Owen Lattimore

Owen Lattimore was a scholar who became the focus of one of Senator McCarthy’s most dramatic espionage accusations. McCarthy portrayed him as a central Russian agent and a former associate of Alger Hiss; the book identifies the charge as fraudulent and contrasts it with Lattimore’s limited government service and the support he received from President Harry S. Truman.

Identity and Public Role

At the time McCarthy named him, Lattimore was director of the Johns Hopkins School of International Relations. His connection to the United States Department of State was brief: he had worked for it for four months in 1946, advising a reparations mission in Japan. The book stresses that he was neither a Communist nor an influential figure in the department.

The Espionage Accusation

McCarthy announced that Lattimore was the “top Russian espionage agent” in the United States and alleged that he had once been the boss of Alger Hiss and Hiss’s espionage ring. The claim came amid Senate hearings into McCarthy’s charges. After six weeks of headlines, McCarthy had not named a single Communist; he now presented Lattimore’s supposed role as a major espionage case and said he was willing to stand or fall on it. The book later calls the accusation a fraud, setting the scale of McCarthy’s claim against the narrow facts of Lattimore’s government service.

Truman’s Response

Truman dismissed the allegation directly when asked whether Lattimore was a Russian spy: “Why of course not. It’s silly on the face of it.” He also wrote to Lattimore’s sister that McCarthy had “no sense of decency or honor.” In the letter, Truman acknowledged the strain of facing repeated attacks and expressed confidence that the truth would emerge. Lattimore’s treatment in these passages thus turns on a sharp contrast: McCarthy’s sweeping public charge, and Truman’s insistence that it did not withstand scrutiny.