“That was a pretty good speech, in my judgment.” He turned to Hagerty, his press aide. “Jim, what’s the scoop on those Americans detained by Communists? Get that researched and let me have it.”
“Yes, General.”
“Oh, and let me have a briefing on my breakfast tomorrow with the Texas delegates.” Their support for Eisenhower was critical.
On Wednesday they came over to Ike’s rolling bandwagon, and the next day Dwight David Eisenhower was nominated for president.
38
JULY 4, 1953
Enter Robin Herrendon
Lincoln McNair, his seersucker jacket loose to let in what comfort he could in the heavy summer heat, leaned on the branch of the birch tree, his long arm outstretched. He’d have taken off his jacket anywhere else. Anywhere else, but not here, not at a White House party. He was chatting with Andrew Ely, administrative assistant to Republican majority leader Senator Robert Taft.
“I swear to you it’s true, Andrew, the day after the Korean war began—June 25, 1950—I looked down at the schedule for the next week and thought, Oh, my God, we’ve got to do something about that. A White House party while we’re at war? I put a note on President Truman’s desk and stayed in the room. He liked that—I know, I know, the guard has changed, but I can still say it was great back then. Mr. Truman liked to have a note summarizing your message, where that was possible. What I wrote was, ‘Sir, should we off-load the Fourth of July party on account of Korea?’ He raised his head and snapped out, ‘Don’t anybody here suggest eliminating the Fourth of July celebration. Pass that word out.’ So here we are, three years later under another administration, and I still get invited even though I work now for a lowly senator. Speaking of lowly senators, Andrew, why in the hell don’t you people curb that madman from Wisconsin? I mean, he’s been driving everybody crazy the whole time.”
“I accept that you people are crazy, Linc. Then you accept that our people drove you people out of the White House. What’s wrong with that? … What did you get to eat with Mr. Truman?” He swigged on his beer bottle.
Lincoln McNair was also drinking beer. “If FDR could serve hot dogs to the king and queen, Mr. Truman said in 1945 at his first Fourth of July party for congressional staff, I can serve beer in bottles. Now nobody thinks about champagne anymore.”
Andrew Ely accepted the challenge, if belatedly. “McCarthy has an, uh, emphatic way of putting things. But, Linc, if you will forgive me, you people screwed things up something awful, and it’s almost a relief to think that maybe some of that screwup was intentional. When cuckoo things happen, and under your ex-boss, at Fourth of July time, the North Koreans had all but swallowed up South Korea. The Red Chinese were egging them on—our European partners are all but ignoring us—Stalin’s successors are continuing to provision North Korea, in case the war resumes, using a lot of hardware we gave Stalin to fight a very different war with—. As I say, it would almost be a relief if we could figure out that somebody wanted it that way.”
“Good thing I’ve known you since Andover, Andrew. I might otherwise take offense. You’ve been reading too many of McCarthy’s speeches, is my guess. They seem to encourage Americans to believe that when things get bad it’s because we Democrats want them to get bad. But—to change the subject sharply: How’s Alice doing?”
“She really appreciated your note. Oh, Linc, have you met Senator McCarthy’s star aide, Harry Bontecou?” They hadn’t met. Harry extended a hand.
“Lincoln McNair, former administrative assistant to the president, administrative assistant to Senator Kennedy—Harry Bontecou, administrative assistant to the junior senator from Wisconsin.” McNair drew himself up from his slouch against the tree and extended his hand.
“How you doing, Harry? Better, I hope, than your boss.”
“My boss is okay; he isn’t so busy.” Harry grinned. “He hasn’t had to mobilize an army to cover for his mistakes.” The Korean war had quieted down, though peace negotiations continued.
“Hey, hey, kids, cut it out,” Ely interrupted. He spotted a friend. “Robin.” He signaled to the girl in yellow with the light brown hair. “Robin, you beautiful thing with the light brown hair, come here for a bit and keep these two brawlers separated.”
She was introduced, and her smile lit up the players, and soon they were talking and laughing together. Harry observed Robin with wonder. The sheer freshness, he thought—how to manage that in such heat! She didn’t have a beer bottle in her hand. Somehow such a combination was unimaginable. She had a Dixie cup with something dark in it. Coke, probably. “Let’s sit down for the fireworks,” she suggested. Lincoln McNair wandered off, looking for his wife at the far end of the Rose Garden.
“I got to get back to Alice,” Ely said. He blew a kiss at Robin, and nodded at Harry.
“Guess it’s you and me.” She smiled. “Okay?”
“Very okay.”
They sat down on two of the four hundred garden seats and saw the fireworks light up on the South Lawn, a twenty-minute display, the marine band playing Sousa music, rounds of applause as the firework sequence reached more and more exuberant heights and splendors. And at the end of it, sudden momentary dark. Quiet. Peace.
“Are you free for dinner?”
“Yes,” Robin said. “I feel very, wonderfully free.”
39
McCarthy vs. Kerr
Jean Kerr opened the door to Joe’s office. It was seven-thirty and he was conferring, collar open, tie askew, with Don Surine and Harry. The whole of five-foot-ten Jean Kerr, made even taller by her six inches of upswept bouffant hair, came into the room. She strode to Joe’s desk, slammed her folder of papers down, reared back, placed her hands on her waist, and hissed, “That’s it, Joe McCarthy. I told you what, ten times? Fifteen times that we had to be at Bazy’s at seven? But you can’t be there at seven because you have to find one more Communist in the Department of—of—Weights and Measures. I’ll call Bazy, tell her we’re not coming. While I’m at it I’ll tell her never mind being a bridesmaid at our wedding because there will be no wedding!”
She turned to Harry. “Hear that, Harry? Hear that, Don? There will be no wedding! Don’t you smile at me, Joe McCarthy. Go marry the Statue of Liberty, or whoever was your last informant. Go marry Freda Utley. Go marry—Mother Bloor!” She left the office, slamming the door.
“Oh, dear,” McCarthy said. He leaned over, picked up the phone, and roused the stand-in office operator.
“Midge, ring Mrs. Tankersley at home.”
Bazy Tankersley, the young niece of Colonel McCormick of Chicago, was the publisher of the Washington Times-Herald. That paper was a property of the Tribune Corporation, owners of the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune. The papers were presided over by maybe the country’s most indomitable right-winger, Colonel Robert McCormick. He had refused to back Eisenhower for president on the grounds that Eisenhower was too much of an internationalist, a liberal, an Anglophile.
“Hang on a minute,” Joe instructed Don and Harry as his phone rang.
“Bazy? Hello, doll. It’s Joe. Bazy, something’s come up, not something I’d want to discuss over the telephone—”
He paused to hear Bazy out.
“Well, Bazy, I can’t answer that, not for sure—I appointed J. B. Matthews chief committee aide because he’s a good man. Now, Bazy, listen, what happened is I’m here with my staff working on the deadline tomorrow, and Jeanie comes in. And Bazy, she is very upset because she told you we’d both be over there with you at seven. Now I could be there at eight-fifteen, but the problem, Bazy, is that Jeanie came in just now and she’s awfully sore. I can’t say I blame her. But you know, she’s all Irish, like her husband-to-be—”
He paused. Then,
“I know, I know, I’m really looking forward to married life with Jeanie, only there’s this problem. She said just now she’s not going to marry me. … Well I agree that’s silly. You know I adore your dinner parties, Bazy, but just because I’m
late for one of them shouldn’t mean my wedding is off, you think? … What can you do about it? Well, Jeanie lives only two minutes from here. Maybe if you could call her at home, and say … you know what to say, Bazy. And tell her I’m coming to your house direct from the office—I know you, Bazy. You’ll make everything okay before dark. Whoops! It’s dark already! Before midnight! Big kiss, Bazy.”
He leaned back in his chair. “We’d better wrap it up. Don, you pull together the J. B. Matthews business. Just stress the line I told you. Just because Matthews said in his article that the Protestant clergy were the—what words did he use?—”
Surine spoke the sentence.
What seemed like the whole Senate was in an uproar over the article by Matthews published in the American Mercury. The Republican sweep of 1952 had made McCarthy the chairman of the Government Operations Committee, and now he had nominated J. B. Matthews, the veteran expert on Communist front activity, as chief of staff. “What he wrote,” Don said, “was, ‘The largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States today is composed of Protestant clergymen.’ How do you want to handle it?”
“Just stick to what I said. Stress this: J. B. didn’t call any single Protestant minister a Communist. What he said strikes me as just plain obvious. A lot of people—well, not a lot of people, but some people—support socialism because they think it’s going to, you know, eliminate poverty, starvation, war, et cetera, et cetera. So they end up supporting Communist fronts. I mean—Harry, you probably saw this at college. I did: You start up a committee in favor of peace, and the pacifists and Protestant ministers flock in by the carload—”
Surine, ever patient, but resolute, interrupted him. “We know all that, Joe. I’ll get the statement ready for you in the morning.”
McCarthy got up. “Well, I’ve got a little diplomacy ahead of me tonight. Mary still here?” He pressed a button. Mary Haskell’s voice came in on the speaker.
“You keeping tabs on the wedding, Mary?”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Did Dulles accept?”
“Allen Dulles did, not John Foster.”
“Nixon?”
“Nothing yet.”
“He’ll come. … Miles McMillin?” He laughed.
“Joe,” Mary called him Joe when there was nobody else around. “You might want to know about Ross Biggers—Biggers. You know him, Fort Worth? Well, he is giving you and Jean as a wedding present a Coupe de Ville.”
“Hey, that sounds great. I never even drove a Cadillac.”
“But get this. He has paid for it by taking donations from his employees. It says here some gave twenty-five cents, a few one hundred dollars. It’ll be here when you get back from the honeymoon.”
“That’s really wonderful! I’ll tell Jeanie. If she decides to marry me!”
He clicked off the speaker and got up. “Good night, folks.”
“Good night, Joe.”
Don Surine took a deep breath. “Long day.” He picked up the intercom. “Mary, come on in here. We boys are yearning for a little female company and a deep breath of—deep breath of what, Harry?”
“Deep breath of Joe-absence!”
Mary had come in, sat down, and lit up a cigarette. She laughed. “Ray—”Don’s assistant was Ray Kiermas, office manager and Joe’s oldest friend in town, who had stopped by on his way out—”how many days since you stopped smoking?”
Kiermas, with his pince-nez glasses, tightened his tie and looked very solemn. He replied, “It depends, Mary, on how you count the days. Some people would say 205, others 81, others 57.”
They all laughed. Harry said to Don Surine, the former FBI agent, industrious researcher, utterly loyal to Joe and his cause, “Don, is it true you worked once for Senator Ralph Flanders?”
“For about three weeks. I was just out of the army, and you know, I’m from Vermont. I had to do something for the month I had before reporting to the bureau. The morning paper had a profile on Senator Flanders, said his Burlington office was immobilized because his aide there had a ruptured appendix. So I thought—why not? Arrived there at ten A.M., and he hired me at ten-fifteen.”
Ray: “Didn’t he ask you if you were a Communist?”
There was more laughter. But Mary decided the time had come to be stern. “Now cut it out, boys. This is serious stuff we’re into.” She was afraid she had sounded the schoolmistress. “I know you’re joking. Was Senator Flanders, well, you know, normal?”
“Wouldn’t think so after the kind of thing he says about McCarthy. But, to tell the truth, he was only in Burlington for two days during the few weeks I worked for him. I don’t remember his smiling ever, come to think of it.”
“He’s a mean man. I wonder if anybody ever told the junior senator from Vermont that Joe isn’t a mean man?”
“Well,” Harry smiled, “Jeanie thinks he’s a mean man.”
Mary got tough again. “Now, nobody here say anything about Jeanie except that you love her. Kiermas?”
“I love Jeanie.”
“Don Surine?”
“I love Jeanie.”
“Harry Bontecou?”
“I love Jeanie.”
“Okay, Mary.” Don yawned. “We’ve passed our loyalty tests. I’m going to the cafeteria for a sandwich or something. Anybody want to come?”
Jeanie was there, but when Joe walked in she most conspicuously did not greet him. At dinner for twelve she was seated, following her request to Bazy, as far from him as the table would allow. The conversation was animated and collegial. All ten guests were ardent backers of McCarthy, and Betty Lee, who was scheduled to be maid of honor, spoke excitedly about the event on September 29. “I bet the whole world will be there, Jean.”
Jean flushed and nodded her head aimlessly, without looking over at Joe.
So it went. By eleven o’clock Jeanie had cooled down, and at eleven-thirty, McCarthy drove her home. He promised he would tame his schedule.
“You always say that.”
“Well, but you know as well as anyone, Jeanie, the kind of things that come up. I mean, like the J. B. Matthews business. That’s taken hours and hours.”
“I love J. B.”
“And I love Ruth.” McCarthy spoke of Matthews’s scholarly, beautiful, and devoted wife.
“So you see how it is, Jeanie?”
“Do you really want to marry me?” Jean asked.
Joe knew the best way to answer her. He leaned over, left hand on the steering wheel, and kissed her fully on the lips.
40
Herrendon and the security check
Alex Herrendon found it hard to believe. As press aide to the British Embassy he regularly attended State Department briefings on trouble spots around the world, a courtesy extended to Washington representatives of all NATO powers. Now the letter, brought in by the ambassador, advised him that the privilege of attendance at these meetings was suspended, pending a more thorough investigation of Press Attache Herrendon’s security file.
If Herrendon wished to appear at the security hearing about himself, he was, as an accredited diplomat with the British Embassy, entitled to do so. The first paragraph of the State Department letter was clearly standard. The second said that Herrendon would be asked, specifically, to account for his association with the National Consumers League.
The National Consumers League! … He dimly remembered. It was sometime in the late thirties. Thirteen, fourteen years ago. His neighbor across the street in McLean-what was his name? Pacelli! “Same name as the pope,” he would tell you-was indignant over the cost of electricity and went around the Drury Park neighborhood collecting signatures for an organized consumer protest group against monopoly utilities. He had signed that paper for Pacelli in 1939. During the war, Herrendon did intelligence work for the War Ministry in London. It was after that, posted again to America, that he noticed—quite accidentally—that the House Committee on Un-American Activities had listed the National Consumers League as a Communist
front. Herrendon’s reaction, as given to an associate at the embassy, had been: For all I know, that’s what it was—a Communist front exploiting consumer resentments.
But of course that was pre-McCarthy.
He wasn’t exactly alarmed, but he was troubled. It would take a little time. Probably, for the hell of it, he should fish through his files to see if there had been any communications from the consumer people—the Communist consumer people—to whom he had paid no more than cursory attention. Which was a mistake.
But Alex was advised by Simon Budge, the British congressional liaison officer, to consult a lawyer. They spoke in his office, and Budge had a most visible hangover. The day before, he had married off his daughter to an American—Alex was at the wedding and had toasted the couple extravagantly.
“McCarthyism is a booming industry, Alexie-boy. It may become a major field of study in American law schools. Specialty? ‘Defense of federal employees or security-cleared foreigners who once belonged to a Communist front.’
“But—” Budge was now the negotiator “—the point is there are lawyers in town who specialize in this kind of thing. They know what questions are going to be asked. And they have a keen nose for smelling out whether the case is likely to metastasize to congressional committee investigation proportions. You’ve got a special problem, you know: You’ve got a high security clearance—and you were at Yalta.”
“Yes. Perhaps I was with Mr. Churchill’s staff to help him persuade Stalin to give better care to Russian consumers. On behalf of the consumers union.”
“I know, I know, Alex. But this is 1953, and McCarthyism reigns.” Budge put his hand theatrically over his mouth. “I mean,” he reduced his voice to a whisper, as if frightened to be overheard, “this is 1953, and McCarthyism reigns.”
Alex Herrendon laughed. “Very well. I’ll call over to the legal department and get somebody’s name.” He did so, reflecting on the irony of a British official calling on the U.S. State Department to recommend someone to shield him from the importunities of the U.S. State Department.
The Redhunter Page 26
