Ike and McCarthy

by David A. Nichols

  MCCARTHY CHALLENGES SEATON

  That day at the Army-McCarthy hearing, McCarthy made another attempt to rescue his deteriorating prestige. First, he claimed he possessed the names of 133 communists who had infiltrated the nation’s hydrogen bomb defense plants; the allegation resembled his charges about the State Department in West Virginia in 1950 that had first brought him national exposure. The next day, he alleged that the Defense Department was uninterested in his information on spies in defense plants; he had directed his secretary to call Assistant Secretary of Defense Fred Seaton to request a meeting during the noon recess, but, he claimed, he had heard nothing from Seaton.

  That was a setup, perhaps aimed at smoking out Seaton on his role in producing the report that had launched the hearings. Seaton had been out of his office when McCarthy’s secretary had phoned. When he had returned the call, McCarthy had not been available, nor had McCarthy returned Seaton’s call the next morning. Responding to McCarthy’s claim that the Pentagon was not interested, Seaton did something unusual for him; he went public, writing the senator a letter detailing his repeated efforts to contact him, indicating his willingness to meet, and emphasizing that he would “be pleased to receive the names of those communists working in defense facilities.” Seaton’s letter, published in its entirety in The New York Times, effectively defused the situation. His quick action rescued the White House from adding him to the list of advisers to the president protected by the president’s May 17 executive order. In his May 6 testimony, he had disguised his role in developing the Schine report, but, given Robert Stevens’s recent testimony, a subpoena to Seaton at this time might have opened a floodgate of perjury charges.18

  Behind the scenes, the role of the man Ike called his “reserve division” continued to grow. On May 13, Seaton, on White House orders, had begun collecting documents on the Army-McCarthy controversy. On Friday, June 4, Sherman Adams formalized that arrangement, and transmitted the president’s order that “Assistant Secretary of Defense, Fred Seaton, is hereby designated as the President’s representative for custody of documents impounded under the President’s letter to the Secretary of Defense, dated May 17, 1954.” That letter had formally implemented the president’s executive privilege order.19

  The order formalized Seaton’s collection of the Pentagon’s phone call transcripts related to McCarthy, published verbatim in the Sunday papers on June 6. They included the call to Robert Stevens on February 20, when McCarthy had threatened, “I am going to kick the brains out of anyone who protects Communists.”20

  WELCH VS. MCCARTHY

  McCarthy had managed to drag out the proceedings so that, by the end of the first week in June, almost two months after the hearings began, he had not yet formally testified. His favorite delaying tactic was to pick a fight with a witness or another senator. On June 7, McCarthy and Stuart Symington got into a row, based on a transcript of Symington’s call to Stevens; McCarthy accused the Missouri senator of hatching “a plot” to destroy President Eisenhower and the Republican Party. Symington heatedly responded that he had acted as an “American,” not as a “Democrat,” in advising Stevens. McCarthy scoffed at Symington, calling him “Sanctimonious Stu” and implying that he was building his case to run for president in 1956.21

  On June 8, the Republicans made a final attempt to close down the hearings. The plan was to call no witnesses after Joe McCarthy—who had not yet testified—a plan senators claimed had been approved by both the army and McCarthy. This time, Eisenhower would exercise no veto; the hearings had already done McCarthy sufficient damage.

  With the end in sight, Joseph Welch, the courtly gentleman with the instinct for the jugular, was circling his prey, preparing to inflict some final wounds. He baited McCarthy, saying that he was “appalled” by his tactics. The senator, he said, had a “genius for creating confusion, throwing in new issues, making new accusations, and creating turmoil in the hearts and minds of the country that I find troublesome. And because of your genius, sir, we keep on, just keep on, as I view it, creating these confusions. Maybe I am over impressed by them. But I don’t think they do the country any good.” McCarthy’s shrewd rejoinder was that he was confident that Welch meant he had “a genius for bringing out facts that may disturb the people.”22

  At the hearing that began on June 9, Roy Cohn was still on the stand. Welch sarcastically explored the “committee work” that Cohn and David Schine had allegedly performed on weekends while Schine was at Fort Dix and “the minimal work product that came out of it all.” McCarthy watched his counsel squirm under Welch’s implications about the intimacy of that relationship. Welch taunted Cohn as to whether he would “hurry” to act “before sundown” if he discovered a communist somewhere.

  McCarthy came to his counsel’s rescue. The senator’s ponderous nasal voice interrupted Welch, and Chairman Mundt asked, “Have you a point of order?” McCarthy responded, “Not exactly, Mr. Chairman, but in view of Mr. Welch’s request that the information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher . . . who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist party.”

  Welch had expected an attack on Fred Fisher because of his past association with the National Lawyers Guild. But, as Fisher later recalled, they had settled on a strategy whereby if McCarthy attacked Fisher, “Joe Welch would become very outraged and turn the attack against the Senator.” However, the situation had become complicated; two days prior, Roy Cohn had struck a deal with Welch, to which McCarthy had agreed, that if the senator did not mention Fisher, Welch would not discuss Cohn’s lack of military service. Now, to Cohn’s distress, McCarthy had violated that agreement. Both Welch and McCarthy were armed and ready for a showdown.23

  John Adams recalled that “a hush fell over the room” when McCarthy hurled the Fisher accusation. McCarthy rumbled, “I have hesitated to bring this up, but I have been rather bored with your phony requests to Mr. Cohn here that he personally get every Communist out of government before sundown. Therefore, we will give you the information about the young man in your own organization.”

  Welch sat with his head in his hands, staring at the table; then he addressed Mundt: “Mr. Chairman, under these circumstances, I must have something approaching a personal privilege.” Mundt replied, “You may have it, sir. It will not be taken out of your time.” McCarthy was pacing about, ordering aides to retrieve the file on Fisher. Three times Welch tried to get his attention, to which McCarthy finally snapped, “I can listen with one ear.” Welch countered, “I want you to listen with both.” He began, “Until this moment, Senator—” only to be interrupted again by McCarthy barking orders to aides. Welch had carefully scripted his response, so he began a second time, using precisely the same words.

  “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us.” He noted that he had learned from Fisher about his membership in the National Lawyers Guild and decided to withdraw him from the team. “Little did I dream,” he continued, “you would be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad. . . . I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”

  McCarthy appeared to be reading a newspaper. When Welch ended his statement, McCarthy resumed his attack on Fisher. After some back-and-forth in front of the very uncomfortable Roy Cohn, McCarthy started to speak again and Welch interrupted in a commanding voice, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

/>   McCarthy persisted in bemoaning Fisher’s subversive associations, but Welch knew when to quit. He said, “Mr. McCarthy”—no respectful “Senator” this time—“I will not discuss this with you further. . . . I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will call the next witness.” The attorney had perfectly timed his tirade to set the stage, after six long weeks of hearings, to fully discredit the senator from Wisconsin.24

  The audience applauded at length. Welch walked out of the hearing room, followed by a herd of reporters. McCarthy was left in the room, looking forlorn, as if he needed someone to talk to. He looked at some of his aides, threw up his hands, and asked, “What did I do?” In the hallway, Welch told reporters, “I am close to tears.” McCarthy, he said, had tried to “crucify” Fisher because he had made “one mistake.” “I don’t see how in the name of God you can fight anybody like that,” he lamented. “I never saw such cruelty . . . such arrogance.” McCarthy retorted to reporters, “Too many people can dish it out but can’t take it.” But the news media had chosen their champion; The New York Times ran a picture of the soulful, tearful Joe Welch, holding a handkerchief to his face.25

  Later, according to John Adams, after the crowd had dispersed, Welch asked a fellow attorney in an unemotional voice, “Well, how did it go?” Adams believed that Welch had set a trap for McCarthy. Despite his earlier agreement with Cohn, Welch’s taunting of Cohn to name and clean out communists “by sundown” had been designed to get under McCarthy’s skin. Adams recalled that Winston Churchill, when asked how he spent his spare time, responded, “I rehearse my extemporaneous speeches.” Adams concluded, “So, I think, did Joe Welch.”26

  McCarthy then began his testimony, repeating his charges of communist influence in the army and how he had been “blackmailed” to end his investigation. Meanwhile, on Ike’s orders, Jim Hagerty had secured a half hour of time on the evening of June 10 for a presidential speech before the National Citizens for Eisenhower Congressional Committee chairs. Eisenhower and Hagerty scheduled the president’s news conference for that day, one day after Welch’s triumphant confrontation with McCarthy. The president was ready for the hearings to end; they had done the damage he wanted. It was time to move on with a news conference focused on foreign affairs and a speech highlighting the president’s legislative program. At the news conference, Eisenhower was pressed by reporters about whether he would endorse all Republican candidates, implying McCarthy’s allies, who were up for election in the fall. The president vaguely discussed the need to elect people who would assist in meeting governing responsibilities. “But I imagine that you could probably pull out of the hat some specific question that could be most embarrassing; I hope you won’t do that.” That remark was greeted with laughter.27

  The president’s speech that night was televised. His only reference to McCarthy-type subjects involved his legislative proposals to enhance internal security and his commitment to “plug loopholes through which spies and saboteurs can now slip.” That oblique reference to McCarthy’s crusade underscored that his speech—in the midst of McCarthy’s testimony—was simply Ike’s latest effort to steal the spotlight from McCarthy.28

  RALPH FLANDERS INVADES A HEARING

  Ralph Flanders was frustrated; the senator complained that his speeches against McCarthy were garnering only marginal attention in the press. On June 11, the aggressive seventy-three-year-old Vermont senator hijacked what remained of McCarthy’s dignity.

  As Ray Jenkins, the subcommittee’s hearings counsel, was questioning McCarthy, Flanders burst into the hearing room. Without permission from Chairman Mundt, he strolled over to McCarthy and—in full view of the television cameras—handed the senator a letter. Mundt later called the action “without precedent in the history of the Senate.” “This is to inform you,” Flanders said to McCarthy, “that I plan to make another speech concerning your activities in the Senate this afternoon . . . I would be glad to have you present.” The letter informed McCarthy that Flanders would introduce Resolution No. 261 on the floor of the Senate that day, charging McCarthy with “unbecoming conduct” and demanding his removal from his committee chairmanships.29

  As the hubbub subsided, Senator Mundt called out, “The committee will be in order.” McCarthy responded, “Will the Chair ask Mr. Flanders to remain?” When Mundt complied, McCarthy continued, “Mr. Flanders”—not the respectful “Senator”—“you have just handed me a letter and I read it.” He sneered, “Number 1, I will be unable to be present because I will be testifying. Number 2, I don’t have enough interest in any Flanders’ speech to listen to it. Number 3, Senator, may I have your attention? Number 3, you have gone on the Senate floor and have indicated you have information of value to this committee. You suggested the committee is not getting at the heart of this matter.” He called Flanders’s June 1 address on the Senate floor “an extremely scurrilous speech.” When Flanders attempted to leave the room, McCarthy roared, “Let me finish, Mr. Flanders. At that time you did not have the courtesy that you have today of letting me know that you are speaking. I think, Senator, if you have any information of value to this committee, what you should do is what my Republican colleagues have done, what I am doing now—take the oath, raise your right hand, let us cross-examine you.”

  Mundt finally recovered and asked Flanders to “retire to the rear of the room,” where other spectators were sitting. “I am sorry,” Mundt said. “We can’t permit this kind of feuding to go on here.” Flanders shot back, “I retire under compulsion.” McCarthy countered that he had “no feud with Mr. Flanders” and suggested that the senator’s attack “was not the result of viciousness, but perhaps senility.” He later told reporters, “I think they should get a man with a net and take him to a good quiet place.”30

  On Sunday, Flanders appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, charging that McCarthy was “fighting communism with fascism,” close to Eisenhower’s comparison of McCarthy to Hitler. Flanders said he would give McCarthy three and a half weeks to respond to his charges, but with Senate adjournment scheduled for July 31, that would leave very little time. Flanders faced an uphill fight. Senator Knowland, the Republican majority leader, had already labeled the Flanders resolution a “mistake” and declared it “not justified.” Knowland argued that dealing with his motion might derail the passage of President Eisenhower’s legislative program. When he heard about Knowland’s opposition, Eisenhower grumbled to Herbert Brownell, “Knowland is the biggest disappointment I have found since I have been in politics.”31

  Flanders’s motion to deprive McCarthy of his committee chairmanships was a first step toward censure. Did the White House put Flanders up to the maneuver? It is likely; the similarities between the president’s and the senator’s rhetoric were striking. The timing and style of the senator’s actions were intriguingly reminiscent of his speech on March 9.

  On June 15, The Washington Post published a small story headed “Flanders’ Home Given Police Guard.”32

  ENDING THE WAR

  Compared to the drama of the confrontation with Welch and the Flanders intrusion, the final days of the Army-McCarthy hearings were anticlimactic. On the fifteenth, Roy Cohn concluded his testimony with an emotional statement calling Joe McCarthy “a great American.” “I have never known a man who has less unkindness, less lack of charity, in his heart and soul,” he declared. On June 16, Welch and McCarthy had their bitterest exchange since the confrontation on June 9. Welch rebuked McCarthy for trying to act as both judge and witness in alleging that the army’s charges were false and dishonest. McCarthy called the charges against his staff “completely unfounded. . . . They are guilty of only one crime—namely, that they fight communism.” When he accused Welch of failing to understand that threat, Welch’s voice rose: “I work at an address (the Pentagon) where there are men without limbs, who lost them fighting communism.” “Don’t tell me,” he declared, “that the United States Army doesn’t fight Communists. You do not have a monopoly, sir, in
that field.”33

  The biggest news at the hearing the final day—June 17—was Senator Charles Potter’s call for perjury investigations. Potter was convinced that the testimony had been “saturated with statements which were not truthful and which might constitute perjury in a legal sense.” He even suggested that “there may have been subornation of perjury,” an accusation that did not exempt the White House.

  Senator Karl Mundt gaveled the final hearing to closure at 6:32 p.m. The hearings had lasted 36 days, had been televised for 187 hours, and had generated 7,424 pages of transcripts. Ironically, it was also the day that the army ordered Private G. David Schine to report to Fort Myer, Virginia, to receive his formal orders before returning to Camp Gordon, Georgia. In spite of all their efforts to be together—so pivotal to the origins of the Army-McCarthy hearings—Roy Cohn and David Schine would continue to be separated.34

  BENEDICTIONS

  John Adams sat in his office alone, watching the television screen and fretting about Senator Potter’s call for the investigation of perjury. “My door was closed; my phone almost never rang; I had little to do; I just sat there . . . contemplating my own bleak future.” Robert Stevens, he wrote, “had been giving me the silent treatment for weeks.” Joseph Welch, he believed, “wasn’t really representing me.” Adams took only limited satisfaction from Welch’s success in humiliating McCarthy “since I was going down the drain too.”35