The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley

  He told the police he would not prefer a complaint but he thought himself entitled to knowledge of where Tracy Allshott lived and worked. The sergeant, making notes, agreed to forward him the information.

  He saw the two policemen out, Allshott logy, head bowed, following them. Harry dreaded the thought of a long evening devoted to the Gillette hearings. But the research had to be done, and Joe was right that Harry had to do it. No one, except maybe Don and Jean, knew better than Harry what Joe McCarthy did—every day, every week, every month. Harry wished Joe would slow down a bit. He was at it all day long and most of the night, going over the files, speaking on the telephone, preparing final versions of his speeches. He was acting often on a sixth sense. Reviewing a file he’d say to Harry: “I’d bet anything this guy is just plain on the other side. Look at that front record.” Then, maybe at one in the morning, he’d say, “Harry, let’s have a drink, and maybe just four rounds of draw poker.” He would pull out the poker chips he kept in the bottom drawer and open the little office refrigerator Mary had given him for Christmas.

  Harry remembered the night in February. Tom Coleman was wintering in Arizona and Joe had been given Coleman’s ample house in Madison to stay in. Again it was one in the morning and Harry was working on the speech Joe would deliver the following night at the convention of the Dairy Council. It would be an important speech, with two special tables reserved for his Wisconsin backers.

  Finally, Harry said, “I’ve got to go to sleep, Joe.”

  “Fine. What time do you want me to wake you?”

  Harry yawned. “If you wake me at seven, I can get it done all right.”

  Harry slept deeply, and when he heard the knock on the door he groaned. Joe was standing outside in his dressing gown with a tray and a hot cup of coffee.

  “Thanks, Joe.” Harry yawned, grabbing his own robe and heading down the stairs to the study and his typewriter.

  “Before you start in, Harry, let me show you something very exciting.”

  Joe bent down on the floor. He had spread out a large map of China. “Look at this,” Joe said on his hands and knees. “That railroad line, Peking to Shanghai. It is the only railroad line coming into Shanghai.”

  “So?” Harry, sipping his coffee, leaned down to view it.

  “If a beachhead were established by the Nationalist Chinese in Shanghai and the railroad was bombed—interdicted—that beachhead could become the capital of the resistance movement. This is a can-do proposition, Harry!”

  Harry looked over to the wall clock. He rubbed his eyes. The clock said the time was 3:15. He checked his own watch. “Goddamnit, Joe, it’s three-fifteen in the morning!”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m really sorry about that. But I just couldn’t keep it to myself, the idea—I’m talking about the liberation of China!”

  Harry turned to the staircase. “Make that call for eight o’clock, Joe.”

  It was a tough job, Harry said to himself as he switched on the coffeepot with his left hand, turning the pages on the Gillette-Monroney questionnaire. But goddamnit, Bontecou. Stop complaining. I’m riding with a great historical figure. McCarthy’s not the kind of person who would have permitted Keelhaul—those were Erik Chadinoff’s words to him only last week. Willmoore Sherrill had published a paper backing McCarthy. James Burnham’s The Web of Subversion, giving a scholar’s reading of the systematic infiltration of government by the Communists, was on the presses. The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee had scheduled extensive hearings on the Institute of Pacific Relations, the primary academic support system for the Chinese Communists. Its dominating presence—Owen Lattimore.

  Harry had to do what he could. He brought his coffee and a banana to the coffee table and began reading the Gillette-Monroney complaints.

  45

  Acheson collects McCarthyana, 1953

  Dean Acheson was cutting up newspapers in his law office at Covington and Burling. However fastidiously he discharged his duties as a practicing lawyer, his mind was on other things, not least his reputation as secretary of state during the last four years of Harry Truman’s presidency. His daily stimulant—“If you can call it that,” he remarked to his partner and close friend Harold Epison, “the daily ingestion of poison I inflict on myself—”was what he referred to with some scorn as “the McCarthy page” in the morning’s newspaper. He had been reluctant to evidence a formal interest in the unspeakable senator. But in fact he read all references to him and, though only when out of sight, collected choice items voraciously. He had taken to scissoring out clippings from newspapers (when his secretary wasn’t in the room) and tossing them into his briefcase. But after a few weeks he decided that it would be better to undertake his project in a more orderly way. That was when he told his secretary, “Miss Gibson, it is possible that when I do my memoirs I shall have in them a chapter on the … grotesqueries of Senator McCarthy. For that reason, I shall ask you to clip out of the papers those articles or editorials I designate with the initial M. These are to be clipped and put in a manila folder, in the bottom drawer—”he pointed down from where he sat—”over there.”

  Day after day, week after week, month after month, the folder grew in size. The methodical Mr. Acheson took to classifying the entries according to his estimate of their ranking. “M-O-3” parsed as “McCarthy-Outrageous-3rd level.” “M-P-1” parsed as “McCarthy-Preposterous-1st level.” He had other categories, including “T” (for treasonable) and “L” (for laughable). He also reserved a classification for criticisms of McCarthy that he especially savored. His very favorites earned, as one would expect, a “1,” whence “M-C-1.” Such a discovery in a morning paper would put him in a very good mood, and sometimes he would even drop a quick note of commendation to the author. When Senator Benton said of McCarthy that he was a “hit-and-run propagandist of the Kremlin model,” Mr. Acheson had filed the remark as an M-C-2 and dropped a note to Benton, “Bill, nice score today on McMenace. Well done.”

  This morning’s reference to McCarthy by Drew Pearson in his column had caused him to glow. “What he is trying to do is not new. It worked well in Germany and in Russia; all voices except those officially approved were silenced in those lands by intimidation.” But he decided against dropping a note to Pearson. He would not wish to run the risk of Pearson’s quoting him. He could hardly countenance any public appearance of an ongoing contention between Dean Good-erham Acheson/ Yak/ Secretary of State and Joe McCarthy/ Chicken Farmer/ Marquette—wherever Marquette was—/ Junior Senator from—a state that had lost its senses.

  He had dined the week before with defeated Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. Dean Acheson enjoyed the company of Stevenson but thought him indecisive. Acheson relished the story Adlai had told him, over drinks at the Metropolitan Club, about the dinner with President Truman. The president was then living across the street at Blair House, while the White House was being rebuilt. Truman had summoned him when Stevenson was still governor of Illinois.

  “I walked in the door, and the president said, I mean just after barely saying hello, he said, ‘Adlai, I want you to run for president. You should announce the third week in April’—this dinner was in January 1952, Dean—‘and say that you will seek a leave of absence as governor of Illinois.’

  “I told him I was very flattered by the suggestion, but that I was committed to run for reelection as governor of Illinois—”

  “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t even acknowledge what I had said. He went on and talked about this and that but at dinner repeated exactly the same instructions—I was to run for president, announce the third week in April, et cetera. I gave him the same answer. After dinner he walked me to the door and, you guessed it, said the identical thing one more time, and I gave back the identical answer. Then you know what he said, Dean? ‘The trouble with you, Adlai, is you’re so indecisive!’“

  They both laughed.

  Then Acheson had looked up.

  “You know, Adl
ai, the president was quite correct; you are indecisive.”

  But at least Adlai wasn’t equivocal about McCarthy. Acheson had given an M-C-1 to Adlai’s designation of McCarthyism before the press club as a “hysterical form of putrid slander” and as “one of the most unwholesome manifestations of our current disorder.”

  When Harold Epison came into the office of his senior colleague just after five, it was in order to spend an hour on the appeal he was shepherding to the appellate division on behalf of their client, the Kingdom of Iran. But he began by asking Dean whether he had seen the reference to McCarthy—”I caught it in the New York Daily News, which I sometimes see. It wasn’t in any of the Washington papers—”by Owen Lattimore?

  No, Acheson hadn’t seen it.

  “Somebody apparently asked Lattimore after a speech what he thought of McCarthy. He said—I have this in memory, Dean!—McCarthy is “a base and miserable creature.”

  “That is a thoughtful summary,” Acheson said. He then paused. “Rather a pity it was done by Owen Lattimore. He is not exactly a disinterested party on the McCarthy question. As a matter of fact, Harold—obviously to go no further—it hurts me to say this—I think that miserable creature was substantially right on Lattimore. … But that hardly vitiates the soundness of Lattimore’s summary on McCarthy.” He made a mental note to write down Lattimore’s characterization and slip it into his folder.

  “You may be interested to know, Harold, that a few Republicans, who are well situated, think McCarthy has gone far enough.”

  “Surely the question is, What does Ike think?”

  Acheson turned his heard slowly, as if to say that the words he would now say were sacredly confidential.

  “He is, I am, I think, reliably informed, prepared to move. … That is enough on that subject.”

  “I agree, Dean. How’re you getting on with your book?”

  “I write every night, five times a week. I try to do five hundred words a day.”

  “Have you got a title for it yet?”

  “Yes. I’m going to call it A Democrat Looks at His Party. We’ve lost a lot of spirit in the Democratic Party in the year since Ike came in. Of course there’s a lot of disequilibrium in the country. You will find, Harold, that this is always so after a society completes a major effort—in this case, winning a world war. Churchill’s defeat was a symptom of that kind of—letting your breath out. The surprise here was that Mr. Truman defeated Dewey. But that also meant that the opposition never got a chance to exercise its muscles. Not until Ike’s victory in 1952.”

  “So your book is intended to do what?”

  “To put the Democratic Party back on its feet, as the civilized party, the intelligent party. A worthwhile project, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Of course. But you know, Dean, I hope you will confront head-on the foreign-policy problem. I agree with everything you say about Senator McCarthy. You know that. But it is a fact that we had to fight a war in Korea that President Eisenhower ended—”

  “Yes. The war ended officially five months after Eisenhower was elected—and three months after Stalin died.”

  “Dean, you are being the advocate now. We Democrats did get into that war, we did—I know you hate that word—’lose’ China—”

  “You are correct that we have to focus very carefully on what is happening in the Soviet Union. We don’t know what the triumvirate that’s in power now, Khrushchev, Bulganin—I continue to refer to it as a triumvirate, though they executed Beria a week ago, good riddance. What the successors to Stalin are going to do we don’t know, but there are no signs they are giving up their commitment to rule the world. But yes, I am ready to say this, with great care: I will show you the draft of that chapter. I will say that it is correct that the Communists can’t be allowed to go any further. Well, didn’t Mr. Truman say that? By engaging them in Korea?

  “But the challenge will be to distinguish between the right kind of anti-Communism and McCarthy’s anti-Communism. A big difference. Harold, did you see what Henry Reuss said about McCarthy the other day? Reuss was a Democratic contender against McCarthy in 1952, you may remember. I think I may just have a copy of the clipping.”

  Acheson leaned over and pulled out the bottom left drawer on his desk. “He said, Reuss said, ‘Senator McCarthy is a tax-dodging, character-assassinating, racetrack-gambling, complete and contemptible liar.”

  Acheson’s face brightened. He gave the closest he ever gave to a giggle. “I wish I had said that, Harold.”

  46

  Herrendon decides to act

  The morning paper, left as usual on the steps of the house in Georgetown by the delivery car, was scooped up by Robin before her father’s appearance that Sunday morning. (“He likes to ‘sleep in’ on Sundays,” Robin had told Harry. She pronounced the words “sleep in” as her father did, with a trace of discomfort and resignation. Alex had spent many years in America but scrupulously avoided “vernacular argot,” as he once described any idiomatic expression that came into use after his graduation from Columbia in 1926.)

  “I leafed through the paper, sipping my coffee. Then I saw it. I panicked,” she told Lucy McAuliffe, her friend and confidante at Senator McMahon’s office.

  “What did you do?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it. I actually thought of destroying that whole section of the paper and hoping Dad wouldn’t notice. Fat chance I’d get away with it. He might not notice the missing section of the paper. But there must be ten girls my age in the Brit/ State/DOD departments he works with, girls I’ve known and still do. Somebody is going to pass the word around that it was me with Senator McCarthy at the racetrack. I don’t know how many people would tease my dad about it, but I can guess somebody would. What I did do was pull a jacket out of the closet and walk into the street. I decided I needed to give him time. I didn’t want to be right there at the kitchen table while he was reading the paper. I walked to the Lauinger library and tried to start in on War and Peace.”

  “War and Peace? I’m surprised you’re not still there. So then what?”

  “Lucy. In July you told me you wanted to get a roomier place to live in but needed a roommate for the second bedroom. Is that offer still open?”

  Lucy was agreeably surprised. “Not only open, I’ve actually seen an apartment perfect for two people, two hundred twenty-five dollars, that’s one hundred twelve-fifty each—oh. It was that bad with your father?”

  Robin nodded. A tear came to her eye.

  “I couldn’t understand his vehemence. He went on and on about Senator McCarthy. Then he said that the photograph in the paper would make him the laughingstock of the embassy—I mean, he went on and on. He finally said—this was after maybe an hour—I mean in just these exact words, ‘Robin. I want you to promise me not to see Harry again.’ ”

  She turned her head away. Lucy waited.

  “I went to my room. And this morning I left for work early. We passed each other without talking. It’s never been that way with Daddy. So I remembered what you said about looking for an apartment. It’s a perfect time anyway, because Daddy has to go to London at the end of the week. When could we move in?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Lucy went out to the public telephone. Senator McMahon did not permit office phones to be used for personal calls. She was back in a few minutes, smiling broadly. But she checked herself.

  “I shouldn’t be happy over your bad news. But the happy answer is we can move in tomorrow.”

  Robin thought carefully about how to manage leaving. There would be no point in a dramatic removal of all her clothes and belongings. She would insert into a large suitcase everything she’d need for a few days. Then wait to move her wardrobe until her father had left. She hoped that in the few days remaining before his departure he would soften his opposition to Harry.

  It didn’t help that the morning’s headlines carried updates on two lawsuits against Senator McCarthy, the first by columnist Drew Pearson, the second by
former Senator Tydings. The first charged libel and slander and asked for five million one hundred thousand dollars. In the second, Millard Tydings charged that in the campaign for reelection he had lost in 1950, Senator McCarthy and his aide Don Surine had: 1) libeled Tydings, 2) violated Maryland’s voting practices laws, and 3) knowingly distributed a photograph of Communist Party head Earl Browder arm in arm with Senator Tydings, an alleged forgery. McCarthy’s comment to the press was to the effect that he was surprised Earl Browder wasn’t suing, to protest his picture alongside “the late Senator Tydings.” Alex Herrendon cut the clipping out of the paper and put it in an envelope for Robin, with the note, “Does your boyfriend also give the senator legal advice?”

  Three days after settling down with Lucy at Eighteenth and M, Robin steeled herself to call her father. She was astonished by the continuing intensity of his concern.

  “Are you still seeing … seeing the McCarthy aide?” He sensed what the answer would be.

  “Yes, Daddy, I am. I do wish you’d just—just agree to meet him.”

  “He is not to come within ten feet of my—of our—house.”

  Robin hung up.

  She was crying. She didn’t call her father to wish him a safe journey.

  Lucy giggled when, two weeks after they had installed themselves in the apartment, she pulled out from her briefcase the “Roommate Protocols,” a mimeographed sheet someone, somewhere, had dreamed up. She posted it in the bathroom she shared with Robin. It read,

  Whereas——and——have agreed to take up joint residence at——, it is hereby agreed between the parties,

  THAT checks for the succeeding month’s rent will be left in an envelope on the letter tray (if none exists, purchase one) on the 25th of every month, marked “Rent money.”

  THAT——will wash all dishes left in the kitchen from the day before on even days of the month, and——will wash all dishes left in the kitchen from the day before on odd days of the month.