Interviewees
Joseph McCarthy American politician who served as a Republican US Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957
Corliss Lamont a socialist philosopher and advocate of various left-wing and civil liberties causes As a part of his political activities he was the Chairman of National Council of American-Soviet Friendship starting from early 1940s He was the great-uncle of 2006 Democratic Party nominee for the United States Senate from Connecticut Ned Lamont
Fuller Warren 30th Governor of Florida
T Lamar Caudle Assistant Attorney General
Owen Brewster American politician from Maine Brewster a Republican was solidly conservative Brewster was a close confidant of Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and an antagonist of Howard Hughes
Robert S Kerr American businessman from Oklahoma Kerr formed a petroleum company before turning to politics He served as the 12th Governor of Oklahoma and was elected three times to the United States Senate Kerr worked natural resources and his legacy includes water projects that link the Arkansas River via the Gulf of Mexico
Lamont was born in Englewood New Jersey His father Thomas W Lamont was a Partner and later Chairman at JP Morgan Co Lamont graduated as valedictorian of Phillips Exeter Academy in 1920 and magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1924 In 1924 he did graduate work at New College University of Oxford while he resided with Julian Huxley The next year Lamont matriculated at Columbia University where he studied under John Dewey In 1928 he became a philosophy instructor at Columbia and married Margaret Hayes Irish He received his PhD in philosophy in 1932 from Columbia University[2] Lamont taught at Columbia Cornell Harvard and the New School for Social Research In 1962 he married Helen Elizabeth Boyden[3]
Lamont served as a director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1932--1954 and chairman until his death of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee which successfully challenged Senator Joseph McCarthys senate subcommittee and other government agencies In the process Lamont was cited for contempt of Congress but in 1956 an appeals court overturned his indictment From 1951 until 1958 he was denied a passport by the State Department
In 1965 he secured a Supreme Court ruling against censorship of incoming mail by the US Postmaster General In 1973 he discovered through Freedom of Information Act requests that the FBI had been tapping his phone and scrutinizing his tax returns and cancelled checks for 30 years His subsequent successful lawsuit set a precedent in upholding citizens privacy rights He also filed and won a suit against the Central Intelligence Agency for opening his mail
Following the deaths of his parents Lamont became a philanthropist He funded the collection and preservation of manuscripts of American philosophers particularly George Santayana He became a substantial donor to both Harvard and Columbia endowing the latters Corliss Lamont Professor of Civil Liberties currently held by Vincent A Blasi During the 1960s he and Margaret had divorced and he married author Helen Boyden who died of cancer in 1975 Lamont married Beth Keehner in 1986
Lamont was president emeritus of the American Humanist Association and in 1977 was named Humanist of the Year In 1981 he received the Gandhi Peace Award In 1998 Lamont received a posthumous Distinguished Humanist Service Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union
Still an activist at the age of 88 he protested US involvement in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 He died at home in Ossining New
