The Chairman

by Kai Bird

  Like the country at large, the Establishment today is suffering a sustained crisis of confidence. But it still exists in many of the same institutions McCloy chaired, and it continues to define the parameters of sound thinking on the great imponderables of public policy.

  The ideas that the American Establishment stood for are still the driving ideas of the republic. Liberal internationalism abroad and a moderate social compact based on a free market economy at home still define what is considered legitimate political thought. Like his mentor, Henry Stimson, and his scion, George Bush, John J. McCloy ardently believed it was America’s destiny to lead the world. And it was this modest man’s own destiny to “run with the swift” through the course of the American Century.

  (1) McCloy’s strong-willed mother, Anna, was widowed when he was only six years old. She went to work as a hairdresser for the well-to-do families living on the right side of Philadelphia’s “Chinese Wall.” It was a social barrier Anna was determined her son would cross.

  (2) She insisted on young Jack’s getting a private education, first at the Peddie Institute in Hightstown, New Jersey, and later at Amherst College. McCloy as a freshman at Amherst in 1916, flanked by Theodore Edwards (left) and Amzi Hoffman (right).

  (3) While at Amherst, McCloy joined the Plattsburg military preparedness movement. His World War I identity card records First Lieutenant McCloy’s middle initial as “S,” for Snader, his mother’s maiden name, but by that time he had already begun to call himself John Jay McCloy, renaming himself after his father. (The “black eye” is an ink splotch.)

  (4) McCloy sat in the back of the Harvard Law School class of Felix Frankfurter (left), while Dean Acheson (right) was a “front-row boy.” Years later, McCloy became Frankfurter’s eyes and ears in the War Department.

  (5) Two of McCloy’s clients from the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb—Otto H. Kahn (left) and Benjamin J. Buttenwieser (right)—testifying before the Senate in the 1930s. The Senate investigating committee criticized McCloy’s role in handling the bankruptcy of various railroads in the 1920s and ’30s, while Buttenwieser admitted taking profits on insider trading. McCloy complained that the New Deal investigations of Wall Street were fanning the fires of class resentment.

  (6) In July 1916, a thousand tons of munitions exploded on Black Tom Island in New York Harbor. In 1939, after nine years of sleuthing, McCloy proved that German secret agents had been responsible. The case convinced McCloy and many other Americans of the need for “an efficient counter-espionage system in time of peace as well as war.”

  (7) As War Secretary Henry L. Stimson’s (left) favorite troubleshooter, McCloy (right) “got his nose into everything,” handling such issues as Lend-Lease legislation, war production planning, the use of Magic and Ultra intelligence intercepts, and deciding where and when to open up a second front against Nazi-occupied Europe.

  (8) Fears of sabotage convinced McCloy of the necessity of interning more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in 1942: “if it is a question of safety of the country . . . why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”

  (9) Stimson called McCloy (left) and Robert A. Lovett (right) his two “Imps of Satan.” Like other Wall Street lawyers and investment bankers such as Averell Harriman, James Forrestal, Lewis Strauss, and “Wild Bill” Donovan, McCloy and Lovett emerged from World War II as part of an identifiable Establishment, “Stimsonians” dedicated to building a Pax Americana.

  (10) General George S. Patton (left) and Assistant Secretary of War McCloy (right) on the Italian front in 1943. The press created a furor when Patton slapped a soldier. After that, McCloy wrote General Eisenhower, “Lincoln’s remark when they got after Grant comes to mind when I think of Patton—‘I can’t spare this man—he fights.’ ”

  (11) McCloy and his wife, Ellen, with their five-year-old son, Johnny, commissioning a new troopship in 1943.

  (12) Lieutenant General Mark Clark (left) and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau (right) on the Italian front in late 1943. McCloy and Morgenthau argued over the Treasury secretary’s postwar plans for a pastoral, demilitarized Germany, and Morgenthau once went so far as to call McCloy an “oppressor of the Jews” because the assistant secretary was reluctant to divert any military resources away from the war effort to the rescue of European Jewry.

  (13) In the Bavarian Alps, July 1945, with his nephew, Lieutenant James Stuart Douglas. The fishing party also included General of the Army George C. Marshall, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, General Omar Bradley, and General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff.

  (14) At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, McCloy and Stimson, pictured here standing to the left of General George S. Patton during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner/’ tried to persuade a new and inexperienced president, Harry Truman, that the war against Japan was over.

  (15) But following the advice of Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima without either the specific warning or the redefinition of the surrender terms that McCloy believed would have ended the war weeks earlier.

  (16) After Hiroshima, Truman sent McCloy out to Tokyo, where he got into a shouting match with the new proconsul of occupied Japan, General Douglas MacArthur. “I fought to get my words in and by sheer might and main succeeded.”

  (17) In 1949, Truman (left) made McCloy proconsul of occupied Germany. Dean Acheson (right) instructed McCloy to solve the “German problem” by building a West German state firmly aligned with NATO, even if this meant an end to de-Nazification and eventual rearmament.

  (18) While McCloy ruled Germany, his brother-in-law, Lewis Douglas (wearing his trademark eyepatch), served as Truman’s ambassador in London.

  (19) The two men worked closely with General Dwight Eisenhower (left), Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett (center), and W. Averell Harriman (right) in building the Atlantic alliance. In the end, McCloy believed, “We made unthinkable another European civil war.”

  (20) The McCloys became occupied Germany’s “first family.” Ellen McCloy stands behind the high commissioner, who had broken his ankle while skiing a week earlier.

  (21) At Munich Town Hall, McCloy downs a huge stein of beer in support of Bavarian export week. While encouraging the reconstruction of the German economy, McCloy sometimes had to fight back his “revulsions.” He once angrily lectured a group of German industrialists, “remember the war and all the misery that followed it . . . was born and bred in German soil. . . . Don’t weep in your beer.”

  (22) Germany was then the anvil of the Cold War. East German communists parade with a caricature of McCloy dictating orders to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

  (23) McCloy, flanked by his son Johnny and daughter Ellen, walks through Rothenburg, the medieval walled city he saved from Allied bombardment during the war.

  (24) McCloy’s press agent, former New York Times man Shepard Stone, helps McCloy kick off a football game against a team of newspaper correspondents. McCloy’s “Hicoggers” beat the writers 10-0.

  (25) McCloy’s prep school coach always told him to “run with the swift.” Tennis became his game, and he once beat Wimbledon champion “Big Bill” Tilden in one set. Here, McCloy is on the court with Gussie Moran, another Wimbledon pro.

  (26) Alfried Krupp was convicted of war crimes at Nuremburg. In 1951, McCloy granted Krupp clemency and restored his private fortune. A shocked Eleanor Roosevelt wrote McCloy: “Why are we freeing so many Nazis?”

  (27) Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (right, with W. Averell Harriman and McCloy) was a cold, aloof man, “full of distrust.” But McCloy and “Der Alte”—the Old Man—became the closest of allies.

  (28) By the time McCloy and his family returned to New York in 1952, the “German problem” had been solved, and Germany would remain divided for another thirty-seven years.

  (29) As chairman of Chase Bank, McCloy—flanked by David Rockefeller (left), George Champion, and Stewart J. Baker—turned th
e Rockefeller-dominated bank into the second largest bank in the country by merging it with the Bank of Manhattan in 1955 to form Chase Manhattan Bank. Afterward, he went fly-fishing.

  (30)

  (31) During Eisenhower’s presidency, McCloy served as Ike’s private secretary of state, providing a counterpoint to the hard-line Cold War views of John Foster Dulles (right).

  (32) President-elect John F. Kennedy wanted McCloy as his Treasury or defense secretary, but McCloy consented to serve only as his disarmament adviser.

  (33) Accompanied by his two “Ellens,” McCloy arrived back in New York in July 1961 after negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev about Berlin and nuclear disarmament.

  (34) During the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy assigned McCloy to work with U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (left) in negotiating an end to the crisis. Afterward, Soviet diplomat Vasily Kuznetsov warned McCloy, “The Soviet Union is not going to find itself in a position like this ever again.”

  (35) After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon Johnson appointed McCloy to the Warren Commission. McCloy thought it important to “show the world that America is not a banana republic, where a government can be changed by conspiracy.” Despite some doubts, he brokered the compromise language that allowed the commissioners to conclude unanimously that Lee Harvey Oswald was probably the sole assassin. McCloy (right) is pictured with Senator John Cooper (left) and Commission investigator David Belin (center) in front of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

  (36) McCloy (far left) watches as Chief Justice Earl Warren hands the Commission’s report to President Johnson in the fall of 1964.

  (37) Lyndon Johnson continued to seek McCloy’s counsel. Although he initially supported the president’s Vietnam policies, by 1968, McCloy had grown weary of the war. He also served as Johnson’s secret emissary to the Middle East. Here, he reports to Johnson about his latest secret talks with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  (38) As chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, McCloy meets with President Richard M. Nixon. Lucius D. Clay, Thomas E. Dewey, and Dean Acheson (left to right) were the other committee members. McCloy clashed with Henry Kissinger over the decision to place multiple warheads on American missiles.

  (39) Well into his eighties, McCloy continued to advise presidents. Here he presents Jimmy Carter with a gift in the early days of Carter’s presidency. Together with David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, McCloy would organize a private lobbying campaign, code-named “Project Alpha,” to convince the Carter administration to give the shah of Iran asylum in 1979.

  (40) David Rockefeller and Richard Nixon congratulate McCloy on his ninetieth birthday at a party thrown by the Chase Manhattan Bank.

  (41)

  (42) McCloy loved the outdoors all his life and took great pleasure in introducing his grandchildren to fishing and hunting. McCloy and his son flank John Jay McCloy III in 1975, and McCloy in the field with his youngest grandson, Rush Middleton McCloy, 1986.

  (43) McCloy with Ronald Reagan at the White House Rose Garden celebration of his ninetieth birthday, at which he was also made an honorary citizen of Germany.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In the decade that it took me to write this book, I was encouraged by scores of people. Victor Navasky, the editor of The Nation, is a man endowed with more good-natured wisdom than anyone I know. Watching Victor write one of his own books, Naming Names, at the same time that he edited the country’s oldest political weekly, gave me the confidence to write this book. Victor was my guide and counsel throughout this project. He introduced me to Elaine Markson, a literary agent who promptly sold the idea to Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster.

  Alice is a magnificent editor, whose line-editing is reflected on every page of this book. But I will always be in her debt for another reason. I began this project with a coauthor—who prefers to remain anonymous—and when we regrettably parted company, Alice had the patience to stand by me through a difficult period. Also at Simon & Schuster, Ari Hoogen-boom guided me through the editing process with his easy wit. Marcia Peterson and Terry Zaroff performed a miracle with their meticulous copyediting of a lengthy and difficult manuscript.

  Gar Alperovitz, Eric Alterman, Richard Barnet, Patrick Breslin, David Corn, Steve Dagget, Roger Daniels, Steve Emerson, Bill Metz, Marcus Raskin, John Rosenberg, Caleb Rossiter, Christopher Simpson, and Don Wilson read portions of the manuscript. Arthur Samuelson read an early version of the entire manuscript and was unsparing in his critique of what needed to be done to complete the book. I owe him a heavy debt and treasure his friendship.

  Many other friends and colleagues encouraged me over the years, including: Fouad Ajami, Jocelyn Albert, Mercedes Arnold, Scott Armstrong, James A. Bill, Norman Birnbaum, Jan Knippers Black, Helma Bliss, Jack Blum, James Boyce, Howard Bray, Frank Browning, Axel von dem Bussche, the late Benjamin Buttenwieser, Gordon Chang, Blair Clark, the late Thomas Collier, Robert Dallek, David L. Dileo, Reinhard Doerries, Carolyn Eisenberg, Joseph Eldridge, Robert Engler, Richard Falk, Terry Fehner, Benjamin Ferencz, Thomas Ferguson, Hamilton Fish III, the late Michael Forrestal, Jeff Frieden, Pie Friendly, Charles Glass, Andrea Giles, Richard Gonzalez, Bill Goodfellow, Bernd Greiner, Betsy Hartmann, Jean Holke, Mark Hulbert, Peter Irons, Peter Iseman, Brennon Jones, Jim Klumpner, Deborah Larson, Maya Latynski, Jerome I. Levinson, Lawrence Lifschultz, Richard Lingeman, Ed Long, Donald F. McHenry, Harry Magdoff, Harry Maurer, Emily Medine, Martin Mendelsohn, George Metcalf, Jim Morrell, Robert Naper, Paula Newberg, Pamela Norick, Kit O’Donohue, Ralph Oman, Marcel Ophuls, David Painter, David & Beth Pollazo, Richard Powers, the late Donald Ranard, Virginia Ranard, Priscilla Roberts, Joel Rogers, Henry Schwarzchild, Gitta Sereny, Tara Siler, Joseph Speer, Dietrich Stobbe, the late I.F. Stone, Corrine Whitlatch, and James Wilkins III.

  I also wish to thank the many professional archivists who guided me through the paper trail of McCloy’s life, particularly Daria D’Arienzo and Cheryl A. Gracey at the Amherst College archives; Samuel Butler of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Grant D. Hering and John Eichler of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; David Haight and John E. Wickman at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; Anne van Kamp of Chase Manhattan Bank’s archives; Carl E. Geiger of the Peddie School Archives; Dwight Miller at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; Benedict K. Zobrist and Dennis Bilger of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library; John Taylor, Wilbur Mahoney, Cindy Fox, and Richard Boylan of the National Archives; Nancy Bressler and Jean Holliday of the Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University; Ann Newhall of the Ford Foundation archive; Fred Edson of the University of Arizona Library; Thomas Rosenbaum and Darwin H. Stapleton of the Rockefeller Archive Center; Edward J. Boone of the Douglas MacArthur Memorial Library; John N. Jacob of the George C. Marshall Foundation Library; Martin Elzy and Donald Schewe of the Jimmy Carter Library; Robert Wood, John T. Fawcett, Shirley Sondergard, and Dwight M. Miller of the Herbert Hoover Library; David Humphrey of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library; Georgene Cassels, Sharon Kotok, Frank Maichak, Peter Shields, and many other over-worked officials of the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act office.

  Viken Berberian, Gwen Bondi, Michael Brownrigg, Dan Charles, Sam Fromartz, Stephen Harvey, and Nicholas Targ volunteered their time as interns to do basic research on various aspects of McCloy’s career.

  I am especially grateful to Benjamin Buttenwieser who first introduced me to McCloy and gave generously of his time in reminiscing about his own life. William Hohri of the National Council for Japanese American Redress and Aiko and Jack Herzig went out of their way to guide me through the archival records on the Japanese American internment. Thomas A. Schwartz was generous with his time in educating me about McCloy’s tenure as High Commissioner in Germany; I relied on his thesis, which was later published as America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany. Jacques Morgan, the proprietor of Idle Time Books in Washington, D.C., kept my library well-stocked, and Jill Hinckley’s pottery class gave me more Wash
ington gossip than I can reveal here. Mark Lynch and Allen Adler advised me on all my Freedom of Information Act requests. Gail Ross is an author’s lawyer, a terrific agent, and good friend. She rescued this book and made it possible for me to finish the manuscript.

  Biographies are perhaps the best but also the most expensive form of history, and without generous foundation funding, I could not have done much of the research. I am grateful to Cathy Trost, Margaret Engel, Helen McMaster Coulson, and Joseph Albright of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, Peter R. Weitz of the German Marshall Fund, and G. Thomas Tanselle of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for providing substantial fellowships. Anne Zill of the Fund for Constitutional Government, along with the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library Foundation, the Hoover Presidential Library Association, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Institute for World Affairs provided additional travel and research funds.