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Here is what WSJ's Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote
The Wall Street Journal
July 7, 2003
CRITIC AT LARGE
A Conspiracy So Vast
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
(snip)
You can read all about McCarthy's downfall, and the alleged dupes and
traitors responsible for it, in "Treason," a new book by Ann Coulter,
the Maureen Dowd of the conservatives. It derides McCarthy's critics and brands the notion of McCarthyism itself as a myth and "the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times."
(snip)
Ms. Coulter has not just set about rehabilitating McCarthy as a martyr
destroyed by anti-American leftists -- she has also set about
rehabilitating the most notorious of his cases, the kind dramatized in
famous film clips of the period. Cases like that of Annie Lee Moss, a
black code clerk who had lost her job at the Pentagon when she was
hauled before McCarthy's committee as a security risk and Communist
Party member. She had been confused with a different Annie Lee Moss, the witness explained -- and who Karl Marx was she could not even say. So evident was Ms. Moss's confusion at what she was doing there that
applause erupted in the hearing room when Democratic Sen. Stuart
Symington declared he believed her.
But the evidence against Ms. Moss was not insignificant, the author of
"Treason" now maintains. The code clerk had said there were two other
people called Annie Lee Moss listed in the Washington phone book --
whereas the two others were actually Anna Lee Moss and Annie Moss.
Dynamite evidence, as far as Ms. Coulter is concerned -- case closed.
After all, an FBI report had identified her as a Communist.
(snip)
The portrayal of Sen. McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying
innocent lives is "sheer liberal hobgoblinism," Ms. Coulter maintains.
It is true enough that there was nothing particularly wild-eyed about
McCarthy, though that eerie giggle of his which tended to erupt at odd
moments did have a certain out-of-this world pitch. Matters like that
aside, the senator knew what he was about -- knew how much gold,
political and other, a crusading Communist hunter could mine --
particularly one who could wave lists of names, numbers of traitors and plotters against the nation. The times were ripe for his kind.
Whether Sen. McCarthy actually believed some of the more fantastic
charges he made -- charges that brought him instant fame -- remains a
question. In 1951 he declared that Secretaries of State George Marshall and Dean Acheson had conspired to deliver China to the Soviets; and, not least, that they and other American leaders had taken part in a conspiracy against the United States, "a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man."
(snip)
Ms. Coulter's work includes an admiring if brief biography of McCarthy's political career. One that for some reason excludes the senator's remarkable efforts on behalf of the members of the SS battle group who executed 86 American POWs in the Ardennes campaign in December 1944; otherwise known as the Malmedy Massacre. In his impassioned efforts on behalf of the accused -- one never to be repeated in his investigative career -- the senator charged that the U.S. Army had cruelly mistreated the former SS men.
(snip)
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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