AMERICA THE POKE OF THE WORLD
AMERICA THE POPE OF THE WORLD
AMERICA THE HOPE OF THE WORLD
Thus does Uncle Sam struggle against this new tide of darkness and perversity, unleashed in effect by one man, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, acting alone in his chambers and against the will and necessities of the entire nation. Uncle Sam himself appointed him to this High Council of Elders as guardian of the sacred laws and interpreter of the Covenant, setting him “as a banner in the vanguard of Righteousness, as one who interprets with knowledge deep, mysterious things, as a touchstone for them that seek the truth, a standard for them that love correction,” but now he’s fucked it up. Was he innocent in his pernicious decision, or has he fallen prey to the Angel of Darkness, stumbling knowingly into wickedness and falsehood, pride and presumption? This is what he said:
I have serious doubts whether this death sentence may be imposed for this offense except and unless a jury recommends it. The Rosenbergs should have an opportunity to litigate that issue…. It is important that before we allow human lives to be snuffed out we be sure—emphatically sure—that we act within the law. If we are not sure, there will be lingering doubts to plague the conscience after the event….
To be sure, if any conscience is to be plagued it will be his, for thus, with one stroke, he has nullified over two years of careful preparations, over two years of exemplary Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and liturgy, granting not merely a stay but ordering the case sent back to the District Court, thence to the Court of Appeals, giving the atom spies not respite but life itself, and making Uncle Sam, Judge Kaufman, Edgar Hoover, and the entire U.S. prosecuting team look like a bunch of clowns. And he has done so knowing that the Court is in recess and scattered, the world is in turmoil, an A-bomb attack is imminent, and the legal point raised by these shady interlopers is so flimsy that even the Rosenberg defense attorneys rejected it.
Haven’t the Pentagon Patriots already warned us…?
…Now some quack lawyer with a flair
Shall try to save them from the “chair,”
But such a shyster (mark him well)
Is paid with gold that comes from hell.
So with God’s lash, he, too, should share
Death with this Communistic pair!
…Still, should some court support their prayer
And save them from death’s “waiting chair”…
If such there be, who’d stoop to spare
Their hides from Sing Sing’s “burning chair”
We’ll brand his brow
With marks of guilt,
And link his name
With traitors
In the sewers of shame!
As one voice, the free press of America cries out against the “treason” of Justice Douglas, calling him “arrogant…crafty…disruptive.” FBI agents secreted in the Warden’s garage at Sing Sing wire the Boss reassuringly that newsmen “are considerably upset as a result of the stay and it is Denno’s opinion they will probably blast Douglas.” And blast him they do. Leslie Gould in the New York Journal-American brands him “a headline-grabber with political ambitions, a tramp who has reverted to type,” and in the Chicago Tribune Walter Trohan writes:
Douglas, it must be remembered, has been the darling of the Communists. He dissented from the Court decision upholding the conviction of 11 top Communists. He called for recognition of Red China by United Nations at a time when the Red Chinese were killing American boys in Korea…. He compared the Communist uprisings in the Far East to the American Revolution…. Douglas aspires to the presidency. Most of his evil might still be before him!
The Washington Post laments that “Justice Douglas has plunged this highly controversial and internationally important case into utter chaos!” and the Philadelphia Inquirer asks: COULD JUSTICE DOUGLAS HEAR MOSCOW’S CHEERS…?
Justice Douglas has done his country one more monumental disservice…after the Court had adjourned until fall, [he] took it upon himself to reverse the whole Supreme Bench by a masterpiece of legal red-hair splitting [and then] hurried quietly away from Washington.
For the moment he is supposed to have gone to Oregon. Some say he will soon head for Moscow, is due there July 1. Many others will wish he would go back to Tibet, climb on a yak—and stay there….
The blackest treason in American history must not be condoned.
This is the man, incredibly, who might have been Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth-term Vice President, and thus ultimately the Incarnation of Uncle Sam himself! Uncle Sam must have had his eye on him even then—probably why he dumped the old satyr into all those sex scandals. Maybe he caught something in all that friskiness, a dose of venereal anarchy or something. And if so, what’s to prevent the whole damned Bench from coming down with it? “One scabbed sheep infects a whole flock,” warns Uncle Sam on the floor of the House of Representatives, and Congressman W. McD. Wheeler of Georgia leaps up as though he’s been goosed to introduce a prophylactic resolution “that William O. Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in office,” whereupon a special subcommittee of five is created instanter to act on the resolution. “Ah see no pahticulah point in sendin’ mey-un to Ko-REE-ya to dai, Mistah Cheymun,” declaims Congressman Wheeler, “whahl ay-tomic spies are allowed to liy-uv heah at HOME! One Justice yieldin’ to the vo-CIF’rous my-NOR-utty preshuh groups of this yere CUNT-tree is indee-FEN-suble! Ah canNOT sit ahdly by heah in this yere layjus-LAY-tuv BAHDY without seekin’ to DO somethin’ abaout it!” Don Wheeler is warmly cheered by his fellow Georgians, all of whom have been aching for years to see this nigger-loving New Deal cowboy stuffed as deep in hell as a pigeon can fly in a week, and they figure now they’ve finally got a clean shot at him.
The Rosenbergs themselves, of course, are elated. Their spirits had sunk pretty low of late, Julius burning his eyes out with futile late-night searches through the trial record, Ethel suffering from migraine headaches and sobbing herself to sleep at night. Columnist Leonard Lyons’s report recently in the New York Post that they were actually anti-Semites at heart who didn’t even want a rabbi with them on their Last Walk apparently rattled them, and they’ve been singing themselves hoarse at the prison services ever since, seemingly in the mad hope that somebody outside the walls would hear them. Julie had to have two teeth pulled out (Warden Denno in his economy-minded way making sure he got temporary plates only), and when his mother, Sophie, visited him while he was still dopey from shock and Novocain, what he said was: “Mama, I don’t feel good. Oh Mama, where is my wife? Where are my children? I’m sick, Mama. If only I were home you and Ethel could take care of me.” Ethel has evidently stopped writing letters to him altogether. She hasn’t wanted to go out in the exercise yard and play boccie-ball any more. Julius has tried to exercise, to keep in shape, but his knees have been like putty. When he’s tried to flip cigarette butts at the toilet bowl in his cell, he’s not only been missing, he’s been burning his fingers as well.
Now all that is changed. Their happy singing, as they call it, is driving the other cons up the wall, and their lawyers are dancing impertinent jigs right out in the streets: it’s a real breakthrough! They have until October now at the very least, even if the Appeals Court rejects the new arguments. Time to design hundreds of new questions, dig up more confounding evidence, get more signatures on the clemency appeals. The Korean War could end, the Soviet peace offensive could lead to detente, the whole climate could change. And what is this that Dr. Urey and others are saying about there being no secret to the A-bomb in the first place? Where is that spy ring the FBI has been shouting about? Who the hell is Harry Gold after all, and where did he come from? No, there’s reason to dance, and what’s more, the Appeals Court might even sustain the new argument, hold that they were indeed sentenced under the wrong law—then the whole indictment would be quashed and they’d both be set free! The government would have to obtain a new indictmen
t and get up an entirely new trial! This time there’d be no mistakes, those Greenglass diagrams would be held up to public scrutiny, Gold would be cross-examined, Morty Sobell would testify, the complicated Greenglass finances would be probed, questions would be asked about where that list of prospective jurors came from, and they might even be lucky and get a Presbyterian judge.
But, like Justice Douglas on his way to the woods, they have not reckoned with Uncle Sam’s resourcefulness and his old-trouper determination that this show will go on—he sends for The Man to Send For, the Clean-Up Man, as TIME calls him, A LEGAL MIND & A POLITICAL BRAIN, Attorney General Herbert J. Brownell. “Get that Court back here, Herb,” he says. “I want this thing now!”
“Won’t be easy. There’s never been a special term of the Supreme Court just to review a stay granted by one of its own members.”
“Yeah? Well, new occasions teach new duties, boy!” His beard seems to darken and a wart flowers momentarily on his cheek: “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion! Find Vinson! Lean on him!”
“O-okay, I’ll do what I can—but he’s not one of ours, I don’t know if he’ll—”
“What, not a Republican, you mean? Hell, neither are Kaufman and Saypol. So what? These guys are professionals, they know the score. Come on, boy, hop to it! This ain’t a political campaign, it is a call to arms!” His teeth flash and a silver cigarette holder seems to sprout from between them—he snatches it away and whips it out the window. “I said, shag ass, mister! Put his feet to the fire! I want what I want when I want it!”
“Y-yes-SIR!” The Attorney General wheels around in his red-leather swivel chair and grabs up the phone. Chief Justice Vinson is on vacation like the rest of the Court, but he tracks him down. “Hey, Fred, get everybody back here! You gotta vacate Douglas’s goddamn stay! Right now! Today, tomorrow—but quick!”
“Vacate a stay? It’s never been done!”
“Yeah, well, the occasion is piled high with you-know-what, and it’s about to hit the fan! Uncle Sam’s breathing hot down my neck, Fred! It’s important in the interests of the administration of criminal justice and in the national interests that this case be brought to a final determination as expeditiously as possible!”
Vinson caves in so fast, Brownell figures Uncle Sam must have got to him first. Justice Hugo Black is dragged, protesting, from his hospital bed, others from crap tables and hunting lodges. Justice Douglas is apprehended in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, heading west. He’s snapped back to Washington so fast his feet don’t even touch the ground. The mothproof dust covers, laid down a day ago for the summer holidays, are hauled off the furniture by emergency cleaning crews, 350 excited members of the public and press are admitted to the big red-draped air-conditioned chamber, and at twelve noon on Thursday, June 18, the Nine Old Men—reportedly “tense and snappish”—file in under a frieze of Truth holding a mirror up to life and take their seats behind the long dark bench. Lawyers crowd in, FBI agents, some of Herb Brownell’s lieutenants, members of the original Saypol prosecuting team, tourists, reporters, and sightseeing foreign dignitaries.
It’s a dramatic moment, unique in United States history, but Uncle Sam does not have time to see out the formalities. Around the world, the Phantom has Sam Slick’s lean back to the wall. The situation in Korea, for example, is still very bleak, riots are breaking out, there’s a new threat of invasions, rumors of nuclear warheads moving into the area, Rhee is as obstreperous as ever, even the Pusan whores are out in the streets bellyaching against the Yanks—biting, as it were, the probang that feeds them—and the Phantom has conjured up a dense fog to hide the North Koreans in their mischief. Undaunted, Uncle Sam sends his forces right into the worst of it. They get cut up, but they hold the line. The hardnosed 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, commanded by an up-and-coming tough-as-nails brigadier general named Westmoreland, is flown in from Japan to round up Rhee’s rampaging prisoners, put them back in the barbed-wire stockades, and quell the riots. This is the same bunch of cowboys used to break up the Red riots in the Koje Island P.O.W. camp last year, they take no shit from anybody. Uncle Sam wants the truce negotiations to proceed, he’s had it with all this yo-yoing, but the Reds say: no roundup, no peace talks. Sam snorts at the cultural ironies and tells them they’d better get their yaller hunkers back to the goddamn table or he’s really gonna cream ’em, but he’s infuriated with Syngman Rhee just the same, WHY’D HE DO IT? the newspapers ask. IT’S A MISTER RHEE! Uncle Sam lines up his boys around the world and they let Rhee have it—the barrage of abuse and repudiation is deafening. Rhee, unabashed, responds with a cablegram to the Ashland, Ohio, Times: The United States, he says, is being influenced by European countries that “are too far gone toward Communist ideology.” Who the hell does he think is running the world anyway?
In East Berlin the situation is even worse, hopeless in fact, it’s a real free-for-all for the Phantom and his T-34 tanks. A few guys throw rocks, West Berlin’s Mayor Ernst Reuter declares that it’s “the beginning of the end of the East Berlin regime,” President Eisenhower announces “with particular satisfaction” an additional fifty million dollars in economic aid to West Berlin, and some trolley wires are pulled down, but there’s not much else that Uncle Sam can do, his own tanks are just too damned far away, and his best stuff is tied down in Korea. Willi Goettling, an unemployed West Berlin housepainter with a wife and two small daughters, is caught by the Russians on the wrong side of the city, accused of being a hired gun of Uncle Sam and “one of the active organizers of provocations and riots in the Soviet sector of Berlin, taking part in the banditlike tumults directed against the organs of power,” and he is taken out and unceremoniously shot. Uncle Sam charges the Phantom with “irresponsible recourse to military action” and lack of imagination. Who’s going to remember Willi Goettling twenty years from now? he asks petulantly, but all he gets in reply is what sounds like a distant fiendish chortle.
Stung, Uncle Sam cranks up the Voice of America wattage to stimulate new riots, organizes a demonstration of two hundred thousand hungry workers in front of the National Palace of the “Red Colonel” in Guatemala, has Herb Brownell arrest fifty-five Chinese for deportation to Red China in retaliation against Chairman Mao’s hassling of the Roman Catholic Missions there, keeps things boiling in Lithuania, where the Kremlin bosses have already had to order drastic party and government shake-ups, and helps Generalissimo Francisco Franco inaugurate four new hydroelectric power plants in Spain, which amazingly all seem to work. “Intimates,” Sam murmurs, kissing Franco on both plump cheeks and stuffing a hundred million in his field-jacket pockets, “are predestined…!” The Radical Party of Argentina cables President Eisenhower, demanding clemency for the Rosenbergs—President Perón, whose own plump cheeks no doubt tingle in anticipation, promptly arrests seven Radical leaders. From one end of the world to the other, all these kissable men: General Sir George Erskine, for example, arriving in Nairobi and announcing his intention to discredit “this Mau Mau business” everywhere and make it “unfashionable” in the eyes of all likely to come into contact with it. It’s a kind of disease, and people must be made to understand that it can easily be fatal. To exemplify this, the British Royal Air Force is given the task of making certain prohibited areas “unwholesome.” In a trial run, a force of 1200 African Kenya Home Guards, supported by British planes and white mercenaries, attacks Mau Mau hideouts in the Aberdare Mountains, and at least thirty of the savages are exterminated by saturation bombing and strafing alone. Smiles Sir George: “By good discipline and common sense, we shall do our duty, distasteful as it may be!”
In New York, however, the iron curtain around the Statue of Liberty continues to vex the American Superhero. He moves the wage dispute directly to Washington, and there are hints of an operation along the lines of the Berlin Airlift if the boats don’t get moving again in time for the gathering of the tribe during the atom-spy burnings. And when is that to be? Crowds have been
drifting all day through Times Square, but there seems to have been no sense of conviction—it is still scheduled for eleven o’clock tonight, but there is no jostling for front-row seats. Uncle Sam joins Cecil De Mille and Busby Berkeley briefly on the Astor Roof for a cinematic overview of the rebuilt Times Square arena, and gets the image of isolated thunderheads scudding through the Square but without the final massing up of unbroken storm clouds. And some of those thunderheads, he sees, are hostile, threatening tempests of another sort—he assigns Allen Dulles and Edgar Hoover the task of collecting and collating I.D. data from these gathering pro-Rosenberg clemency demonstrations, and sends the Holy Six out on the streets to propagandize against them, try to break them up. The Six—Rabbi William Rosenblum, Father Joseph Moody, Christian Herald editor Daniel Poling, former Presidential adviser Sam Rosenman, Notre Dame law dean and mystic Clarence Manion, and “Electric Charlie” Wilson, ex-president of General Electric—have formed a kind of transcendentalist brotherhood with the aims of discrediting the Rosenberg clemency drive, preserving America’s Judeo-Christian heritage intact, and laying their own claim to a piece of the exorcisory action. In newspaper ads across the nation recently, they declared:
Public Burning Page 9