“Wallace, yes. Henry Agard Wallace. His campaign was the loftiest you people ever got. But finally it was a fiasco; or was it?”
BOOK TWO
17
FEBRUARY 9, 1950
McCarthy at Wheeling
Joe McCarthy never ducked the political party speech assignments. Lincoln’s Birthday was a great ritual day for the GOP, just the right day for political oratory, poignant, fiery, nostalgic, orotund, challenging, the more of everything the better. When the GOP chairman made out the roster for Lincoln’s Birthday, 1950, he was careful to stroke lobbies scattered about the country that clamored for special attention.
The year was heavy with political passion. It was generally thought that Harry Truman’s victory in 1948 had been something of a fluke. Republican pols agreed that they had lost the White House because, as Representative Everett Dirksen put it with characteristic color, “We were hit by a concatenation of forces.” What had happened was a spunky performance by Truman, who denounced the “do-nothing Eightieth Congress,” summoning the legislators back to the sweaty capital to stare, poutful but noncompliant, at Truman’s agenda.
That and (Everett Dirksen would concede in private conversation) a self-indulgent, vapid campaign by challenger Thomas E. Dewey of New York. “The future lies before us” was a Dewey line much quoted by the derisory legions left desolate by his failure to recapture the White House for the GOP, which went now for the fifth consecutive time to the Democrats.
Internationally, Europe was slowly rebuilding, but the looming figure was Joseph Stalin. He had lost his bid to win Italy in the 1948 election, but Communism continued to threaten, there and in France; and the captive nations, as they were now regularly referred to, despaired of liberation. In New York City there were clots of Romanians and Bulgarians, Poles and Lithuanians and Latvians, Estonians and Czechoslovakians who did what they could, which was not much, to keep a candle lit in memory of the forgotten purpose of the war declared by Great Britain against Germany on September 3, 1939—to maintain Polish independence. All liberty or prospect of it had been forfeited to an Iron Curtain.
There were Republican activists in the House of Representatives. Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, the minority leader, had a long memory. California’s Richard Nixon was the rising star who had played the critical role in the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ development of the historical case against diplomat-bureaucrat Alger Hiss, now convicted of perjury or, in effect, of treason. That case, the most prolonged and dramatic in American postwar political history, had decisively divided the community, the common man persuaded of his guilt, much of the academic class and the social elite committed, in the name of the integrity of the New Deal, to his innocence.
But mostly, Lincoln’s Birthday cities put in to hear a GOP senator. It was the job of the GOP chairman to match postulant cities to individual senators. It was in the first week of February that Senator Joe McCarthy learned that he was to speak at Wheeling, West Virginia.
“Where is Wheeling?”
“Well, Joe,” Mary Haskell responded. She was his gray-haired, no-nonsense office manager, with the wry smile. “Wheeling, West Virginia, is about eight hundred miles east southeast of Appleton, Wisconsin, and about the same size.”
“You have a nice way of clamming me up, Mary.”
“I wish I could patent it.”
“I guess the date is absolutely fixed?”
“It is absolutely fixed. You gave your word in January you’d accept whatever assignment the GOP gave you. West Virginia is Democratic country and in 1948 went for Truman. Tom Sweeney is a peppy Republican chairman in Wheeling, and the newspaper will give you good coverage.”
He was met at the airport in Wheeling by Tom Sweeney, a businessman who had run unsuccessfully for the Senate and now served as local GOP head. He ushered McCarthy into his Buick Roadmaster and, driving off, asked what he was going to talk about. He had two speeches in his briefcase, the senator said, one on public housing, the second on the loyalty issue.
“Do you talk about Fuchs in the loyalty speech?”
“Yes,” said McCarthy. He made reference to Klaus Fuchs, arrested early in the month for stealing atomic secrets from Los Alamos and passing them to a Soviet spy ring. Four days earlier, President Truman had announced his intention to build a hydrogen bomb. The Soviets had got off an atomic explosion in August the year before. “Is there any secret left that hasn’t been stolen from us?” Sweeney wanted to know. And added quickly, “Did you see the polls, Senator?”
Joe: “Which polls?”
“A Fortune poll says ten percent of the U.S. think the Communist Party is close to wielding decisive power, that there is nowhere we can effectively stop them anymore.”
“Ten percent isn’t many. Only what, twenty-four, twenty-five million?”
“No, but thirty-five percent think the party is growing and that Communists are exercising control in key government posts.”
“My speech on the loyalty issue charges that there are Communists in government, known to the secretary of state to be Communists, who were nevertheless undischarged.”
“That’s the speech you got to give us, Joe. And station WWVA is ready to broadcast it. Have you got a spare copy?”
They pulled into the hotel. McCarthy plopped his briefcase on the registration desk and, while Sweeney was checking him in, pulled out a thirteen-page speech.
He didn’t immediately release his hold on it. “This is very important stuff, Tom. I thought maybe of holding it for Reno—that’s actually Lincoln’s birthday, Thursday.”
“I’d really like to have you give it tonight. It’s an important day for us.”
McCarthy loosened his grip on the manuscript. What the heck. The people in Reno wouldn’t know he had already given it in Wheeling. And vice versa.
He went up to his suite. He had got used to being given a suite when he spoke here and there—the way to treat a senator. Different from what he had got used to running for the Senate, let alone for judge! He welcomed the difference as he took off his shirt and, in his underclothes, fiddled with his manuscript. He found it providential that, above his king-size bed, there was a framed photograph of Abraham Lincoln, looking dolorous as ever. An appropriate expression, McCarthy thought, for February 1950. A hundred years ago all they had to worry about was slavery and the Missouri Compromise. But it was time to go to work. He dressed, and soon the phone rang. They were ready for him.
His talk was written out in rough draft, thirteen pages, just under a half hour. But he spoke grave words, and he felt the lift of the audience, at once that of alarm and that of satisfaction at being told what it was that would explain it all. He had a sense of it, that his message, this time around, would resonate.
There would be very long and heated debates over exactly what he said that night. The radio station that broadcast his talk erased the tape the next morning, routine practice. Nobody questioned the thrust of what he said. “I have here in my hand a list of—[205?]—[57?]—a list of names that were made known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” Later, Joe McCarthy said he had spoken of “loyalty risks.” Whatever the exact wording, his speech to 275 members of the Ohio County Republican Women’s Club in the Colonnade Room of the McClure Hotel charged that United States foreign policy was being affected by the operations of men and women disloyal to the United States and tolerated by their employers.
Joe McCarthy’s Eastern Airlines DC-4 wouldn’t arrive back in Washington from Wheeling until just before noon. He’d have twenty-four hours before leaving for his two other Lincoln Day speeches, both in Nevada. From his hotel room he called Mary Haskell at the office, just after nine. She told him he had several calls, mostly from reporters. “I’ll give you the call slips when you come in. But you may want to call back Tom Coleman, maybe from the hotel before you go to the airport.”
“
Tom always gets priority.”
“Yes. But he pays for it, dear Tom,” Mary said. “Your number one Wisconsin backer, Tom. He put the call in himself. He’s at home. Got the number?”
Joe said he did, and put in the call. It was the first time he had submitted to an interrogation concerning last night’s speech. He’d need to practice saying it more succinctly, he reflected fifteen minutes later.
“Yes. Yes, Tom. I did say that. I said there are Communists—loyalty risks—in the State Department and almost certainly everywhere else. I have the list. … I actually have two lists. One list is made up of people acknowledged by Jimmy Byrnes—yes, when he was secretary of state, 1946—as loyalty risks but haven’t been fired. … What? Right. Right. They hadn’t been fired when Byrnes wrote that letter—… Are they fired now? … Yes. I know it’s been four years. But we know how the State Department is, especially under Red Dean Acheson—… Yes, the other list is more current, Bob Lee’s list. Bob is with House Appropriations—How do I know they’re still there? Tom, Tom, you do remember that Truman in 1948 froze all congressional investigations into executive personnel—denied us access to all the security files. So the assumption is they’re all still there. … Yes, I’ll make that clear. I’ll be talking in Reno tomorrow, same general pitch. … Good, Tom. Give my love to Josephine.”
One week later Joe was back in his office. It was Marge on the switchboard, yet again, maybe the tenth time since he had come in. “Mr. Tom Sweeney, Senator. Says you told him to call you.”
McCarthy sighed—he had been interrupted ten times in the hour he had set aside to read the three morning papers.
But he liked the excited pep in Sweeney’s voice, and reacted to it by saying, “How’m I doing, Tom?”
“That was a shot heard ‘round the world, Joe.”
“You’re telling me, Tom. It’s total war.”
“And we’ve got to win this one, Joe.”
“Yeah, we do. But you know what, Tom, I got to sign off. Another phone’s ringing, and I got to take that call.” It was only Mary Haskell, but she plopped a dozen phone slips on his desk.
18
J. Edgar Hoover calls McCarthy
Immediately after he had landed in Washington, Joe McCarthy began to walk toward the baggage room behind the airport’s ticket counters. A man stepped in front of him. He was tall, of middle age, and wore a heavy winter coat and a fedora. He extended a card in his hand. “Excuse me, Senator. I’m Agent Danielson, FBI. I’ve been instructed to hand you this letter. Director’s office.”
McCarthy nodded and put the letter in his pocket. “Thanks. I’ll read it in the cab.” Joe took the envelope and shook the hand of Agent Danielson.
“Dear Senator McCarthy,” he read as the taxi drove off with directions to take him to the Capitol.
It is most important that I speak with you concerning the speech you gave last night at Wheeling. I will need 1–2 hours with you. I suggest we meet at an address I will subsequently give you either between four and six, or, if you would care to have dinner, between six and eight. Please confirm with Miss Lalley, at DUpont 4226.
Joe McCarthy had never laid eyes on the legendary head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But he knew something of the director’s singular power and prestige. Everybody knew of them. Through Hoover’s office every security file was processed, though the State Department and the National Security Agency had their own investigators. “And whatever you do,” senatorial colleague Karl Mundt from South Dakota had told him when first Joe checked in to Washington as a freshly elected senator, “don’t cross J. Edgar. Yes, he’s a great American. We all know that. But there isn’t anybody in town he can’t make trouble for, and that includes—”Mundt doffed his hat to the White House as, driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, they passed it by.
Joe confided the summons to his office intimates, Mary Haskell, aide Jean Kerr, and assistant Don Surine. He would go, of course. He wondered which of the options to take.
“Why not go for dinner,” Mary said. “For one thing, he’ll give you a drink at six, but he certainly wouldn’t at four.”
At 5:40 the car and driver were waiting for him at the designated spot. McCarthy hadn’t inquired where exactly they were going. Some restaurant, probably. But he was driven to a modest brownstone in the Georgetown area. The driver parked the car, opened the car door, and led him to the entrance, opening the door for him.
The director, in double-breasted navy blue blazer, a tiepin holding up his tie knot, his ebony cuff links conspicuous, extended his hand to greet McCarthy. Hoover took his coat and led him into a small drawing room. The heavy door closed. “Can I get you something from the bar, Senator?”
“Thanks. Maybe a bourbon and soda?”
Quickly the director got him the glass, bent down, and lit a fire. McCarthy stayed on his feet.
“Senator, you are onto the most important challenge in the history of the United States.”
The director went on through the cocktail hour, through dinner, and for an hour after dinner. He spoke of the loyalty/security problem in the federal government. That was of course basic, he said. But it went beyond loyalty/security. “I can tell you this right now, Senator—”McCarthy had not invited the director to address him as Joe. If he had, that would have implied a reciprocal invitation to address Hoover as Edgar, and Joe could not imagine doing any such thing (like calling the pope Pius, he told Jeanie the next morning). “What was the incidence of Americans who voted for Henry Wallace, one in fifty? I’d wager a year’s salary that among federal employees in the State Department it was one in five. What that suggests is an attitude. And it’s that attitude that’s killing us in China, Korea, Germany, Turkey, Greece—and in Soviet nuclear-development laboratories.”
He looked McCarthy directly in the eyes. “You have the message. I felt it when I got the report this morning. Pickups on your speech were placed on my desk throughout the afternoon. You’re going to have the ear of the American public. The people out there know what’s at stake. They have a sense of what has happened to eastern Europeans, what goes on every day in the Soviet Union. But our leaders don’t have that intuitive sense. Senator, you may be the critical man of this decade.”
Joe McCarthy was driven back to his apartment. When he got in the door he opened a bottle of bourbon. He sat at his desk and closed his eyes. After a few moments, he got up and walked over to his briefcase, removing the text of his Wheeling speech and Don Surine’s suggested revision for Reno. He opened the large research folder detailing information on the Bob Lee list of 108 federal employees. He pondered the first on the list, Esther Brunauer. He ran his eyes over the data. His eyes traveled down to Owen Lattimore. Finally he lay down in his shorts and T-shirt. He recited his mother’s prayer. It closed, “… and make me, Lord, worthy of thy designs. Amen.”
Wheeling Plus Two—for a while McCarthy and company used the term Wheeling as the military historians used D-Day—called for a speech in Reno. The night before, ABC News had made a brief mention of McCarthy’s speech at the Ohio County Women’s Club two nights before. The national stir over the Wheeling speech was building. By the next day it was a large national story. When Senator Joe McCarthy deplaned from United Airlines at Reno, Mac Duffie, his host, was at the gate with a telegram received one hour before. He handed it to the senator at the baggage counter, where they stood waiting for his two bags. Joe opened it. It was from Deputy Undersecretary of State John Puerifoy. He turned to his inquisitive host, who quivered with curiosity.
“Department of State,” Joe said. “Puerifoy. He wants me to give him the actual names of the Communists I spoke about. I mean, the loyalty risks I spoke about. … You know—the people I talked about night before last at Wheeling.”
The rhetorical shuffling missed Mac Duffie. From “Communists” to “loyalty risks.” Months and years of fighting would take place: Which of the two terms had McCarthy used in his Wheeling speech, which had not been recorded. Mac Duffie didn’t mu
ch care. “That was one hell of a speech, Senator.”
“Well, they had it coming.”
“How many Communists did you list in that speech? Was it two hundred?”
“God knows how many are there, Mac. There’s two sets of people we’re after, it’s not just ‘two hundred and five’ and ‘fifty-seven.’ It’s a complicated story. But I don’t blame John Puerifoy for being nervous about it. I’ll have to cable him a reply. … I’ve got an hour or so in the hotel before the reception, right, Mac?”
“Yes, sure, Senator.”
“Call me Joe.”
“Sure, Joe.”
“I’ll need an hour or so. I’ll be sending a letter to the president.”
“A letter to President Truman?”
“Yes. I’ll dictate it to my office. It can be delivered to the White House.”
This was very big time, Mac Duffie told himself. He would call Tom Zurkin at the Reno Gazette-Journal the minute he dropped the senator off at the hotel.
Joe was taken to his suite, Mac left tactfully, and Joe placed the call to his office. The telephone call to Don Surine seemed endless. Don Surine was a former FBI agent, in his early thirties, dark haired, sturdy in build, serious in manner. He had just joined up with McCarthy. He was tenacious but also fastidious, and he wanted to know exactly how to handle, now, the confusion over exactly what his employer had said at Wheeling. Surine knew that McCarthy often departed from texts, improvising freely. He simply did not know exactly what figure he had used or the exact wording of his charge. The most stringent version was that Secretary of State Dean Acheson continued to head up a State Department where 205 employees were members of the Communist Party. The most moderate version was that 57 employees of the State Department were loyalty risks.
The Redhunter Page 13