Several times at LRC I have referenced the ongoing internecine warfare between Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Central Intelligence Agency under director Allen Dulles. In the fascinating and absolutely compelling new book by David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, we find the following:

In March 1954, McCarthy’s subcommittee convened a hearing on “alleged threats against the chairman.” One witness — a military intelligence officer named William Morgan who had worked for C. D. Jackson in the White House — stunned the subcommittee by recounting a conversation that he had the previous year with a CIA employ named Horace Craig. As the two men were discussing how to solve the McCarthy problem, Craig flatly stated, “It may be necessary to liquidate Senator McCarthy as was [assassinated Louisiana senator] Huey Long. There is always some madman who will do it for a price.” (pages 223-224)

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