The Redhunter (22 page)

The doorman opened the door. McCarthy stepped out and held the door open for Jean. Three delegates from the American Legion
were waiting excitedly for him. Joe McCarthy was, for them as for much of America, already Mr. Anti-Communist.

“I swear,” Harry Bontecou said to Jean coming into the office on Monday, the day that marked the beginning of the ninth week
of the Tydings investigation, “I never saw anything so
freighted
with politics as what’s going on.”

“Welcome to Washington, Harry. Didn’t you know it would be like this?”

“Jeanie: Why isn’t it
this
simple? Senator Joseph R. McCarthy has charged that the loyalty/security machinery of the federal government is
not working.
And his net goes wider: He says there are a lot of people around who don’t really
want
to prosecute the Cold War. Well: Can’t at least the
first
of these allegations be
investigated?”

“Sure.” Jeanie was sorting mail as she talked. “But it’s also
this
simple. At the end of this year there are congressional elections. At the end of 1952 there is a presidential election. The
Democratic leadership wants to
quiet things down.
Joe’s not a tranquilizing type. Besides, he’s onto the major personnel scandal of our time. So what they want to do is: discredit
him, keep things quiet, and win the elections.”

Am I really that naive? Harry thought as he sat down at his desk. The phone rang. It was George Backer, Associated Press.
He had met Harry at a cocktail party, introduced by Jean, who had whispered, “We leak some things through George. Nice guy.
Also very useful.”

“Have you seen the
Indianapolis Star?”

“No,” said Harry.

“Get it,” George said. “Got to go.” He hung up.

Senator Richard Russell, the august Democratic Party elder and chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, was in Paris on one
of his periodic inspection visits of NATO. He was staying at Rocquencourt with NATO chief General Dwight Eisenhower. An aide
handed him the cable from his office. It gave the text of the article.

The
Indianapolis Star
story spoke of a leadership conference the Friday before at which the majority leader had addressed ten senior Democratic
senators. Russell read on with dismay.

The
Star
has learned that at that meeting Senator Lucas reported that the “Red scare” is a hot issue and the Republicans “want to
run with it in 1952.” He said that the GOP wants to get back in the White House after twenty years, and in control of Congress
after twenty-four years. Senator Lucas is reported as having said, “We got to take the whole McCarthy chapter and turn it
around. Show the public there
never was
any reason for a Red scare.” Senator Lucas was not available to a reporter from the
Star.

The
Star’s
story was bylined by Washington reporter Sam Tilburn. The cable quoted the
Star’s
accompanying editorial. It was entitled, “Dems Prepared to Vaporize Red Scare.”

Richard Russell winced on reading the first paragraph:

Our source in Washington advises us that Majority Leader Scott Lucas has instructed the Democratic senators he appointed to
investigate Senator McCarthy’s charges to come up with a finding that there never was a Red scare. Perhaps the Majority Leader
will advise the Chinese people that the takeover by Mao Tse-tung last year was a hallucination. Since he is a thorough man,
he should advise our military that the explosion of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union last year was really nothing more than
a May Day fireworks display. And yes, the massing of the North Koreans in the last two weeks threatens nothing at all on the
southern side of the frontier.
We should be grateful that there is no reason to be scared by Red activity.

Senator Russell was naturally cautious, and his responsibilities to the armed services enhanced that reserve. He did not cable
Scott Lucas—cables get seen. He went into the “bubble,” the glasslike igloo in NATO headquarters, similar to the facilities
in U.S. embassies, designed to shield conversation from the electronic curiosity of Soviet bugs or interceptors. From there,
on the secure line, he telephoned Senator Lucas.

He gave his counsel in a calm voice. “You can’t unsay what you said, Scott. Just say at this point—if the press pushes you
on it—that you meant to convey that the Democratic leadership is resolved to make any Red threat ‘
futile
.’ ” He went no further.

Scott Lucas wasn’t the sharpest man in the world, but Russell himself had okayed Lucas’s designation as majority leader and
now he had to live with the situation. He was surprised that Lyndon Johnson from Texas, one of the ten Democratic senators
at the meeting, hadn’t been shrewd enough to reformulate Lucas’s language. All he’d have had to say was “
What you mean is, Scott, that we’re doing our job and are very much alert to the Communist problem.
” Some son of a bitch in that room, the senator said to himself, should have known that with two dozen staff people present
there was
always
the probability of a leak.

Senator Russell was on very close terms with General Eisenhower, and at their private dinner that night, in the lustrous candlelit
dining room with the famous tapered sconces, preserved from the period when it was built for the free-spending natural son
of Louis XVI, he said, “Ike, you may be hearing about the fuss kicked up by the
Indianapolis Star
report.” He told him the story.

Ike shook his head. “The
Star
talks about the Republicans hoping to get into the White House in 1952. Imagine anybody thinking there might be a Republican
president elected in 1952!”

Russell laughed, raising his glass. It wasn’t easy to tell whether he was laughing at the prospect of a Republican president
in 1952, as if conforming with General Eisenhower’s ingenuous remark; or whether, as a Democrat renowned for his political
savvy, he was raising
his glass to his private hope that the Republican candidate for president in 1952 wouldn’t be his host at dinner that night.

McCarthy was both outraged and elated by the
Star
’s scoop. Instead of moving directly to his next security case at the Senate hearing he decided to have a little fun with
the chairman.

“Senator Tydings, before I take up the next case on the agenda today, I think we should put on the record the comments of
your leader, the distinguished senator from Illinois, to the effect that your job isn’t to investigate my charges but to prove
they’re insubstantial—”

“Oh, please, Senator—” the chairman’s voice was strangely conciliatory. “All you have is an unverified report in an Indianapolis
paper of remarks perhaps never even made by the majority leader and certainly misinterpreted by the so-called informant.”
He continued to talk about the gravity of the charges and the committee’s conscientious efforts …

McCarthy looked down at the note Harry passed over to him.

Harry had worked up a modus operandi: a) McCarthy is asked a question, or is made to suffer a point, by one of his Democratic
taunters. b) Harry has a bright idea how McCarthy can answer that point or quote from material that makes an answer effective.
But c) Time is required for Harry to scratch out his idea or to come up with the file or clipping from the material in front
of him. d) While he is doing this, McCarthy has to stall however he can—say he didn’t hear, say he needs a parliamentary clarification,
yield to a senator on the misunderstanding that that senator wanted the floor—whatever. Just so it would consume twenty, thirty
seconds, perhaps one minute. e) As fast as possible, Harry would slip onto Joe’s desk surface, unnoticed except by superobservant
press men, the useful document. … It worked, and Joe now had the note.

His eyes on it, Joe said, “I happen to have here, Senator, a copy of the
Indianapolis Star
article.” Joe was now reading through the corner of his eye Harry’s text. It was brief. Without difficulty he improvised
the verbal bridge: “What Senator Lucas said, Senator, is borne out by what
you
said on March eighth at the beginning of these hearings. You said—” he brought Harry’s paper closer to his eyes “—what you
said was ‘You’—that’s me, McCarthy—’are going to get one of the most
complete investigations ever given in the history of the republic, so far as my abilities permit.’ Well, Senator, I greatly
respect your abilities. You have certainly devoted a lot of time to investigating McCarthy, though there is no record of my
being a loyalty or security risk—”

The chairman raised the gavel, but he did not bang it down. Not this time. He had lost the polemical round. He said simply,
“Proceed with case number forty-five.”

“All right, I’ll do so. But let me remind you, Mr. Chairman, for maybe the what—fiftieth time?—that it was
you,
not
I,
who insisted that the names of these cases be read out. I was prepared simply to give them by case number. But no—and the
majority leader was also very insistent on this—you
insisted
the names be read out. All right. Case number forty-five is one J. Daniel Umin.”

Democratic Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut, a skilled attorney and former head of the Criminal Division of the Department
of Justice, leaned back. As ever, he took notes.

The third Democrat, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, eighty-two-year-old Democrat, former governor of his state, had
the habit of closing his eyes when concentrating on proceedings. He did so now, but managed also to reach for his notepad.

Bourke Hickenlooper, Republican senator from Iowa and by now staunch supporter of McCarthy, liked to peek over at the two
dozen reporters (television was not permitted) with their notepads. They appeared to be concerned to record the highlights
of what was going on. They would, of course, get the transcript of the day’s events from the Senate reporter, but not until
later in the evening. By then they’d have filed their stories for the day. Hickenlooper looked over at Sam Tilburn of the
Indianapolis Star,
whose sensational story of what had been said at the Democratic caucus had raised all the fuss. You owe me one, Sam, Hickenlooper
said to himself. He had called Tilburn and whispered to him the scoop on the Lucas meeting. “Hicks,” as he was called, had
in turn been tipped off by a Democratic staff member who was at the closed meeting and owed Bourke Hickenlooper a return for
a very big present: no less, sponsorship of the informant’s son into West Point three years ago.

Henry Cabot Lodge, the other Republican on the Tydings Committee, leaned back in the semireclining chair, somehow managing
to
keep his dress immaculate. His face was impassive. He spoke infrequently at the Tydings-McCarthy hearings. Though of course
a loyal Republican, he managed to communicate to the reporters a certain chemical distaste for Joe McCarthy. Lodge was an
unregenerate patrician. His appearance alongside McCarthy dramatized the contrast. Murray Kempton, the New York columnist,
had a week or so before described McCarthy’s blue suit: “It looked as though it had been washed in clam chowder.” Senator
Lodge, by contrast, dressed in formal gray with a trim white shirt. He wore a vest even in the hot summer.

On the major issue before the committee—Had government loyalty/security agencies been negligent?—Lodge was careful to be receptive
to Joe’s arguments, even if they did not inflame him. He knew already who would be running against him two years later in
Massachusetts for reelection as senator. He’d be facing Congressman John F. Kennedy. A great deal hung on how the Tydings
Committee finally ruled. If McCarthy’s case was indefensibly empty, the whole GOP would be hurt, including him. If McCarthy
made a case of some kind, the Democratic, Catholic, anti-Communist voters of Boston would look kindly on the Republican senator
who had been in on the investigation supporting the heroic senator from Wisconsin.

Senator McCarthy opened the file.

“J. Daniel Umin, who was born in 1909, is by training an attorney. He worked in the State Department’s legal division until
October of 1949.

“Mr. Umin, on leaving the Yale Law School, managed to evade the draft. He then went to work for the Federal Workers Union.
That was in 1939. The FWU has opposed loyalty/security measures steadfastly. You will remember, Mr. Chairman, that in my initial
statement on federal loyalty/security practices, back on February twentieth, I identified that union, the FWU, as the union
that made a dead letter out of the Civil Rights Commission’s directive when it tried to set up uniform loyalty standards during
the war.

“In 1944, Mr. Umin—I do not have the information, Mr. Chairman, on just how he evaded the draft—”

Tydings interrupted. “Maybe he has only one leg, Senator?”

There was a titter from the gallery.

“Yes,” McCarthy shot back. “And maybe the Communists told him
he was more valuable doing what he was doing than merely serving as one of the troops, like me.”