by Jake Tapper
Charlie watched the proceedings on the television in the West Wing lobby foyer. Originally he’d planned to attend the funeral, as insincere as that might have been, but an early-morning phone call from Ann Whitman, President Eisenhower’s personal secretary, forced him to change plans.
The funeral made him uncomfortable, not because Charlie had killed Carlin, but because the oratories eulogized an evil and manipulative politician. Then again, Charlie knew, Carlin wouldn’t be the first or the last politician so falsely memorialized.
“Pretty creepy to hear all that praise,” Bernstein whispered to him. He had brought her for the company, because neither of them had ever been to the White House, and because her internship was soon going to end. In May, she would be heading back home to Los Angeles for a summer job at UCLA. In the fall, she would return to Georgetown for grad school, but it wasn’t yet clear if she wanted to continue working in Charlie’s office. Her experience had been quite a bit more than she’d expected, and a return to normalcy sounded enticing.
The West Wing lobby was filled with men and women darting in and out of offices for appointments with various officials, some sitting on leather chairs and sofas to be greeted, others with special badges, walking around determinedly as if this were Penn Station. Charlie’s eyes went everywhere but the television—to fellow visitors, to the black-and-white-checkered marble floor, to the paintings of American history. The work most clearly in his line of sight was the oddest and most disconcerting one in the room: President James Garfield, post–assassination attempt, suffering through his last miserable days on earth before the infection from the bullet took his life. Snatches of conversations of aides walking by urgently filled the room:
If Secretary Dulles doesn’t say Indochina is in the security interests of Southeast Asia, then France will know we ain’t sending even one soldier.
The networks should be paying McCarthy. I hear ratings are through the roof.
The veep gets one o’clock shadow. They don’t make enough makeup.
So Toscanini freezes. He forgets all the music or something. And the network panics. They cut away; they didn’t know what to do.
At least now no one has to pretend that Margaret Truman can sing.
He’d already read every article in the Washington Post on the coffee table in front of him, including the exposé on the front page, below the fold, “The Curious Case of Phil Strongfellow,” in which it was revealed that the U.S. government had no record of the Utah Republican having ever been in the OSS or any other clandestine service. A spokesman for Strongfellow stated that the congressman would be directly appealing to the Eisenhower administration for his war records to be released.
“So what’s going to happen to Strongfellow?” Bernstein asked.
“He’s over and done,” said Charlie. “You see the unnamed Republican congressional aides quoted in the story saying the party leadership is looking around for someone else to run for the seat in November?”
“Why did he lie?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I don’t know if he’d be able to explain it either.”
Charlie wondered whether the Hellfire Club had leaked the information to the Post or if it had been shared by his dad or his associates, whatever they called themselves. The Post story depicted Strongfellow as either delusional or criminally mendacious. There really wasn’t any acceptable explanation; even the most benign version suggested serious emotional problems.
Ann Whitman appeared at the far end of the lobby and spoke to the receptionist, who motioned to Charlie. In her forties, trim and attractive in a no-nonsense way, the president’s secretary strode purposefully toward him.
“Congressman, we’re ready for you now,” she said.
“You should probably get a cab back to Capitol Hill,” Charlie said to Bernstein as he got up to follow Whitman. “I don’t know how long this is going to last.”
Bernstein nodded, stood, and smoothed her dress. She seemed to want to say something, but no words came out.
“It’s okay, Bernstein, we’ll talk more when I get back to the office,” he said. She nodded, and Charlie followed Whitman out of the reception area and down the hall to the Oval Office.
Charlie had met Eisenhower once before, back in 1948, when the retired general and hero of World War II had been president of Columbia University. Attending a reception honoring students and faculty who had served in the military during the war, Charlie was one of many who stood in line to shake the hand of the former supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. At the time, Charlie was pursuing his PhD in American history, and Eisenhower, then fifty-eight, was just beginning what would be an ill-fated tenure at the Ivy League school. Their interaction lasted maybe thirty seconds—handshake, information about the company Charlie had served with and where, photograph, “Thank you for your service.”
“Come in,” the president said now when Whitman knocked on the Oval Office door, his voice as flat as the Kansas plains where he’d been raised.
Eisenhower hadn’t changed the Oval Office decor much after moving in a year and a half earlier. The walls were gray and the rug was a blue-green; he’d even stuck with the Teddy Roosevelt desk that Truman had brought out of storage. At the opposite end of the room, an immense floor globe stood before the fireplace, on the mantel of which were thirteen miniature flags. To the president’s left sat a smaller version of the famous Seated Lincoln sculpture.
The only touches from the new resident of the office hung on the wall: photographs of a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln and a uniformed Confederate general Robert E. Lee were displayed to the president’s right, Lincoln slightly higher than the man he had defeated. Across from the president, adjacent to the fireplace, were oil paintings by John James Audubon, one of a woodpecker and one of an oriole. Over the mantel hung a painting of a pueblo village in New Mexico. Charlie noticed that one painting by the door—a mountain landscape—was signed DE, the artist no doubt the man behind the desk, who was busy signing a stack of papers as Charlie walked in.
At the edge of Eisenhower’s desk was a small display case featuring twenty-four stones, each taken from a place where he’d once lived, from Fort Sam Houston to Gibraltar. Next to that was a glass block on which was inscribed the Latin phrase Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re—“Gently in manner, strong in deed.”
“Have a seat,” the president said without looking up. An aide standing next to him handed over and retrieved document after document. “Just need to finish signing these, whatever they are.”
Charlie regarded the man, who seemed much older than the last time he’d seen him in person. His charisma and likability were unmistakable, but his body was more slope-shouldered, his appearance now more grandfatherly than fatherly. He had defeated Hitler and Hirohito but he was no match for Father Time.
Eisenhower completed the documents, and the aide waited for Eisenhower to dismiss him, which he did, quickly and politely.
Now it was just the two of them in the room. Eisenhower took off his glasses and placed them on his desk, then stood up and shook Charlie’s hand.
“I’m told we may have met before. At Columbia?”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie said.
Eisenhower nodded and walked from behind his desk to take a seat on the deep red couch; he invited Charlie to join him in a chair across from him.
“They’re about to build a putting green out there for me,” Eisenhower said, waving a hand toward the windows. “You golf at all?”
“Poorly and infrequently.”
“Ah. Well, the rest of us do it poorly and frequently. Your way is probably better.”
Charlie grinned. Eisenhower had been his commanding general in France and his college president at Columbia, so he was having difficulty escaping the feeling that he’d done something wrong and had been called to the principal’s office.
“Your father tells me you’re thinking of returning to academia,” the president said. “That it’s bee
n something of a bumpy ride here.”
Charlie chuckled and then, aware that the president might not understand why, said, “You’ll forgive me, sir, but I’m not quite sure how much you know about the past four months.”
“I know more of it than you probably think I know,” he said. “I know you got caught up in this silent war we’re in. Not the Cold War, though that’s part of it. But these factions and associations and clubs. Hellfire and such. Not to mention the Communists, of course.”
“I did, sir. We did, rather. My wife, Margaret, and myself.”
Eisenhower looked down at the coffee table, then back up at Charlie.
“I heard of the nasty business with that lobbyist breaking into your house,” the president said. LaMontagne’s fall onto the Georgetown street had been impossible to contain or conceal; the Marders had immediately called the police and reported an intruder. Local newspapers covered it as a DC businessman gone mad and then the FBI took over the investigation.
“And of course I know about the Reds going after your wife,” the president added. Two days earlier, the National Park Service had discovered the decomposing bodies of Gwinnett, Kessler, and Cornelius floating in the ocean. The FBI’s official conclusion was that the three academics had drowned because of the powerful storm; they neglected to mention the small detail of the bullet wounds.
“Yes, we’ve been getting it from all sides,” Charlie said.
Eisenhower looked at him thoughtfully.
“You fought in France,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Our allies in that war very quickly became our enemies. The Chinese snatched half of Korea. The Soviets did the same with Germany. Blink of an eye, everything turned. On my desk when I first walked into this office, back in January 1953, was an appeal for executive clemency for the Rosenbergs. Which I denied. There are spies: Alger Hiss. Truman’s number two at Treasury, Harry White. Dr. Fuchs over in England. I mean, they’re there. We don’t know how many. Of course, McCarthy is fighting Communists in the most un-American way. But the threat is real.”
“I know it’s real,” Charlie said. “The Communists tried to kill my wife. And then a few hours later, some anti-Communists tried to kill me and my wife.”
“And my guys saved you two.”
“Yes, sir. Your guys.”
“Charlie, what do you know about the intelligence establishment?” Eisenhower asked.
“Just the basics, sir. Need for intel during the war created the OSS, which is now Central Intelligence.”
Eisenhower chuckled. “Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. You know, we had practically nothing when I went to Europe. Years before, Secretary of War Stimson had even ended what we had, a tiny code-breaking office. ‘Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail,’ he said. Cripes. Can you imagine that? ‘Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.’” Eisenhower chuckled forlornly.
“Yes, sir. That sounds hopelessly naive.”
“No one was a fiercer opponent of the OSS continuing after the war than the isolationist wing of our own party. Except maybe J. Edgar Hoover, who didn’t want the competition. But by now, we have a growing intelligence apparatus out there, run by Allen Dulles. I’m confiding in you now. But the truth is, I don’t trust how much it’s grown. So I, personally, have my own network of folks keeping track of what’s going on. Reporting to me. Those are my boys. My advisory group, I call them. They don’t exist on paper anywhere. They’re solely mine. They tell me everything. Your dad is one of them. Street too. There are three dozen of them, and they all have their own sources and methods. It’s invaluable. Matters are in many ways getting out of hand.”
Charlie was quiet for a moment, then said, “When you say matters are getting out of hand, I’m not sure if you’re referring to McCarthy or the Hellfire Club or the Reds…”
Eisenhower greeted Charlie’s questioning pause with a stern look.
“Well, let’s discuss these one by one,” the president said, “since I am now assuming you will be serving on my advisory board. On the first matter, soon enough McCarthy won’t be a problem. We already see in public opinion polls that his popularity is plummeting. By the end of this year, it will no longer be McCarthyism; it will be McCarthy-wasm.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Charlie asked.
The president smiled. “Permission granted, soldier.”
Charlie collected his thoughts. Watching the U.S. Army–McCarthy drama had been nerve-racking; it felt as though the nation’s tolerance for indecency and lies would never reach a limit. He had watched as senators he’d previously respected pretended that the unacceptable wasn’t becoming the status quo. He feared McCarthy would keep rising in popularity and status, leaving in his wake the complete destruction of basic societal norms. The historian in him intellectually suspected that something at some point would stop McCarthy; all great tyrants experience downfalls. But he couldn’t see it coming for Tail Gunner Joe. He tried to take some small comfort in the president’s confidence that the end was near, but he needed to know more.
“Sir, how can you be so sure?”
The president took a second to consider his reply. “I am sure because I am confident in the idea of the United States of America, Charlie,” he finally said. “I believe that the combination of checks and balances and a free press and our democratically elected representatives ultimately will expose charlatans. I believe in the good sense of the American people, and I know in my soul that truth will win out.”
“Permission to speak freely again, sir?”
“Granted,” said Eisenhower.
“That’s a nice speech, but I assume there’s more to it than your faith in the American people.”
“There is,” Eisenhower said. “We’ve set a perfect trap for him, just as we did the Germans with Operation Fortitude. I am convinced that the only person who can destroy McCarthy as a political figure is McCarthy himself. And he has many weaknesses. One of them is drink. Another is Cohn. And Cohn’s weakness is Private Schine. McCarthy and Cohn demanded special treatment for Schine last year. It was denied. So now McCarthy is going after the army. That’s a fight he cannot win. And it’s a fight we are prepared for. He will not walk out of the hearings on the army unscathed.”
Charlie considered what the president was saying. He would have to take it on faith. “There are others, of course, who are ripping apart our country in the name of preserving it,” Charlie said. “It’s not just McCarthy.”
Eisenhower looked away, toward his painting of a mountain landscape. “The main characteristic of the seven years between V-E Day and my moving into this office has been the steady consolidation of power in two blocs facing off against each other,” he said. “With a growing arsenal of enormously destructive weapons on both sides.”
“Chemical weapons being one facet of that,” Charlie said.
“One of many.” Eisenhower frowned. “Part of understanding everything at play in Washington right now is understanding the birth of a multibillion-dollar industry. Do you know that the amount of money our government spends on military security every year is greater than the net income of all U.S. corporations? It’s astounding. We need a strong defense, of course. But I’m concerned about the conjunction of an immense military establishment with this large arms industry. It’s new in the American experience. The total influence is felt everywhere. Every town, every village—every congressional vote.”
“The arms manufacturers won’t make as much money if we’re at peace,” Charlie noted.
“Precisely. When our wars are determined not by the threat of Nazism or fascism or Communism but by the influence on policy-makers of those who stand to reap financial benefits from the use of these arms—that, Charlie, is my biggest fear for this country. We have, for the first time in the history of this great nation, a war-based industry that exists even though we are not at war. Officers leave the military and take jobs in this industry and influence policies. We don’t want to be
come what the Communists say we are.”
He stared at Charlie, his ice-blue eyes projecting seriousness and concern.
“And that’s one of the reasons why I need you to stay in Congress, Charlie,” the president continued. “Because you understand both the threat of the Communists and the threat of those who would destroy the United States in order to save it.”
There was a knock at the door and Mrs. Whitman poked her head in.
“Just give me two more minutes, Annie,” the president said.
He stood and walked back to his desk.
“Sir?” Charlie asked.
“We need men like you, Charlie. The Republican Party does, Congress does, and, more important, the nation does. I need you working for us the way that your dad and your colleague Mr. Street do. For me. As my eyes and ears. One of my soldiers.”
As Eisenhower sat, Charlie stood.
“Soon the nation will be waging wars just to bring up stock prices,” the president said. “The Hellfire Club, as you well know, has been around for centuries. And they’ve generally kept their business private. But recently, its members have been flexing their muscles in ways that are getting people killed. Look at the Banana Man, what’s his name, from United Fruit Company—”
“Sam Zemurray,” Charlie said.
“Right,” said Eisenhower. “In Guatemala, I can’t tell what I’m being pushed to do because of the Communists and what I’m being pushed to do because Zemurray doesn’t want to pay his banana pickers a living wage. And while he’s not a member—the Hellfire Club doesn’t admit Jews—he wields huge influence with a few of the monks. Allen Dulles and Foster, both. So I need my own eyes and ears all over the place. I trust Allen Dulles, but I need to know what he’s up to. If he and his brother are continuing to take money from Zemurray, for instance.”
Now Charlie felt less reassured. If even Eisenhower was this confused about agendas, what hope could he possibly have of understanding it?