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Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist (2006)

Fall 2006, Vol. 38, No. 3 By Robert Justin Goldstein Enlarge A newspaper article dated December 8, 1947, announces Attorney General Tom Clark's release of a new list of subversive organizations. (Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, RG 233) The so-called "Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations" (AGLOSO) was one of the most central and widely publicized aspects of the post–World War II Red Scare, which has popularly become known as "McCarthyism." AGLOSO burst into the American consciousness in December 1947, when it was published in connection with President Harry S.

The major national news media barely mentioned the Biddle AGLOSO, however, and even after Chairman Martin Dies of the House Committee on Un-American Activities placed leaked Justice Department memorandums concerning the designated Communist "front" organizations into the Congressional Record on September 24, 1942, the names of the groups were not reported in the mainstream press. Thus, according to an October, 1952 memorandum by Assistant Attorney General Charles Murray, head of the Criminal Division, "no reexamination of [the Biddle] cases was made prior to their re-designation in 1947," and with regard to many of the "Fascist" organizations, "incomplete or no files whatever have been located in the department and the basis upon which they were designated originally is unknown, save as summary memoranda prepared at the time may still be in existence." Edelstein and Duggan began by noting the difficulty of seeking to establish adequate AGLOSO criteria, as it was "believed" that they were "designed to be elastic and flexible" and not based on any allegations of "specific deeds detrimental to the United States" that made possible "ready detection," but rather intended to "embrace the vast area of political economic and social action which too often reside in the operation of the mind."

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