The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  “Joe, what’s the matter? Why don’t our people catch your … your Ouspenskayas?”

  Joe took his hand from hers and stood up. “It’s one part because there’s sloppiness out there and one part because their immediate superiors don’t think it’s such a big deal You heard Senator Green. He said—in effect—Well, there are over three thousand lawyers who belong to the National Lawyers Guild, so—so what?”

  She looked at him, then tilted her head, her lips slightly parted. And then, “Joe, do you think after the Tydings investigation is over you can just, well, move into something else?”

  He sat back down on his chair and took her hand again. “It’s rough. … I’m not sure it’s ever possible to back away, not from this one.”

  “I hate to look at the papers in the morning. What they say about you. They’ll say anything.” She pulled a handkerchief from a side pocket and turned her head. She wasn’t the crying type, she said to herself. Joe caressed her shoulders from where he sat. “We’ve got to get it done, Jeanie. And the Ouspenskaya lady, she’ll make a lot of difference, putting her case on the record. She’ll be, well, our Whittaker Chambers. You know we’ve got to see it all through, Jean.”

  Through her sobs, he made out the words. “I know. I know.”

  As usual, Joe took lunch back in his office during the two-hour recess of the committee. Even the cool, disdainful Tydings, he thought, had been impressed—and visibly disconcerted—by what he had heard about one Josefa Kalli—McCarthy had that morning given out her real name, as agreed. There was quite general apprehension about what she would say, what experiences she had had with the security system so ardently defended by Senator Tydings and the Truman administration. Two reporters, hoping to get more details on what the witness would be exposing that afternoon beginning at two, followed the senator from the committee room to his office. McCarthy, as always, chatted affably. But—he told them—he had given the committee that morning all the information he was at liberty to give out. They would have to wait until two “for the fireworks.”

  He was sipping on a beer with his fried chicken, eating at his desk, running over the list of questions he was preparing for Mrs. Kalli. His mouth was full when Mary’s voice came in over the little speaker.

  “I know you are lunching, but he says it’s a major emergency. All he gives is the name ‘Henry.’ ”

  Joe picked up the receiver and heard the report. He was less than one minute on the phone. He rang for Don. “Come quickly.”

  Surine opened the door to the office and closed it behind him. He remained standing. Joe said: “She’s committed suicide. They just found her. They’ll investigate the possibility of foul play, but right now they think the pistol that was aimed into her mouth was put there by—Maria Ouspenskaya.”

  McCarthy managed a wry half smile.

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “So, Don. She was a nice lady, I thought. Well … we have fifteen minutes before we go back and chew the rag with Senator Tydings.”

  “What you going to say, Joe?”

  “What is there to say? ‘Just a little infield practice, Senator.’ ”

  But the shock was very real, and all the office felt it. And it was fueled by frustration and rage. But rage at, exactly, whom?

  “Has the bureau given anything new out since four?” Ed Reidy wanted to know.

  “Yeah. Just a half hour ago their press guy said that she died between eleven and eleven-fifteen. No one heard the shot. On the other hand, there wasn’t anybody in the apartment next door, or the ones above or below. She had been to the post office, and in her purse was a receipt for a registered letter that went out with the mail at noon—”

  “To anybody we know, Sam?”

  “Yeah. Get this. It was mailed to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.”

  “Well … I’ll … be … damned! So maybe Joe gets the last word? Has the bureau intercepted it?”

  “Interesting question, Ed. But now just think for a minute. a) There’s no way to do it, not for sure. The letter’s en route from Baltimore, could be by mail truck, could be by train—could even be by airplane. The post office uses all three, Baltimore-Washington. b) The FBI would need a court order to intercept a private communication, and since there is no evidence that Josefa Kalli committed a crime, the court would have to be persuaded there was immediate cause for taking possession of somebody’s privately addressed letter—”

  “And privately addressed to a senator.”

  “Let alone a letter addressed to Senator McCarthy,” Sam topped him. “I figure there’s no way the letter is going to say that McCarthyism is the reason why she decided to end it all. That’s going to ruin the whole week for Drew Pearson. He’s already filed copy, my good friend who will be nameless told me—”Sam Tilburn—Ed Reidy had got used to it—had tipsters everywhere—”for his column tomorrow, blaming Joe for causing her to commit suicide.”

  “Oh, sure. That’s what he’ll write about. ‘McCarthyism Caused Old Lady Suicide.’ You can bet he’s not going to write, ‘McCarthy Finds Former Communist Spy Who Commits Suicide Before Testifying.’

  “What do you imagine she wrote him, a couple of hours before—biting the bullet? Poor, poor Josefa. We got to do a big story about her. But what did she have to tell Joe? Apologies?”

  “I don’t know, Ed. Maybe she said she couldn’t bear to live in a society with two hundred and five Communists in its State Department.”

  “Ha ha. Funnee. … You’re certainly helpful today, Sam. … Well, I’ll write something.”

  “You always do, Ed.”

  “Good night, Sam.”

  “Good night, Ed. Ed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Say a prayer for that poor lady.”

  27

  Owen Lattimore

  On the opening day of the meeting of the special Senate subcommittee, Chairman Tydings had surprised McCarthy by asking him to reveal the names of the suspects.

  McCarthy said that he thought it wrong to give them out in a public session—”Some of the material associated with some of the names might prove wrong, or outdated.” But the chairman, sustained by the three-Democrat majority, wanted names, and McCarthy edged in, releasing the name of the man he dubbed the “top Russian spy” in the United States, Owen Lattimore. What’s more, McCarthy said he would provide a witness who would identify Lattimore as a Communist wielding great influence.

  Coming to testify, McCarthy said, would be Louis Budenz, now an assistant professor of economics at Fordham College. Budenz had been a party member for ten years, reaching the commanding post of managing editor of the Daily Worker. He had defected in 1945 and given testimony concerning four hundred U.S. members of the Communist Party.

  On the day that Budenz was to appear, five hundred people were crowded into the Senate hearing room. “Excuse me,” Joe said, approaching the table set up for him, facing the examiners. He needed to step over the legs of a photographer attempting a floor-based angle shot of the full committee seated at the long mahogany table opposite: Senators Tydings, McMahon, Green, representing the Democratic majority, and Lodge and Hickenlooper, the minority.

  “Sorry, Senator—”the photographer, lying on the floor, bent his knees up toward his chin, allowing the senator to slide up to his seat. McCarthy propped his briefcase on the table and sat down. A flashbulb went off directly in front of him, and klieg lights from newsreel cameramen blazed on. On his right, on his left, and behind him were tables fully occupied by news reporters.

  It was a scene packed with bodies and with drama. Senator Tydings banged the meeting to order, and instantly Senator Hickenlooper put in for a point of order. He advised the chairman that the minority wished to have counsel of its own during the forthcoming proceedings. Tydings denied the request, banged down his gavel again, and to everyone’s surprise turned to McCarthy, “You will kindly stop interrupting the proceedings, Senator.”

  Everyone was surprised, inasmuch as McCarthy had not
opened his mouth since sitting down. He looked over at Hickenlooper with bewilderment. The senator from Iowa merely shook his head.

  Louis Budenz was sworn in. It was achingly hard to get his story because he was interrupted ever step of the way.

  Budenz: It was then that I met with Frederick Vanderbilt Field.

  Ed Morgan (committee counsel): How do you spell the name?

  Budenz: F-r-e-d-e-r-i-c-k V-a-n-d-e-r-b-i-l-t F-i-e-l-d. Mr. Field, of course, is well-known as a Communist—

  Morgan: Mr. Budenz, we are not going to take for granted such charges as—

  McCarthy: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman. If you can’t say Frederick Vanderbilt Field—is a Communist, you can’t say Harry Truman is a Democrat—

  Tydings (his gavel pounding down): I remind the junior senator from Wisconsin that I am presiding over this hearing—

  McCarthy: But Senator Tydings, Senator Tydings, I mean, would we have to prove that Stalin was a mem—

  Tydings (renewed use of the gavel): If the senator does not obey the rulings of the chairman, we will call a recess—

  McCarthy:All right. All right.

  Tydings:Counsel may resume.

  Budenz was shaken by three hours of this. “What’s happened,” he said as they walked out together at the lunch recess, “is obvious. They’re on the public record about Lattimore. He seems to be very special for Tydings. They’ve all lionized Lattimore. What’s that all about?”

  “It’s all about McCarthy,” Joe volunteered. “I said on the Senate floor—you know—that my case would stand or fall on Lattimore. That means they’ve got to take good care of Lattimore.”

  Owen Lattimore was a professor at Johns Hopkins, a specialist in Far East Studies. When asked by a student journalist what he had to do with the State Department, his answer had been, “Nothing.” Then the student asked, Why was his name brought up to begin with, if indeed he had nothing to do with the State Department? Lattimore commented, “I’ve told everybody, Senator McCarthy is crazy if he got me mixed up with the State Department. I have never been in the State Department.” At the third session Tydings informed the committee at large that he had checked with the State Department and indeed there was no record of Lattimore’s having served.

  Budenz had never met Lattimore. He had learned of Lattimore’s commitment to the party from party faithful Frederick Vanderbilt Field. “Why didn’t you mention Lattimore in your article in Colliers magazine last year when you wrote about Communists in government?” Tydings asked. Budenz replied that Colliers had not wanted him to name Lattimore for legal reasons, but that he had in effect named him when Budenz complained of the Communist authors who wrote for Pacific Affairs, a journal edited by Lattimore. Budenz said he could not there and then document the leaning of all the articles published in Pacific Affairs, but that Lattimore was its editor and no one would deny that the journal was pro-Communist in its direction.

  “Was he the top Soviet agent?” Senator Tydings asked.

  “From my own knowledge, I would not say he was a top Soviet agent.”

  The headline in the following day’s Milwaukee Journal read, “Budenz Says Lattimore ‘Aids’ Reds But Refuses to Call Him Communist.” The testimony of Budenz was largely discounted. “Budenz has been around the ring once too many times,” the New York Post article read, making reference to Budenz’s numerous appearances on the witness stand. “Most probably he’s just making it all up, to help Joe.”

  The following day, Tydings called the committee into executive session, no press allowed. Executive sessions were generally attended only by the committee’s executive members, though all were reportedly notified, and entitled to attend.

  At the start of this session, Budenz was asked to give such other information as he had about Communists in the State Department. At just that moment, Senator McCarthy opened the door and entered the room. It was the first meeting of the committee in executive session, and he had arrived late. At the door of the chamber he had bumped into Minority Counsel Robert Morris, who told him that, moments before, Tydings had ordered him to leave the room, on the grounds that minority counsel would not be permitted at executive sessions. Joe angrily shut the hearing door and strode to his seat.

  Tydings: “The junior senator from Wisconsin is not a member of the investigating committee and will leave the room.”

  McCarthy sizzled for a moment, then stood up and wheeled around toward the door. But then he stopped to peer down at an alien presence sitting to one side at the end of the table.

  He would give many a speech, telling and retelling it: that at the same executive session to which minority counsel was denied admission and Senator McCarthy was denied admission, there sat—Owen Lattimore, accompanied by his lawyer.

  That evening they spent at McCarthy’s office. Ray Kiermas, Jean Kerr, Don Surine, Mary Haskell, and Harry Bontecou. Harry had begun work only the week before but had been assigned from the first day to the Lattimore case.

  Joe drank a bottle of beer and munched a salami sandwich. The staff had Coca-Cola with their sandwiches. “I’m going to say tomorrow, on the floor, that maybe I was wrong to say about Lattimore that he was a top espionage agent. But the way the hearing’s shaping up, nobody thinks Lattimore has done anything except study and write books. Yeah, Harry?”

  “I pulled out Lattimore’s book. There’s a revealing blurb on the jacket. Want to hear it?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “It says,’He’—Lattimore—‘shows that all the Asiatic people are more interested in actual democratic practices such as the ones they can see in action across the Russian border, than they are in the fine theories of Anglo-Saxon democracies which come coupled with ruthless imperialism. … He inclines to support American newspapermen who report that the only real democracy in China is found in Communist areas.”

  “Holy Jezus!” McCarthy dropped the sandwich on his plate. “You got to be kidding, I mean, show me the book.”

  “They wouldn’t let me take it out of the library. I wrote out the blurb.”

  “Mary. Send someone to the library tomorrow and get a photostatic copy of that jacket. Harry, did you read the book?”

  “No, didn’t have time. But I called a professor of mine who knows the publishing business and asked him whether a blurb would ever appear on the jacket of a book if the author of it didn’t approve.”

  “Answer?—”Joe was impatient.

  “All but inconceivable in such a situation as this. That means to me not only that Lattimore argued those positions, but that he was proud to advertise them.”

  They spent until eleven in the office. “Your real problem, Joe,” Jeanie said, “is you can’t do any thorough exposition of the points you are trying to make, the way Tydings is running the show. I think you’ve got to try to put it together in a speech—”

  “Tydings wouldn’t like that,” Don Surine interjected. To give a speech in the Senate about something that is currently being investigated by the Senate—no, that’s not right. Not only Tydings wouldn’t like that. The Southern gentleman wouldn’t like that. We wouldn’t want to alienate Senator Russell.” It would not do to antagonize Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. He was not the majority leader, but he was senior in almost every other sense of the word. The tribune of Senate practice, custodian of procedure and protocols.

  McCarthy mused. “Yes. Maybe I should give it as a speech?”

  They bandied that about. But that too might appear—would appear—“contumacious.” McCarthy the lawyer supplied the word. And went on. “Maybe we should get somebody else to give the speech.”

  “—or write an article,” Jean said.

  “An article wouldn’t see print for a couple of weeks. Don’t we need to move faster?”

  “What about this: We could feed the information to Larry Spivak, maybe. Maybe get him to invite Lattimore on Meet the Press and ask him a couple of questions.”

  “That would mean giving Lattimore a very big audience when h
e hits you over the head. He’s probably pretty good at it.”

  “Still,” Joe said, “let’s sleep on it. If we decide to go with it, I’ll call Spivak tomorrow.”

  “He’s not all that friendly.” Mary Haskell never missed Meet the Press on Sunday mornings.

  “He’s above all things a journalist,” Jeanie said.

  McCarthy got up, grabbed his briefcase, and stopped. He put his arm around Jeanie. “How’m I doing?”

  “Not too good, Joe.”

  “We’ll see what we can do about that.”

  28

  HANBERRY, 1991

  Herrendon and Harry dig in

  Harry Bontecou and Lord Herrendon worked now every morning in the library of the country estate, Hanberry, not a villa as vast as one gets used to, visiting titled tycoons in England. “My father never cared much about space when he didn’t use it. But there is the farm down there, and we have quite enough acres—forty, when I last looked at the tax bill. The house itself is very old, Georgian, eighteenth century. And ample for six scholars, let alone two. You will be comfortable.”

  They met for three hours before midday in the library, and for three hours late in the afternoon, after taking exercise and a rest. Alex’s computer sat on the table and lit up a large screen at the end of the room, a pedagogical device recently developed. He worked studiously in his notes on Western capitulation to the Soviet Union in the matter of the prisoners-refugees.

  “Operation Keelhaul was not a heavily documented operation. American and British files are incomplete. We don’t have that genetic German compulsion to record everything, no matter how heinous.”

  “Yes,” Harry concurred. “I know what you mean. In the summer of junior year-”

  “You were in Nuremberg.”

  Harry was no longer surprised by his host’s detailed knowledge of Harry’s life. The long article in Contemporary Authors, published after his Pulitzer-winning biography of Bismarck, had brought Harry Bontecou his fifteen minutes of fame. The article had recorded in some detail the historian’s year-by-year itinerary, beginning with his wartime duty. It was, except for the war years and the immediate post-college years, the life of a sedate historian.