Theodore Kaghan (July 24, 1912 – August 9, 1989) was an American civil servant and journalist.
Early years
Kaghan was born in Boston on July 24, 1912 and graduated from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
.
[''New York Times'']
"Theodore Kaghan, 77; Was in Foreign Service," August 11, 1989
accessed March 7, 2011
At the University of Michigan he won several annual prizes given for undergraduate dramatic writing, including the top award in 1935 for a play called ''Unfinished Picture'', later read but not performed by the
Group Theatre, named in 1948 as a Communist front organization by the
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
.
He wrote a one-act play called ''Hello, Franco'' that was staged in New York City in January 1938. It depicted a multi-ethnic group of Americans in the
Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade ( es, Brigada Abraham Lincoln), officially the XV International Brigade (''XV Brigada Internacional''), was a mixed brigade that fought for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War as a part of the Internation ...
. They pretend to use their broken field telephone to talk with friends and family back home as well as with
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...
.
Kaghan worked on the foreign news desk of the ''
New York Herald Tribune
The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...
'' beginning in 1939 and moved to the
Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...
in 1942.
In 1946, he served as editor-in-chief of the ''
Wiener Kurier'', Vienna's official anti-Communist publication.
From 1945 to 1950 he was Director of American Publications for the U.S. Army forces then occupying Austria.
Kaghan served from 1950 to 1953 as Deputy Director of Public Affairs for the
United States High Commission in Germany, with indirect responsibility for all of the Commission's newspapers and radios stations in Germany.
When
Roy Cohn
Roy Marcus Cohn (; February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer and prosecutor who came to prominence for his role as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954, when he assisted McCarth ...
and
David Schine, two investigators for Senator
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visi ...
's
Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, toured Europe early in 1953, Kaghan called them "junketeering gumshoes."
[''New York Times'']
C.P. Trussel "Kaghan Tells McCarthy Unit he has Fought Reds Decade," April, 30, 1953
accessed March 7, 2011 When Cohn called him a security risk, Kaghan said he would welcome a chance to testify before McCarthy's committee. He also said that when the two "have made half the record I have in the field of psychological warfare against communism, then perhaps the money this trip of theirs is costing the American taxpayer might begin to pay off." And he offered to show McCarthy his record fighting communism "here in Europe, where the threat is an everyday reality rather than an excuse for creating political confusion."
[''New York Times'']
accessed March 7, 2011
Resignation
In April 1953, he was called home to testify before the subcommittee. He admitted that in the 1930s he had held radical views and did not recognize the threat Communism posed to the United States, but said that his views had long since changed. The Senators questioned him about plays he wrote around 1930, a possible Communist he shared an apartment with between 1935 and 1940, and other issues. McCarthy read passages from his plays and Kaghan called some of the passages "long-winded" and "corny." He denied Communist Party membership at any time, but supposed he had attended social gatherings organized by his roommate without realizing the political nature of the events. When McCarthy asked for the names of those who visited the apartment, Kaghan said he thought it "un-American" to provide them based on so little grounds for suspecting them of wrongdoing. Kaghan described his conversion to anti-Communism, beginning with suspicions in 1939 and ending with firm belief in 1945 when he took up his State Department assignment in Vienna.
To support his testimony, Kaghan offered the committee a letter from
Leopold Figl
Leopold Figl (2 October 1902 – 9 May 1965) was an Austrian politician of the Austrian People's Party (Christian Democrats) and the first Federal Chancellor after World War II. He was also the youngest Federal Chancellor of Austria after the w ...
, a prominent anti-Communist politician and first
Federal Chancellor of Austria after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. During the hearing, another cable arrived in support from
Ernst Reuter
Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter (29 July 1889 – 29 September 1953) was the mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the time of the Cold War.
Biography
Early years
Reuter was born in Apenrade (Aabenraa), Province of Schleswig-Holstein ...
, the
Mayor of Berlin
The Governing Mayor (german: Regierender Bürgermeister) of Berlin is the head of government, presiding over the Berlin Senate. As Berlin is an independent city as well as one of the constituent States of Germany (''Bundesländer''), the office i ...
. At one point in the hearing, when Senator McCarthy was unable to remember how Kaghan had characterized Cohn and Schine, Kaghan supplied the answer: "'junketeering gumshoes', sir." He explained why he took an interest in their visit: "It is my duty to uphold the positions and conduct of the American Government. These investigators had cast reflections on the American Senate. There was a raft of cartoons and dispatches in the German press that were hurting American prestige. I felt that it was time I became interested in it."
Following Kaghan's testimony, Robert L. Johnson, the new head of the
International Information Administration (IIA), commonly known as the Voice of America, launched a review of the security clearances of several dozen officials in his department, including Kaghan. After discussions with the State Department, Kaghan resigned from his post on May 11, 1953. Friends reported he was pressured to resign.
[''New York Times'']
W.H. Lawrence, "U.S. Public Affairs Officer in Germany was Target of McCarthy Inquiry," May 12, 1953
accessed March 7, 2011 Newspapers described it as a "forced resignation."
[''New York Times'']
accessed March 7, 2011
Kaghan returned to Bonn and there described the State Department's role in his resignation. He said the Department had asked him to resign before he completed his subcommittee testimony and that its security investigator
Scott McLeod gave personnel orders to the IIA. Expecting to be dismissed, he resigned in order to be able to return to Bonn to bring his wife and children home. He described his Washington experience as "disillusioning," and explained: "When you cross swords openly with Senator McCarthy, you cannot expect to remain in the State Department, even though you have, as I do, loyalty and security clearance and an anti-Communist record reaching from Vienna to Berlin." A week later
Raymond Swing
Raymond Gram Swing (March 25, 1887 – December 22, 1968) was an American print and broadcast journalist. He was one of the most influential news commentators of his era, heard by people worldwide as a leading American voice from Britain durin ...
resigned his position as senior analyst for the Voice of America to protest what he called the State Department's "spineless failure...to stand by its own staff."
On May 29, more than 200 members of the U.S. High Commission, including Commissioner
James B. Conant
James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard in 1916. ...
and Deputy Commissioner
Samuel Reber
Samuel Reber III (July 15, 1903 – December 25, 1971) was a diplomat who spent 27 years in the Foreign Service of the United States, including several years with the Allied High Commission for Germany. Threats by Senator Joseph McCarthy to reveal ...
, attended a farewell party for Kaghan in Bonn, where Kaghan gave a speech that was "constantly interrupted by applause."
Later years
In October 1954, Kaghan congratulated ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine when it reported that McCarthy's investigations had "hurt his country's chances to rally the peoples of Europe against Communism." He referred to his State Department superiors as "the schizoid psychological warriors of Foggy Bottom."
The State Department later cleared him of the allegations.
He joined the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'' as
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
correspondent and then as a foreign affairs columnist.
From January 1967 to September 1973, he was Director of Public Information in Rome for the
Food and Agriculture Organization
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...
of the United Nations.
[FAO]
"Department of General Affairs and Information"
accessed March 7, 2011 He worked for a Manhattan public relations firm until retiring in 1975.
Kaghan died of heart failure on August 9, 1989 at
Memorial Hospital in
Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro (), originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The most populous municipality abutting Vermont's eastern border with New Hampshire, which is the Connecticut River, Brattleboro is located about no ...
, survived by his wife Nancy, a son Benjamin, and a daughter Susan.
Notes
Sources
*Theodore Kaghan, "The McCarthyization of Theodore Kaghan," ''The Reporter'', no. 9 (July 21, 1963), 17–25
External links
Theodore Kaghan, Public Testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, April 28, 1953
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaghan, Theodore
1912 births
1989 deaths
Writers from Boston
Jewish American journalists
People of the United States Office of War Information
American male journalists
Journalists from New York City
Victims of McCarthyism
Writers from New York City
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male dramatists and playwrights
University of Michigan alumni
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American Jews