Murrow had already addressed the harm McCarthy-style investigations could do. Back on October 20, 1953, See It Now had covered the case of Lieutenant Milo Radulovich, a young weatherman in the Air Force Reserve who had been discharged abruptly. When Radulovich asked why, he was told it was because his father and his sister were suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. Consequently, he himself was considered a security risk.
Pursuing the matter with the help of a lawyer, Radulovich was granted a hearing by the Air Force, where he learned the reason for the charge against his father. The elder Radulovich, an immigrant from Yugoslavia, kept up with news from his homeland by subscribing to several Serbian-language newspapers. One of the papers was published by an organization that had been labeled Communist by the U.S. government. Suspicion fell on Lt. Radulovich's sister, Margaret, because she had made donations to a number of liberal causes. This was enough to convince the Air Force brass that the lieutenant must have come under the influence of his Communist father and left-wing sister.
At the hearing, a lawyer for the Air Force pulled a sealed manila envelope out of his briefcase and said that it contained the evidence against the Radulovich family. He displayed the envelope to those present but refused to share its contents with Radulovich or his lawyer. The Air Force went ahead with its plan to strip Lt. Radulovich of his commission in the Reserve. But he was told that he might get the commission back if he publicly repudiated his father and sister. Saying "This isn't what Americanism means to me," Radulovich refused, as he put it, "to cut my blood ties."
For some time, Edward R. Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, had sought a way to cover the damaging effects of the McCarthy witch-hunts on See It Now. However, like many other journalists and politicians, they were hesitant to confront McCarthy's tremendous power. Besides, they had their sponsor, Alcoa (the Aluminum Company of America), to consider. The last thing Alcoa wanted was to alienate a large segment of the program's viewers.
When Murrow and Friendly heard about the Radulovich case, they decided it could provide the perfect focus for the story they wanted to tell. It was a clear-cut example of guilt by association, an unfair tactic that had been employed successfully in so many of Joe McCarthy's anti-Communist investigations. At the same time, McCarthy himself had played no role in the case, so no one could accuse Murrow, Friendly, and their team of attacking McCarthy directly. Even so, as Murrow and the others traveled to Dexter, Michigan, where Radulovich and his family lived, they joked about the likelihood of their being fired.
In Dexter, they filmed emotional and touching interviews with Radulovich and his father, sister, and lawyer. The lawyer, Charles Lockwood, looked straight into the camera and said, "In my thirty-two years of practicing law, I have never witnessed such a farce and travesty upon justice as this thing has developed into."
Viewers across the country were moved by the story of Radulovich and his immigrant father. Many questioned the harsh tactics employed against them by the government and the military, and more than 8,000 sent letters and telegrams to CBS and Alcoa. The messages ran 100 to 1 in support of Radulovich. As a consequence, the Air Force reconsidered its decision and restored the weather forecaster to his former position a month after the broadcast.
McCarthy grasped immediately that the program was an indirect attack on him, and as usual he set out to get revenge. He dispatched his chief investigator, Don Surine, to approach Joseph Wershba, one of Murrow's reporters, and give him a warning to pass along to his boss.
In a memoir, Wershba recounted what happened. Surine came up to him in the Senate and said, "Hey, Joe, what's this Radwich [Radulovich] junk you're putting out?" Wershba tried to escape by saying he had to get to the airport, but Surine cut him short. "What would you say if I told you Murrow was on the Soviet payroll back in 1935?" he asked. "Come on up to the office and I'll show you."
Surine told Wershba to wait outside McCarthy's staff office while he got the evidence. He returned shortly with a photocopy of an article from a 1935 issue of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, a right-wing daily newspaper. The article was an attack on a respected American organization, the Institute of International Education (IIE), for sponsoring a summer seminar at Moscow University for American professors and their Soviet counterparts. Murrow, who worked for the Institute at the time, was listed as a member of the advisory committee that had helped to organize the seminar—a meeting the article claimed was designed to promote the Communist cause.
Wershba understood at once why Surine was showing him the article. McCarthy had dug up "files" on everyone he considered a subversive, and now Murrow, for daring to air the Radulovich story, had been added to Joe's list of targets. But where did Surine's charge that Murrow had been on the Soviet payroll come from?
Surine had a ready explanation. In organizing the seminar, the IIE had to work with VOKS, the Soviet student exchange organization, and VOKS picked up some of the expenses. Hence, the IIE, and Murrow, were for a time on the payroll of a Soviet organization.
Wershba asked if he could show the photocopy of the article to Murrow, and Surine said yes. "Mind you, Joe," McCarthy's investigator felt compelled to add, "I'm not saying Murrow's a Commie himself. But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck—it's a duck."
As Wershba started to walk away, Surine made what seemed like an offhand remark. "It's a shame," Surine said, "Murrow's brother being a general in the Air Force." Wershba understood the comment for what it really was—a threat that McCarthy could do harm to a member of Murrow's family if the TV host persisted in challenging him.
When Wershba told his boss about the exchange with Surine and showed him the article McCarthy's investigator had given him, Murrow said, "So that's what they've got." Obviously, he had been expecting trouble. However, the prospect didn't seem to faze him. The next day, he said to Wershba, "The question now is, when do I go against these guys?" The answer was: as soon as he and his team could put together a convincing case against McCarthy.
Over the next four months, Murrow, Fred Friendly, and Joe Wershba assembled the material that would be included in the broadcast. It consisted mainly of film clips of McCarthy himself, from his conflict with Eisenhower during the election campaign of 1952 through his questioning of Gen. Zwicker in 1954. It was apparent to anyone watching that McCarthy consistently harassed the witnesses who came before his subcommittee. Over and over, he interrupted them when they tried to answer his questions and employed innuendo and half-truths to convince those present—and the often-gullible media—that the witnesses were guilty as charged.
When Murrow and the others watched a near-final cut of the broadcast, some members of the staff revealed their fear of putting it on the air. Murrow looked around and said, "The terror [of how McCarthy would react and what he might do] is right here in this room." Later, after they had talked about the reasons for their fear, Murrow tried to reassure them. "No one man," he said, "can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices."
On March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow opened the broadcast by saying, "Tonight See It Now devotes its entire half hour to a report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, told mainly in his own words and pictures.... [If] the senator believes we have done violence to his words or pictures and desires to speak, to answer himself, an opportunity will be afforded him on this program."
Twenty-seven minutes later, Murrow concluded the broadcast by summing up its meaning. "No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior senator from Wisconsin has overstepped it repeatedly.... We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," Murrow continued. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law."
As soon as the broadcast ended, the New York headquarters of CBS television began to be flooded with phone calls
. Forty-eight hours later, weary responders added them up and found that the network had received almost 14,300 calls. The vast majority of callers, 12,294, had praise for the program. Only 1,367 opposed it, and some 600 were a mixture of favorable and unfavorable. A similar proportion of yeas and nays was reflected in the telegrams CBS received: 3,267 senders reacted favorably to the program while only 203 responded negatively.
This positive response from the television audience was not surprising. Sharply critical newspaper columnists like Walter Lippman and senators like Ralph Flanders had helped pave the way for Murrow's scathing report on McCarthy. But the mere fact that the exposé went out to the nation on television automatically ensured that it would reach a far larger audience and have a much greater impact.
That impact was reflected in the comments of TV critics for many of the country's major newspapers. The New York Times called the broadcast "crusading journalism of high responsibility and genuine courage." The New York Herald-Tribune hailed it as the moment when "television came of age."
McCarthy's right-wing supporters, while outnumbered this time around, were equally fervent in their opposition to the program. Murrow received numerous pieces of hate mail. Some of it was addressed to "Red" Murrow. One correspondent rewrote the poem that is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty to show what he felt about the broadcast: "Send me your Commies, pinkos, and crackpots and I will put them on television."
Joe remained remarkably silent. But he accepted Murrow's invitation to present his side of the story, and his appearance on See It Now was set for April 6. At the same time, he sent a telegram to the Aluminum Company of America, the program's sponsor, denouncing its support of Murrow and vaguely threatening to launch an investigation into the firm's activities.
On March 10, the day after the broadcast, Joe went about his business as usual. He was in the middle of another hearing on the situation at Fort Monmouth when an invitation came from Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson to join him at the Pentagon for lunch. Wilson—along with many other prominent Republicans, including the president—had decided Joe's investigations of the Army had gone far enough.
23. A Devastating Report
AT THE LUNCH, Defense Secretary Wilson confronted McCarthy with a thirty-four-page report the Army had compiled. It was a carefully documented account of all the attempts—many of them outrageous—that Roy Cohn had made over the previous seven months to win special favors for Private David Schine.
McCarthy was caught completely off-guard. He had no idea the Army had assembled this kind of file on Cohn and Schine, and a quick glance through it showed him how dangerous the report could be if it was released. Joe was weighing how to respond when Wilson dropped another bombshell.
Roy Cohn's threat to "get" Army Secretary Stevens, a key point in the report, had convinced the Defense Secretary that Cohn was behind McCarthy's continuing probes of the Army. If the young investigator was out of the way, Wilson and others close to the president believed, McCarthy's focus would shift elsewhere, sparing both the Army and the Eisenhower administration further embarrassment. And so, before the luncheon came to an end, Secretary Wilson named his price for keeping the report under wraps: Joe must fire Roy Cohn. McCarthy refused even to consider Wilson's demand, strode out of the Pentagon, and returned to his Senate office.
Late that afternoon, Joe had a visit from an old friend, Senator Charles Potter of Michigan, a member of his subcommittee. Secretary Wilson had contacted Potter earlier, explained the situation to him, and sent him a copy of the Army report by messenger. Potter was shocked by what he read, and when Secretary Wilson asked him to try to persuade McCarthy to change his mind about firing Cohn, Potter agreed to see Joe at once.
McCarthy blew up when Potter repeated Secretary Wilson's demand that he let Cohn go. Although he still hadn't read the entire report, Joe defended Cohn and charged that the Army was trying to blackmail him. He also threatened to tell his right-wing columnist friends what was going on and give them Wilson's and Potter's names.
After his temper cooled, Joe admitted to Potter that he wasn't that concerned about Schine's fate. "Hell, Charlie," he said, "I don't care if they ship him to Siberia. But Roy worries about him." He remained totally loyal to Cohn, his invaluable comrade in the fight against Communism. "If I got rid of Roy," he told Potter, "it would be the greatest victory the Communists have scored up to now."
That evening Potter phoned Secretary Wilson. When he informed him that McCarthy was determined to retain Cohn on his staff, Wilson cut him short. "The man has gone too far," he said. The next day, March 11, Wilson sent copies of the Army report to each member of Joe's subcommittee and several members of the Armed Services Committee. If McCarthy knew of Wilson's action, he didn't let on.
That morning, Annie Lee Moss, recovered from her illness, was scheduled to complete her testimony before the subcommittee. Reporters flocked into the courtroom, and interested spectators filled the remaining seats. After all the subcommittee members except Charles Potter had taken their places, Joe opened the hearing in his usual confident manner.
It was not a good time for Mrs. Moss. Besides her lingering illness, she had learned two weeks earlier that she had been suspended from her $3,300-a-year job as a clerk-typist (a low salary even for 1954). On the day of the hearing, she was unemployed and had no idea where her next paycheck would come from. In a soft voice, she denied any connection with Communists and said again that she had never been a member of the Communist Party.
As the questioning by Joe and Roy Cohn continued, the members of the subcommittee, both Democrats and Republicans, responded more and more sympathetically to Mrs. Moss. She had been born in South Carolina, she said, and had not finished high school. When asked if she had ever heard of Karl Marx, she answered, "Who's that?" She also testified that she had never heard of Mary Markward, the undercover FBI agent who had identified her.
Senator Stuart W. Symington. The Library of Congress
Mrs. Moss's next words caught the attention of everyone in the hearing room. She remarked that there were three other Annie Lee Mosses living in Washington. At that, the members of the subcommittee exchanged glances. Could McCarthy and Cohn have summoned the wrong Mrs. Moss to testify?
Roy Cohn stepped in at this point to say secret evidence existed that proved the witness was Annie Lee Moss, the former Communist. Unfortunately, he could not show the proof to the subcommittee because it was classified.
Two Democratic members of the subcommittee, Senator John L. McClellan and Senator Stuart W. Symington, did not accept Cohn's explanation. Sen. McClellan denounced what he called Cohn's "usual practice of convicting people by rumor and hearsay and innuendo." The audience applauded McClellan, a rare happening in a Senate hearing. Later, they cheered again when Sen. Symington looked at Mrs. Moss and said, "I may be sticking my neck out, but I believe you're telling the truth."
Joe McCarthy had left the hearing by then to tend to other business. Senator Karl Mundt, who was filling in for him, did nothing to stop the crowd's unusual response or interrupt the criticisms of Cohn. Mundt was one of those who had received a copy of the Army report on Cohn and Schine. Perhaps its content made him hesitate to stand up for Cohn.
Sen. Symington had the last word at the hearing. He assured Mrs. Moss that if the Army did not rehire her, he would personally see to it that she got a job somewhere else. As the subcommittee members, reporters, and spectators filed out of the hearing room, it was clear to everyone that Joe's case against Annie Lee Moss—the case that Don Surine had called "an open-and-shut damn deal"—had collapsed completely.
Many newsmen and political commentators echoed that opinion in the days that followed. Walter Lippman thought the utter failure of the Moss hearing played a major role in "the breaking of a spell" that Joe had cast over public opinion. Edward R. Murrow played excerpts from the hearing on See It Now, and audience response ran nine to one against McCarthy and Roy Cohn. One letter writer wrote that she was "sickened" by the way M
rs. Moss had been treated.
If the media response to the Annie Lee Moss hearing seemed unusually harsh, it was nothing compared to the outcry that greeted the leaking to the press of the Army report on Cohn and Schine. The United Press news agency called the report "a dynamite-laden document ... landing like a bombshell." The New York Times ran a banner front-page headline in bold type: "Army Charges McCarthy and Cohn Threatened It in Trying to Obtain Preferred Treatment for Schine." Inside, the paper printed the entire text of the document.
The publication of the report threatened to have a more devastating effect on McCarthy's reputation and popularity than any previous attack had had. Not even the Murrow TV exposé could match its impact. The American public held the Army in the highest esteem. It had achieved tremendous victories in World War II and now served as the nation's front line of defense in the cold war. After reading the report, average Americans found themselves asking how Senator McCarthy—whom most of them still admired as an anti-Communist fighter—could have tolerated Roy Cohn's bullying of top Army officials and his brazen attempt to blackmail them.
Beyond that, many wondered in private what was behind Cohn's obvious obsession with David Schine. Why was he so determined to have Schine with him in New York every evening and weekend? What sort of relationship did they have, exactly? However, no journalist or politician raised these questions in public. In the 1950s, certain subjects, including homosexuality, were simply not discussed openly.
Joe appeared to be blind to the implications of Cohn's obsession. But he was acutely aware of the dangers the Army report posed to him personally. And from the moment he rejected Defense Secretary Wilson's demand that he fire Roy Cohn, he knew the report would inevitably be leaked to the press. The question then became: How could he defend himself and protect Cohn?
That evening, Joe held a hastily arranged meeting with Cohn and other aides to hammer out a response. The plan they came up with was as daring—and risky—as the way Joe kept changing the number of Communists he claimed were at work in the State Department back in 1950. Under Joe's direction, the team would draft eleven interoffice memos, back-dated to the previous fall and winter, that had supposedly been exchanged among McCarthy, Cohn, and Francis Carr, an ex-FBI man who served as executive director of the subcommittee.
The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy Page 21
