The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  “I, er,” Harry had not yet devised a workable name for Lord Alex Herrendon. Though he yet been urged to do so, he found it difficult for more reasons than age and rank to call him Alex. He’d get used to it. But meanwhile—“I was about to tell you that I had a firsthand experience with that aspect of German historical punctiliousness we’re talking about. I worked that summer vacation from Columbia in the War Crimes Office—I was in Germany to study the language, but I was earning my own vacation money. The honcho I worked for asked me one night if I wanted to know exactly what happened to the men who tried to assassinate Hitler on July twentieth.”

  “But of course you knew what happened to them, didn’t you? Lowering them live onto the meat hooks?”

  “Sure I knew. I still shiver. Yes, Stauffenberg had to guess that if he didn’t succeed in killing Hitler with a bomb on July twentieth, Hitler would find something more painful than a bomb to punish Stauffenberg and his collaborators with. When I visited Berlin I found out there what actually took place. The executions. What Captain Rothstein showed me was something I didn’t know existed.”

  Alex killed the computer screen and looked over at Harry. “I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “There is a—movie of their executions. I asked Captain Rothstein to stop the screening after I viewed Stauffenberg lowered onto the hook. Hannah Arendt was talking about the Holocaust when she coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil.’ But you can’t see that movie and believe people could get used to it. But then, that’s what you—are working on.”

  “Yes, though at some remove. I’m not talking so much about how torturers go to sleep at night. Though it’s good to remember that professional hangmen in Britain during the last century couldn’t find anybody to drink a beer with them after work. What I want to look at is: How is it that societies estrange themselves from huge-scale systematic brutality? Hitler-Stalin, of course. But Pol Pot? Strenuously unnoticed. Did the movie you saw part of—I didn’t know it existed—get any kind of circulation?”

  “No, I gather not. It was suppressed even by the Nuremberg tribunal. … Mildly interesting development: The filming was intended for showing to the fuhrer, to give him personal satisfaction in seeing the … the treatment of his would-be assassin, so to speak, in the flesh. It was in a fine European tradition. You’ve read about the public torture of Guy D’Amiens, for trying to kill Louis XV. Anyway, for whatever reason, Hitler never got around to viewing the film.

  “What a waste,” Harry spoke grimly. “I don’t know whether your people—your then people—went in for protracted torture of that kind—”

  “No. Well, no unless you count Gulag as protracted torture, and there’s a good argument for saying that is exactly what it was. But when the idea, for the Bolsheviks, was execution, the shot in the back of the head in the Lubianka was the routine. Granted, Gulag—I repeat myself—is torture, as is starving to death in the Ukraine. … But we’re a far cry from what you engaged in at Plattling. The men you helped to round up to return to Russia were in many cases shot, or sent to Gulag. What I was saying,” Alex relit the screen, “is that I am anxious exactly to trace the events of February 25, 1946—exactly what happened to the repatriated Russians. And I have come up with material that wasn’t available to early historians like Nikolai Tolstoi. I’ve loaded my computer with six photo shots of what I think was Plat-ding; I’m wanting your confirmation of this—” he called them up on the screen, one after another.

  “Yes, that’s Plattling,” Harry said, his voice husky. “That’s definitely Plattling. You can see off at the corner—at eleven o’clock—where my company headquarters was.”

  “And I have this one. I need to know if it harmonizes with your memory of that morning.”

  The photo was taken from a hundred yards outside the camp, looking in at an angle on the main gate. There was scattered snow and a heavy congregation of soldiers on both sides of the gates. At the left, one tank was visible, facing the gate.

  “Is that it?”

  Harry examined it carefully. “At least I can’t find my own face among the U.S. Army contingent.” And after a pause, “I can’t say. I can imagine other situations where there’d have been a lot of GIs and Russians on the scene, and tanks here and there weren’t rare. … Tell you what, Alex. As a historian I’m careful about these things. You can say that the photograph is of Camp Plattling and in no way contradicts what happened on February twenty-fifth, and is probably authentic.”

  Alex, as usual, was writing down on computer Harry’s answers to the questions put to him.

  They went on to pictures of the Bavarian forest, where the Soviet soldiers had picked up the refugees. Once again there was the question of absolute identification. Indeed it was a picture of a train loaded with men with indistinct features, once again a picture of what might have been on February 25, 1946, beyond Zwiesel, near the Czech frontier. “Does it really matter?” the historian asked his host.

  “I would like to fortify a personal narrative. The pictures would make that possible.”

  The balance of the week was spent reviewing the long textual narrative of U.S. and British appeals against the Soviet demand for repatriation of the refugees.

  “You know something,” Harry said at the end of a long day. “If Truman and Churchill had been as resolute as Stalin, they’d simply have said: No. ‘No, Marshall Stalin. You can’t get them back. So what do you want to do about it? Go to war?’ But they really abandoned that kind of language at Teheran and Yalta. They hoped Stalin would come around; FDR was ill and Truman new at the game, Churchill beleaguered by the British rejection of his government, Attlee relatively green and concerned mostly about domestic socialization—”

  “Yes. And Stalin’s obduracy, I think we both agree, was a great strength. I was certainly impressed by it. I saw Stalin staking out his position: the Marxist-Leninist position. Everything else was derivative. Like Saint Thomas on God: If He exists, then you have a postulation, and nothing that you see or experience can undo that postulation. It just exists—and is permitted to exist by the divine order. I’m writing about why the West wasn’t as convinced about its position as Stalin was about his. And I’m asking why Stalin appealed to so many, in so many forms. God help me I’m qualified to write about that. It is vulgar to forget, which so many people in fact do, the high appeal that Communism had for so many.”

  “Maybe I was too young to come across that appeal.”

  “Come now. Do not pretend to be unfamiliar with the story. I know you are not. I marked here, I took it from a manuscript, unpublished, of letters to Ralph de Toledano, the American author and journalist, from Whittaker Chambers. It is a paragraph that for reasons hard to understand was omitted from his great book, Witness, apparently at the urging of his editor. Chambers was apparently remonstrating to a friend who wonders that Communism’s idealistic net could ever ensnare the sophisticated. Here, let me read it to you. I like to hear the sound of Chambers, and his reproach here is arresting.”

  He picked up the book and read.

  “ ‘Now, in the light of its late sundown, you tell me that you took one look at Communism and knew at once that it was a fraud. My friend, you are mistaken. In the terrible decade, 1915-1923, you scarcely knew the word Communism. You did not know that, for multitudes, Communism hung, like a star-shell, lurid, but casting the only steady light into that bleeding, dark and ruined world. It is only now that you know that Communism is a fraud. You only know now that, of the ways of saving the world, Communism is not one. I know that too—now. I learned it in another school. I learned by trying, in the day of disaster, to do something, and doing the wrong thing, because I did not see what else to do. Life has been more gracious to you—or perhaps your judgment is better. For you did nothing at all.’ ”

  “Of course I understand, but then it’s true I didn’t live through that decade Chambers is talking about. My decade, 1938 to 1948, tilted me, and most others, in a different direction. But
we’re to talk about all that.”

  “Right, Harry. And to get down to a little business. I need to know some details of your life that were not reported in the Contemporary Authors biography of 1986. What did you emphasize when you served in the National Endowment for the Humanities?”

  29

  Meet the Press with Lattimore

  Public attention to Josefa Kalli quickly ebbed. There was a memorial service in Baltimore, attended by a half dozen of the men and women she had worked with at the Commerce Department. There was no family, and no one stepped forward asking to be put in charge of burial arrangements and the final service. The assistant secretary of commerce then stepped in and (“I’ve never done this before. What exactly do I do?”) asked his personnel director for help. What had to be done was pretty routine. Police … mortuary … cremation. “But there is one less-than-routine thing I’d do if I were you, Mr. Secretary.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d call Senator McCarthy and ask him please not to attend. He’ll understand why. If he comes, the whole tabloid community will be there and a lot of stuff will get said that won’t exactly—well, you know, help our own … personnel situation.”

  Donald Sutherland said he understood.

  He put in the call. He didn’t want to ask for Senator McCarthy personally. For one thing, the assistant secretary was in no mood to chat with the senator about the reasons for Kalli’s behavior. The operator put him through to Mary Haskell. “You understand, Mrs. Haskell, if the senator wants to speak to me I’d be absolutely delighted to do so. But I thought perhaps this business was better handled at … this level.”

  “I understand,” Mary said.

  And Joe understood; in fact was grateful to be excused. His only knowledge of Josefa Kalli, after all, was what he got from his two-hour interview with her. He had filed inquiries about her record, but he knew they would be of no effect: He would bump into the 1948 executive order that barred legislative inquiries into personnel security records.

  “So, Mary, I had two hours with her and—”he drew it from the drawer he had placed it in—”this letter, which you’ve seen.” The letter spoke of Josefa Kalli’s fright, her despair, her reluctance to reveal names, and her decision to end it all.

  “I got the hundredth request for a copy this morning. Do you intend to give it out?”

  McCarthy sat back. “No. Let them speculate—and worry—about what’s in it. Let’s let the poor lady alone.”

  “What if Mr. Hoover asks to see it?”

  “That’s different. But if the FBI asks for it, tell them to have the director call me.”

  Kalli was forgotten, but the tempest over Owen Lattimore heightened. McCarthy moved forward on his idea.

  Harry had worked hard on the research, and Don Surine drew on his many sources. Joe brought in some data without saying where he had got them. The whole package was sent to Lawrence Spivak, editor of Meet the Press and its principal interrogator.

  The TV program was heavily advertised: Owen Lattimore on Meet the Press. McCarthy had said early on in the Tydings investigation that his case stood or fell on the correctness of his identification of Owen Lattimore as a Soviet agent. McCarthy retreated on the matter of his being the “top” agent, but Lattimore remained, week after week, the dominant figure in the Tydings investigation. It would be an important half hour.

  •Millard Tydings, spending Sunday in his ample house in Baltimore, told his houseguests to be quiet, even though it was only 10:55 and the television program didn’t begin until eleven.

  • Dean Acheson had come into the imposing secretary’s office at the Department of State. He had been meeting with political advisers on the matter of Korea, but ten minutes before the hour he said, simply: “Look, gentlemen. I have to see the Lattimore program on Meet the Press. It is very important to me, and very important to the department. You may join me in the Red Room or disport yourselves as you please until eleven-thirty. All seven joined the secretary of state in the adjacent room with its brand-new twelve-inch television.

  • The First Baptist Church, on Sixteenth and O Street, was the church of the Reverend Edward Pruden, and his Sunday services began at ten o’clock. President Truman and Mrs. Truman were regular congregants. There was this problem, namely that the Reverend Pruden tended to deliver substantial sermons, with the result that services ended approximately one hour after they began. On the Friday before, a White House aide—Posi Casertano—had met with Mr. Pruden. If he could manage to end the service this next Sunday at 10:50, the president would be grateful to go from the church to the rectory next door in order to watch Meet the Press on Mr. Pruden’s set. No publicity, just an impromptu call by the president on his minister.

  The clergyman was delighted and winked at Miss Casertano. “I’ll make certain the last hymn ends at ten-fifty. On the other hand, I shall certainly make it a point not to end the service too early. That would give the president time to return to the White House, and I wouldn’t want that! I’d be honored to have him as my guest, even if it is only for a half hour.”

  • Don Surine had suggested the entire staff view the program on the senator’s set in the office, but Joe said no. He didn’t want the press to sniff out that McCarthy attached that much importance to it.

  You watch it here. I’ll watch it at Jeanie’s house. At Jeanie’s mother’s house.” He turned to Harry. “Want to come?”

  Harry nodded. “Wouldn’t miss it. I don’t have a television set.”

  • Ed Reidy called Sam Tilburn from Indianapolis. “You going to watch it at home? So am I. Give me a call after it’s over, okay?”

  —Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Larry Spivak bringing you Meet the Press. Our guest today is Professor Owen Lattimore. Mr. Lattimore, as everybody knows, has been the principal target of Senator Joe McCarthy, who two months ago charged that there were two hundred and five Communists in the State Department. There is a dispute over that figure, but he did charge that there were a number of loyalty and security risks in government, and he named Owen Lattimore as his primary target.

  Mr. Lattimore is a Far East specialist, teaching at Johns Hopkins. He is the author of many books, including The Desert Road to Turkestan. Our panelists are four journalists who will be introduced later.

  Welcome, Mr. Lattimore.

  —Thank you, Mr. Spivak. I am glad to be here.

  —Mr. Lattimore, you said on February fifteenth that you had no association with the Department of State. You also said, “I am the least consulted man of all those who have a public reputation in this country as specialists in the Far East.” But Mr. Lattimore, in 1941 President Roosevelt appointed you personal political adviser to Chiang Kaishek, then head of state of China, and you remained in Peiping until 1942. What is your comment on that?

  —Well, Mr. Spivak, that was a special appointment and it was outside the, the purview of the State Department.

  —But surely the State Department was concerned about what you reported on China?

  —Well, we like to think the State Department is aware of everything that goes on that can in any way affect foreign policy.

  —Mr. Lattimore, after you got back to Washington you were made the chief of Pacific Operations for the Office of War Information. Surely that is one, well, one front of the State Department?

  —The Office of War Information was created after Pearl Harbor, Mr. Spivak, and it would be incorrect to think of it as a part of the State Department—

  —In 1944, Mr. Lattimore, Vice President Henry Wallace made his famous visit to Siberia and to China. That was the trip about which he wrote, representing forcefully the Soviet position on the issues of 1944, having to do with bringing the war to an end and planning the peace. You accompanied Vice President Wallace on that trip. Would you not call that an official connection? Surely the State Department was concerned with the diplomatic impact of the trip of the vice president of the United States?

  —Well, Mr. Spivak, I have
—I’m not denying it—a, er, considerable professional reputation in my own field. And the vice president obviously wished to have one or more people in his entourage with whom he could consult on historical and cultural matters, Russian and Chinese—

  —Mr. Lattimore, in 1945 President Truman appointed you as a member of the Pauley Reparations Mission to Japan—

  —Look, Mr. Spivak, that was a purely technical assignment—

  •“I didn’t know that,” Harry Truman said, “about Lattimore and the Pauley commission. Why the hell didn’t somebody tell me that? Make a note to find that out. Make a note for me to call Mr. Acheson as soon as I get back.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Presidential Assistant Ellery Grew took out his notebook.

  —Mr. Lattimore, in 1949 you attended a State Department conference on China policy. And—wait just a minute, Mr. Lattimore—yet you have said, I quote you, again, February fifteenth, “I have never been in the State Department.” Mr. Lattimore, I have a photostatic copy of a letter signed by you and directed to Mr. Benjamin Kizer, dated June 12, 1942. The last paragraph of that letter reads, “My home address is as typed above, and my home telephone is Towson 846-W. I am in Washington about four days a week, and when there can always be reached at Lauchlin Currie’s office, Room 228, State Department Building; telephone NAtional 1414, extension 90. Yours very sincerely, Owen Lattimore.”

  •“God almighty,” Dean Acheson pointed his finger at his aide, ignoring the seven senior officers grouped around the television set with him. “Lauchlin Currie’s office! Lauchlin Currie isn’t just a McCarthy target. He was FDR’s administrative assistant for foreign affairs and, we now know, a member of the Silvermaster spy ring!” He stopped. He wanted to hear.