The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  As arranged, Harry arrived at eleven. There was plenty of activity in the Senate Office Building. Young men and women, usually carrying large briefcases, scurried back and forth, a few of their seniors entering and leaving offices, dodging men and women with their cleaning materials. It was only May, but the temperature was summerlike, and Harry felt gratefully the refreshing coolness of the Senate’s air-conditioned office building, the envy of the occupants of the legion of federal office buildings not yet equipped with that postwar luxury.

  He went by elevator to the second floor and walked down the hall to office number 212. On the outside of the door he examined the polished brass plate.

  MR. MCCARTHY

  WISCONSIN

  Should he knock, he wondered? He did, but got no response. He tried the door. It was not locked. He walked in. There he saw a wide expanse of desks, each with typewriter and telephone. On four or five desktops vast piles of papers and manila folders were stacked. Two large sofas, the state flag of Wisconsin woven on the upholstered back of the larger of the two, were placed near the entrance door, in front of them a coffee table. Copies of Senator McCarthy’s recent speeches and of editorials commending his activities lay on the table. Harry could hear a typewriter clicking away behind a partition at the far end of the big room. He was beginning to walk toward the sound when, from the recessed alcove, Mary Haskell appeared, her reading glasses held around her neck by a slim yellow band, her gray hair slightly tousled, two pens attached to the pocket of her yellow blouse.

  “You’re Harry Bontekow?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s Bonte-KEW.”

  “Sorry. … I’m Mary Haskell, the senator’s office manager. Let’s go over to the sofas. Nobody else is here to bother us. I’m sorry to say that the senator is at the State Department; emergency meeting. But he will listen closely,” Mary smiled reassuringly, “to what I have to say. You won’t be wasting your time.”

  She sat down and positioned her glasses over her nose, her secretarial pad on her lap, and said—”Let’s begin, all right? Where were you born?”

  Mary Haskell wrote in shorthand, so there was little delay between answers and queries. Harry was surprised by the thoroughness of the interview, and later gratified by it.

  “Father?”

  “Jesse Bontecou, deceased.”

  “Profession?”

  “He was a … scholar. But unattached to any university.”

  “How did he make a living?”

  “He wrote. Articles, reviews, and books. His field was poetry.”

  “When did he die?”

  “1943.”

  “Of?”

  “Heart.”

  “Surviving family members?”

  “Widow and one child. Me.”

  “Sources of family support?”

  “Poetry.”

  “Poetry?”

  “My father published a book called Poetry to Live By.”

  Mary Haskell looked up. “I read that book in school.”

  “Fortunately,” Harry smiled, “most people since 1937 read that book in school.”

  “Other sources of income?”

  “None.”

  “Did your father’s estate provide for your schooling?”

  “My father left no estate. Just the property in his book. The revenue from it goes equally to my mother and me. Most of my schooling was paid by the GI Bill.”

  “What is your annual revenue from the book royalties—you understand, Mr. Bontecou, we have to ask a lot of questions other senators wouldn’t have to ask. We use the same preliminary interview form as the CIA. I was asking you about income.” She returned to her pad.

  “Last year, 1949, the royalties were just over twenty thousand. So my half was ten thousand.”

  A half hour later, taking notes assiduously, she was questioning Harry about his activities at Columbia. A voice came in from the other end of the long room, beyond her own office.

  “Hey, Mary?” the voice called out.

  Joe McCarthy had entered through the private entrance.

  She rose quickly to intercept him, but McCarthy was halfway to them, charging in in characteristic stride, shoulders weaving to one side then the other.

  “Joe—Senator, this is Harry Bontecou. … I already apologized to Mr. Bontecou, Senator, for your absence because of the State Department meeting.”

  Mary Haskell had worked for Joe for four years. She knew how to flash signals to him. “We were just talking about his activities at Columbia, after his service in the war and on Operation Keelhaul. It’s good that you were able to get away to meet Mr. Bontecou personally. He’s down from New York.”

  Joe caught all the pointers. He had been told by Mary 1) the name of the young man (three times). She had told him 2) what excuse she had concocted to account for his absence. And that 3) young Bontecou had served in the war and attended Columbia.

  Joe McCarthy off stage was pleasant by nature, and uninhibited. He took the hand of Harry, shook it vigorously, and plopped himself down at the end of one of the couches. He looked at Harry but addressed Mary.

  “Catch me up, Mary.”

  “Mr. Bontecou, Senator—”

  Harry interrupted. “I wish you’d call me Harry, Mrs. Haskell.” Harry smiled informally. At ease. “After all, Mrs. Haskell, you know my life story.”

  Joe smiled his own approval.

  “Harry has graduated from Columbia, where he was editor of the student newspaper. He was very active in fighting the Wallace for President movement in sophomore year.” She was scanning her notes. “He graduated with honors, won a battlefield commission in January 1945, was wounded, decorated, and closed out his service by prodding the Russians—by sending them back to the Soviet Union. You gave a speech about that, Senator.”

  Joe interrupted her. “You believe in my cause, Harry?”

  “That’s why I’m here, Senator.”

  McCarthy trained his eyes on the young man, hesitated for only an instant, and then,

  “Harry, let’s go to lunch.”

  Joe spoke with animation about the trial ahead. He would need to convince an antagonistic Senator Tydings, chairman of the investigating committee, that the loyalty/security situation in the State Department was “lousy” and “dangerous.”

  “What you need to remember, Harry, is that what’s important to Tydings isn’t whether that’s so. What’s important to Tydings is to discredit McCarthy. He’s figuring: If McCarthy is right, then that damages the Truman administration and McCarthy’s critics.”

  Mostly, Harry listened. But he interposed occasionally. He asked, “On your two hundred-odd cases, Senator, is there evidence at hand that ties these people to any particular deed? I mean, to a memo obscuring reality to the benefit of the Communists, or obvious delinquency in passing up damaging information—I mean, obviously, some activity this side of actual policy espionage.”

  “In some cases, yes. In most cases, no. And of course there are two kinds of policy corrupters. The kind that says, Don’t sell arms to Chiang Kai-shek because he’s a lost cause. And the kind who delay the delivery of authorized weapons to Chiang Kai-shek. We’ve got to get both kinds.”

  Harry nodded.

  Suddenly McCarthy said, “Did you ever hear of Owen Lattimore?”

  “State Department?”

  “Not quite. A professor by background, Far East specialist. Never mind. You’ll be hearing a lot about him.” He paused. “You know we’re losing the struggle, don’t you Harry?”

  “I know we’ve had a lot of setbacks.”

  McCarthy looked up at him and chuckled. “Yes, that’s right. A lot of setbacks is different from losing.”

  He looked at the tall young man with the light brown eyes, dressed in a white shirt and light gray suit, a hint of a reciprocal smile on his face. “When can you come to work for us, Harry?”

  24

  McCarthy meets Whittaker Chambers

  Jean walked into his office carrying a file. She inten
ded to wait until Joe finished his telephone conversation but became impatient. She wiggled her fingers in front of him. It worked:

  “Hang on a second, Dick, Jeanie’s trying to tell me something.” McCarthy put his hand over the mouthpiece. “What is it, Jean?”

  “Tell him Mother’s out of town and her big, roomy old Packard is sitting in the garage. Harry and I will pick you up, and together we can go to the Senator’s, pick him up, and I’ll drive you all.”

  McCarthy lifted his hand from the receiver. “Jeanie says let’s stop fightin’ about who will pick who up in what car: She’s going to pick us both up.”

  The date was made, after two postponements, and at eleven on Saturday morning, Jean Kerr at the wheel, Harry alongside her, Joe McCarthy behind, the car stopped at an apartment house on Gunston Road in Alexandria, Virginia. She stayed in the car while Joe went out and rang the buzzer. Harry opened the door and stood by. The audiophone sounded. “It’s me, Dick. We’re downstairs.”

  Five minutes later Richard Nixon walked out, dressed in a light summer gray suit and wearing a fedora. He had already met Harry, whose hand he shook.

  “We’ve been instructed to sit in the backseat,” McCarthy said. Harry will sit up front with Jeanie, who knows the route. Chambers wrote me giving directions.”

  “Hell, I know the way,” Nixon said. “I practically lived there during the Hiss trial.”

  Whittaker Chambers—his story was by now very public—had joined the Communist Party in 1925 and, during the thirties, served as an espionage agent for the Soviet Union, acting as courier for a ring that included Alger Hiss of the State Department. In 1948 he had given testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, identifying Hiss as his coconspirator ten years earlier, when Chambers had broken with the party and joined Time magazine, where he became a senior editor. Hiss had sued Chambers for libel, and a trial was held in New York, the point of which quickly became less whether Chambers had libeled Hiss than whether Hiss had engaged in espionage. The jury was divided, and a second trial ordered. This time, the jury found against Hiss, and the superliterate Chambers became the hero of the anti-Communist community. He had exhibited his great learning as an editor, dared to challenge a bastion of the diplomatic establishment, and prevailed in a judicial contest against dogged and well-financed forces that thought the vindication of Hiss necessary to the validation of the New Deal. Chambers, dismissed from Time, had retreated to his farm in Westminster, declining almost every invitation to leave it or to receive visitors.

  The two legislators talked in the backseat. Jean chatted with Harry. Occasionally McCarthy would consult Jean, who drove evenly and waved at the cop guarding the crossing near Baltimore. She did not conceal her excitement over meeting the now-legendary figure. “He’s supposed to be very polite,” she reassured Harry, who felt his own heartbeat accelerate as they neared Westminster. Joe, seeking some show of approval from Chambers, as also perhaps his advice, had taken the initiative. He didn’t want to appear as the guest of Richard Nixon, but he thought it wise to make him a part of the delegation. In his letter to Chambers seeking permission to visit, McCarthy suggested that Nixon, who had stood by Chambers during the ordeal of his congressional testimony and the suspense and agony of two trials, might like to be present at their meeting. Might he come, and might he bring Jean Kerr and Harry Bontecou of his staff with him? “She is very good company and can take notes if ever you want notes taken. And Harry is only twenty-three but has fought the wars since he was a lieutenant in Germany.”

  Whittaker Chambers wrote back quickly. Yes, he said, do come with Miss Kerr and Mr. Bontecou. If Congressman Nixon can join you, fine; if he is busy, come anyway. He enclosed driving directions. Jean had enjoyed their exactitude, and gave Chambers’s letter to Harry, to read sentence by sentence as time came to turn onto different highways or roads.

  “Let me tell you how to get here from Washington,” Chambers’s letter read.

  I assume you will drive. Drive out Wisconsin Avenue to Bethesda. From Bethesda to Rockville, from Rockville to Gaithersburg. Then to Damascus, Mt. Airy, Taylorsville, Westminster. A road map will give you the route numbers. Route 140 is Main Street, Westminster. Drive out 140 (towards Pennsylvania) for three miles beyond Westminster. There a concrete road comes in to 140, but does not cross it. This is Route 496, the only concrete road you will meet above Westminster. Drive out 496 two and 7/10 miles. We are there, on your left, we are back from 496 on a hill; you have to turn left down a dirt country road for a short distance; then right at the mailbox into our lane. At the corner of 496 and that country road there is one of those metal Guernsey Cattle Club signs which says: Chambers. In addition, anybody in the county can tell you where we are. I look forward to seeing you.

  It was warm and sunny when they emerged from the car in Maryland farm country. Esther Chambers, slim and ascetic, her gray hair austerely brushed back, opened the door of the farmhouse. She kissed Nixon, who introduced her to Jean Kerr, Joe McCarthy, and Harry Bontecou.

  They heard a “Hello!” It was Chambers, coming from the red barn. Of medium height, pronouncedly heavy, his face round, his lips parted in a smile of formal greeting. He wore khaki work pants and a loose white sport shirt. He was perspiring heavily. He wiped his face and hands with a handkerchief, shook hands, and asked them in to the comfortable living room. “I think we’ll need the fan.” He went to turn it on.

  They sat around the large old coffee table on a sofa and three armchairs in the book-crammed living room, the foliage in the surrounding trees and bushes now dimming the window light. On the mantelpiece were photographs of the two Chambers children, the girl, Ellen, a student at Smith, the boy, John, attending high school locally and working on his father’s farm. Esther Chambers asked who would like coffee, or tea?

  They stayed through a lunch of potato salad and ham and mixed fruit. Chambers asked Nixon about Korea: “I don’t have my private wire into the hotboxes anymore, and the people at Time don’t exactly keep me posted, but from the news I get it looks bad.”

  Nixon confirmed that his own contacts were pessimistic about the scene there. “Kim Il Sung is anxious for an opportunity to be bloodied in the Communist wars, that’s what I think.”

  Chambers then turned to McCarthy. “What do you know about Oliver Edmund Clubb, Senator?”

  McCarthy had tried earlier in the morning to persuade Chambers to call him Joe. Chambers had nodded quietly and, rather than rebuff him by addressing him as “Senator” in the next breath, used neither the formal nor the informal address; but now, at lunch, he slipped back into conventional habits. McCarthy knew better than to protest.

  Clubb’s was one of the names given by McCarthy to the Tydings Committee. “Did you bring the file on Clubb with you, Jeanie?” She had brought a large briefcase in the car. “No, but I can remember.” She spoke to Chambers. “Clubb was an important China hand in the State Department. Born in Russia, came over in the thirties, I think, and was chief of the China desk in 1950.”

  Chambers puffed lightly on his pipe. “Yes. I knew him slightly, met him in 1932 when he came into the New Masses.” Chambers’s reference was to the Communist monthly he was briefly associated with.

  “Did he come in to the magazine as a party type?” McCarthy asked.

  Chambers laughed. “Or do you mean, Was he just calling? … That was eighteen years ago. I don’t remember. The reason I asked is the FBI came around a week or so ago with some names, and he was one of them. On the Korean business—I spotted Clubb’s name in a quarterly—”he pointed to a large pile of magazines on a stand in the corner of the room. “He was writing about Korea from the perspective of Peking.”

  He looked at McCarthy. “They are giving you a very hard time. I wrote a chapter for my book yesterday, Wednesday, whenever. I wrote of the quite extraordinary spontaneous mobilization of all the people who want to believe that it is problematically un-American to spy for the Soviet Union, but it is certainly un-American to
call attention to it.” He put down his pipe and chuckled. “Now, Senator, you are not to say to anybody that Whittaker Chambers informed you that Oliver Edmund Clubb was spying for the Soviet Union.”

  Everybody laughed. And Nixon said, “I assume everything we talk about here is off the record, as usual, right, Whit?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Chambers dilated then on his favorite theme, the corruption of the West, documented by its failure to rise adequately to the Soviet challenge. Nixon insisted it would soon be different. Truman was a lame duck, as also Dean Acheson. In two years it would be different.

  “In two years, the cow will jump over the moon,” Chambers remarked. And then he asked, “Who will it be when the Republicans meet?” Chambers peered over at Nixon.

  Nixon cleared his throat. “I don’t have any party secrets on that point, Whit. I don’t think there are any party secrets, but it’s plain that a movement for Eisenhower is forming.”

  McCarthy said he’d be more comfortable with Robert Taft.

  Chambers said, “Esther and I saw him on television two or three days ago. We found him terribly stiff, didn’t you think, Esther?”

  “Yes. Stiff, but decent. And I’d guess strong. Strong on the important points.” She rose. Everyone responded to her signal. Time to go, to leave Chambers alone, whether to go back to his work or to rest for a bit. But Chambers sensed that there had been a neglect of Senator McCarthy’s young aide. “Wait one minute,” he said to McCarthy. “I’d like to introduce Mr. Bontecou to my son, John; he’s probably over by the shed.” He smiled at Harry, who bounced from his chair and out the door Chambers held open.