Ike and McCarthy
Page 17
At 12:40 p.m., Senator Potter confirmed to John Adams that the Tuesday hearing had been postponed. Zwicker was taking no chances on his unpredictable superiors. In a telephone interview that evening, the general protested that he had been treated more harshly than a former communist who had testified. He emphasized that he had informed McCarthy that he was complying with a presidential directive in declining to answer questions.13
Amid this furor, the press noted with disdain that Eisenhower was in California, playing golf. A New York Times reporter in Palm Springs characterized the president as holding himself aloof from the dispute. Jim Hagerty, in California with the president, seemed to confirm that impression. When asked if the army secretary had been in contact with the president, Hagerty said he had not, although he conceded that Stevens had possibly communicated with Secretary of Defense Wilson and Sherman Adams. However, according to Hagerty, the president had not expressed his personal view regarding the dispute between the army and Senator McCarthy. Once again, Eisenhower’s penchant for camouflage contributed to the myth that he would rather play golf than pay attention to weighty matters.14
The February 23 papers carried the unedited text of McCarthy’s interrogation of Zwicker. By all accounts, Eisenhower was privately furious over McCarthy’s abuse of Zwicker. Ike, when preferring to disguise his involvement in a controversial matter, frequently employed surrogates to communicate with those on the front lines. A favorite messenger was Paul Hoffman, the Studebaker chairman and his golfing partner in Palm Springs. At 11:25 a.m. that day, Hoffman tried to call Stevens. He missed him, so he left a message commending Stevens for his courage and calling it “wonderful” that Stevens “was doing battle with McCarthy” and “doing a great job.”15
About 2:30 p.m., Stevens received a call summoning him to what John Adams later called “a council of war” on Capitol Hill. Stevens and Adams stopped at the White House to pick up congressional aides Jerry Persons and Jack Martin. When they arrived at the Capitol, other power brokers were waiting: Richard Nixon, William Rogers, William Knowland, and Everett Dirksen. Persons, who had instigated the meeting, announced that his objective was to cancel the hearing, now rescheduled for Thursday.
Dirksen called the abuse of Zwicker “outrageous” and the Schine-Cohn affair “unpardonable.” Claiming he was McCarthy’s best friend in the Senate, Dirksen wanted McCarthy to do three things: end his arbitrary use of subpoenas and one-man hearings, cease his abuse of the army, and fire Roy Cohn. But John Adams later believed that Dirksen betrayed him by failing to deliver that message to McCarthy, instead promising McCarthy that he would ask the administration to fire Adams. Months later, Dirksen would repeatedly propose such a compromise scenario: fire both Adams and Cohn and end the conflict. As they prepared to leave the meeting, Nixon said, “Remember, this meeting never occurred.”16
Later that afternoon, Senator Mundt called the Pentagon and asked Stevens’s executive officer, Colonel Kenneth BeLieu, to convey the urgent message to Stevens “that tomorrow we are setting up a lunch at the Capitol for him and the Republican members of the committee—McCarthy, Dirksen, Potter, and me.” Mundt added, “No one else is to know.”17
Henry Cabot Lodge knew nothing about that planned luncheon. On February 23, he penned an “eyes only” message to Eisenhower that would be waiting on the president’s desk when he returned from California the following morning. Focused on 1956, Lodge bluntly asserted that although ostensibly McCarthy’s fight was with the army, it was “actually a part of an attempt to destroy you politically.” He foresaw a rising tide of pressure for FBI checks of army officers and employees of other executive departments preliminary to McCarthy’s taking on the White House itself.
Given that danger, he urged the president to use Stevens as his lightning rod. Stevens’s job should be “to defend the Army before the public and before the Congress and do it with skill and vigor.” As long as the president was in a political struggle with McCarthy, “all questions to the Army should come through Secretary Stevens”—not the president—and Stevens should avoid any appearance of denying the right of Congress to investigate the army. Lodge lamented that although Zwicker’s stand “was perfectly correct,” he was not a skilled debater and “it was very easy for McCarthy to make him look stupid.” “Debaters should be met by debaters,” he wrote. “It is not fair in war for debaters to meet Generals or in peace for Generals to meet debaters.” Then with foresight, he suggested that the Peress situation “can be the occasion for bringing the entire question to a head.” What they needed was “a little help from a friendly Senator, a little luck and a little skill on the part of Sec. Stevens.”18
That “friendly senator” would be Republican Ralph Flanders of Vermont, who was then planning a public attack on McCarthy. “A little luck” might be taking shape over at CBS, where the journalist Edward R. Murrow was finalizing plans for a televised program about McCarthy. As for Stevens demonstrating “a little skill,” that was more problematic. Unknown to Lodge or anyone else in the administration, Stevens had committed himself, once again, to a secret negotiation with McCarthy the following day.
“SURRENDER!”
At 7:45 a.m. on February 24, the president’s plane landed at National Airport. By 8:00 a.m., Eisenhower, rested and refreshed, was at the White House, and at 8:30, he presided over a meeting with Republican legislative leaders.
At midday, Stevens was working with Struve Hensel and John Adams on his statement to use in testimony before McCarthy’s subcommittee. Suddenly, about 1:00 p.m., without explanation, he rose and left the room. “Where’s he gone?” asked Hensel. Adams responded, “He’s going to a secret lunch on the Hill.” When Stevens arrived at the Capitol, he was shocked to find a crowd of reporters clustered outside the dining room. He “opened the door and walked in alone: without a lawyer, without even an accompanying aide as a witness.” Stevens had unwittingly walked into what press secretary Jim Hagerty later called “a bear trap.”19
The senators in the group included McCarthy, Dirksen, Potter, and Mundt. The luncheon discussion, over fried chicken, went on for an estimated two hours. Stevens and McCarthy exchanged heated words about the abuse of officers and Stevens’s discussions with other committee members. Eventually, group exhaustion spawned a desire for the creation of a document of understanding. Using a typewriter in the room, Karl Mundt typed up a draft, making numerous changes. It was signed by both Stevens and McCarthy and was, as Mundt recalled, “attested to by the signatures of all Senators present.”20
The memorandum of understanding covered three main points; the first cited “complete accord” between the army and the subcommittee that communists “must be rooted out of the Armed Services”; the second documented “complete agreement” that the secretary of the army would complete the Peress case, identify the names of persons responsible, and make those persons available to the subcommittee. Finally, the next appearance of General Zwicker would be “deferred” until Senator Symington returned from Europe; if the subcommittee decided at that time to call Zwicker, Stevens pledged that he would be available.
The memorandum contained not one word about what Stevens had come into the room seeking: assurances that army officers who testified would be treated with respect, although Stevens thought he had received verbal assurances to that effect. However, the group apparently persuaded him that including such guarantees in the memorandum might cause McCarthy to renege on the agreement. When the doors opened, an estimated fifty reporters and photographers flooded into the room; plates and coffee cups were still left over from the lunch. The cameras caught McCarthy and Stevens sitting side by side on a green leather sofa, smiling and shaking hands.21
When asked by reporters, Stevens expressed confidence that army officers would not be abused in the future. At 4:30 p.m., back at the Pentagon, Stevens called together twenty-one of his top officers and associates and announced that he had achieved an agreement whereby they would be protected from mistreatment like that visite
d upon General Zwicker. Seaton listened to Stevens’s account in growing discomfort. Struve Hensel handed Seaton a wire service copy of the luncheon memorandum of understanding. When the meeting broke up, Seaton joined Stevens as he walked out the door. According to William Ewald, who undoubtedly heard the story directly from Seaton, Seaton said, “Bob, you’ve been had.”22
The president’s first day back at the White House was a busy one. Somehow, however, Ike found a few moments to read Henry Cabot Lodge’s “eyes only” memorandum warning him that McCarthy’s assault on army heroes, e.g., Ralph Zwicker, was “part of an attempt to destroy you politically.” Eisenhower called Lodge in New York, asking him to talk with Bob Stevens. Once again, by using an intermediary, he would maintain the fiction that he and the secretary were not in communication. However, neither he nor Lodge knew about the lunch agreement Stevens had just signed.23
When Lodge reached Stevens at 5:10 p.m., his initial assignment from the president was to coach the secretary on his testimony the next day. However, he was surprised when Stevens informed him, “By the way, Cabot, the hearing is off.” He reported that he had gone to lunch with McCarthy and the other Republicans “at their request.” Lodge listened in stunned silence as the secretary recited the three parts of the agreement he had signed. Stevens maintained that he had “fought the good fight” to ensure that military personnel were “treated decently.” When Stevens declared that “the Republicans talked very frankly to Joe,” Lodge skeptically asked, “They did?” Stevens replied, “Yes.”
Shocked by this revelation, Lodge played his presidential card. He said that after reading his memorandum to Eisenhower on McCarthy, the president had “called me this morning . . . and asked me if I could talk to you on the phone.” He told Stevens that McCarthy’s investigation of the army was “preliminary to an attempt to destroy the President politically. There is no doubt about it. [McCarthy] is picking the Army because Eisenhower was in the Army.”
Lodge punched holes in Stevens’s hopes about the outcomes of the noon meeting. “I know these guys and I know how their minds work,” he said. “The crowd that supported Senator Taft at the convention in 1952 are all now revolving around Joe. And this is basically an attempt to destroy Eisenhower.” The confused secretary protested, “But it was his top legislative leaders who were talking to me.” Lodge countered that those men were “inclined to appease” McCarthy.
Having punctured Stevens’s balloon, Lodge focused on using the Cohn-Schine relationship against McCarthy. He had evidently seen John Adams’s written report, sent to Sherman Adams on February 16. “You have that documentation there on boy S,” he said, “and I think you ought to get that in shape; edit it up so it is in shape for publication.” Stevens responded, “We are doing that.” Only days after receiving the Adams report, the White House had apparently ordered Struve Hensel and Fred Seaton to edit and fact-check it for release to the media. Lodge believed that release of the Schine story could be “a devastating thing. And all we need to do is find a good . . . thing to get it out.” That, the ambassador concluded, would be “a great public service.”24
Stevens had now been warned he had been “had” by both Seaton and Lodge. Increasingly unnerved, he called Karl Mundt to seek a copy of the memorandum of understanding. Stevens put on a brave face with the senator. “Actually I have accomplished what we set out to do, and that was to get our fellows treated right by that committee,” he asserted. Mundt’s response was not encouraging: “If we can avoid stirring it up by Joe.” At that, Stevens broke down. “I am going to be in the ash can,” he moaned but still dared to hope that, as a result of the meeting, “we will get along a lot better.” Regarding “the Schine matter,” Mundt advised Stevens to “treat him like he was anybody’s boy now.”25
Stevens’s panic escalated; he called his unidentified White House contact, probably Jerry Persons, repeatedly between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. He phoned Ralph Zwicker, feebly explaining that he could not guarantee that the general would not be called to testify again; however, he was “satisfied” that the other Republicans on the subcommittee would ensure that officers received “fair and appropriate treatment.” Zwicker fretted about “getting it straight on the things he called me. And I am not satisfied that that has been straightened out.” Stevens promised to support whatever the general wished to do to correct the record.26
At 6:38 p.m., Seaton called Stevens to tell him how bad the situation was. Reporters had buttonholed Hensel and Seaton, insisting that Mundt, when asked if the treatment of officers had been discussed, had “denied it categorically.” Seaton had dodged the question by saying, “I wasn’t at the meeting.” Stevens protested, “I certainly did tell Joe McCarthy in no uncertain terms I thought he had abused General Zwicker very badly.” Seaton countered that the news wires and the major newspapers “all seemed to have a unanimity about it.” Any story they would write would “not be too satisfactory.” That was an understatement; the press had already adopted a powerful word to characterize what Stevens had done: “Surrender.”
Stevens was now in a state of sheer panic. The longer he talked with Seaton, the closer he got to breaking down. The secretary stared into the abyss. “If it turns out I am a yellow-belly and McCarthy is a hero,” he would go back to the senators, “tell them this is more than we in the Army can take” and try to get them to approve another kind of statement. Seaton tried to calm him: “I wouldn’t want to say it was going to be that bad.” Stevens sighed, “I think it will be bad.” Seaton then urged the secretary to prepare a statement “because I don’t believe you have any choice in the matter if you want to avoid that sort of public opinion.” He bluntly warned Stevens, “Any corrective measures will have to be taken tomorrow.”27
That night, Stevens frantically called Mundt to tell him he had “made a mistake” in agreeing to the memorandum and that he intended to issue a statement repudiating it. Mundt recalled attempting to dissuade Stevens, “without success.” Colonel BeLieu took the distraught secretary home and called his friend the journalist Arthur Hadley to come to the Stevens residence to help with the secretary. Hadley arrived to find “a shattered Stevens” who was “drinking too much.” In that condition, Stevens was juggling phone calls, including one to Jim Hagerty about 10:00 p.m. He wanted to put out his statement and resign, but Hagerty urged him to “cool off overnight.” Hagerty fumed to his diary, “Someone let Stevens walk right into a bear trap, and now I’ll have to work like hell to get him out of it.” He knew that Eisenhower would also have to “work like hell” on it.28
BeLieu and Hadley finally persuaded Stevens to go to bed. “We know this is a mess,” they agreed. “Stevens will probably be destroyed and McCarthy become bigger than ever. The Army is in for a long, bad time with failing morale.” Then the two men did something extraordinary: they ghosted a statement for Stevens and put it out, falsely claiming that the secretary had “drafted the statement just before he went to sleep.” That worked with some news outlets but not with John Finney at United Press, who, Hadley recalled, was “the type of reporter who will check inside the Pearly Gates before he decides to enter.” Finney said, “Arthur, I can’t take that story without talking to Stevens.” After some arguing, they told him to wait, went upstairs, awakened Stevens, and coached the secretary to mouth to Finney, “John, I’m going to fight.” Inebriated and half asleep, Stevens repeated on the phone: “I’m going to fight.”29
A FALSE IMPRESSION
The morning of February 25, Eisenhower was embroiled in a fiasco that, contrary to appearances, was not of his own making. The New York Times ran a devastating front-page photograph of McCarthy whispering in Stevens’s ear. William Lawrence concluded that Stevens had “reversed his previous stand and abandoned his defiance of the McCarthy investigating committee.” Again, “surrender” was the handy one-word label for what had transpired.
More important, Lawrence reported that the army secretary’s “about-face reflected a high Administration policy decision.”
That was obvious, he concluded. “The Administration decision to drop its public fight with Senator McCarthy because of charges he had mistreated Army officers in questioning them was taken a few hours after President Eisenhower had returned to Washington from his Palm Springs, Calif. golfing vacation.” Arthur Krock, usually inclined to give Eisenhower the benefit of the doubt, declared that Stevens’s capitulation to McCarthy was the result of “the high policy decision of the Administration.”
That misimpression was not erased by Karl Mundt’s statement to the press that President Eisenhower had known nothing about the meeting. When asked if he was aware of reports that the president had sent word that he wanted the dispute settled privately, Mundt replied, “I’m sure not.”30
Stevens, thanks to Hadley’s and BeLieu’s ghosted statement, was reported the next morning to be “steaming mad” at the implication that he had surrendered to McCarthy; he was quoted as insisting that McCarthy had agreed not to abuse army officers in the future. Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, the hungover Stevens was, as John Adams described him, “brokenhearted.” He lamented that “yesterday I was a hero; today I am a dog.” Officers greeted one another in the hallways, waving white handkerchiefs. McCarthy was rumored to be strutting around the Capitol, boasting of his victory; he reportedly quipped to one reporter, “Want a commission? I can get it for you!” Then McCarthy winked, grinned, and administered a small kick.31
According to Hagerty’s diary, the allegation that the luncheon agreement was “high administration policy” linked to the president’s return from California “kicked up a mess.” The 8:30 a.m. staff meeting ended early so Sherman Adams, Hagerty, Persons, Jack Martin, and Gerald Morgan could meet with Nixon and Rogers about it.32