The Redhunter (52 page)

“A good day to be away from the office, Sam.”

“Permanently?”

Harry was not going to say it in as many words, in a telephone call that was on the record. But he knew that Sam knew. All
he said was, “Thanks for calling, Sam. I’ll be in touch.”

Harry longed for some company. He soon had it. Mary Haskell called. “I can’t stand another hour in the office, Harry. Take
me to dinner, will you?”

HANBERRY, 1991

Alex Herrendon seemed very excited, as he always was when, pausing in his own narrative, he would hear Harry’s.

“I always considered Eisenhower a masterly politician. From what you relate I am reinforced in the conclusions I arrived at
a long time ago. Would you agree that Ike masterminded the collapse of McCarthy?”

“I know what you’re talking about, Alex.” Harry rose from his desk to search in the library’s Book Index.

“Can I help?”

“I’m looking to see what you have here by Murray Kempton. He’s maybe the shrewdest journalist in America on that subject.
And others. He did a piece for
Esquire
—”

“Are you talking about ‘The Underestimation of Ike’?”

Harry turned, a broad smile on his face. “I say, Alex. You do get around. An important piece. Kempton takes a half dozen political
crises, large and small, and shows how Ike handled them without ever giving off the sense that he was manipulating anybody.
Did you ever run into him?”

“Kempton?”

“No, Ike.”

“Never did. Did you, Harry?”

“Oh, no. Not even close. If I had, it would have been at a large
party for the senators and their principal aides. After the army dust-up—we’ll take you through that—McCarthy was dropped
even from the official White House invitation list. Not even invited to the annual party for senators—
No Joe.”
He paused. “I like that phrase:
No Joe.
”

“No, no, Ho Chin Joe.” Alex’s face brightened with the frolic. And then snapped back to normal, a trace of wistfulness there.
“Ixnay. That doesn’t quite work. Does it?”

“No. If you’re searching for the matrix, it was
Ho, Ho/Ho Chi Minh—
”

Alex roared in like a trained chorister,
“Is bound to win.”

“Speaking of Ike, Alex, you are of course aware of the John Birch Society?”

“Yes. The group founded in 1959 by Mr. Robert Welch, a retired candy manufacturer. It lives in the memory that Mr. Welch privately
concluded that Eisenhower was an agent of the Communist Party!”

“Yes. The John Birch Society, which he vigorously organized and which swelled to a couple of hundred thousand members in the
early sixties, was founded on the thesis that critical public servants were agents of Communism. Although the general literature
of the society didn’t go so far, a discreetly circulated book by founder Welch arrived at exactly that conclusion, that Ike
was a secret Communist. Joe was dead two years before the John Birch Society was founded. But in a way, McCarthy was the first
Bircher.”

“Defined as what?”

“As someone who believes that subjective intentions can be deduced from objective effects. McCarthy flirted with the notion
that George Marshall was a Communist—because he had been ambassador to China and secretary of state when the Nationalists
lost China to the Communists, and principal military adviser to Roosevelt and Truman when the Communists got eastern Europe.
Joe wouldn’t have formulated it that way, but his reflexes were what a few years later people were calling ‘Birchite.’ ”

Alex raised his hand; Harry should stop talking for one minute while Alex wrote down his notes.

After dinner that night they put their work aside and played chess. Harry showed his father some moves he had been taught
at Camp Plattling by Erik Chadinoff.

“Those must have been czarist chess moves. I don’t remember even running into them. Maybe the inventor was off in Gulag.”

Alex could do that now, a levity in which Gulag figured. For many years, he couldn’t; wouldn’t. Harry had been a little that
way on the subject of McCarthy. He would never raise his name, but from time to time others did, speaking directly to him
or, more often, obliquely when others were present. From almost as far back as Harry could remember, they would, in discussing
McCarthy, take the shortcuts about him that finally took over altogether. But Harry would never interpose. He left the subject
alone. He was feeling very good about the work he was doing, and the company he was keeping.

FEBRUARY 1954

John Adams, counselor to the Department of the Army, reported, of course, to the secretary of the army. But Secretary Stevens
was not decisive in thought or deed, and his public personality was so bland and tentative that no threat that came from his
lips seemed quite credible. Accordingly, the call from the White House came in not to the secretary, but to John Adams, who
knew instantly that he was dealing with the First Team. Sherman Adams of the White House on the phone, backed by Charles Wilson,
secretary of defense, backed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, president of the United States.

The call had come in that afternoon from Sherman Adams, their first contact. (“We have no alternative than to call ourselves
by our first names. So—John—it’s Sherman here.”) As ever, Sherman barked out what it was he wished done, which was the way
Sherman Adams governed Eisenhower’s White House. “I need to speak to you. Not at the White House, not at the Pentagon. I’ll
meet you at the Madison Hotel dining room at twelve-thirty tomorrow. They have a little out-of-the way room I use. Tell the
maitre d’ it’s—Sherman! who made the reservations.” That quick play on first names was as jocular as Governor Sherman Adams
ever got.

John Adams was of course prompt, but even so, the rugged Sherman Adams, with his white hair and weather-beaten face, was sitting
there waiting for him. The Madison was new and formal, the waiters
wearing black ties, the decorations and flowers serving to remind the patrons that they were not eating at the Hilton. He
had ordered iced teas for both, without asking John his preferences. They picked out their lunch, and, with the waiter out
of the room, Sherman came quickly to the point:

“The president has had it with McCarthy. He told us to come up with two plans. One plan is: Make peace with McCarthy but get
the public loyalty hearings out of the way, beginning right away with the army hearings. The second—if that doesn’t work—is
make war and kill him.”

Sherman Adams outlined the plan. He had put it together with Bernard Shanley and Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge had lost his Senate
seat to John F. Kennedy and was now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but he served simultaneously as assistant to the
president. They had come up with: a proposal. If McCarthy would agree to hold all future hearings in executive, i.e., closed
session, the army would agree (they hadn’t yet consulted with army secretary Robert Stevens, but that was a formality) to
permit designated witnesses to give testimony, on the understanding that executive action would follow, but not publicly,
and not subject to legislative review.

“What’s the alternative?”

“Here’s where you come in. Stevens mentioned over the phone a couple of weeks ago that Roy Cohn was driving the army crazy
with his demands for special treatment for his boyfriend, David Schine. I assume that’s true, is it?”

“Is it
true
? Lord Almighty, I must have had twenty calls from him myself. He wants, for David Schine, a) weekend passes—so that twenty-six-year-old
Schine can ‘give critical help with the research’ for Senator McCarthy. He wants b) for Schine to be transferred from Fort
Dix to Fort McNair, or some other camp within walking distance of Roy Cohn in Washington; and c) he wants Schine to be commissioned,
to spare him any further ignominy as a mere private in the army of the United States.”

“Who the hell is David Schine, anyway?”

“He is the son of a hotel magnate. His father controls a chain, the Schine Hotels, Inc. Schine graduated from Harvard and
was quickly given a sinecure by his dad. He wrote a six-page pamphlet on the
meaning of Communism, which his proud dad distributed to every one of his hotel rooms.”

“Was it any good?”

“Superficial stuff. But either it attracted Cohn or else the author of it attracted Cohn; they came to be friends, and Cohn
foisted David onto McCarthy’s staff as an unpaid researcher. The headlines came when they went off on the grand European tour
to save European readers from the temptation of reading the wrong books. When he got back, I guess his draft board decided
enough was enough. I never got around to finding out how he got the deferrals that kept him out until age twenty-six.”

“Why didn’t Stevens put his foot down?”

“Well,” John Adams let himself say about his boss, “you know Bob. But in a way he did put an end to it. A week or so ago he
told me that any call coming in from Roy Cohn had to submit to a routine. The person getting the call, in his office or my
office—or any office, though most of the calls come in to Bob and me—would not put him through until after Cohn was politely
asked: ‘Sir, is this call on the subject of David Schine? If so, my instructions are to say the secretary (or Mr. Adams, or
whoever) isn’t available.’ ”

“Did it work?”

“Well, if you don’t get through, you don’t get through; so Roy hasn’t talked to either of us since then. But the most important
thing Stevens did was six weeks ago. He instructed his secretary and my secretary to listen in on conversations with Cohn
and make notes of what he said and what he asked for.”

On hearing this, Sherman Adams took a gleeful gulp from his iced tea. “That dumb little bugger, he thinks he’s so bright:
He didn’t watch his language over the phone? Never suspected somebody might be listening in?”

“Suspected? If he had suspected, would he have said, which he did say—to me—that if Schine is sent overseas, he promised to
‘wreck the army’?”

Sherman leaned back in his chair. His lips parted. A grin of satisfaction. “This is good stuff.
Very
good stuff. So.” He moved his empty plate away. “We’ll try the Peace Plan first. I’ll communicate it to Bob Stevens. He can
take it to McCarthy. McCarthy’ll say no, I believe.
He’s not so much interested in security at Monmouth as he is in getting publicity for himself.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Sherman. I’ve heard him talk about pro-Communist infiltration when there wasn’t anybody around.
And Joe McCarthy is on record as saying that publicity is necessary to fuel genuine reform, and he has a point there.” He
sipped his tea; he hated tea. “Though I agree with you; I doubt he’ll buy the Peace Plan.”

The next day, McCarthy made it absolutely clear to Secretary Stevens.

“The answer to your proposal, Bob, is no. This is a government of the people for the people.”

The day after that, John Adams began putting together a comprehensive Roy Cohn-Army file, a record of telephone calls, Roy
Cohn to officials of the Department of the Army. Subject: Private David Schine. Dates: mid-July 1953 to February 1954.