The Redhunter (46 page)

“Yes, Mr. President. And he said McCarthy reminded him of Adolf Hitler.”

“Now that was
wrong
of Arthur. I called, told him so. Shouldn’t play around with names like Hitler. Nobody reminds me of Hitler except Hitler.
But except for that—I mean, who in the name of
God
does McCarthy think he is? He was exchanging—’declarations!’—with Clement Attlee last month. I don’t like Attlee much, Churchill
doesn’t either, but he
was
prime minister and he heads up the opposition, and it isn’t McCarthy’s job to issue, what does the Vatican call them, encyclucals
telling people what to do. He’s done it to the Brits on their China trade. Sometimes I think he
owns
the Greek merchant fleet, the way he talks about it, tells them what to do—so what do we do about this one? McCarthy says,
‘The administration has a lot to learn about the loyalty program.’ ”

President Eisenhower sat rigid in his chair. He mused, his pencil tapping on the desk. He spoke deliberately, as if postponing
a D-Day landing.

“We’ll say nothing.
One more time we’ll say nothing
. One more time.”

Late in the afternoon, Joe was shaving. “You’ve got to do something about that late-afternoon shadow,” Jeanie had said on
the second day of their honeymoon in Spanish Cay. She had made this complaint before. Perhaps ten times. But now that they
were married perhaps it would be different. The other side profiteered from his rapid hair growth. “Herblock has you looking
as if you hadn’t shaved for three days—”

“Herblock is not going to clean me up if I shave five times a day.” For the
Washington Post
cartoonist Herblock, the pursuit of McCarthy was a holy and comprehensive cause.

“Still, Joe. You’re going to have to try.”

He agreed to try to remember. He had agreed before to try to remember.

Now he was living with Jean at her mother’s house, renting from Mrs. Kerr the second-floor apartment on Third Street. McCarthy
had a speech to give that night. He would elaborate his charges that the Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth was a mare’s nest of
loyalty risks.

Roy Cohn had tracked McCarthy down at Spanish Cay in the Bahamas, even though Joe’s instructions were that he was not to be
disturbed “unless Alger Hiss assassinates the pope.” But Cohn was not easily deterred. Reaching McCarthy over shortwave radio
in the Bahamas, Roy Cohn told him he had lined up two Signal Corps officers at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, who were willing
to give testimony on loyalty risks in their division. “Very hot stuff, Joe. Serious, heavy stuff. You got to get back here.
Apologies to Jeanie.”

Jeanie was mad as hell. “Roy can’t stand to have you anywhere that doesn’t give him access to you every ten minutes.” But
McCarthy was habituated to criticism of Cohn’s habits. He didn’t want to fight with Jeanie on this point, but it all added
up to one more reason for him to make a big impression about the Signal Corps in his talk to the veterans convention.

The Republicans’ sweep in 1952 gave them both houses. That meant, applying the rules of seniority, that Joe McCarthy, beginning
his second term, would be handed a committee to head. He became the chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee. This
assignment gave him a broad license. The subcommittee could probe any—operation of government that caught its interest. And
arrangements in the Senate were conventional: Whatever caught the interest of the chairman caught the interest of the committee.
Senator McCarthy, exercising a power of subpoena, could now bring before his committee very nearly any government official
he wished to hear from. There was immediate speculation on whom he would name as chief counsel.

In January, McCarthy gave the name of Roy Cohn, the candidate of George Sokolsky.

Sokolsky was a learned, imperious, dogged newspaper columnist sponsored by the Hearst chain. Early on he had championed McCarthy,
adopted his causes, and ventilated, from time to time, opinions on positions and issues that closely corresponded with the
views of McCarthy. Sokolsky was highly independent, something of a China scholar, and tended to condescend intellectually
to McCarthy. His recommendations were never made obsequiously: George Sokolsky tended to give the impression that anyone he
counseled, he was befriending. Moreover, Roy Cohn was about to lose his job. Cohn was a Democrat and as such was named an
assistant U.S. attorney in New York
City. But with the Republican sweep, he would have to yield his office to a Republican. He was out of a job.

Roy Cohn was a dazzling twenty-five-year-old. He had graduated from law school at nineteen, as Harry had reminded Professor
Sherrill, two years too soon to be permitted to practice. “Fifteen minutes after he became twenty-one,” one observer on the
scene remarked, “Roy went from clerk-typist to assistant U.S. attorney. He managed to get everybody important to his swearing-in
this side of the chief justice.” His modus operandi, everyone silently agreed, was this: He knew everybody, he passed along
and occasionally husbanded secrets, and he did favors for everyone, in part by blocking further ventilation of rumors he had
himself promulgated. (“What I told you about Ruth, Nathan, isn’t to go any further. I’ve told her that you know but that the
secret will die with you and me.”)

During a busy three years as assistant U.S. attorney, Roy Cohn had helped to prosecute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted
in 1951, electrocuted in 1953, for conspiring to send atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Joe McCarthy never mentioned the
Rosenbergs, even when he was introducing Roy at a banquet or fund-raiser. “How come?” Jeanie was asked by Bazy Tankersley.
Jeanie led her to the corner of the room and explained. Six years before, soon after his first election to the Senate in 1946,
McCarthy had challenged the nomination of Anna Rosenberg as assistant secretary of defense. Research established that the
derogatory information by which McCarthy (and others) had been influenced came from the file of Anna Rosenberg, indeed—but
an entirely different Anna Rosenberg. But in the interval, anti-Semites insinuated their conventional insinuations (anyone
named Anna Rosenberg was, well, suspicious), whereupon the conventional anti-anti-Semitic press went into its own high gear.
A rumor was born, which was that Joe McCarthy was motivated to go after her by anti-Semitism. No friend of Joe McCarthy, as
law student, judge, Marine officer, or senatorial candidate, had remarked any trace of anti-Semitism. But McCarthy was keenly
anxious to discourage any talk or charges on the subject. Sokolsky was plainspoken on the question: “It won’t hurt you to
have a Jewish lawyer at your side on the committee.”

On getting word from McCarthy that he would be chief counsel,
Roy Cohn planned and consummated a swearing-in ceremony in grand style.

Sam Tilburn spoke of it to Ed Reidy. “Cohn managed to produce J. Edgar Hoover at his swearing-in. Granted, Roy’s father is
a well-liked judge in New York, but it wasn’t the old man who was master of ceremonies at this affair, it was Roy. I was specifically
invited. I wondered why. Because I had said an occasional good word about McCarthy? Hell, no, I haven’t run into one reporter
on the Capitol beat who was
not
invited. But I did go, and so did a couple of others. McCarthy was beaming like a proud father. He told me Roy was ‘the most
brilliant young person’ he ever met—”

“Maybe he is,” Ed Reidy commented. “Who’s the competition? How many brilliant young people has Joe McCarthy met?”

“I don’t know. But you can be sure of this, that the McCarthy committee, with Cohn running it, is off to the races.”

The Signal Corps investigation was, for Roy Cohn, a big-stakes race.

Meredith O’Toole stared at the one letter. It had been a crowded week, a terrible week. On Tuesday, the heart seizure. She
drove Jimmy to the hospital, they did what they could, but pronounced him dead two hours later. Dead at sixty-one. Then the
wake. Then the funeral. Their only son, Bobby, was in Korea. Meredith had for company from the family only her spinster sister.
There were others at the funeral, four or five fellow clerks from the FBI and a few friends. The O’Tooles mostly stayed at
home. A colleague once twitted Jimmy that anyone who was personal file clerk for J. Edgar Hoover had better look inconspicuous,
and act inconspicuous.

But now, on the very afternoon of the funeral, Meredith had undertaken to look at Jimmy’s personal papers. He had them in
a large safe, a cast-off from old FBI safes replaced by modern equipment after the war. Jimmy had instructed her on what the
combination was, and it was written in simple code in the family bible. You always added two to the number shown. So that
4-8-9 would become, in the real world, 6-0-1. 2R meant two revolutions to the right. 1F, one to the left.

She didn’t know what was in the safe other than his will, and had little reason to be curious about it, as it was inconceivable
that Jimmy had hidden assets. Still, he was a fastidious man, and whatever was there, he’d have wanted Meredith to look at—what
else was the point in putting it in a safe and giving her the combination?

But this letter. What was
it
doing in Jimmy’s file?

Meredith didn’t follow the news carefully, and Jimmy never talked about his work at the FBI. But she was alarmed by what she
read. She couldn’t quite elaborate for herself what would be the consequences of its disclosure, but—well, it would be serious
business, she thought.

She suspended her examination of other material in the safe, what seemed a hundred folders, many of them including newspaper
clippings. And of course his last will and testament, which told her nothing she didn’t expect. The letter was very much on
her mind when she put it back and locked the safe, and went to the kitchen to make some soup and see if she could distract
herself with
I Love Lucy
at eight o’clock.

But she couldn’t keep her mind even on Lucille Ball. She knew what she was worrying about. That the FBI—that the director—would
… discover the letter. What would happen then! Certainly she would risk losing her pension, and the thought of this was intolerable.
She had to do
something
.

Burn it?

That would have desecrated Jimmy’s memory, she concluded. She would say a Rosary and pray for guidance.

The next morning she had resolved what to do. She drew the letter from the safe, inserted it in an envelope, and wrote out
the name of the man Jimmy always spoke of as a great American who cared the most for his country. The newspaper accounts of
the wedding had said the newly-weds would live with the bride’s mother. She looked in the phone book and wrote down the address.
She would not trust it to the mail, perhaps to fall into alien hands. She would have it delivered to his house.

She took the bus, the same route as when she took Bobby there, the first semester days, before he could look after himself.
She knew the route to Hamilton High School and the parking lot where some of the older boys and girls, those who used the
family car, would come in for their late afternoon and evening courses.

She watched the young people coming and going, and decided that the time had come for a leap of faith.

She approached the young redhead about to lock the door of the prewar Ford.

She smiled and spoke directly. “Can you do me a favor?”

The young man, his hair combed, wearing a sport shirt and jeans, answered politely.

“What is it, ma’am?”

“I have a letter here I want delivered to Senator McCarthy at his home—the address is written on the envelope. It is very
important to me. If you will do this—Haydock Street is only a few minutes away—I’ll give you twenty dollars.”

“
Twenty dollars?
… You mean when I come back you’ll give me twenty dollars?”

“No. If you say you will do it, I will take your word for it and pay you now.”

He pulled the car key from his pocket.

Meredith O’Toole smiled, gave him the envelope and a twenty-dollar bill. And said, “Just give it to him, personally, and don’t
talk about it, that’s all.”

“Okay, ma’am.”

The young man inserted the car key, opened the car door, and drove away.

Meredith O’Toole would never know what happened, she said to herself on the bus going home, but she was certain that Senator
McCarthy would do the right thing.

The knock on the bedroom door had to be Mrs. Kerr. McCarthy assumed his landlord was looking for her daughter.

“Jeanie’s not home yet, Elizabeth.”

“I know. But it’s for you, Joe. There’s a man here with a package, but he says he can only deliver it to you directly. Do
you want to come down, or shall I have him come up?”

“Send him up, dear. I’m in my underwear. I’m shaving, you’ll be glad to know.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt
that
.” Elizabeth Kerr—the
mirror caught Joe’s smile—had joined the anti-McCarthy conspiracy to keep him closely shaved.