The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  The next morning he called Mary Haskell.

  “I got to have a half hour with Joe alone,” Harry said. “Can you figure out how that’s possible?”

  “It ain’t easy, Harry.” Mary was obviously scanning the senator’s appointment book as she spoke.

  “It’s important, Mary. Bless you, love.”

  “I know what I can do. He’s got a date at six at the suite in the Hay-Adams, same room you had a few weeks ago with Joe and Roy. He’s got to be on time because the date is with Eugene Pulliam, and Joe knows that Mr. Pulliam doesn’t like to wait around. What I’ll do, I’ll call Pulliam and tell him the hour for the supper with Joe has been moved up to six-forty-five. You get there at six, you’ll have him all alone. I won’t tell the senator the Pulliam hour has been moved up. If I did, he’d be late for your date.”

  “Thanks, Mary.”

  Harry arrived at the hotel at 5:50. There was no answer when he rang the bell at suite 455. He’d go back to the lobby, fuss around a few minutes at the newsstand, and then come back up. He was there at 6:05. As he lifted his finger to ring, he heard the voice behind him … in February 1954, the most recognizable in the country apart from the president’s and maybe Edward R. Murrow’s.

  “Hey there, Harry! How you doing?”

  McCarthy took the room key out of his pocket and opened the door. “Come on in. But Harry, you ought to know I’m expecting that newspaper tyrant Gene Pulliam any second, and he doesn’t like to share my company with anyone, even my Phi Beta Kappa assistant-speechwriter. What are you doing here?”

  Harry didn’t want to dissimulate, so he took some shortcuts. “Mary found out Mr. Pulliam couldn’t get here till seven, too late to warn you away, but I asked her for the hole so I could talk to you.”

  “Sure, sure, Harry. Let’s order a few … beers and wait for the old dragon.” He dialed room service and put in his order.

  “So what’s on your mind, besides the speech tomorrow?”

  Harry put it up front. “I think the way things have been going the past few months you are, net, hurting the anti-Communist cause.”

  Joe looked up, startled.

  “I don’t understand that, Harry, coming from you. If it was any of those … other people. But you—”

  “It’s disordered, Joe. Terribly disordered. You know how I felt about some of the issues, the challenge to Eisenhower and now the treatment of Zwicker, with you scheduled to go back at him in public session tomorrow—”

  “That’s been put off till Thursday.”

  “Then with you scheduled to go back at him in public session on Thursday. You’ve always been frank, and you hit people hard—”

  “It’s a hard world—”

  “I was going to say that. It’s a hard world. But the impulse to act has got out of hand. You’re losing sight of the strategic picture. You’re giving ammunition to the enemy that’s going to hurt you and our position on the Soviet Union and for sure on the internal security question.”

  McCarthy stood up to open the door to room service. The waiter took the glass with the ice and poured it half-full of bourbon.

  “Shall I add soda, sir, or water?”

  McCarthy shook his head. “Just ice.” He slipped a dollar to the waiter. And to Harry, “You don’t see that people like Ike and Zwicker are blocking out any possibility of us making real progress?”

  ‘Joe, the White House announced last week that fourteen hundred-odd federal employees had been let go. That’s your accomplishment. The loyalty/security system is on its way to making sense—”

  “Meanwhile, a known Communist is promoted and given an honorable discharge.”

  “Joe, Joe. Now hold it. I’m not talking about individual acts of stupidity, like promoting Peress. It’s the bigger view of how some people are seeing you. You probably didn’t read Walter Lippmann this morning. Well, don’t tell me what you think about him, most of which I agree with. But here’s what he said, and it matters that he said it.” Harry pulled the clipping from his pocket.

  “ ‘This is the totalitarianism of the man, his cold, calculated, sustained, and ruthless effort to make himself feared. That is why he has been staging a series of demonstrations, each designed to show that he respects nobody, no office, and no institution in the land, and that everyone at whom he growls will run away.’ Now Joe, I know there’s a lot of horseshit there and I know that Lippmann and that tribe defended Hiss. But what matters, Joe, is that some of what Lippmann is thinking and saying he has reason to think and say. Who’d read your exchange with Zwicker and not think the same thing?”

  McCarthy, twirling his glass in his hand, was silent. He looked truly sad. “Harry, what are you saying? I mean, I’m glad to talk these things over with you. That’s always true, for how long? How long has it been?”

  “Since June 1950. Three and a half years.

  “I got to leave you, Joe.”

  McCarthy was staggered. He stared ahead, then finished his drink. Then struggled for his old composure.

  “I can’t stop you.” He forced a grin. “I suppose I could rescind the Thirteenth Amendment—remember? The guarantee against involuntary servitude? That’s what the Lippmann types think I’d want to do. But—just to sort of explore the question: What would I have to do to make you change your mind? Other than—take a vow of silence?”

  “Dismiss Roy Cohn.”

  McCarthy looked up. He had heard those words before, just yesterday. He knew that was what Ray Kiermas really wanted. What Mary Haskell wanted. What Jeanie really wanted. Yet he seemed astonished at hearing the suggestion put in just that way.

  “Roy’s a terrific counselor and, er, aide.”

  “I’ve watched him carefully. He gives bad, bad advice.”

  “Harry, I mean, I couldn’t just—fire Roy. It would, I mean, it would be, you know, disloyal.”

  “That’s not the right word, Joe. You’d just be saying to him: ‘I’ve got to get different advice from what I’ve been getting.’ That kind of thing happens all the time, the sense that you’ve got to have a different set of people advising you.”

  McCarthy was shaking his head. He refilled his glass and drank deeply. He stared down at the glass in his hand. “I just can’t do that, Harry—”

  The doorbell rang. Harry sprang up to open it. It was Pulliam, escorted by an aide. Harry led them into the room.

  “I was just leaving, Mr. Pulliam.”

  “Nice to see you again, Harry.” He turned to Joe—Eugene Pulliam would never address a senator by his first name. “Good evening, Senator. I see you have a start on me!” He looked down at the tray and said to his aide, “George, order me a Budweiser beer.”

  He sat down. McCarthy looked around, slowly: Was Harry still there?

  “Harry?”

  “Yes, Senator.”

  “I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.”

  Harry replied, with some emphasis, “You can reach me at home, Senator, any time you want.”

  Pulliam dismissed his aide, told him to return at 8:30. Harry, walking out of the room, overheard him starting in. “Now Senator, on this business of inviting all federal employees to …”

  McCarthy’s voice interrupted him. “Gene, sorry, I forgot to tell Harry something, something for the office. Just wait a minute.”

  He overtook Harry halfway down the hall to the elevator. “Harry, on that speech you’re working on.” But his voiced edged down, and now his eyes were moist. “Harry, please don’t leave me.”

  Harry couldn’t look at him.

  McCarthy grabbed him by the shoulders and forced Harry’s face toward him. Harry’s tears were running down his face. McCarthy bowed his head. He put one hand on Harry’s right hand, the other on Harry’s upper arm. He squeezed them both tightly. “Harry, I do need you, I really do need you.”

  But then he shook his head abruptly, loosed his grip on Harry, and went back to the door, to Eugene Pulliam.

  55

  President Eisenhower hold
s a press conference

  The next day, everything happened. The New York Times had got hold of a transcript of the closed hearing with General Zwicker and printed every word of it. The paragraphs Harry had pointed out to Sam Tilburn were set in boldface type. Willard Edwards, the Chicago Tribune correspondent in Washington, was a staunch supporter of McCarthy and a friend of both the senator and Harry. He called Harry on the telephone and asked if they might lunch “at one, one-thirty. I’ll pick you up. I’ve got to be at the White House press conference at ten.”

  Harry hadn’t even finished reading the Times stories when the telephone rang again. It was Jean Kerr McCarthy, calling from New York. … She must see him.

  Jean Kerr McCarthy had assigned herself a personal mission. She needed Harry. Needed him for Joe. She had to bring him around.

  Harry sensed immediately her purpose.

  She went right on, ignoring his stuttered demurral. “I’m in bad shape to press for a meeting with you, Harry, because I won’t be able to move from Fort Monmouth, which means nights in New York, for two or three days. That’s how long we expect the hearings up here to take. Is there any chance you could get up here?”

  Harry said it would be “terribly hard” to make the round trip to New York immediately. This was difficult to bring off. He couldn’t plead that he was behind in his work. Jeanie knew the burdens on every member of the staff: It was her job to distribute the work. Harry hadn’t yet filed his formal resignation with Ray Kiermas, and he wasn’t going to leave Joe in a bind. He’d finish up the talk he had been preparing for Joe to give in Los Angeles, though the way the news was crowding in, Harry couldn’t be confident that Joe could get away to go on a thirteen-hour plane trip to California. The hesitation in his voice was picked up by Jeanie: Maybe better, she thought quickly, to put off a meeting with Harry for two or three days.

  “I see the problem, Harry. But let’s try to schedule a meeting in the next few days.” The interval might, just to begin with, permit Harry to get off what Joe had described to her over the telephone as his “moral high horse.” She had no intention of disparaging Harry’s motives for quitting (she had got the story from Joe, but she moved it about in her mind, and came up with a plausible version she was confident of). But she wanted very badly to succeed in her mission, which was to keep Harry on the staff.

  She had told Joe two years ago, “Harry is all decency, tough but decent, which figures; that’s why he wants to fight the Communists.” And she hadn’t disguised from Joe in the past months that she thought Roy Cohn was blundering. So now her objective was: Persuade Harry to change his mind. A better prospect of achieving this—her mind raced forward and came to the conclusion: She’d have a better chance if she didn’t make him come up to New York. Fort Monmouth, in New Jersey, virtually next door, was the pressure cooker of the Zwicker problem.

  “I’m going to try to be back in Washington on Wednesday. You know something, Harry,” … Jean’s voice was now the out-of-the-office voice of the statuesque, elegant woman who liked all the normal things, including kings and queens, “I’m kind of anxious to go to the reception for the Queen Mother. I’ve been a fan of hers a long, long time. Joe promises to make time to go. So maybe after that, or better—how about lunch Thursday? Can we make that a firm date?”

  “Sure, Jeanie. Sure.”

  “Please don’t get discouraged, Harry, I couldn’t bear it.”

  What could he say? “We’ll fight the good fight, Jeanie.”

  Then, later in the morning came the presidential press conference. Two hundred and fifty-six reporters were panting to hear President Eisenhower denounce Joe McCarthy. Harry, at home, listened eagerly over the radio (presidential press conferences were not shown on live TV). Eisenhower’s voice came over, calming, firm, confident. He was speaking from a text, it was easy to deduce. He went right to the subject on everyone’s mind. He said that the case of Major Irving Peress had been mishandled and that reforms were under way to prevent such a thing from happening again. He explained that the promotion to major had been routine, automatic: seven thousand doctors and dentists were promoted during the same fortnight. He then said that the administration had never wished any employee to “violate his convictions or principles” when appearing before a congressional committee. But neither did the administration think it right for a federal employee to “submit to any kind of personal humiliation when testifying before congressional committees or elsewhere.” That was the sentence that caught the attention of the press.

  In the question period, individual reporters all but begged the president to discuss directly Senator McCarthy’s call to the federal employees, and the revelations of the New York Times that morning about his treatment of General Zwicker. The president declined to say anything more.

  The announcer then reported that Senator McCarthy was preparing a “comment” on the presidential press conference that would be broadcast as soon as available—”Stay tuned,” the CBS announcer said.

  Willard Edwards arrived at Harry’s apartment seconds later. He whisked Harry off to La Colie, where, breathless, Willard told the story of what had then happened.

  “I knew Joe would rush to answer the White House based on notice that he was going to be criticized. Now get this: As soon as the president had read out his statement, I beat it out of the White House and flagged a cab to go to Joe’s office to tell him the president hadn’t mentioned his name, had obviously deleted it from the early draft prepared for him. By the time I got there, Mary had the full text. She had taken down in shorthand from the radio what Ike actually said. Before she finished doing that, somebody in the office had handed Joe an Associated Press bulletin on Ike’s statement, which just plain falsely said that Ike had attacked Joe.

  “So what happens? Joe takes his prewritten reply and adds a fiery first sentence. I barrel into Joe’s office, read Joe’s statement, and holler out “Hold the presses!” I tell Joe I was physically there, and Ike had sounded pretty conciliatory. ‘You’re crazy,’ Joe says, and shoves the AP dispatch at me. Mary says, ‘Quiet, gentlemen,’ and pulls up her typescript. Joe reads it quickly and acknowledges that the AP was wrong, that they had gone with a different draft, or whatever.

  “So—he gives instructions to delete the let’s-go-to-war sentence from his opening paragraph. But there are three reporters outside yelling their heads off, and Mary doesn’t have time to retype it, so she just pencils out the deleted sentence, and the office gives out the text to the reporters with the bad sentence penciled out. But on the radio, just now—on my way to you!—the newscaster quoted it whole—”

  “Quoted the sentence Joe deleted?”

  “Yeap.” He brought out a copy of the McCarthy response to the president from his briefcase and passed it over to Harry.

  Harry’s eyes traveled to the critical sentence. It read, “Far too much wind has been blowing from high places in defense of this Fifth-Amendment Communist army officer.”

  Harry was dismayed. His eyes traveled back to the paragraph before the deletion.

  I think that the joy of the critics will be short-lived. When the shouting and the tumult die, the American people and the president will realize that this unprecedented mudslinging against the committee by extreme left-wing elements of the press and radio was caused because another Fifth Amendment Communist in government was finally dug out of the dark recesses and exposed to public view.

  Willard Edwards, disconsolate, chattered on.

  Harry did not tell him about his resignation.

  Harry thought the day intolerable, but it was not over. At four, Sam Tilburn rang him. “I called you at the office. They said you were working at home. Harry, this is for the record. The paper wants a comment from you on the army’s release of the Cohn-Schine telephone calls to the army secretary’s office.”

  “The what?”

  “You don’t know about it?”

  Harry hadn’t heard. Sam gave him a rundown. A record of dozens of telephone calls to
the secretary of the army by Cohn asking for special treatment for David Schine. The news would break the next day. Sam had an early copy.

  “Sam, I simply had no wind of this.”

  “Okay, let’s go off the record. Looking at it from here, the sequence is pretty clear to me. One. President Eisenhower meets the press and says nothing really tough about Joe McCarthy. But two, General Eisenhower, who of course has been told by his army secretary about the Cohn phone calls, has meanwhile told the army people to put the evidence all together and—hand it out to the press for publication the next day. That’s pretty good generalship, don’t you think, Harry? That strikes me as Ike’s Hiroshima bomb. And your boy Roy made it all possible.”

  “A good day to be away from the office, Sam.”

  “Permanently?”

  Harry was not going to say it in as many words, in a telephone call that was on the record. But he knew that Sam knew. All he said was, “Thanks for calling, Sam. I’ll be in touch.”

  Harry longed for some company. He soon had it. Mary Haskell called. “I can’t stand another hour in the office, Harry. Take me to dinner, will you?”

  56

  HANBERRY, 1991

  The evaluation of Eisenhower

  Alex Herrendon seemed very excited, as he always was when, pausing in his own narrative, he would hear Harry’s.

  “I always considered Eisenhower a masterly politician. From what you relate I am reinforced in the conclusions I arrived at a long time ago. Would you agree that Ike masterminded the collapse of McCarthy?”

  “I know what you’re talking about, Alex.” Harry rose from his desk to search in the library’s Book Index.

  “Can I help?”

  “I’m looking to see what you have here by Murray Kempton. He’s maybe the shrewdest journalist in America on that subject. And others. He did a piece for Esquire—”