Owen Lattimore, Scholar and McCarthy Target, Dies

Owen Lattimore, a China scholar who was accused by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1950 of being “the top Soviet espionage agent in the United States,” died here Wednesday. He was 88.

Lattimore, who suffered a stroke last year, had been in failing health the past two weeks, relatives said.

Lattimore grew up in China, and spent nearly 25 years in the Far East.

In March, 1950, McCarthy made his much-quoted assertion that Lattimore was the nation’s top communist sympathizer. The Wisconsin Republican later toned down his charge to “one of the top” agents.

Eventually a Senate subcommittee cleared Lattimore of all of the charges, declaring them baseless, but that was not the end of his public ordeal. A federal grand jury indicted him in 1952 for perjury in testimony before the committee and the charges lingered until 1955, when the Justice Department dropped them for lack of evidence.

Lattimore never earned a university degree, instead going into business and doing newspaper work in Shanghai and Beijing from 1920 to 1926. He studied at Harvard in 1929 before beginning research in Manchuria later that year. He conducted more research in Peking from 1930 to 1935, also working in Mongolia.

From 1941 to 1942 he served as a political adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist government. He then became deputy director of Pacific operations for the U.S. Office of War Information, serving until 1944.

From 1934 to 1941, he edited Pacific Affairs, a journal of the Institute of Pacific Relations. Lattimore was the director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University from 1939 to 1953, and lectured at Johns Hopkins from 1938 to 1963.

During his legal troubles, Lattimore resigned his job at the Page school but stayed on as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins.

Among Lattimore’s books are, “High Tartary” (1930), “Manchuria, Cradle of Conflict” (1932), “Inner Asian Frontiers of China” (1940) and “Ordeal by Slander” (1950).

Lattimore’s wife, Eleanor, died in the mid-1960s. His son, David Lattimore of Pawtucket, is a professor in the department of East Asian studies at Brown University.

In addition to his son, Lattimore is survived by a sister, six grandchildren and two great-grandsons.

A family member said Lattimore’s remains will be cremated and a memorial service will be held at a later date.