Hagerty did not know that, at lunch that day, his own intestinal fortitude would be tested. He had been invited to dine at the office of J. Mark Trice, the secretary of the Senate, along with Jerry Persons, Gerald Morgan, and Jack Martin, the key White House conservatives in the McCarthy confrontation. When Hagerty walked in, he was shocked to see senators Joe McCarthy, Karl Mundt, Herman Welker, Iowa’s Bourke Hickenlooper, Nevada’s George Malone, and several other Republican lawmakers. Later, William Knowland dropped by to shake hands. Like Robert Stevens on February 24, Hagerty had walked into a trap.38
The gathering was purely social for a while. Hagerty was relieved when McCarthy, Mundt, and Malone departed. However, Welker and Hickenlooper then proposed that “both Cohn and Adams resign and [the] case be dropped.” That was the compromise Everett Dirksen had repeatedly advocated. Hagerty listened quietly, as did his White House colleagues, understanding that it was a last-ditch effort to derail the planned hearings. He departed without comment.
The press secretary, who undoubtedly consulted with Eisenhower, then called in Persons and Morgan and told them he was going to put out the word that there had been no White House approval of that luncheon. He called it “a put up job and don’t know whether our boys are in on it.” The next day, William Lawrence, fully briefed by Hagerty, reported that the rumor of a “settlement by resignations” had been denied by “the highest Administration officials.” He had acquired names and details “according to a reliable source [of ] who was present at the luncheon.” The luncheon effort and Karl Mundt’s public insistence that McCarthy was not a “principal disputant” in the controversy reinforced the Wisconsin senator’s pet assertion: “This isn’t my case—it is a case involving my chief counsel and the Army legal counsel.” The New York Times reported that, according to “a high Administration source”—undoubtedly Hagerty—“no such deal is cooking.”39
Roscoe Drummond’s column on March 26 addressed what he called “a new mess” in Washington. “What do you think of the manner in which the Republican Party is conducting itself in Washington today?” he asked. “Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy continues to spread the impression that the Eisenhower administration is either deliberately or stupidly ‘coddling Communists.’ ” He predicted that “unless this spectacle comes to an end soon, the Republicans will lose one or both houses of Congress in November.” In 1952, the Republicans had pledged to clean up the “mess in Washington” left by the Democrats; now there was another “mess in Washington” presenting “Republican government as quarrelsome, unproductive and legislatively nearly impotent.”
Eisenhower read that column and passed it on to Hagerty, calling it “a remarkable piece” that “ought to be read by every Republican. Why not get [Leonard] Hall to reproduce & send out wholesale?” Later that day, the RNC chairman stated that, in regard to the 1954 election, “McCarthy has done more harm than good.” He granted that McCarthy’s “Senate effectiveness has diminished in the past few weeks.”40
WHO ENLISTED TOM DEWEY?
Meanwhile, Karl Mundt’s search for counsel for the hearings had bogged down. Mundt asked three high-ranking government officials for assistance: Chief Justice Earl Warren, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, and J. Edgar Hoover, none of whom thought it proper to help him find an attorney for the subcommittee. William J. Jameson, the president of the American Bar Association, declined to take the job after consulting with his sixteen-member board. Consequently, as the month ended, Mundt was forced to postpone the commencement of hearings.41
The press covered Mundt’s stalled search for counsel but paid little attention to the question of an attorney for the army. John Adams could not serve because he would be a witness. Neither could Hensel, given his deep involvement in the preparation of the Schine report. Furthermore, McCarthy claimed he had information regarding Hensel’s alleged profiteering during World War II. Though Hensel had cleared himself with the attorney general, it was obvious that the Pentagon needed to go outside its ranks to find a tough attorney to cope with McCarthy, Cohn, and the subcommittee’s legal team.42
Secretly, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York had been enlisted to assist the US Army in its search for counsel. Who authorized Dewey to recruit an attorney for the army? The most likely candidates were Dewey’s former associates John Foster Dulles and Attorney General Brownell. However, on the evening of March 31, Dewey had called Dulles and revealed that he had already been recruited. The next day, Dulles told Brownell that Dewey had been coy, saying only that “he had to find trial counsel for this McCarthy business.” Brownell said he had told the governor “he was crazy to do it” and speculated incorrectly that Hensel had possibly enlisted him. But Fred Seaton knew Dewey well.43
There is only one credible answer as to who chose or, at minimum, approved Dewey: Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dewey was unlikely to have involved himself in the search for army counsel without a green light—or, more likely, a personal request—from the president. There is no record that Eisenhower questioned Dewey’s involvement because he must have sanctioned it. Typically, he transmitted such requests, especially if politically explosive, through a trusted friend or a credible subordinate, most likely, in this case, Fred Seaton.
Therefore, while Senator Mundt’s subcommittee was still floundering in its search for counsel, the army was not. Over in the Pentagon, Robert Stevens knew the choice was imminent. Near the end of the month, he asked Seaton, “How are you coming on a lawyer?” Seaton responded, “Ours? There’s no need to worry.” About that time, Seaton informed Hensel, “I’ve been talking with Tom Dewey. He recommends a lawyer in Boston named Welch. Do you know him?” Hensel said he did and declared, “He’d be a natural. I should have thought of it myself.”44
Late in the day on March 31, Stevens tried to call Seaton, who was unavailable; he was at National Airport, picking up a visitor. The visitor was a Boston attorney named Joseph Nye Welch.
CHAPTER 12
* * *
* * *
COUNTDOWN
On April 1, the US government reached an agreement with Joseph Welch to represent the army. Welch was sixty-three, a highly successful trial lawyer and partner at the Hale and Dorr firm in Boston. He was over six feet tall and meticulous about his dress; he wore bow ties and three-piece suits and projected a folksy, eccentric persona. An Iowan by birth, he had attended Grinnell College and earned a law degree at Harvard. He was known for his wit, jocular personality, and deceptive brilliance. He had, Roy Cohn observed, “an unerring instinct for the jugular.”1
In Ewald’s account of Welch’s recruitment, one day in late March, a phone rang in Welch’s office. Bruce Bromley, a friend and former judge on the New York State Court of Appeals, was on the line. Bromley had called about “an extremely sensitive subject.” Welch was requested to go to New York City to a room in a club, where a certain gentleman would be waiting. When Welch walked in, he was greeted by the governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey.2
Years later, Herbert Brownell confirmed that Governor Dewey had played a “decisive part in the selection. . . . As far as I know, the decision to select counsel for the Army was in the hands of Sherman Adams at the White House.” Brownell knew that anything of consequence that Sherman Adams did, he executed on behalf of Eisenhower. A handwritten note in large letters in the Adams Papers at Dartmouth College reinforces the evidence: “Fred Seaton—Joe Welch—Dewey recommended. He came down—talked with Wilson.” The problem, the chief of staff noted, “was to get Wilson to agree.” At the bottom of the page, Adams wrote, as if in relief, “Finally.”3
Once Wilson signed off, Stevens, Seaton, and Hensel could orchestrate Wilson’s announcement of the appointment. It is unlikely that Welch met with the president. He would soon spend extended time with the president’s key field commanders in the struggle with McCarthy: Seaton, Hensel, and Hagerty.
ORGANIZING THE TEAM
Early the afternoon of Thursday, April 1, Seaton, Hensel, Stevens, and Welch were all in Seaton’s offic
e. The group decided that a meeting with Welch’s entire team was essential prior to issuing an announcement. The next morning, Fred Fisher, a young attorney in Welch’s office, read a memorandum from his boss. He and a colleague, James St. Clair, were directed to fly to Washington, DC, immediately and bring luggage for a week to ten days. They were further instructed, “Flower in buttonhole, Pentagon, River entrance, Room 3E, Mr. Fred Seaton.” Fisher was given a direct phone number to call to contact Governor Dewey in event of any difficulty. At National Airport in Washington, a Seaton aide met the attorneys and ushered them into a waiting limousine. They were hustled through “the maze of the Pentagon” and into a room where Welch awaited them. Welch then explained that they had been summoned to Washington “in the greatest secrecy” because the Pentagon wanted to announce Welch’s appointment the next afternoon.4
The Friday-morning papers revealed that another Boston attorney, Samuel P. Sears, had been engaged as counsel for the hearings subcommittee. According to The New York Times, his nomination “precipitated a storm on Capitol Hill.” Sears, it turned out, was a fervent McCarthy advocate who had applied for the job in violation of subcommittee rules and had lied about making public statements supporting the senator. On April 5, the subcommittee officially terminated the relationship with Sears. Because of the furor over the Sears appointment, the announcement of Welch’s selection avoided intense scrutiny.5
About 6:00 p.m. that day, following the news conference announcing Welch’s appointment, the attorneys left with Seaton and Hensel for the Carlton Hotel, where they all relaxed in a cocktail lounge. When the Pentagon officials left for a few moments, Welch looked his colleagues in the eye and said, “Boys, we’re in the kind of lawsuit that is different from anything you’ve known.” He warned that “even the lawyers will be on trial. If there is anything in any of your lives that might be embarrassing for you, it better come out now—even tax returns.” St. Clair knew of nothing, but Fisher revealed that he had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild at Harvard and had joined an affiliated group after graduation. The guild had been accused of communist ties, and Fisher had resigned in 1950.
Welch pondered that. “This is serious, Fred, it can be very serious. I don’t think you can stay after this.” When Seaton and Hensel returned to the table, Welch informed them, and almost immediately Seaton and Hensel left to make phone calls. Later, the group repaired to a hotel room and over drinks discussed the problem. Fisher recalled that Seaton and Hensel “were very much on edge.”
Fisher’s membership in the Guild almost certainly would come out at the hearings. They considered a strategy whereby if McCarthy attacked Fisher, “Joe Welch would become very outraged and turn the attack against the Senator.” However, the consensus emerged that it was too dangerous to take the chance; Fisher would have to return to Boston. St. Clair also asked to be removed from the case, but Seaton and Hensel were “adamant” that Welch and St. Clair should not withdraw. They decided to consult with Jim Hagerty and accept whatever decision he made. Seaton tracked down Hagerty, asking him to meet them at Hensel’s home in Georgetown.
When the group arrived, Hagerty was waiting for them. Following intense deliberation, he promised the attorneys that if McCarthy abused them, they “could count on a friend in the White House—his boss, the President.” The upshot was that Fisher would return to Boston but Welch and St. Clair would remain on the case. Welch told Fisher that he was “the luckiest of the three” because Welch and St. Clair could not know what awaited them in the hearings. Welch, although he had agreed to take the case pro bono, foresaw a big payoff for his law firm. “What a case!” he said. “A million dollars couldn’t buy all the publicity.”6
IKE’S ANTIFEAR CRUSADE
The New York Times of Sunday, April 4, reflected the president’s evident command of the situation that had put McCarthy’s fortunes at “a cross-roads.” Unlike previously, “the real strength” of the anti-McCarthy forces, the editors said, “is that they are anchored in the White House.” The Schine report had been released on March 11, “evidently with the President’s knowledge.” The Republican National Committee, “with the President’s approval,” had chosen Richard Nixon over McCarthy to respond to Adlai Stevenson’s March 6 speech. Sources close to the president had indicated—in language virtually lifted from Jim Hagerty’s diary—that Eisenhower was “fed up” with McCarthy.
That McCarthy’s fortunes were in decline was undeniable. In a January 1954 Gallup Poll, the senator’s favorable-to-unfavorable ratio had been 50 to 29 percent. By March 15, three days after the release of the Schine report, it was down to 46 to 36 percent. The poll published on April 4 reported, for the first time, more negative than positive respondents to McCarthy: 48 percent negative to 36 percent positive, with 16 percent undecided. A small news story that weekend symbolized the deteriorating McCarthy-Cohn fortunes; down in Georgia, Private G. David Schine had been rejected for training as a military police criminal investigator.7
Once Welch was hired and the announcement was imminent, Eisenhower could escape from the prehearing clamor in Washington. About noon on April 2, he and Mrs. Eisenhower departed for Camp David, where Ike intended to spend the weekend in preparation for a Monday-evening speech. The address would be his “fear speech,” designed to drain energy from the McCarthy movement by reassuring the American people. That was a great mission of the Eisenhower presidency in 1954: to lower the level of fear at home and abroad, thereby protecting American democracy from extremism and avoiding another, more cataclysmic world war.
A week earlier, Hagerty and Eisenhower had discussed the speech “at length” and the president’s plan for “a package deal,” with Herbert Brownell reporting later on what the administration was doing to combat communism. Ike planned to “speak only from notes and nothing else—15 minutes.” The address, he said, “should take [the] Red play away from McCarthy and put it back on [a] decent level.”8
The president’s Camp David notes were a rich litany of the sources of fear among the American people, including “the intentions of the Men in the Kremlin,” weapons of mass destruction, the “possibility of depression,” and the threat of communist subversion at home and abroad. Ike made specific notes about how he would handle McCarthy’s contribution to a climate of fear without using the senator’s name.9
That Monday morning, Eisenhower fretted his way through a legislative leadership meeting. “I am speaking off-the-cuff tonight,” he told Republican congressional leaders. “I’ll probably faint from stage fright.” Brownell’s address on Friday would “lay out [the] whole Red set up,” emphasizing the FBI, which enjoyed great prestige with the American people. Ike could not resist a dig at McCarthy. He had learned from Brownell’s script that “there were about 6/10,000ths of 1% of subversives in the Armed Services.” That, the president concluded, showed “what a silly business this screaming of the Armed Forces being full of Communists was.”10
That night, Eisenhower delivered his “fear” address in a new format; he sat on the edge of his desk, arms folded, smiling, with a flag to his right, and spoke from notes, not a script, without a teleprompter. One reviewer commented that, in contrast to the president’s past efforts, “the improvement was great indeed.” The format “enabled General Eisenhower to achieve relaxation” and “television’s most desired quality—naturalness.”11
What Ike called “off-the-cuff” remarks were, in fact, thoroughly rehearsed and, given their fidelity to his Camp David notes, memorized. For a president not renowned for his speaking skills, the talk was a tour de force. Among other subjects, he discussed the fear “of Communist infiltration into our own country, into our Government, into our schools, into our unions, into any of our facilities, any of our industries, wherever they may be, and where those Communists could damage us.”
Then he addressed McCarthy’s methods and “the fear that we will use intemperate investigative methods, particularly through congressional committees, to combat communistic penetr
ation.” He observed “that there can be very grave offenses committed against an innocent individual, if he is accused, possibly, by someone having the immunity of congressional membership. He can lose his job. He can have scars that will be lasting. But in the long run,” Eisenhower assured his listeners, “you may be certain of this: America believes in, and practices, fair play, and decency and justice.” No reasonably informed citizen could doubt that he was talking about McCarthy.12
THE GENERAL’S “FRIEND”
At 8:15 on Tuesday morning, Ike was so pleased with how his television address had gone that he summoned Jim Hagerty to alter his original plan to cancel Wednesday’s news conference. He wanted to hear all the newspaper reports. “That’s what I’ve been telling you boys for a long time,” he lectured his press secretary. “Just let me get up and talk to the people. I can get through to them that way. I don’t feel I do when I have to read a speech or use that damn teleprompter.” Ike called Herb Brownell, cautioning him to avoid any “political overtones” in his Friday address. He should make it “a factual presentation” focused on “bragging on [the] FBI and his subordinates.”13
April 6 was the evening of Joe McCarthy’s response to Edward R. Murrow’s March 9 See It Now telecast. McCarthy reiterated his standard anticommunist rhetoric, talked about the “Major Peress scandal,” and alleged that Murrow “as far back as twenty years ago was engaged in propaganda for Communist causes.” The line from McCarthy’s broadcast that concerned the White House was his charge that there had been an “eighteen-month deliberate delay” in the US development of the hydrogen bomb; McCarthy demanded to know if the delay had been perpetrated by “loyal Americans or traitors.”14
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