Ike and McCarthy

by David A. Nichols

  “A FRIENDLY SENATOR”

  On March 9, the newspapers reported that the Republican National Committee had “sidetracked Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and assigned Vice President Richard M. Nixon to deliver the Administration’s reply” to Adlai Stevenson’s charge that the party was “half McCarthy and half Eisenhower.” Nixon would make his response at 10:30 p.m. on March 13. New York Times correspondent William Lawrence, apparently briefed by Hagerty, reported that Nixon’s assignment had been orchestrated by Eisenhower. McCarthy was undaunted; he threatened to take legal action to force the radio and television networks to grant him time to respond to Stevenson. “Mr. Nixon,” he stated, “is speaking for the party. I am speaking for myself.”12

  In Palm Springs the week of February 17, Ike had played golf as the guest of Paul Helms, a California baking-industry executive. In a March 9 letter to Helms, Eisenhower wrestled one last time with the efficacy of his strategy for confronting Joe McCarthy. He had returned to Washington from California “to find a plateful of problems and headaches.” McCarthy, he said, could make “a few extraordinary and outlandish charges in the papers, and the whole United States abandons all consideration of the many grave problems it faces in order to speculate on whether McCarthy has it within his power to destroy our system of government.”

  To Helms, Eisenhower recalled his commitment, throughout his professional life, “to avoid public mention of any name unless it can be done with favorable intent and connotation; reserve all criticism for the private conference, speak only good in public.” “This,” he stated—as if arguing with himself—“is not namby-pamby” but “sheer common sense.” Ike protested—again, almost to himself—that he had not acquiesced in or approved of McCarthy’s methods. “I despise them,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, I am quite sure that the people who want me to stand up and publicly label McCarthy with derogatory titles are the most mistaken people that are dealing with this whole problem.”13

  Eisenhower had chosen another, clandestine path. Events were already in motion; and there was no going back. Senator Ralph Flanders, the Republican from Vermont, had lunched at the White House the previous week with his old friend and former gubernatorial colleague Sherman Adams. They had surely discussed Flanders’s plan to deliver the most important address of his senatorial career. Adams had either recruited Flanders on behalf of the president—a likely scenario—or, at minimum, had strongly encouraged him.14

  The afternoon of March 9, Flanders rose on the Senate floor and announced his intention to offer some “advice to the junior senator from Wisconsin.” He asked a loaded question about Joe McCarthy: “To what party does he belong? Is he a hidden satellite of the Democratic Party, to which he is furnishing so much material for quiet mirth?” Flanders answering his own question, intoned, “One must conclude that his is a one-man party, and that its name is ‘McCarthyism.’ ”

  Flanders likened McCarthy to an overly zealous housecleaner, frenetically cleaning out the grimy corners of the house of government bequeathed to his party by the Democrats. “Is the necessary housecleaning the great task before the United States,” he asked, “or do we face far more dangerous problems, from the serious consideration of which we are being diverted by the dust and racket?”

  Flanders catalogued the march of communism in the world—in Korea, Indochina, Europe, Latin America, and “other trouble spots in Asia and in Africa.” “In truth,” he observed, “the world seems to be mobilizing for the great battle of Armageddon.” In that apocalyptic struggle, “what is the part played by the junior senator from Wisconsin?” His words dripped with sarcasm: “He dons his war paint. He goes into his war dance. He emits his war whoops. He goes forth to battle and proudly returns with the scalp of a pink Army dentist.”15

  It was a short speech, designed for ready reference for reporters and others, including Eisenhower, to whom Flanders had sent advance copies. Most important, the speech had been delivered by a Republican senator—the very people Eisenhower had insisted all along must ultimately deal with McCarthy—with ridicule perfectly designed to provoke an imprudent reaction from McCarthy. When Hagerty heard that McCarthy, who had returned that day from his speaking tour, had responded to Flanders with sarcasm, he noted in his diary, “Joe getting reckless.”16

  Having read the speech in advance, Eisenhower wrote Flanders, “I was very much interested in reading the comments you made in the Senate today. I think America needs to hear from more Republican voices like yours.” Flanders told reporters that he had that night received “a letter of praise from President Eisenhower.” He insisted that his campaign against McCarthy would “not split the party”; it was “something like either concealing a cancer or operating on it. I am operating on it.” Indeed he was, with the enthusiastic endorsement of the president of the United States.17

  “WE WILL NOT WALK IN FEAR”

  Another advance copy of the Flanders speech had been delivered to Edward R. Murrow. As the journalist put the final touches on his See It Now script, he inserted the “war paint” segment of Flanders’s remarks. At 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time on March 9, Murrow looked into the camera and began, “Good evening. . . . Because a report on Senator McCarthy is by definition controversial, we want to say exactly what we mean to say, and I request your permission to read from the script whatever remarks Murrow and Friendly may make.” He then offered McCarthy the option of making a response in a subsequent broadcast.

  The show was a montage of video footage as Murrow painted a portrait of an unrepentant demagogue. “Our working thesis tonight is this question,” he stated. “If this fight against Communism is made a fight between America’s two great political parties, the American people know that one of these parties will be destroyed, and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one-party system.”

  In measured phrases and images, Murrow, explored the senator’s operations “as a one-man committee” who had “demoralized the present State Department” and leveled charges of conspiracy against the army. He noted in particular McCarthy’s allegation that General Ralph Zwicker was unfit to serve and his humiliation of the secretary of the army at the February 24 luncheon. Murrow granted that congressional committees had legitimate investigative roles, but, he noted, “the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.”

  A half hour later, Murrow closed with devastating eloquence. “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, reading directly from his script. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.” In a few words, he plumbed the depths of the paranoid psychology on which McCarthyism thrived: “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” Murrow concluded, “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.” Though the United States was committed to defending freedom around the globe, “we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”18

  It is dangerous to assume that, because things happen at the same time, one is the cause of the other. However, the circumstantial evidence for the White House’s exploitation of the two events on March 9—the Flanders speech and the Murrow broadcast—is compelling. The army, with Seaton in charge, clearly delayed distribution of the Schine report until after Flanders and Murrow had delivered their attacks. As A. M. Sperber, Murrow’s biographer, put it, “The convergence of events March 9 was near-uncanny.”19

  Edward R. Murrow would not have colluded with a White House he held in some disdain. However, the plan for the broadcast was no secret. The Eisenhower people—Jim Hagerty in particular—considered CBS CEO William Paley and President Frank Stanton “good friends.” Now, with the Flanders speech and Mu
rrow’s program grabbing headlines, the Eisenhower forces had met the requirements for action that Henry Cabot Lodge had considered essential: “a little help from a friendly senator” and a “good” thing—Murrow’s powerful broadcast—to trigger release of the Schine report.20

  A CRITICAL NEWS CONFERENCE

  The morning of March 10, the White House staff focused on the president’s news conference at 10:30 a.m., especially his response to the Stevenson speech. The staff advised the president to characterize Stevenson’s charge that the party was “half Eisenhower and half McCarthy” as “nonsense”—counsel Ike readily embraced.21

  At the news conference, UPI’s Merriman Smith asked if the president saw “a need for any additional Republican reply on a nationwide basis to Adlai Stevenson other than Vice President Nixon’s speech on Saturday?” Eisenhower responded, “Well, I don’t sense any particular need myself” and expressed his admiration for the vice president. ABC’s Martin Agronsky asked about the report “that you personally chose the Vice President to respond to Mr. Stevenson, and communicated your wishes to Mr. Hall; is that correct?” Eisenhower suddenly developed a faulty memory. He vaguely recalled a meeting, “and I don’t remember that I was one the one who suggested it . . . but I certainly concurred heartily.” Then came the predictable question about Stevenson’s charge that the Republican Party was “half Eisenhower and half McCarthy.” Ike was ready: “I say nonsense.” He did not elaborate.

  Roscoe Drummond asked about the Flanders speech and “whether you find yourself in substantial sympathy with it, or what your reaction is to it if that is not correct?” There was no foggy response this time; Eisenhower spoke resolutely, asserting that “the Republican Party is now the party of responsibility.” He stated that Flanders had been justified in noting “the danger of us engaging in internecine warfare.” Flanders, he continued, “is doing a service when he calls the great danger to that kind of thing that is happening.” The president commended Flanders for “calling attention to grave error in splitting apart when you are in positions of responsibility and going in three or four different directions at once is just serious, that’s all.”

  Anthony Leviero of The New York Times jumped up to ask, “Mr. President, I wonder if you would put that much on the record, the answer to that question.” Eisenhower smiled, mentioned the news conference transcript, and muttered that Jim Hagerty could “see how any errors of grammar, of which I was guilty, when I stated it.” Following laughter, he conceded, “You can put it in.”22

  “USE MY INFLUENCE ON MR. H”

  Following the news conference, Eisenhower discussed the anti-McCarthy operation under way at the Pentagon with his advisers. He believed the moment had arrived to act. The president, Hagerty noted, was “in [a] fighting mood” and “has had it as far as Joe is concerned.”

  Eisenhower told Hagerty, “You can use my influence on Mr. H to get him to release it.” “It” clearly was the Schine report and “Mr. H” undoubtedly referred to Struve Hensel. That was a direct presidential order. Ike did not mention Seaton, who surely already knew Ike was ready to launch the attack. Later that day, Hensel called Stevens regarding the “narrative,” confirming that they “were under pressure to get it out.” The report would be ready “shortly before noon,” and he strongly urged Stevens to review it. When Stevens asked about the sources of the pressure, Hensel, probably fulfilling an unwritten commitment to provide the president with deniability, spoke not of the White House but mentioned requests from Democratic senators Richard Russell of Georgia and Republican senator Charles Potter of Michigan. Hensel and Seaton “had spent yesterday with Rogers and Brownell of Justice, and time with the Secretary [Wilson] last night.” At 11:00 a.m., Seaton called Stevens, pressing upon him the urgency of looking at the report because “we are getting great pressure from the hill.”23

  Charles Wilson was apparently spooked by what Seaton and Hensel shared with him the evening of March 9. The next morning, knowing that the release of the Schine report was imminent, he called McCarthy and invited him to lunch at the Pentagon. They talked for two hours and met with the press afterward. Aside from agreeing that they had “no arguments” regarding the handling of communists drafted into the armed forces, Wilson was unusually quiet. McCarthy did most of the talking, praising Wilson as a man “who has been combating Communists longer than I have.” Wilson commented that “he had not come to Washington to engage in quarrels with anyone.”24

  Roy Cohn later recalled McCarthy’s account of the luncheon with Wilson. McCarthy “had barely pulled his chair up to the table” when Wilson informed him that a “shocking” and “thoroughly documented” report had been compiled about the “favored treatment” Cohn had sought for Schine. Wilson had told McCarthy that “he would be powerless to keep it from getting out unless I [Cohn] resigned at once.” When Cohn asked McCarthy how he had responded, McCarthy boasted, “What do you think I told him? I told him to go to hell.”25

  Eisenhower was furious about Wilson’s unauthorized luncheon with McCarthy. In Jim Hagerty’s words, that luncheon hurled “a monkey wrench” into the president’s “carefully prepared plans.” When he informed the president, Ike leaned back in his chair and let loose with a number of “goddams.” Then he said to Hagerty, “You know, Jim, I believe Cabot Lodge is dead right when he says we need acute politicians in those positions. They are the only ones who know enough to stay out of traps—the only ones who can play the same kind of game as those guys on the Hill.” Hagerty described Eisenhower as “greatly disturbed”; the president called him several times to find out what had been said at the news conference. He fumed to Hagerty, “If they are cooking up another statement, then, by God someone is going to hear from me—but good.”

  Hagerty called Seaton to ask, “What’s going on over there?” Seaton shot back, “Listen, if you think you have troubles, come over to the Pentagon.” Hagerty commiserated, concluding afterward that Seaton was “doing [a] good job.” But when Ike read reports of Wilson and McCarthy’s postluncheon news conference, he relaxed. “Just a lot of words,” he said. “No use to have that luncheon at all.”26

  According to Cohn, he and McCarthy ran into Stuart Symington in the corridor of the Senate Office Building that afternoon. Symington told them he had just received a “strictly confidential” copy of the report detailing “improper activities” on behalf of Schine. Cohn recalled that as Symington “turned to walk away he whispered for my ear his reminder, last made two months before: ‘Crossfire!’ ”27

  That evening Eisenhower attended a stag dinner at the Sulgrave Club for Senators Knowland and Homer Ferguson of Michigan. Ike was grinning when he shook Vice President Nixon’s hand and said, “I hope you are taking plenty of vitamins for that speech you are going to make Saturday night.” The president was not smiling when he talked with a group that included Senators Dirksen and McCarthy. Nixon noted “considerably more coolness in [Ike’s] attitude toward McCarthy than he previously had evidenced at social functions.”28

  On March 10 another shot was fired in the escalating barrage of anti-McCarthy salvos emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The National Guard announced that Roy Cohn, a guardsman for seven years, had been ordered to report to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for training from June 12 to 25. Ironically, Cohn would undergo his training under the command of General Ralph Zwicker.29

  “IT’S A PIP”

  On March 11, the morning newspapers reported on the president’s press conference, highlighting his endorsement of Senator Flanders’s speech and his characterization of Stevenson’s “half McCarthy” allegation as “nonsense.” A companion story, somewhat bizarre, also hit the news. On Wednesday, McCarthy and Flanders had reportedly encountered each other in the Capitol basement. McCarthy had given Flanders a “hug”—perhaps an overstatement describing the senator’s habit of throwing his arm around the shoulders of colleagues. Flanders had tried to be cordial, saying “Hello, Joe, I’m glad to see you.” McCarthy had allegedly said, �
�Ralph, I looked up your record. You voted less for the Republican than any man in the Senate.” Flanders invited McCarthy to “get the figures ready and put them in the record.” McCarthy had his facts wrong; The New York Times reported that, in the past year, Flanders had supported his party more consistently than had McCarthy. In a final, surreal twist, when Flanders arrived at his seat on the Senate floor McCarthy approached him and “put his arms around him from the rear, pretending to choke him.” Then he patted Flanders on the shoulder and walked away.30

  Over at the Pentagon, there was controlled panic. John Adams called Stevens at 9:40 a.m. to tell him that Senator Potter was, at that moment, reporting to Seaton and Hensel about a meeting that the Republicans, including Knowland and Bricker, had held “with Joe in secret last night.” Potter had taken his copy of the Schine report to the meeting. According to Adams, the senators had “laid it on pretty violently” with McCarthy, recommending he fire a staff member (presumably Cohn) and pressuring McCarthy “to get off the Army’s neck.” Neither Stevens nor Adams knew the precise plans or when the report would be released; they were not in the inner circle with Seaton and Hensel. Adams said, “I have a personal feeling that it [the Schine report] will never see the light of day.”31