“Please follow me, Senator.”
Henry walked ahead. McCarthy followed him by a step or two. When they reached the door he saw the number 322 on the side in polished brass. The door opened from the inside, Joe stepped in and saw a middle-aged man, formally dressed, who looked at Henry and exchanged nods with him.
“Upstairs, please, Senator,” Henry said.
McCarthy followed him. At the end of the hall Henry put his hand into his jacket pocket. McCarthy thought he heard a faint buzz. The door opened. Henry beckoned him in. He walked into a comfortably appointed office, a small sofa on his left, small sofa on his right, scenic lithographs on the walls, and J. Edgar Hoover sitting behind the desk, in shirtsleeves.
The director came around, dismissed Henry with a spare flick of his fingers, shook McCarthy’s hand, motioned him to the couch, and returned to his desk. He came immediately to the subject.
“Sorry about the ruse. I had to lure you here. And I had to do it in a hurry.
“Joe, I’ve given you quite a lot of help through channels in the past few months since our initial meeting. Now you’ve got to do something for me. I think I better put it to you straight, Joe. I require your cooperation.”
McCarthy began to bristle. He was in awe of the power of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, but he was too confident of the sway he now had over the entire country to be treated like a—plebe.
“Edgar,” he said, venturing into territory very few others had penetrated. Who else called J. Edgar Hoover Edgar? Since schooldays? “You know what I think of you. And I am very indebted to you. But I have the pulse of the American people on this business, and they look to me—”
“Joe. Stop. I know all that. I was the first person in Washington to recognize your special effect on the American people. But listen to what I have to say. First, we’re sitting, right now, in this room, inside an electronic bubble. It’s constructed just like the bubbles in the embassies, except that this is decorated to look like a regular office. No bugging can go on here, and nobody sees who comes into the office. No human being knows what you and I are talking about. Nobody will know.”
“So where we going, Edgar?”
“We have informants. You know that. Chambers, Hede Massing, Elizabeth Bentley. You know all that. We had the goods on Julius Rosenberg, on Alger Hiss.”
“I don’t get it. If so, why did the president refer to the Hiss case as a red herring?”
“President Truman obviously didn’t think Hiss was an agent.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“The situation is that bad, that serious. The president doesn’t believe the Communist infiltration is that deep.”
“You’re telling me the president doesn’t believe Chambers and the rest?”
“How do you read it? It helps to remember that the president never met a Communist until he went to Potsdam. He does not know how difficult the security question is.”
“Why are you telling me?”
Hoover paused. Then lifted his eyeglasses a fraction of an inch.
“Because there were two men on your list last Tuesday who must not on any account be pursued by you. They are Ted Levinson and Michael Gazzaniga. You are to cease any further mention of them, and you are to direct your staff—in such a way as not to excite suspicion, I hardly need tell you—to discontinue any interest in them.”
McCarthy looked up at the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, his chin brawny, his fists tightly closed. Instinctively he transposed the scene. It was a heavy-deal poker game. He and J. Edgar Hoover were players, with great stakes moving here and moving there.
He crossed his legs. “I understand, Edgar. But it’s right for me to say: What are you offering me in return?”
“Silence.”
“Silence on what?”
“Silence on Mary.”
“Mary … Mary who?”
“Mary Haskell, your principal secretary. She is a security risk.”
“Mary Haskell? My Mary Haskell, who runs my office?”
“She was a member of the party when you hired her.”
When Joe McCarthy left the house, he and “Edgar” had a deal.
Though Mary Haskell was an intimate figure in Joe McCarthy’s operations, she was never a part of his informal life. That was simply the way it was, and that was the way Mary wanted it to be. At the end of a long, tiring day in the office she’d return to her apartment a few blocks away and mostly just let the air around her still her nerves. There were a lot of books on her shelves, and she regularly brought home diversionary reading, in particular modern novels, from the library around the corner. Early in July, Mary had acquired a small television set, but she would turn it on only at hours when she could be certain she wouldn’t be staring at Joe McCarthy or his enemies. Or, for that matter, his friends.
At one corner of her library she kept her college textbooks. At the end of sophomore year at CCNY in New York she had married, become pregnant, and quit college. During the day she nursed Hilda, at night she attended secretarial school, learning Gregg shorthand. Her husband, Igor, was a typesetter at 30 Union Square. He was employed by the Daily Worker. She and Igor divorced when Hilda was nine.
There were no suitable jobs to be had in New York, but in Washington the expansive federal government of President Roosevelt created a considerable need for secretarial help, so she and Hilda moved there in 1931. Hilda was grown and married when Mary went to work in the office of Wisconsin senator La Follette in 1942. The defeated senator rose above the bitterness of his humiliation and offered his successor guidance about staffing his office. “I can make your office life significantly smoother and happier. What you do—Joe—” Senator La Follette found it hard to call him “Joe”; on the other hand, he found it harder to call him “Senator” “—is take on Mary Haskell, age forty-five, skilled in shorthand and the smoothest, ablest office manager in town. And a very nice lady.”
McCarthy liked her instantly. She became his den mother, amanuensis, expediter of all enterprises and overseer of problems coming in from whatever quarter. She appeared to have no other life, though she kept the picture of her daughter prominently displayed. The office seemed to be her life, and its tenant, her special charge.
Today she was surprised to find the handwritten note on her desk from Joe. He must have scratched it out and left it there when she had gone out for a quick lunch. Joe McCarthy communicated with Mary Haskell thirty-five times every day, mostly over the intercom: Why a written note? It said simply, “Mary, I need to see you alone. I’ll go from my television date at WRC-TV to the Phoenix hotel. If I don’t hear back from you, that means you’re okay to meet me at the bargrill at 6:30. J.”
He had to have found her out. She held her breath. … Either that or Joe was going to tell her he was dying of cancer … or—but no. If he had cancer, he’d have been told it by a doctor. If he had gone to a doctor, Mary would have made the appointment, and that hadn’t happened. It had to be the other.
Oh, my goodness. (Mary never used the name of the Lord in vain.) After all these years.
To her surprise, Joe was punctual. He gave her a fleeting peck on her forehead. “Well, what’ll it be for you, Mary? Your usual Singapore sling?”
“My usual Coke, Senator.”
Joe ordered a gin and tonic and a Coke. He spoke of his experiences on the television interview with the CBS Washington anchorman Gus Attlee. “Okay guy, Mary. We must be nice to him. He’s a youngish guy—”
She interrupted him. “Joe, what’s on your mind?”
He drank. “Mary, were you a Communist?”
“Yes.” She twined the paper napkin around her fingers. “I joined up sophomore year at college. Married a Communist; he worked for the Daily Worker. We had Hilda, got divorced in 1931, came to Washington. Igor went to Spain to fight against Franco. He was captured and shot. I never heard again from anyone in the party.”
“When you were in the party, what did you do?”
&n
bsp; “Mostly I passed out leaflets at student meetings. We distributed a lot of them in November, at election time.”
“That’s sort of—all you did?”
“Yes, Joe. I didn’t try to influence foreign policy.” But she regretted the crack. “Sorry about that. You asked the right questions. … You going to fire me, Joe?”
He leaned across, put his hands on either side of her head, and kissed her on the cheek.
“No. But I want you to do something for me, Mary. I want you to write me a letter describing everything you did as a Communist, when you became one, when you quit, why you quit.”
She nodded.
“But Mary, here’s the most important thing. I want you to date that letter to me December 1946.” He winked at her. “You know, Mary, I always run a thorough security check on everybody I hire.”
“Of course, Joe. That’s always been your rule. Joe,” her smile was weary but affectionate, “how’m I doing?”
“You’re doing just great, Mary. You are just great.”
34
The Tydings Committee reports its findings
The finding of the Tydings Committee surprised no one, but the language used surprised everybody. The report read not like conclusions to an investigation but like a bill of indictment against the senator who had brought the charges.
The committee report was made public on July 17. McCarthy’s office had received page proofs only twenty-four hours before. He called out from his office through the open door to Mary when the package of page proofs arrived. “You all go ahead and read it first. Just tell me this. It’s not unanimous, right?”
Mary called back. The report had the signatures of the three Democratic senators. “Hickenlooper and Lodge weren’t even shown it. Naturally, they’ve refused to sign it.”
When a half hour later Mary brought it in, he looked up at her. She turned her face away.
“That bad?”
She walked out of the room.
As agreed, Sam Tilburn telephoned Ed Reidy in Indianapolis after he had read the report and made a few phone calls.
“Let me give you the tone of it, Ed, by reading you two sentences. McCarthy’s campaign is, quotes, ‘a fraud and a hoax perpetrated on the Senate of the United States and the American people … perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of this republic. For the first time in our history, we have seen the totalitarian technique of the “big lie” employed on a sustained basis.’ Unquote.”
“Sam, how they going to get away with language like that?”
“Hickenlooper and Lodge have already renounced it. Lodge wants a brand-new investigation of McCarthy’s charges and the whole loyalty/security picture. As an example of distortion, all you have to read is the section on Owen Lattimore. But what comes from it is just … a smell. A plain old cover-up.”
“A brand-new investigation! What I tried just now over the phone was a sigh. Did you pick it up?”
“Yes, Ed, I know, I know, nightmare time. But it seems to me your editorial lead is obvious. The Tydings Committee didn’t investigate the charges—they completely cleared Lattimore, by the way—they set out to reject McCarthy’s charges. The full Senate will have to vote on whether to accept the report. I doubt we’ll see a single Republican voting in favor. And let’s see what kind of a public reception Joe gets tomorrow—he’s making a big speech in Baltimore.”
“Call you back after I read the wire-service report.”
Harry got an extra copy from Andrew Ely, Senator Taft’s administrative assistant. He took it home, and on the way to his floor, scooped up his mail. There was an airmail from Elinor.
He sat down and looked at his watch and took a minute to survey the scene. A one-bedroom apartment, a living room that looked more like a study than a lounge. It funneled into the tiny kitchen. To economize on space, Harry had the newly bought television in the kitchen mounted on a lazy Susan. He could swivel it and watch it sitting at his desk or on one of the two armchairs—or while preparing a meal. He had three photographs plopped about: one (his mother, his father, Harry at age ten) on the desk; a second (Harry at Columbia, sitting as editor of the Spectator, his first day in office!) on a bookcase; the third (Elinor boarding the Nieuw Amsterdam with her father) also on the bookcase. He thought to himself: If ever he got two days in a row with nothing to do, and could come up with a loose two hundred dollars, he’d probably spend the time and the money replacing his boarding-house khaki-colored curtains, which reminded him of Camp Wheeler.
The news would come in at six. He turned on the television set to CBS and turned down the sound. He’d turn it up when the news he especially cared about today came on. He put the report down on one side of his typewriter, which he kept on the coffee table where he liked to work. He opened the letter. After he read the first paragraph, he put it down, went into the little kitchen, and poured himself some bourbon. He looked about in the freezer compartment for some loose ice, but there wasn’t any. He didn’t have the energy to pull out the tray and disgorge the cubes. He took his glass, brought it to the table, and sat down.
The television images turned to the news and flashed a photograph of Joe McCarthy. Harry didn’t turn up the sound. He stared at the typewriter, the letter on one side, the report on the other. Which should he go through first?
What the hell, he’d go first with Tydings. The first paragraph of Elinor’s letter said she had become engaged. He could wait to read the closing paragraph of the letter.
At the Admiral Fell Inn in Baltimore, Senator McCarthy faced a full house. He was speaking not to the American Legion or to the Veterans of Foreign Wars; this was a hotel-keepers convention. There were a half dozen reporters and a television news camera there. How would he respond to the historic rebuke of the Tydings majority? How would the crowd respond to him?
After dinner he rose to speak.
“I’m glad to be in your company tonight. A perfect night to celebrate shelter!”
There was a big laugh.
But quickly McCarthy got serious. “The words we most remember about Pearl Harbor were President Roosevelt’s. Recall, he spoke of a day that ‘would live in infamy.’ Well, today was an infamous day in the Senate of the United States.”
McCarthy denounced the committee findings. They constituted an “invitation” to Communists and fellow travelers to come into the government or stay in the government without any fear that there would be action to uproot them. He itemized the backgrounds of some of his targets, and contrasted their treatment by the “Democrat report” of the committee. He felt the listeners tuning in on his indignation. His speaking voice as ever in monotone, even so he passed on his mounting scorn and bitterness. Toward the end, the assembly of professional hotel keepers and their wives, much excited that their dinner speaker was the same man featured on the front pages of every newspaper in the country, were rallied to McCarthy’s banner.
“When things get very bad, ladies and gentlemen, very, very bad, then we have to pay for grave mistakes, pay with the blood of young American soldiers, which is being shed this minute, while we speak, in Korea. We won a great world war just four and one-half years ago. We defeated enemies on both sides of the globe. We developed a nuclear weapon. Four and one-half years under the leadership of President Truman and Dean Acheson and the State Department. What have we got? We have lost Poland and Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia and Romania and East Germany. The Communist Party threatens to take over in Italy and to paralyze France. China, almost one billion people, has been taken by the ruthless Communist dictatorship. The Soviet Union has got the nuclear weapon, stolen by spies right from American laboratories. In Korea, I say, they are dying. And in Washington, three senators invited to investigate these colossal events end up—talking about the sins of—Joe McCarthy.”
The applause was huge, beginning in indignation with the committee, changing gradually to sympathy for its victim, their speaker. The occupants at the first table rose to their feet cla
pping. In a minute all 450 guests were standing.
McCarthy told the television interviewer that the voters in Baltimore had one very direct opportunity to speak back to Millard Tydings. He was Maryland’s senator.
“They can vote him out of office in November.”
In November the voters did just that.
Harry reflected. Joe is riding high, he thought. It was stupid of Tydings to write a report so egregiously distorted. Would he complete the reading of Elinor’s letter? He turned to the last paragraph. Nice, warm, but, really, formalities. He knew he had to write her back, and made his way to the typewriter. He began to stroke out a few words, but quickly he stopped. He’d have to wait.
How long? An hour? A day? Two?—before he got her out of his mind, the girl-of-his-dreams while at Columbia. He had thought the separation would be intolerable, but he had lived McCarthy minute after minute after hour after hour after day after month. He thought back on her calm invitation to go to Holland to spend—a few weeks, was it? Perhaps his letter then had caused that little—tectonic shift he had felt in the ensuing weeks, the phasing down of letters that in June had been coming three or four times every week. There had been more space spent, in the last few weeks, on public affairs. That meant she was progressively disinclined to talk about herself—or about Harry. He thought she too was distracted, by diplomatic life, even as he was distracted by political life. But Elinor was not the kind of girl who could do without a real boyfriend. In New York, though they had dated continuously, he had never got her so to speak full-time. What she wanted, needed, was a full-time boyfriend. Had she found someone in the American Embassy?
Or was it a Dutch boy?
He closed his eyes and began typing, with sure fingers. “Dear Elinor.” Not “My darling Elinor,” not this time around. “I was stunned//// I was shocked//// I was surprised and saddened/// I was shaken by your letter. You must write and tell me more about the wretched young (?) man who has taken you away from me. What can I say? Would you like me to write you a speech about—what? But I could write a speech about how you are the most entrancing girl in New York. In Holland. You are in my thoughts. All love, Harry.”
The Redhunter Page 24