What Joe didn't know was that the Army, in response to the information that Peress had failed to address the question, had ordered in mid-January that the dentist be discharged. The officers involved with the discharge hoped to avoid publicity, so it would be an honorable one. Peress was given ninety days to select the date on which he would leave the Army. At first he planned to depart on March 31, but after testifying before McCarthy's subcommittee, he changed his mind. Fearing further pressure from Joe, the dentist asked for immediate re-lease, and the Army granted his request on February 2.
That same day, Joe followed up on his statement to reporters and sent a letter by messenger to Army Secretary Stevens. He said he would be launching a full inquiry into the Peress case. Once again he urged that the dentist be court-martialed. He was too late; the Army had already announced Peress's honorable discharge.
Joe was outraged when he heard the news. He told Roy Cohn, "When they [the Army] want to move fast, they can shuffle those papers faster than you can see them." Later, at a news conference, he accused the Army of "highly improper conduct," and said it only made him more determined to pursue the case. Army Secretary Stevens, not wanting to be upstaged, promised that he would personally investigate the circumstances surrounding Peress's honorable discharge.
Dentist Irving Peress works on a patient in his pre-Army days. The original photo was altered, but why, when, and by whom are not known. The National Archives
In the meantime, Roy Cohn had continued to badger the Army about David Schine. By then every phone call he made to Army Secretary Stevens or Army counsel John G. Adams was being recorded. Back in January, presidential aide Sherman Adams had been informed of Cohn's relentless pressure on top Army officials. Adams summoned counsel Adams (no relation) to his office and advised him to keep a detailed chronological record of Cohn's calls and other actions on behalf of Schine. The presidential aide said such a record might prove a useful weapon against McCarthy if he persisted in his investigations of the Army and tried to expand them.
President Eisenhower's name didn't enter the conversation, but counsel Adams understood that he must have given his approval to Sherman Adams's initiative. Eisenhower had devoted his life to the Army. He wasn't about to stand by and let Joe McCarthy question the loyalty of its dedicated officers and enlisted men. At the same time, the president was well aware of the senator's favorable poll numbers and his popularity with the Republican base. He might think twice about confronting Joe directly, but he could fight McCarthy in other ways—by keeping a record of Roy Cohn's damaging phone calls, for one.
Joe, meanwhile, was more determined than ever to pursue his investigation of Irving Peress. But before launching its next phase, he and Jean embarked on an eight-day tour of the country, sponsored by the Republican National Committee. During the tour, Joe made a number of Lincoln Day speeches, starting with one in Charleston, West Virginia—the state where, four years earlier, he had given the speech on Communists in government that brought him instant fame.
Joe was greeted by enthusiastic crowds wherever he went, and he responded with fire-breathing rhetoric. "The fact is," he said in one speech, "that those who wear the label 'Democrat' wear it with the stain of historic betrayal; wear it with the corrosion of unprecedented corruption; wear it with the blood of dying men who crawled up the hills of Korea." But more immediate matters were never far from his mind. At a news conference in San Francisco, he said he wouldn't be satisfied until "each and every Army officer" who had been involved in granting an honorable discharge to Irving Peress, "a Fifth Amendment Communist," was court-martialed. After finishing the tour in Dallas, Joe and Jean vacationed briefly in Mexico with Texas oil millionaire Clint Murchison. Then they flew to New York, where the public hearing on Irving Peress was scheduled to begin on February 18.
At about the same time, Roy Cohn was getting nowhere with his attempts to have the Army assign David Schine to duty in or near New York City after he completed basic training. First Cohn was told no, that Schine would probably be sent from Fort Dix to a school at Camp Gordon, Georgia. There the private would enter an eight-week course of study, at the end of which he would qualify as an assistant criminal investigator. Cohn asked repeatedly if Schine would be assigned to a post in New York after he graduated, but none of the officials he talked to seemed to know. Then word came that the initial information Cohn had been given was incorrect; Schine would need to spend five months in the school at Camp Gordon, not eight weeks. And after the course ended, there was a good chance he would not receive a New York assignment but would be sent abroad for a lengthy tour of duty in Europe.
At that point, Cohn lost all control. He accused the Army of double-crossing him and said he would not stand for it. Then he went further, reminding his listeners of the power he wielded as Joe McCarthy's chief deputy. He could "wreck the Army," he said, and make sure that Robert Stevens was "through as Army Secretary."
This was risky business, since Joe had not expressed any strong feelings about David Schine in his conversations with Stevens and other military personnel. McCarthy had supported Cohn's request that Schine be given an assignment in New York so that he could contribute to the work of the subcommittee, but he had not made it seem like an urgent issue.
Certainly not as urgent as the charges pending against Dr. Irving Peress.
21. Grilling General Zwicker
JOE DIDN'T SPEND much time questioning Irving Peress. When the dentist's public hearing began in New York's federal court on February 18, Joe turned his fire on the Army for granting Peress an honorable discharge. He summoned the officer who had signed the discharge to appear in court that afternoon and gave the Army twenty-four hours to hand over a list of all military personnel who had played a role in the case. "I think here you have the key to the deliberate Communist infiltration of our armed forces," Joe intoned. "And the men responsible for the honorable discharge of a Communist are just as guilty as the man who belongs to the conspiracy himself."
When John Adams, the Army counsel, interrupted Joe's rambling attack to try to answer a question the senator had raised, McCarthy cut him short. "John, I will not take any double-talk, any evasion on this."
During a recess, Adams released to reporters a letter Army Secretary Stevens had written to Joe on February 16. Stevens had pledged that thereafter no members of the armed forces would receive promotions if they refused to answer questions regarding their loyalty. Nor would they be granted honorable discharges. When asked by the reporters why Peress had been promoted when he was under investigation, Adams acknowledged that he shouldn't have been. But, he added, the Army's inquiry into Peress's past affiliations had failed to uncover the kind of solid evidence that would be needed to justify a court-martial.
Joe flatly rejected the idea that the Army lacked enough evidence to court-martial Peress. "That is a completely incorrect statement," the senator said. He intimated that Secretary Stevens must have been "misinformed," or had signed a letter composed by others, "perhaps holdovers from the previous administration."
Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker. The Library of Congress
That afternoon the scheduled witness at a closed hearing was Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, commander of Fort Kilmer, where Irving Peress had been stationed. Zwicker, a graduate of West Point, had served in the infantry during World War II. He had led a special reconnaissance unit during the D-Day landings in France, had commanded an infantry regiment during the deadly Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944–45, and had received many military honors for his bravery. After the war, Gen. Eisenhower publicly commended Zwicker, and he rose steadily through the ranks of the Army. He was promoted to brigadier general in March 1953, four months before being assigned to run Camp Kilmer.
Most people saw Ralph Zwicker as a model professional soldier. To McCarthy, however, the general was the man who had first promoted Irving Peress and then given him an honorable discharge. And Joe showed Zwicker no mercy during the hearing.
; The general began by trying to explain that he had had nothing to do with the Army's decisions concerning Peress. The dentist's promotion to major resulted from an amendment in the doctors' draft law and applied to more than 7,000 Army doctors and dentists. The order to give the dentist an honorable discharge hadn't been made by Zwicker either. It had originated at First Army Headquarters in New York and had come down to the general to carry out.
Joe would have none of these explanations. "Don't be coy with me, General," he said. "Don't you give me double-talk." McCarthy went on to outline a hypothetical situation that he claimed was identical to the one Zwicker had faced with Major Peress. Would the general have granted an honorable discharge to a soldier if he had learned at the last minute that the man was a thief who had stolen fifty dollars? Would he have given an honorable discharge to a soldier whom he knew to be "a part of the Communist conspiracy," as he had to Major Peress?
Flustered, Zwicker said again that he had "no authority to retain him [Peress] in the service." He added, "I was never officially informed by anyone that he was a part of the Communist conspiracy, Mr. Senator."
Joe ignored this and returned to the hypothetical theft.
MCCARTHY: Would you tell us, General, why fifty dollars is so much more important to you than being part of a conspiracy to destroy a nation which you are sworn to defend?
GEN. ZWICKER: Mr. Chairman, it is not, and you know that as well as I do.
MCCARTHY: Yes, I do know it. That is why I cannot understand you sitting there, General, a general in the Army, and telling me that you could not, would not, hold up his discharge.
Joe kept on grilling Zwicker relentlessly, demanding to know how a hypothetical general—one who had acted the way Zwicker had acted in the Peress case—should be treated. At last Joe reached the ultimate question: "Should he [the general] be removed from the military?"
Zwicker answered without hesitation. "He should by all means be kept if he were acting under competent orders to separate [discharge] that man."
Joe brushed aside the general's answer and persisted in holding him responsible for the decision to discharge Peress. Once again he asked: "Do you think the general who originated the order decreeing the separation—do you think he should be kept in service?"
Zwicker tried to be logical in his reply. First, he said, the question was hypothetical and didn't really apply to the Peress case. And even if it did, it would not be for him to decide. That decision would be up to the Army high command....
McCarthy jumped in before Zwicker had finished, demanding to know the general's personal opinion.
MCCARTHY: You will answer that question, General, unless you take the Fifth Amendment. I do not care how long we stay here, you are going to answer it.
GEN. ZWICKER: Do you mean how I feel about Communists?
MCCARTHY: I mean exactly what I asked you, General, nothing else. And anyone with the brains of a five-year-old can understand that question. The reporter [court stenographer] will read it to you as often as you need to hear it so that you can answer it, and then you will answer it.
GEN. ZWICKER: Start it over, please.
The reporter repeated the entire question, ending with: "Do you think he should be removed from the military?"
GEN. ZWICKER: I do not think he should be removed from the military.
MCCARTHY: Then, General, you should be removed from any command. Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to general and who says, "I will protect another general who protected Communists," is not fit to wear that uniform, General. I think it is a tremendous disgrace to the Army.
Then Joe dismissed Gen. Zwicker, ordering him to reappear the following Tuesday.
The general returned to Camp Kilmer, furious at the way McCarthy had insulted and humiliated him. He wrote out a report on the hearing and sent it to the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense. General Matthew B. Ridgway, who had returned from Korea and was now chief of staff, read Zwicker's report and was outraged at the way one of his officers had been treated. He brought the report to the immediate attention of Army Secretary Stevens.
Stevens reacted with equal fury to Zwicker's account. He issued an order that no Army officer, including Zwicker, should appear in future before McCarthy's subcommittee. Then he called Joe personally to inform him of the order.
McCarthy did not take Stevens's announcement calmly. According to insiders, the senator started shouting, and the Army secretary responded in kind. At last, Joe asked Stevens if he himself would accept a subpoena to testify. "I'll take the matter under consideration," the Army secretary said, to which Joe replied, "Well, then, consider yourself under subpoena!" And he hung up. That evening, Army officials informed the press that Stevens would appear before Joe's subcommittee the following Tuesday—the day that Zwicker had originally been scheduled to appear.
Stevens was a busy man in the next few days. To win support for his order, he prepared a summary of Zwicker's report and had it distributed to the subcommittee members who had not been present at the hearing. They were stunned by the tone of McCarthy's questioning and promised to do all they could to have a transcript of the hearing released as soon as possible.
Joe was busy, too. During subcommittee hearings in the daytime and speaking engagements at night, he directed a stream of taunts at Secretary Stevens. He referred to him as "a fine, innocent, unknowing secretary of the Army who refuses to clean house." He called Stevens "a good, loyal American who has fallen under the influence of the wrong element," and ended by describing him as "an awful dupe."
The Army secretary took those jibes without answering back. But when McCarthy accused him of being "unfair to loyal officers" by forbidding them to appear before the subcommittee, Stevens had had enough. He issued a statement defending his action: "I cannot permit the loyal officers of our armed services to be subjected to such unwarranted treatment. The prestige and morale of our armed forces are too important to the security of the nation to have them weakened by unfair attacks on our officer corps." Stevens went on to say that he himself would be "glad to appear before the subcommittee" because "since assuming office I have made it clear that I intend to take every necessary action to rid the Army of subversives."
The Army secretary's statement failed to silence McCarthy. Speaking to reporters in Philadelphia, where he had gone to accept a good citizenship award from the Sons of the American Revolution, Joe made his own statement. He charged that the issue Stevens had raised "is whether the Army is supreme over the Congress ... and can enjoy special dictatorial authority in covering up its own wrongdoings."
On Monday, February 22, the day before Secretary Stevens was set to appear before the subcommittee, Congress responded to demands from both Democrats and Republicans and made public the transcript of Gen. Zwicker's interrogation. The New York Times published the entire document, and newspapers across the country reacted with shock and anger. The Chicago Tribune, which had always been a strong supporter of McCarthy, recommended in an editorial that the senator should "learn to distinguish the role of investigator from the role of avenging angel." The editorial concluded: "We do not believe Senator McCarthy's behavior toward General Zwicker was justified and we expect it has injured his cause of driving the disloyal from government service."
Reached by reporters at his home, Gen. Zwicker said he agreed "100 percent" with what Joe was trying to do, but not with the way he did it. The general had refused to discuss the Peress case with McCarthy because, he said, "I'm an officer of the Army, and there are certain things I'm not permitted to do. To begin with, I don't know who in the Department of the Army issued the order directing that Peress be given an honorable discharge. I'm not supposed to know."
McCarthy seemed eager to get Secretary Stevens in the witness chair and pressure him to respond to the questions Gen. Zwicker had refused to answer. But the last thing Joe's Republican colleagues wanted was an open confrontation between McCarthy and the Army secretary. Sen. Dirksen request
ed and was granted a two-day postponement of Stevens's appearance before the subcommittee while he and other Republicans tried to work out some sort of compromise.
Joe went along with the postponement but then changed the subject—as he had often done in the past—in hopes of gaining fresh media attention. He summoned reporters to his office and announced that he had uncovered another "known Communist" who was working for the Army. She was Annie Lee Moss, a civilian employee of the Army Signal Corps. McCarthy said he would hold a public hearing on Mrs. Moss starting the next day, and he invited all the major television networks to cover it. Don Surine, McCarthy's longtime investigator, filled reporters in on additional details. The FBI had alerted Joe to Mrs. Moss's existence, Surine told them, and had helped Joe obtain a photostatic copy of her Communist Party membership card. "It's an open-and-shut damn deal," Surine said.
All the subcommittee members, except for one who was in Europe, attended the first day of hearings on February 23. The witness was Mary Stalcup Markward, who had been an undercover FBI agent from 1943 until 1949. She testified that she knew Mrs. Moss was a Communist from seeing her name on party lists of card-carrying, dues-paying members. However, Mrs. Markward admitted under questioning that she probably could not personally identify Mrs. Moss, since she wasn't sure she had ever met the woman. Mrs. Markward also noted that Mrs. Moss's name had disappeared from Communist Party records sometime in 1945.
Joe assured the members that he, his staff, and the FBI had carefully checked every aspect of the case. Annie Lee Moss, who had been a cafeteria worker at the Pentagon in 1945, was now a clerk in the Army's Signal Corps code room. There she was responsible, Joe said, for "handling the [encoding] and decoding of confidential and top-secret messages." Her name might not appear on the party's recent lists of members, McCarthy acknowledged, but he was confident Mrs. Moss was still a Communist. "There is nothing in the record to show that she ever broke with the Party."
The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy Page 19
