The McCarthy Era - Sierra Kaplan-Nelson

During the McCarthy Era intellectuals, liberals, and anyone foreign was targeted as a possible Communist or communist sympathizer. Many were investigated by HUAC or the FBI, put under surveillance, and blacklisted. Some fled the country to avoid having their careers ruined or being followed by the FBI. Others stayed and lost their jobs. The first person I interviewed was a liberal lawyer named Victor Kaplan who represented the labor union the CIO before WWII and was later called in for questioning by HUAC. The second person was a physics PhD whose wife left him to go to Russia with her Communist lover. Because of these (and other) associations, Bruce Dayton was investigated by the FBI and blacklisted. The final person I interviewed was a Jewish immigrant from Germany, also a PhD in physics, who was thought to be a Communist spy and investigated by the FBI. He finally fled the country after several incidents with the FBI and an investigation by HUAC.


Interview 1: Victor Kaplan (June 13, 2010)
Victor Kaplan was a liberal lawyer who protested the government’s encroachment on human rights.

Before WWII I was working at a law firm in LA representing the CIO. At the time the CIO was a powerful labor union that split off from the AFL, but then rejoined it again years later. They organized on an industrial basis. The old labor union was divided on a small craft basis, while the CIO grouped everyone in the automobile industry, for instance, into one union. Their leader was very leftist, and the CIO was known for having many communists working for it, while the AFL didn’t tolerate them.

At the end of the 1930s the House of Un-American Activities Committee was going around the country forcing people to answer questions about their political preferences and other activities. I wasn’t questioned, but I was considered very leftist because of my job representing the CIO and was labeled a communist by many people. When I joined the army I wasn’t allowed to become a marine and people were told to keep an eye on me. The army’s always been a very conservative organization and they didn’t want leftists reaching positions of power.

The witch hunts for communists really reached their height during the McCarthy era though. The country almost became a fascist dictatorship. People were afraid of making phone calls, of joining any sort of organization, even of having the wrong kinds of conversations. Your livelihood was at stake. The McCarthy Era so frightened and intimidated people that the whole country was scared into becoming more conservative. I guess you could call this the “Red Scare.” The McCarthy Era terrified people; it made people afraid to deal with you because you were labeled “left wing.” The entire guild of screenwriters was blacklisted. People weren’t allowed to belong to many innocent organizations.

Towards the end of the McCarthy Era they were trying to pass a loyalty bill in California, which would make anyone who held a state job have to take a loyalty oath. This would include swearing that you had never been a member of the Communist Party. Well it would have affected me, so I went out with a lot of other people to protest. It would have made thousands of people have to lie about their pasts. It was defeated in California, although for a while it looked like it was going to pass. I know in other states it did pass, and all state employees including lawyers had to take a loyalty oath if they wanted to keep their jobs. It was terrible and unconstitutional.

A group of about thirteen lawyers and I, who had been protesting the loyalty bill, were detained by the HUAC and hauled into court to testify. The trials were held in the federal building. They asked us questions about our political preferences. Not just if we were members of the Communist Party, but also if we affiliated ourselves with other political parties or were members of different political groups in our community. They even asked us questions about our own personal beliefs. I refused to answer any of their questions, on the grounds of the 1st and 5th amendments. It was what you’d expect of a fascist dictator, like what you’d expect of Hitler. I couldn’t believe that so soon after WWII our government was trying to take away our rights of freedom of speech and thought. What they were doing was unconstitutional. It was terrifying to refuse to answer questions, although it was the right thing to do. Your career could be ruined forever. It was a real concern of all of ours.

Our entire group of lawyers gave the committee a hard time. We opposed what they were doing on the grounds of the first amendment and made them look bad on television. People’s attitude towards the witch-hunts was starting to become more negative at that time anyways, and they ended up letting us go and not blacklisting us. I still had to quit my job at my brother’s firm where I was working though, because I refused to testify as a friendly witness when one of our powerful clients asked me to. If I hadn’t quit I would have lost my brother a lot of wealthy clients.

Of course I felt threatened by the McCarthy era; I think everyone did. Your very livelihood was at stake. It permeated the entire atmosphere. People were afraid to talk, afraid to join organizations; the whole country was terrified. After about ten years the atmosphere had recovered greatly, although many top professionals never got their careers back. I don’t think anything like it has happened since, although there have been many conservative trends over the years.


Interview 2: Bruce Dayton (June 13, 2010)
Bruce Dayton was a physics PhD whose wife became a Communist, left him, and went to Russia with her communist lover, leaving him with two children and an FBI investigation.

The McCarthy era…well it was a bad period for me. I was never called before the McCarthy committee, but my troubles were that at a time when I was looking for a job, because of my associations with the man my wife ran off with, the FBI thought I was a suspicious person. At every job interview people would run a security check, find out I was blacklisted, and tell me, “Uh, thanks, but no thanks.” This happened so many times. I wanted a university position, but at that time people were so paranoid about the Red Scare that they wouldn’t hire anyone investigated by the FBI.

I had a job offer from the Tata Institute in India, where your uncle Bernard had gone, so I applied for a passport. At that time the US required you to have a passport for foreign travel. The president had declared a state of national emergency so the Secretary of State had to approve every passport application and he denied mine. So I sued for it. It took me four and a half years to get it. First I got turned down in the district court, so I went to the US court of appeals and lost again. Then I went back to the district court and my case ended up going to the Supreme Court.

During this period of four and a half years I continued applying for jobs at different colleges. I would be forthright with them and tell them, “You know I’ve been denied a passport.” They always told me they couldn’t hire me. Finally I went to work at an industrial job. After a few months I was denied a passport again and I talked to my boss about it. A few days later I got a call saying they no longer had a use for me.

So I went looking for a job out west. I finally got one in California at a teaching college. The president needed a physics teacher. I told him I was going to sue for a passport again and there could be publicity but he told me it was OK. But when I lost at the district court again the school board got involved. They voted 5-4 to pay me to disappear for a while. They said they’d pay me a whole term’s salary if I would just go away. Well I told them no, and they fired me.

Finally my case went to the Supreme Court. They heard it with two other cases, Rockwell Kent, the artist, and Walter Briehl, a psychiatrist. All of us had been denied passports by the secretary of state. The Supreme Court ruled in our favor with a 5-4 vote. They said that denying anyone a passport was unconstitutional and that everyone has the right to travel.

So I finally got a passport, but it took so long that Bernard wasn’t in India anymore, he’d gone to work in Denmark. My wife left me and disappeared for thirty years in the summer of 1950 and it wasn’t until 1959 that I was allowed to leave the country. So Bernard and I set something up in Switzerland and I went to work in Bern. I stayed there for two years, worked in Denmark for a year, and finally went to India to work at the Tata Institute after all. After about five and a half years in Europe and India I came back to the United States. At that time the climate was completely different. Before I left the US was still in a climate of fear, but when I came back I got a job at California State in LA and worked there until I retired. I was a moderately famous physicist in Europe but nobody knew me in the US. But still, I guess you could say that everything turned out just fine.

I don’t know anything about what’s going on nowadays from personal experience, but it seems to me that what is going on with Muslims is remarkably similar to what happened in the McCarthy era. The terrorist attack on 9/11 left the country in a very similar state of fear.

A Time article from 1958 on the Supreme Court case that allowed people the right to travel can be found at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,891897,00.html

A report on Bruce Dayton’s specific case can be found at:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=357&invol=144



Interview 3: Tom Peters, on the experiences of his father Bernard Peters (via email, June 13, 2010 – June 15, 2010)
Bernard Peters was Jewish physicist and a German immigrant who worked with Oppenheimer to develop the atomic bomb during WWII. After the war he was investigated as a Communist sympathizer and regarded with extreme suspicion by the FBI. Tom Peters is a historian in his free time.

Bernard was one of Oppenheimer's two graduate students at Berkeley. The families were friends as Bernard was already twenty-seven when he started studying. Oppie's son Peter was my age and Toni, the daughter, was Susan's. Bernard worked on the atom bomb project, "Project Manhattan" at Berkeley, and we were slated to go to Los Alamos where Bernard was working. Hannah had even bought me a snowsuit when suddenly everything was canceled. Bernard and Hannah did not know why.

Well it turned out that the FBI had discovered that one of the two German-Jewish refugees working on the project was a spy for the Russians and was giving them information about the project. The other was Klaus Fuchs who worked in Los Alamos and who eventually did turn out to be the spy and later fled to East Germany. J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that it was Bernard, so he no longer had clearance to work on the project.

On top of it all, Oppenheimer came under suspicion. His brother Frank who was also a physicist, but not on the project was indeed a member of the American Communist Party as was Frank's wife Jackie, the daughter of a longshoreman. Robert Oppenheimer was something of a coward and so he badmouthed some of his colleagues, among them Bernard, was always outspoken about his political views and quite naïve in some respects. To Bernard he said that he was shielding him from difficulties and to the FBI he said that he was a "dangerous radical." The FBI never found anything bad out about Bernard because there was nothing bad to discover. The only thing that they could find to accuse him of was that he was "prematurely and excessively anti-fascist!" That was the epithet they put on his dossier. Prematurely meant before Pearl Harbor, that is before the US entered the war. Of course he was anti-fascist before then. That is why he fled Germany. After all he had been put into Dachau, the concentration camp, at the very beginning years before Pearl Harbor in 1933 and had gotten out because of his mother. What "excessive" meant in relation to anti-fascist, no one ever could explain. As Bernard later said, J. Edgar Hoover never forgave him for not being Klaus Fuchs, and he carried a grudge against Bernard until he (Hoover) died.

When we moved to Rochester, New York in 1945 (where Bernard got a job as assistant professor at the University of Rochester) the troubles moved with us. The then president of the university was very courageous, much more so than Oppenheimer, and when the FBI insisted that he fire Bernard he refused. It was during that time that a telephone company technician came to the house one day and told Hannah that something was wrong with the telephone and he had to fix it. The next day Philip Morrison, Oppenhimer's other former PhD student who was visiting us, picked up the receiver to phone someone. This was in the days before dialing and one had to wait for the operator to come on and say, "Number please?" This could take a moment or two if the operator was busy with other callers. In that pause, Phil heard typing on the other end of the line, and he realized that he was connected to an office that was listening in to our calls. This was years before reliable recording devices and a typist was probably waiting on the other end to take shorthand of what was said. Phil yelled into the phone: "If you can't even bug a phone line so that we can't hear you, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" He then took the receiver apart and Hannah photographed the "bug" as evidence should we be further persecuted in any way. The "telephone technician" – who was in reality an FBI technician – came the very next day and took the microphone out again.

Hannah also remembered, but I have blocked it out of my memory, that Susan and I were shadowed by FBI men one our way home from school. All I do remember is that I can to this very day smell an FBI man a mile away against the wind. They all acted as though they had learned to sleuth from old B-movies with Humphrey Bogart, soft fedora hats and raincoats with turned up collars and all! It sounds improbable, but it was true at least until the 1960s.

I remember Bernard telling me about traveling to Washington DC to testify before HUAC. Being rather politically naïve, he was convinced that he could explain and convince them that he was no dangerous radical. But of course, the FBI had made up the committee's minds and Joseph McCarthy was only interested in media publicity and in his career. Any sensation would do - even if it were not true.

It was around that time that Micha, Bernard and Lena's brother in Israel, came for a visit to the US. His typewriter was stolen off the ship or in customs when he arrived. It reappeared, sent back to him in Rochester with no explanation. Bernard later discovered that one of J. Edgar Hoover's agents, an eager young man named Richard Nixon, later President Nixon, had stolen it to see whether the letters matched up with some incriminating letters that had been typewritten, presumably by Klaus Fuchs. Typewriters were only manual, not even electric at the time and each had characteristic wear and irregularity in the way it hit the paper, so that the "handwriting" of each machine was unique. Needless to say, it was not Micha's typewriter. I later found a letter in the Cornell archives that Hans Bethe, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner, had written to Oppenheimer at the time, saying he hoped that what he had heard Oppenheimer had said about Bernard Peters was not true. So there were obviously others who were also outraged at Oppenheimer's cowardice.

Bernard's case finally blew up and led to Oppenheimer's famous case before HUAC and Congress. Ed Condon, another physicist who I think was in Los Alamos at the time, or at any rate in New Mexico, wrote a letter to Oppenheimer berating him for lying to Bernard about protecting him. The FBI intercepted the letter and Oppenheimer was accused of having made the whole thing up. The case, and the fact that all his former friends (including his brother) now had ruined careers, ruined Oppenheimer’s career and personal life. Kitty – his wife, an alcoholic – finally drank herself to death on a friend's yacht in the Caribbean. Peter dropped out of sight and finally got back on his feet and became a building contractor in Albuquerque. Toni committed suicide, and Oppenheimer himself died totally abandoned by everyone of cancer. Frank however, survived after having tried to be a cattle rancher in Colorado with no success for a couple of years. He became the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco; Clotilde and I knew him well and were very fond of him and Jackie, and of Frank's second wife Millie after Jackie died.

We left the US for India because Bernard had the opportunity to build up primary research there, a very attractive proposal. Also he was sick and tired of being hounded by the government and hoped to find some peace outside the country. Eventually the government refused to renew his and Hannah's passports while in India and they were forced to take back their German citizenship in the mid 1950s.

There are many more stories, of being strip searched by the French Secret Service on the request of the FBI while crossing form England to France in 1948, and so on. Bernard and Hannah had fled that kind of government in Germany and found it again a few years later in the US. I wonder why they did not become totally disillusioned with any and all governments after that.

Civil Liberties in America - Emma Meersman

When international warfare enters the United States, the government will stop at nothing to accomplish their own ends. Fear is a tool that is commonly used to manipulate the American people into allowing the violations of civil liberties in the name of national security. Three major examples of this occurrence in history include the Japanese Internment of World War II, the McCarthy Era during the Cold War, and the 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks.

Interview 1 - Gaylin Gardette is my neighbor, a woman in her mid-forties, who is part Japanese, part Native American, and part Hawaiian. Her grandfather was a full Japanese man living in America in World War II when Pearl Harbor occurred. She will speak about his experiences as well as her own knowledge of the Cold War and 9/11.

What was your experience with the Japanese internment of World War II?
My grandmother was named Rhione Honore. She was half Native American and half Hawaiian. As the only girl in a very traditional family, a marriage was arranged for her when she reached her late teens. This was several years before the tragic bombing of Pearl Harbor. My Japanese grandfather, Harry Suehiro, lived in a community in Los Angeles. The two met there, in East Los Angeles. That was the Asian area of the city. My grandparents got married and had just had their first child when World War II entered the United States.

What happened to them then?
Well, once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a whole culture of fear took over the country. To the American people, the Japanese became the enemy, period. It did not matter if it was the Japanese abroad or in the United States. All Japanese were seen as violent and cruel monsters for attacking America. The internment was concentrated especially on California and Los Angeles in particular, known for its enormous Japanese population.

Can you tell me more?
Well, here is a small bit of Japanese history to put things in perspective. First, their government built up a huge army in order to become a superpower and take control of the world. Their culture was centered on the brutal military and government. This all took place during the Second World War. In America, propaganda was based on the ruthless Japanese monsters, which furthered the opposition to all Japanese. Frankly, there was some truth behind the propaganda back then.

What happened to your grandparents after Pearl Harbor?
The pair faced an incredible surge of discrimination, for my grandmother had the skin color of an African-American, and my grandfather was obviously Japanese. They also had to deal with distrust, especially on my grandfather’s part. Luckily, their marriage had granted my grandfather his citizenship, so he was able to avoid deportation. He made a good living, so my great-grandparents were satisfied with their choice for my grandmother. Once America became involved in the war, my grandfather, like many other Japanese, grew deathly afraid of internment. Actually, he was one of the few Japanese Americans who was able to escape. After the beginning of the war, all Japanese were made to register with the government so that they could be watched. Everyone had to register, and everyone had to go to the camps. It is so hard to believe that it happened in this country.

So how did your grandfather escape internment?
As I said before, he was fairly well off, and he had many connections within the community. Somehow, he was able to convince the government officials to stamp his papers when he registered saying that he was Hawaiian. I have no doubt that bribery was somehow involved. Unfortunately, his avoidance earned him a mandatory trip to Hawaii in 1942. He was forced to leave his wife and my newly born mother behind in America. Eventually, their marriage was annulled. My grandfather was able to escape internment, but he interned himself. While he was afraid to return to America, those consequences resulted from his self-internment. He had no idea what would happen to him if he were found out, and because of his fear, my grandparents never really had a chance to get to know one another. My mother grew up without a father.

What part did fear play in all of this?
The Japanese Americans had heard horrible stories of German death camps, and they believed that they were about to be massacred. They feared the camps of the Holocaust with a passion. Once all of the Japanese had finally been interned, my grandmother who remained behind compared her community to a wasteland. Hardly anyone was present, and all her friends had been taken. She was afraid for all the people in her life, for she did not know their fates. When the Japanese finally returned, things were never the same. Fear and discrimination still existed, and the community was forever impacted.

When did the propaganda against Japanese first appear?
I’m not sure, but I believe that it began once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The fact that there were Japanese within America greatly alarmed many United States citizens. People could clearly see that fact that the Pacific Rim was quickly being taken over by the Japanese. Many people from Japan were already in California.

What happened once the war ended?
After the atomic bombings, Japan became peaceful. In turn, the Japanese Americans were seen as weak, and became frequently bullied targets. The government had encouraged this discrimination through internment. Once they planted the seed that Japanese Americans were different and needed to be locked away, discrimination and racism naturally progressed. All Japanese living in the United States at that time were incredibly angry, for their lives were taken away through internment. It was a horrible contradiction in history that all of this occurred in a country that encouraged freedom.

On another note, what do you know about McCarthyism?
McCarthy and the Red Scare in general were based on the fear of an enemy on home turf and the need to control this. Everyone needed to know who was a communist and how they were spying on us. The realization of espionage in the war was just coming into being and encouraged civilian paranoia. As long as the government was doing something to control the communists, people were pacified. It did not matter whether there was misinformation or wrongly accused communists. This follows a principle that I call ‘group think’. The idea behind this is, ‘if I can convince this many people that others are bad, we can go after them.’

How does this relate to the Red Scare?
McCarthy was able to use his version of ‘group think’ to convince enough people that creative people were bad and susceptible to communism. They were able to get their own ideas out through a combination of liberal views, power, and money. The government supported McCarthy’s attack, for they liked the idea of creating a panic and getting rid of the communists. The process of Russian expulsion was promoted, for the government needed a new enemy to focus on because the Japanese had been defeated. This involves the government’s need to have an enemy in order to create fear. If the government has an enemy, they can go to war, which sometimes makes money for the country.

What was your experience with 9/11?
I believe that Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both similar in that they were acts of terrorism which opened the gates to pursue enemies. Honestly, after 9/11 I was really hoping that the government was not going to intern the Muslims. I think that the media did a good job of stepping up and trying to stop the discrimination, though there definitely still is racism.

What changes have you noticed since 9/11?
Obviously, there have been airport screenings after the attack. Once, when I was travelling on a business trip, the airport officials were randomly pulling people out of line for extra security checks. I was pulled out for an extra check, and when I got into the new line, I noticed that every single person selected had brown skin. This was blatant discrimination of American citizens. I believe that today, the government is using ‘group think’ and ignorance to keep people feeling safe. This helps to turn mass attention away from noticing scenes such as the one in the airport that day.

What are your opinions on the 9/11 conspiracy theories?
Honestly, my first thought upon hearing the theories was, “Oh my god, what has Bush done now?” I believe that the government needed an enemy show that Bush was a good leader, regardless of the fact that the economy was doing well and there was no war. This was a situation of greed, and Bush needed to prove to his father that he could be a good leader. I am not sure what to make of the theories themselves, though they are probable.

What happened after 9/11?
There was an upsurge in American pride following the attacks, though it was against the Bush and Cheney administration. In fact, there was a republican military commander that left his post after 9/11 and found common ground with the democrats. He was that opposed to what Bush and Cheney were doing.



Interview 2 - Thomas Meersman lived through most of the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks and is also my uncle. Today, he is a newspaper reporter in his late fifties living in Minneapolis with his family. He experienced the Cold War as a child in Spokane, and will speak about his memories from that time as well as his perceptions of 9/11.

What was your general experience with the Red Scare and McCarthyism?
Around that time, I was just a kid, and unaware of politics. The Cold War was talked about in school, especially in history class. We were given information about how communism had taken over many countries, and unless we were watchful, it could take over the world. I remember that we had drills for air raids in which we had to duck and cover so that we resembled turtles. These drills were similar to earthquake drills, but these occurred when the civil defense siren rang out. This was for the practice that there might be a bomb. There were even jingles for the duck and cover positions, those that advertised that you wouldn’t be hurt if you were a turtle. I was aware that the Soviets were bad and communism was all-consuming, for that was what I had been taught. We were told that the United States needed to stand up and have a strong defense in order to avoid being like the Soviet Union.

Were these advertisements propaganda?
The people that put out these advertisements believed that it was propaganda, but they knew what they were in for after World War II. The government knew that it had to play up the enemy to avoid another serious war. It was necessary for us to match the Soviets in military strength. In the case of war, the population needed to know how to defend itself, despite the fact that being like a turtle wouldn’t matter much against an atomic bomb. The enemy stood for the very opposite morals than us, and the government needed to broadcast that as much as possible.

What was your perception of communism?
I realized that communism was happening elsewhere and that we needed to be fearful of it. We could not let Vietnam fall, for if the progress of communism was not stopped, soon the United States would be the only free country left. McCarthy was running around trying to find anyone in the country who was associated with communism at all. His actions further validated the lesson that communism was wrong and bad.

Was this especially so with blacklisting?
Many good careers were ruined by McCarthy and his communist lists. Amazing writers all over the country were accused of opposing capitalism, and after this they were virtually unable to be published. This was especially horrible because these were sometimes false charges that ruined successful careers.

Why do you think the people were wrongly accused?
It is all part of a power thing. The government and McCarthy knew that Americans feared communism, and they were able to garner attention and popularity through their actions. Many people agreed with McCarthy. Some people felt relieved by his initiative, though others were unsure of whether the trials would make a difference. These people were more concerned about what was occurring in other parts of the world and were not scared until the legitimate threat of communism was brought to the United States.

How did the government respond to McCarthy?
McCarthy was basically in charge of the hunt for communists. Edward Murrow, a television and radio reporter of the time did a documentary on McCarthy at one point. It included evidence of how McCarthy had taken his hunt too far and it berated him for his harsh actions. Many people closely followed Murrow’s opinion, so he was too powerful to be ruined by McCarthy for his opinions. Following this documentary, the public began to doubt McCarthy, and many people realized that he was ruining the lives of fellow Americans. The press and the public opinion were able to turn things around rather than the government’s will in this case.



What do you remember about the day of 9/11? How did it feel to you?
The televisions in the newsroom are always on to multiple channels in order to follow other stories. When I came into work on that morning, I saw my coworkers gathered around a television screen on which the World Trade Centers were collapsing. Over the course of the morning, I constantly watched the televisions to see what was happening and what else would happen. The reaction that many people had was pure shock. No one could believe what had come to pass, including myself. There were immediate repercussions of the attacks, including the facts that all plane in the air at the time landed at the nearest airports. All airports in the country were closed for days, and I remember writing an article about the travel issues in the nation.
George Bush, meanwhile, was apparently put into a plane and was flown around in the air so that he would not get hit with another bomb. This sparked uncertainty among the public, for no one know how many more violent planes existed. Everyone wondered whether it was over, or whether there would be more bombs. The populace felt very sad that day for the country in general, and it was a new tragedy that we would have to live with. America suddenly felt more vulnerable, for we had been attacked on our own soil. I knew that there would immediately be new restrictions and things would never be the same as they were on September 10th.

What do you think of the 9/11 conspiracy theories?
I think that the theories are ridiculous, for the president is the president, and he does not need any more power than he already holds. I do believe, however, that Bush was looking for an excuse to go to war with Iraq. He lied about many things, especially the fact that Iraq had nukes, for they most certainly did not. Cheney was also lying about the Iraqis being at fault, for al-Queda were obviously behind the 9/11 attacks. The theories do not make any sense and there is no convincing evidence that someone in the United States would attack their own country to make themselves more powerful. Bush was still popular at the beginning of his presidency and he had three long years ahead of him. His popularity did not need to be boosted, and he was still learning how to govern the country.

What happened once the war began?
Bush’s credibility with the American populace went out the window when he made the decision to bomb Afghanistan. Though not everyone had problems with attacking Afghanistan, Bush then pressed his luck with targeting Iraq. He began to build a case to target Iraq, but that resulted in confused and opposing public. Bush grouped all Middle Easterners together as terrorists, which was a fatal mistake. The American people disagreed with him, but they did not completely speak out. Bush maintained that going to war was patriotic of the Americans.

How did the Americans react to terrorism and the Muslims within the country?
People began to look at those who appeared to be Middle Eastern with more suspicion, and some Muslim businesses were damaged. There were some protests in predominately Muslim neighborhoods near where I live, and I know that a few people even got hurt. The populace was upset and emotional and needed a target to attack. Their ignorance of the conflict in the Middle East caused the attack, while the Muslims being targeted were scared for themselves. Some tried to speak out, for they had absolutely no desire to be synonymous with the term of terrorists.


Did the government wanting to bomb the Middle East help people’s attitude towards the Muslims?
The bombing persuasions occurred several years after the discrimination, but because of the people’s desire for revenge against terrorists, it was easier for the government to start a quick war in Afghanistan. As that country was the source of the problem of 9/11 and a center of terrorism, the American public was able to be convinced. This was a much harder sell for Iraq, which was not the source of the 9/11 attacks. The government needed to put together a list of the most wanted terrorists in order to show the people the existing danger.

This is basically propaganda, is it not?
Yes, the message was that America needs to protect itself by attacking Iraq. The idea was that a leader from a culture similar to that of Iraq bombed the United States, so Iraq was therefore linked to the bombings of 9/11. This was all done to garner the support of both the public and a large portion of the government. Many people were uneasy and wanted proof of connections to Iraq, but the response they were given was that the information was classified.

What changes have you noticed since 9/11?
I have noticed the increased security around nuclear power plants since the attacks. There has also been less information available to reporters, and therefore the people in general, for news stories. Information in national infrastructure is sparse so that it does not get out and present a target for hostile terrorist groups. Many internal structures of the government are kept quiet out of the fear that they could be attacked.

Is the mindset of “they are among us” present?
Yes, especially since I heard about a Pakistani man who drove a van into Times Square three months ago. The van was noticed by several people and was deserted with smoke and popping noises emanating from it. Once the police arrived on the scene, they explored the van and found it filled with explosives that failed to detonate properly. Apparently, the man in possession of the van had gone to Pakistan and had received money and training in order to accomplish this attack.
This event merely enforces the fact that people are still aware that anything can happen—not necessarily just from foreigners in airplanes. Events such as the van have led to increased security in countries worldwide, for terrorism can occur anywhere at any time. This mindset did not begin with 9/11, but it certainly increased since then.

How were your work and the media in general affected by 9/11?
Personally, I was not greatly affected by the attacks, for the local news reports that I do progressed unchanged. As a reporter, I notice that information about certain systems that would be vulnerable to terrorists is difficult to obtain. In order to get the information, it is necessary to go through more channels, meaning that some reporters need to work harder to get their stories. The local news basically remains the same, though there may be a slight increase in the attention paid to the demographics of Muslim communities after 9/11. Muslims and their religion were definitely spotlighted directly following the attacks.



The government censorship that you mentioned is interesting.
Yes, the nuclear power plants (the Nuclear Regulatory Committee) closed their websites down for months in order to clean it and make sure that there was no information included that could be valuable to enemies. There is still a lot of information included in the website, but the committee took out a great deal of it. I know that there used to be more information available on that website, so I think that they might have been watching what people who accessed the site were looking into. I would be very unsurprised if the government was tracking the interests of some people, or tapping the phones of others. It is always impossible to know whether security is innocent or abusive, which brings us back to McCarthyism and the Red Scare. The question remains: How far is too far when it comes to public security? Civil liberties in America are a careful balancing act which shifted to one side following 9/11.



Interview 3 - Deborah Wiese is a family friend in her mid-fifties who currently works as a reference desk librarian in Port Townsend. She studied political science in college and experienced part of the Cold War and 9/11. Deborah will talk about her opinions on McCarthyism as well as her beliefs about the 9/11 attacks.

What do you remember about McCarthyism and the Red Scare?
Well, I was born in Wisconsin in 1955, and that was the state that McCarthy was from. I grew up in a republican family who was very patriotic and did not question the government. They did not support McCarthy, believing that civil rights were extremely important. The Red Scare, though I do not remember much of it, reminded me greatly of the premise of the Salem witch hunts. There was so much fear in both cases. During the trials of suspected communists, I felt that they were unjust and they broke the constitution. In the United States, people are allowed to be members of opposing parties, but these trials caused suspected communists to lose their jobs for no good reason. This was a time in our country’s history that was bad.

What about 9/11?
I do not believe that 9/11 was as bad as McCarthyism, though it was still bad. People were against attacking Afghanistan, and they realized how harmful our actions could be through their grief. I wish that they would have taken the matter through international court. Iraq and Iran had nothing to do with the attacks, and they did nothing wrong. The conflict only created hardship for Iraq and the United States. I suspect that there were definitely more deaths in Iraq than the media reported to America. The Bush administration merely used 9/11 to do something that they had wanted to do.

What did you observe after 9/11?
Everyone was in a state of shock, horrified by the attacks. They were suddenly aware of why people who do not have power turn to terror to accomplish their goals. People in our country suddenly got ideas that Muslims were terrorists, and that the country was at war with terrorists in general. The media certainly did not help, as it promoted the ideas of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, and it targeted terrorists as enemies. The voices of those who were against the bombings became subdued, though there were demonstrations opposing the bombing. It was like the power of the people did not exist.
What changes have you noticed since 9/11?
First of all, there has been an increase in border patrols and in security checks. The released fact that Guantanamo was holding terrorists against their wills has done nothing to help the government’s image in the eyes of the people. Many see 9/11 as a threat to their civil liberties just like the McCarthy era. The government has played up the fear angle, and Obama is stuck attempting to lessen it. Obama still needs to make more progress against terrorists, but terrorists are only one threat to our country and the planet. There are more serious threats to the planet that cannot be solved with bombing.

Do you believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories?
I think that rigging the buildings to explode would have been too complex, but I just do not know. Based on the government, I can see why people would believe the theories. However, the fact remains that there is no concrete evidence in support of the 9/11 conspiracy theories.