The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  “We got to get it straight on the numbers. Let’s decide which of the lists you want to stick with, Joe. What’s the figure you’re using in the speech tonight?”

  “Fifty-seven.”

  “Should we stick with that, Joe?”

  McCarthy was a little irritated. “The place has got to be crawling with them. We’ve seen Bob Lee’s report. And he was talking about just the State Department. My guess is they’re all over the place. We’ve just scratched the surface on this question. We now—finally—have some idea why our side is losing all over the world. Because the let’s-go-easy-on-the-Communists people are influencing policy.”

  “God knows I agree with you, Joe. But what’re you going to do about Puerifoy? His telegram was leaked to the Post.”

  “I’m going to reply directly to Truman.”

  “What’re you going to say?”

  “Put Mary on the line. I’ll dictate to her. I’ve got it written out here. She’ll show it to you. Send it by messenger to the White House. Okay?”

  “Okay. Here’s Mary.”

  Joe began to dictate. He described his list and said, “This list is available to you, but you can get a much longer list by ordering Secretary Acheson to give you a list of those whom your board listed as being disloyal and who are still working in the State Department.” He went on to say that only 80 out of 300 State Department employees certified for discharge had actually been let go. He added, “… presumably after a lengthy consultation with Alger Hiss.” He interrupted himself after dictating that line.

  “Like that, Mary?”

  “Yeah, Joe. And the president will of course love it. What’s it been, three weeks since Hiss was convicted? Two years since Truman said the Hiss case was a red herring?”

  McCarthy finished his letter by requesting the president to revoke his 1948 order sealing the loyalty files. That famous presidential order, issued under executive authority, forbade any interrogation of executive personnel by legislators. Truman had reacted against efforts by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to probe the security files of State Department and other personnel. If he refused to revoke that order, President Truman would be labeling the Democratic Party “the protector of international Communism.”

  “Why not make that ‘the bedfellow of international Communism,’ Joe?”

  “Good. The ‘bedfellow of international Communism.’ Now put me back to Don, Mary.”

  He came on. “Don? Look, the other side is playing pretty dirty. You knew about Puerifoy’s letter to me before I actually read it. Let’s show them we can play that game too. Let’s release my letter to the press.”

  “Anybody in particular?”

  “We want instant action on it. AP.”

  “I’ll give it to George Backer. Know Backer, Joe?”

  “Hell, yes, he was in the marines.”

  “Get wet crossing the equator?”

  “Fuck you, Don.”

  “Will do, Senator.”

  19

  McCarthy defends his Wheeling charges

  At 9:45, carrying a bulky manila folder, Senator Joe McCarthy opened the door of his office to begin the long marbled walk to the Senate chamber. The day had come, just eleven days after the Wheeling speech, when the full Senate would hear out “McCarthy’s charges” and decide how to proceed. The august body seldom moved so fast, but there was a national clamor: Investigate McCarthy’s charges. Majority leader Scott Lucas interrupted the calendar. McCarthy would make his charges to the entire body.

  Don Surine and Mary walked with him as far as the elevator. There Surine extended his hand. “Give ‘em hell, Senator.” Mary angled herself for a quick kiss on the forehead. She had sneaked a folded handkerchief into his vest pocket. “Try to dress up our Joe just a little bit.”

  “Never used one of these before, Mary. I was saving it for when I get married. Now they’ll confuse me with Cooper.” Joe’s reference was to John Sherman Cooper, the picture-perfect solon from Kentucky, conspicuous as a natty dresser.

  “No one will confuse you with Senator Cooper,” Mary said, backing away from the elevator door as it opened.

  Waiting at the lobby were a half dozen photographers and as many reporters. One middle-aged woman in a long skirt, her hair tightly contained in a bun, writing pad in hand, came to within a few feet of the senator, walking alongside to keep pace.

  “What are you going to tell them, Senator? You got any new names?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but I’ve got to get to the chamber. You’ll hear everything I have to say.”

  A voice from another reporter overrode. “You got anything on the White House, Senator? On President Truman?”

  He succeeded in catching Joe’s attention.

  “He’s made some mistakes. But—” Joe was rescued by his colleague, Senator Homer Capehart, approaching the chamber along with a dozen other senators.

  “Let’s get along, Joe. There’s plenty of time later.” Senator Capehart had had long experience with importunate reporters. He smiled, brushed them to one side, and propelled Joe McCarthy down into the Senate subway.

  A few minutes later, they entered the sacred chamber. It was very nearly full. Joe sensed genuine anticipation. The smell of it brought both drama and spice. The constant routine, the aides in their neat jackets and ties buzzing about silently with their folders and messages, the little drone from the press gallery, like an orchestra tuning up. He passed by the desk of Senator Wherry, who caught his coat sleeve and said, “Let’s hear it all, Joe. I’m listening.” Joe smiled broadly, tapped his manila folder. “See you later, Ken.”

  A young newsman seated next to Sam Tilburn, veteran reporter for the Indianapolis Star, leaned over in the press gallery to his fellow reporter. “What I don’t really understand, Sam, is why so many senators are obviously on McCarthy’s side. Do they know he’s right about Communists in government? Do they hope he’s right? What is it?”

  “They like the sound of him, they like the national support he’s getting. They like it that Truman and Acheson and the liberal bureaucrats are hurting. I mean, it’s only ten days since he gave that speech in Wheeling and he’s become a national celebrity.”

  “So it’s got nothing to do with anything he’s proven?”

  “Nothing. He hasn’t proven anything—yet.”

  The aged vice president was in the chair and gaveled for the start of proceedings. The Senate chaplain said a prayer. It included an appeal for divine protection against the enemies of the state. Joe’s bowed head looked up, registering apparent surprise. Vice President Alben Barkley then acknowledged the majority leader.

  “Mr. Lucas has the floor.”

  Senator Scott Lucas, senior senator from Illinois and Democratic majority leader, rose. He was tall, dignified in bearing. That day he was in good humor, not always the case. He leaned heavily for expert opinion on how to conduct his high office on Senator Russell of Georgia, the member most conversant with Senate business, lore, and indeed arcana. Senator Russell’s desk was in the same row, a few desks removed. Russell eyed his protege expectantly.

  Lucas’s opening speech was relatively brief. He made three points. The first, that everyone agreed that maximum protection against Communist agents was critically important. The second, that President Truman and Secretary Acheson were very well aware of this and had made every effort to protect the government against penetration by “the enemies of true government, who are friends of tyranny.” The third, that the junior senator from Wisconsin had leveled very grave charges against the security system and very direct charges against the security program in the State Department.

  “There is some question about exactly how many Communist spies … or just plain Communist Party members … or loyalty risks whose names the senator says he has, are still in the State Department. I myself have heard 207, 81, and 57. But let’s start at the beginning and ask our colleague what it is that makes him allege any such delinquency in the State Department. Sir, will y
ou inform us?”

  Joe McCarthy rose. He did not appear to be ill at ease. He had been four years a senator and had engaged in many debates, some of them spirited, one or two acrimonious. With deliberation he opened his folder and began to talk.

  When Joe McCarthy was reading his remarks, the voice was monotonic, the speed a little faster than ideal for listening. It was different when he was interrupted. His speech then became lively. An interruption came a few minutes after he had begun his historical description of loyalty/security procedures in the State Department. Senator Benton, the quick-witted, erudite, verbose senator from Connecticut, broke in.

  “Can the senator from Wisconsin inform us why the Communists have made available only to him their roster of agents in the State Department?”

  The spurts of laughter from the floor and the galleries broke Joe’s rhythm. Lips tightening, he looked over at Benton.

  “Maybe under the Truman administration the Communists have become so cocky they figure it doesn’t matter who they inform about their people, nobody will bother them. Only from now on, the senator from Connecticut may be dismayed to know, they are not any longer safe. I,” he paused for a moment, then thought to look about the chamber, to share the credit, “and my colleagues—and the American people—will not let it happen. We’re going to ruin their day. … Now let me get on with it. I have here … ”

  McCarthy’s formulation would be imitated for months and years by late-night comedians and talk-show hosts and, indeed, the whole derisive community—”a photostatic copy of—”

  Senator McClellan of Arkansas broke in to ask for the history of the State Department’s loyalty procedures.

  “I was coming to that. I was interrupted by the senator from Connecticut, who wanted to say something reassuring to some of his constituents in Connecticut.” A little frown of dismay crossed the face of Senator Knowland of California. It was not lightly suggested, on the floor, that any senator had constituents to whom he pandered, let alone Communist constituents.

  McCarthy continued reading again. He sought, he said, to “refresh the recollection” of his colleagues by giving a little of the background of “U.S. efforts to protect itself.”

  In 1938, “twelve years ago,” Congress had passed the McCormack Act, ordering all agents of foreign governments to register with the Department of Justice. That act, said McCarthy, was designed to “blow away the pretenses of American Communists, who were taking their orders from the Soviet Union.”

  The Hatch Act of 1939, McCarthy reminded the chamber, forbade federal employment to members of any organization that advocated the forcible overthrow of our constitutional government.

  “Even though there was a military honeymoon during the war, when Stalin and FDR fought the same enemy,” McCarthy went on, “in 1942 the Civil Service Commission came through with loyalty criteria supposed to govern federal agencies in determining whom to hire. That commission set up the criterion of ‘reasonable’ doubt as to an applicant’s loyalty. If reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s loyalty and reliability was found, he couldn’t be hired.” That criterion, McCarthy said, was very important. Yet the Hatch Act had simply been unenforced.

  “Whose responsibility is that?” Senator McKeller of Tennessee wanted to know.

  “The attorney general, Senator, is supposed to enforce the laws we pass.”

  The senator nodded. McCarthy continued. He gave an example. “The American League for Peace and Democracy is universally recognized as a Communist front,” he reminded them. “It was never anything else. It had been so declared by the attorney general. Yet 537 members of the American League for Peace and Democracy were still in government.”

  “Were still in government, or are still in government?” Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota asked.

  McCarthy hesitated. He came in with the more dramatic alternative. “Are still in government.”

  “How did you get that number, 537?” Senator Benton wanted to know.

  McCarthy flushed. “From the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Senator.” Benton was chairman of the board of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The laughs now were at his expense.

  However, McCarthy explained, mark this loophole. The Civil Service reasonable-doubt criterion applied only to applicants for government employment, not to those already in government. Frustrated by different loyalty/security standards being applied by the departments of the federal government, the attorney general in 1942 created an “Interdepartmental Committee on Investigation.”

  But it was ineffective, McCarthy said. “It never got its act together.” And besides, under its permissive criteria an applicant could not be excluded “unless he personally advocated the overthrow of government by force and violence.

  “Gentlemen, Senator Smith,” McCarthy said—Margaret Chase Smith, junior senator from Maine, was the only woman in the Senate—”I’m not sure that by using Interdepartmental Committee standards you could exclude anybody. That committee said nobody could join government who was in favor of overthrowing our government by force and violence. I mean, is it all that easy, if you’re a security officer trying to make a case against an employee or an applicant, to pick up a document that proves that a particular person once said, ‘I believe in overthrowing the government of the United States by force and violence’? I’m not one hundred percent sure you can find that statement signed by Joe Stalin.

  “Okay,” McCarthy went on. “You think I’m exaggerating. However latitudinarian the Civil Service Commission, in fact its exertions did block access to federal jobs to some Communist employees. With what result? A protest from the Communist-dominated Federal Workers Union.

  “Did anybody pay any attention to this protest, a protest from a Communist union? Yes: the Bureau of the Budget. It cut the funds required to implement the loyalty program. And the result was that Communist after Communist worked his way into the assorted wartime agencies.”

  But the most important development, McCarthy told his colleagues, was the presidential order of March 13, 1948. President Truman’s executive order instructed all federal departments to deny to any congressional investigating committee access to loyalty/security files. “The president looked down on Congress and said: ‘Go away. We don’t want you around messing with our business.’ Well, the Soviet Union has been messing with government business, and I believe it is time for the Congress of the United States to assert its responsibility to monitor the executive branch.”

  Senator McKeller spoke again. He wanted to know what proof there was that Communists had actually remained in government since wartime. He was seated next to Senator Benton, who spotted immediately the danger of his colleague’s formulation, but before he could enter the exchange in an effort to distract from it, McCarthy pounced.

  “Proof? The senator from Tennessee wants proof! Senator, are you aware that Alger Hiss was convicted by a federal court as recently as six weeks ago? Did you not know that the State Department and the White House were twice informed about Alger Hiss? Mr. Adolph Berle relayed Whittaker Chambers’s report on Hiss to his superiors in 1939. In 1943, Chambers spoke with the FBI, which, we have to assume—is that fair to say, Senator?—passes along the information it gets about subversives to the government officials who employ them. The FBI must have passed its information, dating back to 1939, to the State Department. How do you account for that, Senator? Well, I have an explanation. There are people in the State Department who take the same view in these matters as Paul Appleby, not so long ago an employee of the Bureau of the Budget.”

  He paused. Waiting for a reaction to the name Paul Appleby. He got none.

  “You know what he said? Mr. Appleby? He said—it’s in the Congressional Record, July 18, 1946—he said, ‘A man in the employ of the government has just as much right to be a member of the Communist Party as he has to be a member of the Democratic or Republican Party.’ What do you think of that statement, Senator?”

  Senator Benton raised his hand and began to speak, but McCart
hy did not pause. “And Chambers didn’t give just the name of Alger Hiss. He spoke of Lee Pressman and Nathan Witt and John Abt and Charles Kramer, among others. Some of them were still in government; all of them have been in government. None of them was ousted from government. Why didn’t the loyalty/security division of the State Department catch them? The State Department not only didn’t catch Hiss, it promoted Hiss. It was Hiss who presided at the opening session of the United Nations!”

  McCarthy looked about him. Two of the senators were reading their mail. But most of the rest were listening, and were silent. (“There are two kinds of silent senators,” McCarthy later told Jean Kerr at dinner. “There are the senators who are silent because they aren’t talking. And there are the senators who are silent because they are actually listening.”)

  He completed his discussion of Hiss and the State Department. “If an Alger Hiss can slip through the fingers of the State Department with that kind of incriminating evidence sitting around since 1939, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that there should be other Alger Hisses. How would we know?”

  The Senate recessed for lunch and resumed its session at two in the afternoon, to adjourn, finally, just before six.

  Sam Tilburn picked up his telephone in the Senate press gallery and dialed his boss, the editor of the Indianapolis Star. The Star was a part of the Eugene Pulliam chain. It had been cautiously receptive to McCarthy’s charges after Wheeling. Ed Reidy’s lead editorial had said,

  Intelligent Americans will simply deduce from the deteriorated position of the west that our policies have been misguided. Who guided them? We mean, obviously, below the glittering surfaces, where one deals with Presidents and Secretaries of State. Did any of our senior counselors have other motives in mind than the advancement of western interests? We believe that this is at the heart of Senator McCarthy’s contentions.