Who was erring and on what exactly points is not immediately clear.

Mr. Lattimore probably was not "a spy" ; this seems to have been one of the favorite traps laid for the unsuspecting public, counfounding espionage (for foreign powers) with internal subversive activities.

The latter seem certain to have been present on the part of Mr. Lattimore. To defend J. Stalin, for example, plainly disinformed the American public. Some such one instance would not mean much, perhaps, but there seems to have been a pattern on the part of Mr. Lattimore.

The misrepresentation of facts is a fraud by any legal definitions in any circumstances. The facts of the matter have often been in the case of the communist activities confounded with 'ideology' and 'ideological differemces'.

The may be valid 'ideological differences' as in the case of for example Mr. Hyndman, a (partially misled but entirely honest) 'socialist'. The majority of the 'socialist' cases after 1917 were however plain troublemakers and disturbers of the historic continuity. To swamp the semantic environments with either lying or designedly confusing propaganda would not be excusable on the grounds of 'ideology'.

The activities of Mr. Lattimore seem to have deserved of sharp censure. What somebody's "spying" had to do with this case is not entirely clear to me but it seems that the proper handling of Mr. Lattimore had been impeded by lack of clear definitions.

WPT

http://www.rotten.com/library/history/huac/McCarthy_Hearings_Part_1/

While the committee charge was essentially trumped-up, and eventually dismissed, it seems that Mr. Lattimore did indeed encourage an Asian policy which seemed fairly amenable to the USSR and China. He was a staunch opponent of Chiang Kai-Shek, wrote approvingly of Socialism in China and Mongolia, and argued that America must accept some form of Soviet involvement in Asia. Mr. Lattimore published articles approving of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, editorialized in support of the Stalin purge trials, and, in National Geographic, published an astonishing Potemkin-like account of the Kolmya gulag in Russia, which spoke of it favorably and compared that prison to a WPA work camp. He also kept some suspicious company. A good friend, Lauchlin Currie, the White House liaison to the State Department, was a Soviet spy. Mr. Lattimore�s assistant at Pacific Affairs, Michael Greenberg, was a KGB operative. His co-editor at Pacific Affairs, Chen Hen-Shen, was a Chinese spy.