The Redhunter (49 page)

At that moment Bernard Shanley walked in. He greeted the president, who recognized his voice and called out to Hagerty, “
Hold the call to Brownell
. Shanley, have you seen what McCarthy did?”

“Can’t hardly not see it, Mr. President—”Shanley was an easygoing young lawyer, greatly respected; he had served as editor
of the
Harvard Law Review
—”even in this light. It’s everywhere. Headlines,
radio, television. Drew Pearson took it so hard I fear for his life.”

“Better fear for McCarthy’s life. Siddown. Now tell me this, Shanley, you’re supposed to know everything there is to know
about the Constitution and the separation of powers and all that business. What’s the best construction a sober supporter
of McCarthy could put on that statement of his, inviting mass disobedience?”

“Well, sir, you could take the position that Congress has an ongoing responsibility to monitor the operations of the executive.
But Senator McCarthy isn’t simply saying that. He is inviting employees to pass individual judgments about whether to obey
their superior officer—to obey the chief executive—or interpose a different loyalty and go to a congressional committee. What
he’s doing is in effect pleading the Nuremberg doctrine. The kind of insubordination he’s advocating might be honored by a
respectable legal tribunal if your department heads were engaged in sending employees to crematoria. But in this situation
the answer to your question is: No supporter of Senator McCarthy could defend him while sober. I mean, while the supporter
was sober.”

The telephone rang. Hagerty picked it up. He turned to the president. “You want to talk to the attorney general?”

The president fumbled for the telephone in the near dark. Hagerty maneuvered the phone into his hand.

“Yes. Herbert. You’re calling about McCarthy, I’d guess. … ”

The President listened. “You just said McCarthy’s is ‘an open invitation to violate the law’? Quote unquote. Now I tell you
what, Herbert. I want you to go public with that. Use
exactly
that language. Because this is it. The end of Ike’s sweet temper. Son of a bitch. Now Herb, you’ve got a long friendship
with Bill Knowland. We need something from the majority leader. Go to work on him to go our way. Maybe we’ll hear from some
other senators from our distinguished political party, if we can find any with guts.”

Jack Hastings, the appointments secretary, walked into the Oval Office from the little room he occupied next door. “The doctor
is ready with the drops, sir. Shall I tell him to come in?”

“
God
, yes, and next time I have my eyes examined, tell Walter Reed to send me somebody who doesn’t need to make me blind for two
hours every time he wants to check my eyesight.”

“Well now, Ed,” Sam Tilburn said on the line with his daily call to Reidy at the
Indianapolis Star
, “the you-know-what has really hit the fan today. I mean it’s coming in every few minutes. You got the wire stories, but
you may not yet have got the Flanders quote, or has it come in? … No? Well, get this. I’ll read it fast, because the wire
will have it complete within the hour, if you want the quote in front of you. But listen to this—Oh. You
have
seen the Brownell quote?”

“Yeah, that came in an hour ago. That wasn’t so much a surprise. Eisenhower’s fed up, and using his attorney general to apply
pressure on McCarthy is to be expected. What
really
hurts Joe is Bill Knowland. Here’s the right-wing majority leader of the Republican Party, senior senator from California,
saying no to his pal McCarthy. Our Joe is treading on highly dangerous and doubtful ground. But go on with Flanders—I like
Flanders. He uses colorful language. Amazing what McCarthy does to Flanders, the thoughtful, sort of highbrow, quiet senator.
He whiffs McCarthy and he might as well be charging it up in a bull ring.”

“What he said isn’t so much colorful as apocalyptic. Brace yourself: ‘One of the characteristic elements of Communist and
fascist theory is at hand, as citizens are set to spy upon each other. Established and responsible government is besmirched.
Religion is set against religion, race against race. Churches and parties are split asunder. All is division and confusion.
Were the junior senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them.’ ”

“Oh, my goodness, Sam.” Ed Reidy began to laugh at the display of rhetorical temper, but stopped. He simply repeated himself.
“Oh, my goodness.”

“Yeah, I feel the same way. Some of the enemies of McCarthy will, if possible, manage to outdo McCarthy. You saw where Robert
Hutchins said that under McCarthyism it requires an act of physical courage to give money to Harvard?”

“No. I’ll note that. … Has Joe come back at Flanders? How can they sit in the same chamber? Granted, Vermont is a fairly long
way from Wisconsin, but they are in the same
country
. Did Joe respond?”

“Joe never lets us down. Hang on. …” Sam went through his notes. “Here it is: ‘
I think they should get a man with a net and take him to a good quiet place.
’ ”

“I’d say Joe won that exchange. But he’s not going to win the big one, the one with Ike.”

“No—here’s another one, just handed to me. Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey. Not long ago Smith was pleading with Joe
to cooperate with the GOP. Lemme see, Smith is … ‘deeply shocked,’ … he reads it as ‘a defiance of the executive in crisis.’
… Hold on. It gets better: ‘We cannot tolerate one-man government either in the executive or in our legislative body.’ ”

“You think Joe’s going down?”

“I think he was a real asshole on this one, Ed. I mean, he’s had the whole liberal world to fight. He’s only been a national
presence for three years. Why throw the gauntlet at Ike? Among other things, Ike’s the most popular man in America, after
John Wayne and Arthur Godfrey. Is the old man going to call in his troops and give them marching orders? President/General
Eisenhower knows how to do that. … How are you going to handle it on the editorial page? Or is
your
old man going to call in and give orders?”

“If Mr. Pulliam gives me orders, I’ll follow them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the boss—Mr. Pulliam, sir—did call me about
this one. I’ll wait till the last minute to write the editorial. If you want to get me with anything more you can reach me
till seven-thirty. Make that seven-twenty-nine.”

Then Ed Reidy and Sam Tilburn went into their daily act, an exaggerated imitation of NBC superstar nightly newsers Chet Huntley
and David Brinkley.

“Good night, Ed.”

“Good night, Sam.”

They both audibly and noisily wept, regularly amusing editorial hands working at close quarters with them, at the terrible
prospect of going an entire day until their next telephone conversation.

The officer who had alerted Roy Cohn to the problem at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey was a brigadier general. He had given Roy
Cohn several leads, the most explosive of which, in a matter of weeks, gave way to a bumper-sticker size question intended
to intone dark, subversive activity within the heart of the United States Army. The words were:
WHO PROMOTED PERESS
? Tens of thousands of the stickers were made, distributed, and exhibited. One partisan, carrying a sign with those three
words emblazoned on cardboard four feet high, six feet long, walked solemnly for a day up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, opposite
the White House.

Peress? Irving Peress was a dentist, an army officer, and—a member of the Communist Party. A hidden member of the party? No,
not really. When questioned about it by Fort Monmouth army intelligence he did not hide his membership. The questions that
subsequently arose were: How was it that he was a) then promoted (to major, from captain); and b) honorably discharged? (The
Communist Party having been declared hostile to the government of the United States, membership in it entailed a discharge
from the Army “without honor.”)

Dr. Peress did not tranquilize the situation when, asked by a reporter whether he was still a member of the Communist Party,
he
declined to answer the question, giving rise to the assumption that yes, he was still a Communist.

One month after McCarthy’s open invitation to federal employees to give information to congressional committees, Roy Cohn
advised the general who had alerted the committee to the security delinquencies at Monmouth that the time had come to give
formal testimony, giving him, by telegram, the date on which the hearing would be held. General Zwicker wired back that, after
all, he could not testify—because of the presidential ban on testimony to legislative agencies by federal personnel on security
matters. General Zwicker had been reminded by John Adams, counsel to the army, of the presidential directive.

Cohn put in a call to the general. He told him he could not possibly get away with any such a defiant act of “disloyalty.”
He then telephoned McCarthy, who was in New York to visit with Jeanie. The McCarthys had taken a weekend vacation in Mexico
with tycoon Clint Murchison and Hollywood actor Ward Bond. Returned to New York, McCarthy was off to Monmouth, and Jean’s
taxi was hit, her ankle broken. The next day, McCarthy sent her to the hospital. She was now immobilized. McCarthy had a further
medical objective, to seek fresh medical advice about his own recurrent problem, inflamed sinuses.

“Zwicker thinks,” Cohn said, “he can just back off the whole thing, pleading the executive order. I think you should get in
there and let him have it.”

McCarthy told Cohn to call a meeting of the committee for the afternoon of the following day to advise General Zwicker to
be there unless he wanted to receive a subpoena. McCarthy would arrive in Washington on the ten
A.M.
Eastern flight. “Tell Harry to meet me,” he instructed Mary Haskell. “Roy will be tied up getting ready for the closed session.
I got to get Harry going on my speech for tonight.” McCarthy would return to New York to speak to the East Side Republican
Club. “I want to talk to Harry about that speech and a lot of other things.”

Harry was waiting at the Eastern Airlines terminal. He was not surprised by the appearance at the gate of reporters there
to wrest something from Joe McCarthy, anything, preferably about the hostile reception given to his Come-All-Ye-Faithful invitation
(as the radio wags were calling it) to two million federal employees. But Harry was
surprised and dismayed by Joe’s appearance. Harry had seen him only three days earlier. Now Joe’s beard was a day old, his
hair seemed thinner and looked as if plastered over his head. His eyes were droopy. At close quarters one could hear him wheeze
as he struggled with his sinus. At very close quarters Harry could smell the whiskey.

Joe extruded a smile for the reporters and gave them a wave of the hand. “Sorry, gents. Got a committee meeting waiting for
me. Can’t keep my fellow senators waiting!” Another wave and he shuffled out, following Harry to the waiting car, his wedding-gift
Cadillac.

“Joe,” Harry spoke in the car, “you’re not keeping any senators waiting, because nobody else is going to be there this afternoon.”

Joe had become accustomed to boycotts and threats of boycotts by the Democratic members, Symington, Jackson, and McClellan,
even to persistent absences by the overburdened Everett Dirksen, with his legion of fishes to fry; but he was surprised that
his fellow Republicans Charles Potter and Karl Mundt would be absent.

“To hell with them. Zwicker’s all I care about. I’m going to ask him some hard questions, playing with us this way. Roy’s
quite right. Zwicker complains to us about the security at Monmouth and now he wants presidential protection to keep him from
testifying.”

Harry said, “You know, General Zwicker’s from Wisconsin.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Stoughton. He did a year at the University of Wisconsin before West Point. … Do you know about his war record, Joe?”

McCarthy shook his head—”Turn down the heat, Jeremiah,” he called out to the driver. They were traveling slowly in the light
snowfall, crossing the Memorial Bridge. “What did you say, Harry?—You know, I think you’d better come up to New York with
me after the hearing. I’ll have to speak off the cuff to the East Side Republicans. We can discuss what to say on the plane.
My sinus is awful.” He reached into his briefcase and brought out a flask. “Slug?”