He went back to his whiskey bottle, but this time he paused to shake out some ice.
He was surprised, and comforted, to find his mind wandering a bit, wandering from Elinor—and wandering from Joe McCarthy. He looked over at his bookcase. He’d do a chapter from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was always, always instructive.
35
HANBERRY, 1991
Alex and Harry discuss espionage
“The criticism—”Alex Herrendon addressed his colleague Harry Bontecou—”is generally to the effect that McCarthy did not uncover espionage—”
“Which is true,” Harry said. “But that doesn’t mean espionage wasn’t going on—”
“I know. I engaged in it.”
Harry leaned back in his chair. “You can imagine, Alex, that I want to know about that. I don’t think it’s clear yet whether it belongs in your book about Western innocence/indifference to Communist cruelty. Or in mine about Joe McCarthy.”
Lord Herrendon cackled. He rang the buzzer for tea. “I suppose we can fight over it, but if you resisted me that would be—what? Parricidal?”
“Maybe you can shed light on this episode. I learned of it very very late, and only accidentally.”
“Did it have to do with Khrushchev’s ultimatum on Berlin?”
“No. It had to do with Korea.”
36
Two Soviet agents meet in Pennsylvania
The farmhouse nestled in the rolling farmland outside Hanover, two dozen miles from bloody Gettysburg. The little house near the barn was looking old, though not so old as to disclose its true age. It and the larger building were built just after the war of 1812. Then it was a dairy farm, and in 1950 it was still a dairy farm, though the efforts of Floyd Dunn to maintain it were listless, or had become listless since the death of his wife and the departure of his two children, from both of whom he was estranged. There were six cows and twenty acres of corn, a tractor, a prewar truck, and, in the main house, a kerosene heater and a winter’s supply of corn liquor. Floyd Dunn kept a picture of Madeleine, none of Bobby and Sara. He tried, every now and then, to train himself to blot them from memory, but he was cursed by the vision of them playing in the courtyard, or waiting for the school bus, or toiling over their homework before exams.
Then—it was as if it had all happened in one moment—suddenly Bobby went off to war. According to the letter from a fellow soldier, also a patient at the hospital, written to Floyd at Bobby’s request, Bobby was not coming home. “Not ever, Bobby says to tell you. So don’t look out for him.”
Floyd deduced that Bobby had been blinded, because a P.S. had been added by his friend (no name or address given). Bobby, the amanuensis wrote, had been “badly disfigured” when the explosive went off at Okinawa. Floyd Dunn figured that Bobby had not seen the P.S. written after the bitter dictation of the short text.
Mrs. Dunn was in the hospital at the time, dying of cancer. Floyd did not show her the letter, or tell her of it. Madeleine, in turn, had never spoken of Sara, not after Sara left home with “Little Bill,” as they used to call him (son of “Big Bill”)—after forging her father’s name at the bank and drawing out everything he had saved in ten years.
When Andy, his tenant farmer, died, Floyd was too old and tired to find another hand and start out all over again. He decided to quit. Floyd asked Cornell, the druggist in Hanover, his friend and everyone’s counselor, if he knew of anyone who might want to rent the little farmhouse. Cornell suggested Floyd place an ad in the weekly paper, and it was to that ad that Ned had responded.
Ned Johnson was young and athletically built. He had a brand-new car and arrived in it at the farmhouse to meet with his prospective landlord in the summer, without jacket or tie. But Floyd sized him up, knew instantly that Ned Johnson was a city dweller. Ned didn’t disguise this, but said he liked to “get away” to the countryside. Floyd guessed what that meant, and he was right. After they made the deal, Ned started coming in for weekends, often with the one girl, often with a different girl. But he came sometimes with a male friend. Sometimes he stayed over the weekend; occasionally he would appear and leave on the same day: Floyd didn’t care, and they didn’t see much of each other, but the check for forty-five dollars came in regularly, at the end of every month.
On this cold Monday in December, Ned drove in as Floyd was leaving the cow barn. They waved. An hour later another car drove in. Floyd looked hard at this friend of Ned’s, a tall, well-built man wearing a thin mustache. He wore a fedora and a heavy brown overcoat. Floyd’s memory flashed back to 1942, to the head of the draft board, who had checked Bobby in at the post office in Hanover that day, to catch the bus to the induction center. Wasn’t this man the head of the draft board? If so, might he know something about Bobby?
Impulsively, Floyd intersected the visitor.
“ ‘Scuse me. Were you, I mean, back in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor. Were you the head of the draft board? I thought I’d just ask something—”
“Sorry,” the visitor said. “That wasn’t me. I’m—from out of town.”
That was clear. Floyd had addressed someone with an English accent. “Sorry,” he said.
The visitor nodded his head with a quick smile and knocked on the door.
Inside, Ned had fired up the kerosene heater. He was stoking the log fire when Gabe opened the door. Ned greeted him, took his coat, and motioned him to the chair opposite. Gabe accepted the glass of sherry.
Ned had placed beans and sausage in the skillet and now put sliced bread in the toaster. Gabe moved his chair toward the fireplace. “You got something for me to read while you cook, Ned?”
Ned left the stove and drew from a briefcase two sheets of paper. They were stamped EYES ONLY TOP SECRET. The first was a memorandum from the president of the United States to the secretary of state, the second to the chairman of the joint chiefs.
The language was spare. Army prose, Gabe thought as he looked down the page. But in an instant his mind was engrossed by what the spare prose communicated. He was reading a precis of a meeting and decisions made by the president intended as an ultimatum to the Chinese Communists.
If they did not yield in their offensive against South Korea, the United States would resort to “maximum force, not excluding the use of a nuclear weapon” to repel the aggressor.
The final page was devoted to the need to keep the president’s decision utterly private.
“The likelihood of success in this major maneuver,” the president instructed the secretary of state,
depends on a direct communication of our ultimatum to the enemy, to whom we’ll speak using our access in Moscow, not our access in Tokyo. Our strategy here requires that there be no pressure on the White House either from our allies or from the public. Such pressures would build quickly and undermine the force of the ultimatum.
Gabe poured himself another glass of sherry.
“Jee-sus, Ned! I shan’t ask how you got ahold of this … steamer.”
“That’s right, Gabe. Don’t ask.” Ned brought over a plate of sausage and beans, a tomato, and two pieces of dry toast. He placed them at the end of the little table, getting a second plate for himself. “And I’m not going to write down how I got a copy of that memo, except maybe at Sing Sing the day before my execution. Speaking of which, you think they got the goods on the Rosenbergs?”
The reference was to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, arrested for stealing nuclear secrets as agents of the Soviet Union—a capital offense.
“Yes. I think they’ll, to use the picturesque American expression, fry. A risky business we’re in. The conviction of Alger Hiss in January stirred things up, all right, and McCarthy knows how to take advantage of it. The Meet the Press program with Lattimore didn’t help. … But the important thing: This memo has to get to our people right away.”
“Gabe,” as he was known to Ned, paused to think about strategy. He spoke as if to himself. “A counter-nuclear-threat campaign has got to build up bef
ore this threat is actually issued by Truman. Pressure—publicity—diplomatic pressure. If necessary, public pressure. That’s what we need to scare Truman off. We need pressure right away, right away.”
Ned was silent. Gabe would make that decision. Gabe was in his mid-forties. He had years of experience in diplomacy, in the manipulation of pressure. Ned waited for him to say more.
“What I’m thinking is, Shouldn’t we leak it? Like right away. Like—I’m serious—tonight? Moscow would take a day or two to act, and what they’ll do, obviously, is pass the word around and help crank up world opinion and public pressure. ‘TRUMAN PROPOSES NUKING CHINA.’ ”
Gabe stopped. He thought through alternatives. Ned did not interrupt him. “ … We could—tonight, I’m thinking—leak it to Paris and London, which is exactly what Bibikoff is sure to do—what Stalin is sure to tell him to do. But that would take two days minimum. There’s no way of knowing, but it’s possible Truman would deliver the ultimatum in less than two days.”
Gabe paused again. He knew that Ned would have to concur in the decision. Gabe was senior, but in this situation, nothing could be done to jeopardize the man who came in with the secret. His own security as espionage agent was an overruling priority. But Gabe continued. “On the other hand, leaking it ourselves does have risks. I put it to you: Are you confident there’s no way they can connect you up in this, Ned?”
“To get that memo I took a chance I wouldn’t ordinarily take.”
“Well, on that point: Where are you supposed to be, like right now?”
“I’m theoretically meeting this afternoon with … someone at ECA. I got cover there.”
“Where did you develop the film? Usual way?”
Ned nodded and put a fork to his beans. “I don’t know, Gabe. No point in mailing it on over. It would take three days to arrive. We could radio it using SamVox, delivery tonight. Bigger risk, but it’s an awfully big item.”
They were both silent. Gabe spoke up. “My recommendation is that we use SamVox in Brooklyn. I can’t be away for the length of time it takes to get—him—to make the contact print, get to Brooklyn and back, and give instructions. We’ll have to use a courier. I can get this to Basil by,” he looked at his watch, “six. He can be in Brooklyn at eleven. SamVox can have it in Moscow, Moscow time, at dawn.”
Ned agreed. “That’s the way to go. And it gets done outside of Washington, which suits me just fine.”
The beans and conversation were on Monday. On Wednesday afternoon, Her Majesty’s Government announced that Prime Minister Attlee would fly from London on the following morning to confer with President Truman.
The morning of Attlee’s flight, reports appeared in Stockholm, Paris, and London that President Truman was considering a nuclear ultimatum to China designed to contain its offensive in South Korea.
There was immediate speculation that the purpose of the unscheduled Attlee trip was to dissuade President Truman from threatening any use of the atom bomb in the Korean conflict. The whole of the intelligentsia of the Western world mobilized overnight, it seemed, in a chorus opposing any use of atomic weaponry: “Not even as a hypothetical threat,” Walter Lippmann, the premier American solon, wrote solemnly in his syndicated column.
Attlee’s plane had taken off from London at noon—seven A.M., Washington time. At ten A.M. the president was asked at his regular news conference to comment on reports that he had threatened the use of the bomb.
Truman said that while his deliberations with his generals were private, he could certainly say that no such alternative had ever been considered.
37
AUGUST 1952
The GOP Convention nominates Eisenhower
General Eisenhower didn’t like it at all when he was shown the speakers’ roster for the 1952 GOP Convention. What he especially did not like was the positioning of McCarthy for a prime-time speech. He addressed his complaint to the manager of his campaign, Sherman Adams, governor of New Hampshire.
“General,” the gruff New Englander said to him, “you don’t control the Republican Party. Maybe you will a week from now. But between now and then you have to defeat Senator Taft for the party nomination. Right now, Taft controls the party—and the convention, and he okayed McCarthy.”
Dwight Eisenhower was prepared to make critical concessions in return for securing the nomination. He had cleared the choice of Senator Richard Nixon of California as running mate. Richard Nixon’s identification with the party faithful was as: the man who flushed out Alger Hiss. As such he had been the premier anti-Communist in Congress, until Joe McCarthy came in. Eisenhower could hope, with Nixon on the ticket, to carry California and the mighty Midwestern states so much alive to the Communist issue.
The keynote speaker was to be General Douglas MacArthur, the august hero of World War II and the Korean war, dismissed by President Truman in April of 1951, an act of enormous political consequence. MacArthur was the greatest living American orator, and his speech was greatly anticipated. “The Democrats want to see how he’s going to play the Communist question,” Adams told Ike, who, as a major, had served as personal assistant to MacArthur in Manila in 1939.
MacArthur was not ambiguous in his keynote address on the matter of U.S. diplomacy. He denounced “those reckless men who, yielding to international intrigue, set the stage for Soviet ascendancy as a world power and our own relative decline.”
Eisenhower, in his hotel suite with a half dozen of his staff, watched intently the following day when time came for McCarthy to address the convention. He was introduced by temporary convention chairman Walter Hallanan of West Virginia.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the convention,” Hallanan said, “the Truman-Acheson administration, the Communist press, and the fellow travelers have all joined hands in a gigantic propaganda campaign to discredit and destroy an able and patriotic United States senator because he had the courage to expose the traitors in our government.” Applause. “Let us make it clear to the country here today and now that we turn our backs on Alger Hiss but that we will not turn our backs on any man such as that fighting marine from Wisconsin whom I now present to this convention, the Honorable Joseph McCarthy.” Great applause.
Eisenhower turned to Adams. “You say Taft controls the convention. Looks like McCarthy controls it.”
The Eisenhower contingent watched the big television screen as McCarthy entered the convention hall, walking slowly to take and shake proffered hands. The band played “On Wisconsin” and the marine corps hymn.
On the platform, Senator McCarthy lost little time in hitting his theme. The Truman administration, he told the convention, was trying to hold back Communism “in the Acheson-Lattimore fashion of hitting them with a perfumed silk handkerchief at the front door while they batter our friends with brass knuckles and blackjacks at the back door.” The crowd cheered and yelled. It was a minute and more before McCarthy could resume his tongue-lashing of the administration.
“Wait till you hear his closing lines,” Adams warned General Eisenhower, an advance text of the speech on his lap. “They’re powerful.”
McCarthy preceded his peroration by introducing on the floor Robert Vogeler, who as an executive of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company had been arrested by the Communist government in Hungary on bogus charges of spying and kept in jail for seventeen months. Mrs. Vogeler, who had been a beauty queen in Belgium, had petitioned for intervention by the secretary of state. She arrived at Mr. Acheson’s office, but was not given a hearing. She coped with this bureaucratic intransigence by reappearing every morning at nine A.M., filing her petition with the receptionist, and staying until the office closed. She did this for several consecutive months until her visitation became a news event. The great diplomatic machinery began finally to clank, and Vogeler was let out of jail. But there were other Americans detained by Communist governments.
“Mr. Truman says there is nothing wrong in the State Department,” McCarthy went on. “He says everythin
g is just fine; he has actually said that if anyone hears of anything wrong, just call him collect and he personally will take care of things.”
The pause was dramatic. Where was Senator McCarthy going to take that opening?
McCarthy’s voice was suddenly thunderous, demanding, frustrated. “Mr. Truman, your telephone is ringing tonight. Five thousand Americans are calling, calling from prison cells deep inside Russia and her satellite nations. They are homesick, Mr. Truman. They are lonely and maybe a little afraid. Answer your telephone, Mr. Truman. It will be interesting to hear what you have to say. Some of them haven’t heard an American speak for years.
“But, Mr. Truman, they are getting a busy signal on your line. They will call Washington again; they will call again when the American people are through with you, Mr. Truman, and through with the Achesons, the Jessups, and the Lattimores.”
This brought on an eruption from delegates transfixed by what they heard, their great resources of indignation over Communist practices tapped. McCarthy’s closing had, word for word, been heard by everyone who had heard him speak in the past two years. It was his standard closing. It began, “My good friends, I say one Communist in a defense plant is one Communist too many.” And ended, “And even if there were only one Communist in the State Department, that would still be one Communist too many.”
McCarthy received a standing ovation.
Everyone in the suite looked at Eisenhower for his response.
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