As the NCEC exulted, the consequences of all this were many. Committee official George Agree would later say its foremost success in all of 1953 had been “the getting of J. B. Matthews, in which the Clearing House provided the initial spark, the biographical dossier that fired up Senator McClellan, the contacts with clergy around the country whose pulpit and press reaction helped particularly with Senators McClellan and Potter.” As to the larger meaning of the struggle, the NCEC would put it: “Opportunities like the Matthews episode have arisen before and will arise again. The difference this time seems to have been the presence on the Hill of people armed with detailed information about Matthews, who were seeking an opening and ready to take advantage of it.”11
That lesson would be remembered, and used in other contests. However, the NCEC was perhaps taking a few more bows than it deserved to, as other and even more powerful forces were also in the field, likewise seeking to exploit the religious issue against McCarthy. Here we are once more indebted to some inside players for explaining how they pushed the onslaught to the highest levels—getting the President himself to attack McCarthy in a carefully crafted statement on the Matthews affair that would cause the greatest possible damage.
Part of the story would be told by journalist Joseph Alsop, the rest by Emmet Hughes and other White House staffers. As usually happened, Ike’s advisers were of two minds on how to handle the Matthews flap, but top aide Sherman Adams decided it was just the ticket for doing in McCarthy. In his newspaper column, Alsop recounted not only what had happened in the White House, but also the larger implications of the tactic. “President Eisenhower,” said Alsop, “has at last opened hostilities against Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy…[via] Ike’s decisive statement denouncing the slander of the Protestant clergy by McCarthy’s pet investigator, J. B. Matthews.”
“The real interest of this statement,” Alsop added, “lies in a vital background fact. The White House actively sought the opportunity, indeed, created the opportunity, to strike this hard blow at the Wisconsin senator…. The President’s chief of staff, former Gov. Sherman Adams of New Hampshire, was the man who decided that Matthews offered the long-awaited ‘really good issue’ on which the President could take his stand against McCarthy….Rather cleverly, the White House then took steps to stimulate a telegram denouncing Matthews…. This was to give the President a reason to speak…the intention to strike at McCarthy was abundantly clear.”12
Emmet Hughes would fill in some blanks, recounting White House confabs in which it was decided to solicit a protest relating to Matthews from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, a liberal-leaning church group. Hughes further disclosed that Ike’s “response” was written before the solicited “protest” ever made it to the White House. This streamlined method, however, was not without its glitches. Disconcertingly, while Hughes and other staffers were anxiously awaiting the NCCJ protest with the answer already drafted, the message of clerical outrage didn’t arrive as scheduled.*268 In the meantime, word reached the White House that McCarthy had decided to jettison Matthews, and concern was rampant that this would remove the pretext for Ike’s ready-made rejoinder. A priceless chance to trash McCarthy would be wasted.
Accordingly, at the request of Hughes, Vice President Nixon and Deputy Attorney General William Rogers detained McCarthy on Capitol Hill in an extended gabfest as he was on his way to announce the Matthews resignation. This gave Hughes and others just the time required to get the NCCJ “protest” to the President, obtain his approval for the “response,” and release it to the press. (A further minor foulup was that mimeograph stencils for the Ike message and press release had already been prepared, but because of editing changes had to be done over.)13
So the thing at last went forward, and the next day’s papers featured the clerical “protest” and Eisenhower’s “response,” both as mendacious as they were synthetic. Each was a classic of the genre, blandly misstating the nature of the issue, as per the Shirley Temple furor. The NCCJ “protest” referred to an alleged “sweeping attack on the Protestant clergy” made by unnamed parties, and said that “destroying trust in the leaders of Protestantism, Catholicism or Judaism by wholesale condemnation” was to be lamented. Ike’s answer, drafted by Hughes, likewise asserted, “I want you to know at once that I fully share the convictions that you state…. Generalized and irresponsible attacks that sweepingly condemn the whole of any group of citizens are alien to America.”14 (Emphasis added.)
Of course, Matthews hadn’t engaged in “wholesale condemnation” of the “leaders” of any faith, nor had he “sweepingly” condemned the “whole of any group of citizens.” He had indeed done the reverse, pointing out that the Protestant clergy he criticized were a minority, and that the vast majority of such churchmen were loyal to both faith and country. None of that, however, made any difference. The important thing was to blitz McCarthy, and the blitzing had been accomplished.
The implications of all this would be greatly amplified by press coverage of the Ike/clergy statements and the sudden Matthews exit. Of particular note was the Murray Marder story the next morning in the Washington Post, played in what used to be called in the newspaper business “Second Coming” fashion—gigantic, eight-column headlines spread across the top of page one. The treatment was comparable to that given the attack against Pearl Harbor, the Normandy invasion, or the dropping of the A-bomb. Nor did the Post neglect to print in full, as done with the most important documents of state, the complete texts of the totally ersatz Ike/clergy correspondence.15
These events were instructive at many levels, most obviously as to the conventional notion that McCarthy was guilty of unprovoked attacks against the executive branch under Ike and thus responsible for conflict within the party. In the Matthews affair we see the exact reverse, as forces within the White House assiduously worked to discredit McCarthy on a matter that had no relevance to the executive branch whatever. The issue at stake was strictly the internal staffing of a Senate committee, which was no business of the White House. It nonetheless provided Hughes, Adams, et al., a chance, in Alsop’s phrasing, “to strike this hard blow” against the hated maverick.
At a deeper level, the significant aspect of the case was the effort of McCarthy’s foes to stir up the furies of religious conflict—specifically, to inflame Protestant sensibilities against the Catholic McCarthy. This was no trivial matter, as there were many sections of the country where anti-Catholic feeling ran strong (a condition that would get more notice a few years later during the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy). This purpose was implicit throughout the Matthews ruckus, but would be made crystal clear by Drew Pearson, whose office worked closely with the NCEC in this and other anti-McCarthy battles.
In his comments on the Matthews affair, Pearson held forth on the theme that McCarthy’s choice of Matthews had outraged Protestants—not failing to emphasize, wherever possible, that McCarthy was a Roman Catholic. The columnist also linked Matthews with the Roman Catholic Father Charles Coughlin, and noted that Matthews-McCarthy had been supported in the pages of Our Sunday Visitor, the nation’s largest publication for lay Catholics. So deposing, Pearson concluded that “given Matthews’ background,” McCarthy should have known that “Protestants would be outraged” by the choice of Matthews. Pearson thus managed to stamp “Catholic” all over the Matthews-McCarthy combine, while tut-tutting about the “tragic” religious conflict thus created.16
From this treatment, readers of Pearson’s column could have concluded only that Matthews, like McCarthy, was a Roman Catholic, and that the two of them were engaged in a wholesale attack against the nation’s Protestant churches. That Matthews was not a Catholic but a Protestant, and a former Methodist minister in the bargain, was nowhere mentioned in these effusions. Thus were religious hatreds deliberately fanned for political reasons by forces allegedly speaking out for tolerance in our discourse.
Bad as all this was for McCarthy, still other ill effects would follow. Based on th
is incident, McClellan and the Democratic members of the subcommittee demanded greater say-so in the hiring of staff, and when this turned into a conflict with McCarthy and Republican members, began a boycott of the panel that went on for the remainder of the year. (Robert Kennedy would at this time leave the panel also, to return later as counsel to the Democratic senators.) This was a level of rancor far beyond the usual divisions in the Senate. It also meant some of the most significant investigations of the committee would be conducted without any Democratic members present.*269
Taken all in all, the Matthews uproar and its effects must be accounted among the stranger episodes in our political history. Everything about it was fake: the misrepresentation of what Matthews said, and the manufactured outcry; the staged “protest” to the White House, its canned response, and the falsehoods embedded in both statements. Add to all of this the hyped press accounts and envenomed columns of Drew Pearson. That this campaign of poisonous disinformation succeeded—and is even now presented as historical truth in write-ups of the era—is an astonishing fact of record, the more so as its impact on the work of the McCarthy panel was both disruptive and long-lasting. (What had been done to J. B. Matthews was deplorable also, but obviously of zero concern to orchestrators of the protest.)
Meanwhile, the folks at the NCEC, vetted by a major battle with McCarthy, had tasted blood, liked the flavor, and were anxious for another serving. In which connection, they would subsequently be in close contact with an eccentric Republican member of the Senate, Ralph Flanders of Vermont, whose vagaries would lead him to become point man for still other attacks against McCarthy. Likewise, back at the White House, Hughes, Sherman Adams, and others had at last precipitated an open break between Ike and McCarthy, far transcending the earlier squabble about Chip Bohlen. Some members of the administration were now in a fighting mood, anxious to have it out with McCarthy and alert to other occasions like the Matthews fracas. And of these, as the McCarthy panel proceeded with its labors, there would be no shortage.
THOUGH it didn’t receive much attention in the wake of the Matthews battle, the McCarthy committee at this period, despite the pressures converging on it, continued with some productive investigations. One such, relevant to the charge that McCarthy “never exposed a single Communist,” involved the Government Printing Office, which handled all sorts of printed matter for the federal government, proceedings of the Congress and countless documents for the executive branch, military data and reports on many classified subjects.
The GPO investigation focused mainly on Edward Rothschild, an identified member of the Communist Party who worked in the assembly room where confidential documents were put together. Rothschild would be named under oath as a CP member by a fellow worker at the office, and his wife would likewise be named by an undercover agent for the FBI. Both Rothschilds responded to these identifications by pleading the Fifth Amendment.
A number of tangible outcomes would result from this investigation. Among the most important were committee findings about loyalty/security standards at GPO, which went far to explain how the likes of Edward Rothschild continued to hold a job there. As established by the hearings, the loyalty board at GPO had operated in such a way as to guarantee that virtually no one on its payroll could be found a loyalty risk, whatever the evidence against him.
Two of the tenets under which this board had functioned were (a) a loyalty proceeding would hear only witnesses favorable to the employee, and (b) “mere membership” in the Communist Party wasn’t considered a disqualifying factor. The reader will perhaps recognize the second as a concept favored in the security fog of World War II—which in this case persisted for eight full years into the era of the Cold War. Also, the penalty at GPO for removing documents from the premises, as Rothschild was accused of doing, was a brief period of suspension. Under standards of this sort, adverse FBI reports about Rothschild did nothing to affect his employment status. He thus continued to have access to classified material that passed through the printing office—including nuclear secrets of the Navy.17
In the wake of these hearings—still being described as irresponsible, hit-and-run, and ineffective by the press corps decades later18—wholesale changes were made in procedures at the GPO. Rothschild was discharged the day after he took the Fifth Amendment before McCarthy, thus concluding a run of fourteen years of almost unlimited access to documents in the print shop. Also, fifteen other GPO employees accused of pro-Red activity were moved to less sensitive jobs while their cases were under review.
Even more significant than the ouster or transfer of employees, the entire loyalty board of the GPO was fired and new security standards were adopted, concomitant with tougher government-wide guidelines announced by the Attorney General. A month after the hearings, the new head of the GPO, Public Printer Raymond Blattenberger, wrote McCarthy thanking him for the committee’s disclosure of security problems there, and recounting the steps being taken to ensure that these would not continue.*270
As to McCarthy’s conduct of the hearings, Blattenberger’s further comments are worth noting. The printer concluded his letter by saying: “The inquiry by your subcommittee focused my immediate attention on the matters described above, and I wish to express my appreciation for the courtesy and the cooperation extended to me by the subcommittee and its staff.” If that weren’t astonishing enough, McCarthy received a similar accolade from Rothschild’s attorney, Charles Ford, who had exercised in behalf of his client the various privileges afforded by the panel. “I think the committee session…,” said Ford, “is most admirable and most American. I think they are to be admired for it.”19
These comments echoed those that had followed the investigation of the State Department’s filing system. Even more to the point, perhaps, they presaged events that would unfold as the PSI began the most contentious and historic investigation of McCarthy’s tenure.
CHAPTER 38
The Moles of Monmouth
IN THE spring of 1953, Joe McCarthy got a cryptic phone call from an intelligence officer in the Army who said he had some important security data to share with the new committee chairman. McCarthy would meet with the mysterious caller, who did have such information, including a confidential memo about a hush-hush Army research setup vital to the nation’s defenses. This would be the start of the longest-running, most complex, and most controverted of all McCarthy inquests. It would also be the start of endless trouble for McCarthy.
Though the memo in question was never published, a good deal would eventually be learned about it—and even more would be said about it—in some flamboyant Senate hearings. The memo was a two-and-a-quarter-page précis of an FBI report, dated January 1951, culled from an original Bureau document running to fifteen pages. The subject was the security drill at an Army Signal Corps research post called Fort Monmouth, based at Eatontown, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore, about an hour’s drive from New York City. As later described before the Senate, the memo listed thirty-four workers at Monmouth who had been subjects of FBI investigation, though specifics on the cases were deleted from the bobtailed version.*271 To judge by the comments of those who read it, most notably including Joe McCarthy, the memo indicated serious security trouble at Monmouth and related units.
This was but one of many leads about the Army Signal Corps that would reach McCarthy in the spring of 1953 and later. Based on such tips, the committee launched what would become a protracted series of investigations that branched off to several aspects of the Signal Corps, other military bases, and firms that supplied materials, technical expertise, and other services to the Army. These interlocking probes would run from the late summer of 1953 through the spring of ’54, when they would be brought to a sudden halt by stunning Army charges of malfeasance against McCarthy and his counsel Roy Cohn, and their equally stunning answers.
As the above suggests, while Fort Monmouth would become the major focus of the McCarthy inquest, the panel looked at a number of other things as well. Some of these w
ere arguably as important as Monmouth itself, though they weren’t the subject of public hearings, didn’t garner any headlines, and are omitted from the usual histories. Taken together, they indicated that security problems in the Signal Corps were many, ongoing, and of most serious nature. One particular instance is worth special mention, as it overlapped in several ways with what later happened at Fort Monmouth.
In this case, the McCarthy probers pulled together data relating to alleged infiltration and security infractions at the Pentagon-based Signal Corps Intelligence Agency (SCIA), nerve center and receiving point for military telecommunications, hence an obvious target for penetration. Charges of lax security at this unit had been brought in the latter part of 1951 by ten Signal Corps officials, alleging that staffers of pro-Red sympathy and background had infiltrated its operations. The complainants further said that important classified papers had vanished from the files and never been recovered.1
The officials pressing these allegations included Col. O. J. Allen, executive officer of the SCIA, civilian research chief Edwin Webb, scientific division chief Robert Stilmar, and seven others of some stature in the program. Following their initial charges, certain apparently flagrant suspects were removed from their positions. But thereafter, according to the complaining officials, the probe had been stalled out and a proper cleanup never happened. The ten then took the unprecedented step of petitioning Congress for an outside investigation. This resulted in a brief flicker of congressional interest and public notice in the early weeks of 1952, but thereafter little or nothing would ever be heard about the topic.2
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