What Eight Republicans Found

The eight weeks of MacArthur hearings produced 2,045,000 words of testimony, bales of supplementary documents and plenty of contradictions. Last week Georgia's Senator Richard Russell, who had presided over the long sessions of the joint Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee, announced that the committee had voted to leave things just that way. The committee would issue no formal report, said Russell, although individual members could present their own views. His reason: "To renew a bitter discussion of methods for waging war as advocated by General MacArthur would not help successful conclusion of a cease-fire or the signing of a Japanese peace treaty at San Francisco."

Eight Republicans, who had asked Administration witnesses some thorny questions during the hearings, this week released a 52-page report giving their conclusions. The signers were New Hampshire's Styles Bridges, Wisconsin's Alexander Wiley, New Jersey's Alexander Smith, Iowa's Bourke B. Hickenlooper, California's William Knowland, Washington's Harry P. Cain, Maine's Owen Brewster and Vermont's Ralph Flanders. Their findings:

P: General MacArthur never violated military directives, was always substantially in agreement with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His removal was legal, but Harry Truman's method was "ill advised," and the reasons given were "utterly inadequate to justify the act."

P: Secretary of State Acheson "did not always frankly and fully reveal the information requested of him." The record indicates that "under his guidance, the objective of American foreign policy has been primarily to conciliate certain of our associates in the United Nations, rather than to advance the security of the U.S."

P: Defense Secretary Marshall "defended the many administration policies, in the formulation of which he had presumably played a part." He seemed peculiarly "uninformed" and inclined to shunt many of the questions to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who sometimes seemed embarrassed by the chore of supporting him.

P: "The Administration's Far East policy has been a catastrophic failure . . . the most desolate ... in the history of our foreign policy . . ." Notable exception: Japan, where General MacArthur was in charge. The Administration has been "unduly preoccupied with the defense of America in Europe, to the neglect of the defense of America in Asia ... It is unfortunate, but true, that the State Department has been affected by a group who have interpreted Asiatic problems to the advantage of Russia rather than that of the United States . . . The truth about the pro-Communist State Department group has not yet been revealed."

P: Suppression of the 1947 Wedemeyer Report (advocating support for the Chinese Nationalists, a U.N. trusteeship to keep Manchuria out of Communist control) was a "tragic error"--particularly the section predicting an attack in Korea.

P: State Department policies lost China to the Communists. "The myth that China fell because the Chinese troops refused to fight is again refuted by sworn testimony . . . Effective military aid . . . might have defeated the Communists." Dean Acheson's claim that the Administration supported the Chiang Kai-shek government belies the facts. Some U.S. officials were so opposed to Chiang that "they were automatically on the side of the Red regime," and should be investigated. If the Chiang government was, in some instances, corrupt and decadent, "certainly there can be no greater corruption than that found in the Communist world wherein whole nations are forcibly brought to slavery." Added footnote: "Deep freeze, pastel mink, RFC and organized crime and dope would furnish ample material for a Chinese writer to discuss corruption in some other quarter."

P: In its secret directive, issued Dec. 23, 1949, on Formosa, the State Department helped "to prepare the way for the abandonment of Formosa to the Chinese Reds . . . No matter how the directive is explained, it reflects little credit to the honor and dignity of the United States."

P: The U.S. backed the Administration's decision to fight in Korea because it thought there was a competent military plan of strategy. There was none. The "only one positive plan for victory in the Korean war" was Douglas MacArthur's.

P: "We are unable to comprehend why the Administration [refused] the offer of 33,000 fighting men [for Korea] advanced by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek."

P: "Any peace short of the liberation and unification of Korea is a delusion. Any settlement at the 38th parallel is a Chinese Communist victory."

P: The MacArthur hearings were in the public interest, forced the State Department to make "a major shift" in foreign policy. "The ground swell of American public opinion, which expressed itself in one of the greatest floods of spontaneous correspondence which has ever descended upon the legislative and executive branch of the government, required the State Department to alter policies which were disapproved by the public."

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