Legal advisor Adams inadvertently lent credence to the senators' statements. When questioned about events that led to the Army's compiling a chronology of Cohn's attempts to win favors for Schine, Adams told of attending a January 21 meeting with presidential aide Sherman Adams, Attorney General Brownell, and U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. He went on to say that it was Sherman Adams who had suggested at the meeting that the Army begin to keep such a chronology.
Democratic members of the subcommittee were as startled as the Republican members by Adams's disclosure. But when Democratic Senator Stuart Symington tried to question Adams further about the high-level meeting, Adams told Symington he had received instructions not to discuss it. Hearing this, McCarthy was heard to mutter what everyone in the hearing room was thinking: "I can't believe the White House is intervening in the case of a private [David Schine]."
The next day, the administration released a letter from President Eisenhower to Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. The letter prohibited any testimony concerning the January 21 meeting on the grounds of the separation of powers between the executive [the presidency] and the legislative [Congress].
Joe was furious when he learned of the prohibition. He railed to reporters that someone had placed "an iron curtain" between the subcommittee and the truth about the charges against him, Roy Cohn, and their aides. "I frankly thought all along that Mr. Adams [John Adams] was the one who had instigated this. Now there is no way of knowing who did." He said he did not blame the president. "I don't think his judgment is that bad."
Was Joe so naive that he believed President Eisenhower had no knowledge of the Army's chronology? Or that the president had not approved the letter to the Secretary of Defense? Perhaps for once Joe held back from expressing what he really thought, judging that with so much else at stake, it wasn't the moment to risk an open confrontation with Eisenhower.
With feelings at a fever pitch on both sides, Sen. Dirksen decided it was time to take a break. He moved that the subcommittee recess for a week, and his motion was approved on a party-line vote. Democratic members feared this was just another Republican attempt to cut the hearings short. Chairman Mundt reassured them by saying, "I think we all want these hearings to continue, and we want to get out all the facts."
During the recess, a new Gallup poll brought fresh evidence that the television broadcasts of the hearings weren't doing McCarthy any good. His popularity rating had continued to slide and now stood at 49 percent unfavorable. Some Republican leaders were backing away from him, too. Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan, who chaired the Republican Policy Committee, told reporters that Joe would not be a welcome speaker in the party's fall campaigns.
The hearings resumed on May 24 with Secretary Stevens and legal advisor Adams again on the stand. Both did their best to minimize the importance of the secret meeting on January 21 by affirming that the chronology of Roy Cohn's attempts to pressure the Army had been compiled at the urging of the Pentagon, and the Pentagon alone. Joe made it clear he didn't believe them.
At the next session, Joseph Welch called to the stand General Cornelius Ryan, the commanding officer at Fort Dix, to help document the special treatment Private David Schine had been accorded during his eight weeks of basic training. Schine, Ryan said, had received sixteen passes to leave the base, whereas most privates received only three or four. He had been permitted to make more than 250 long-distance telephone calls; other recruits got to make between five and ten. Once he had gone AWOL (absent without leave) on a holiday without being penalized.
Ryan went on to say that in permitting this, he was only following orders that came from Secretary Stevens—at a time when McCarthy and Cohn claimed that Stevens had been holding Schine "hostage." Ryan could not testify as to how much pressure Cohn had put on Stevens. He could state that he himself had received twenty-nine pressuring phone calls and visits from Cohn and his aides.
McCarthy and Cohn objected strongly to the introduction of this evidence. McCarthy interrupted Ryan's testimony with yet another point of order. Calling Welch a "clever little lawyer," McCarthy said, "He is now recounting events in the private life of David Schine. I am not going to sit here and listen to it. May I say, Mr. Chairman [Mundt], we have much more important work to do. We should be investigating Communists!" With that, McCarthy rose from his seat and strode out of the hearing room.
Perhaps he intended his walkout to impress the crowd and steer the session in a different direction. It probably had the opposite effect. The public had already formed a largely negative impression of Schine's behavior at Fort Dix, and General Ryan's testimony merely reinforced it. In any case, Joe returned to the hearing room before the session ended.
The Army rested its case on May 26, the twenty-first day of the hearings. The next day, McCarthy and Cohn planned to begin the presentation of their case with testimony from Cohn about the eleven interoffice memoranda he and his aides had written. But first, Sen. Symington raised the unresolved issue of the Hoover "letter" that Joe had introduced earlier. Symington made it clear he wasn't accusing anyone. "I have never said that anybody committed anything wrong in receiving it [the 'letter']. But I do say that, regardless of his personal opinion, no man who takes an oath of office not to divulge secrets has the right to decide to do it."
Joe was well aware that Symington was referring to him, and it ignited his temper. He tore into Symington and his fellow Democrats, challenging their patriotism. He also attacked the presidential directive that had cut off discussion of the secret meeting on January 21. On the other hand, he had nothing but praise for those in government who had supplied him with confidential information over the years "in defiance of any presidential directive."
Chairman Mundt tried to turn the discussion back to Cohn's testimony, but Joe wasn't through yet. "As far as I am concerned," he said, "I would like to notify all two hundred million federal employees that I feel it is their duty to give us any information which they have about graft, corruption, Communism, treason—and that there is no loyalty to a superior officer which can tower above and beyond their loyalty to their country." (Joe's math was more than a little off; the entire U.S. population in 1950 was just 151 million.)
President Eisenhower was stunned when told of McCarthy's diatribe. According to Jim Hagerty, he paced back and forth in the Oval Office as he tried to put his thoughts and feelings into words. "This amounts to nothing but a wholesale subversion of public services," the president said. "McCarthy is making exactly the same plea of loyalty that Hitler made to the German people. Both tried to set up personal loyalty within the government while both were using the pretense of fighting Communism.
"McCarthy is trying deliberately to subvert the people we have in government, people who are sworn to obey the law, the Constitution, and their superior officers. I think this is the most disloyal act we have ever had by anyone in the government of the United States."
Publicly, the White House issued a statement by Attorney General Brownell that was personally approved by the president. It declared that the executive branch's responsibility "cannot be usurped by any individual who may seek to set himself above the laws of our land." A short while later, Brownell linked the statement directly to McCarthy in a speech that the president had also approved. Brownell called Joe's appeal for information from government employees an "open invitation to violate the law."
Back at the hearings, Roy Cohn spent nine days on the stand describing the main points of his and McCarthy's case. He proved to be a tough, sharp-witted advocate, but the subcommittee members and the audience found it hard to believe some of what he said. Despite all the evidence the Army had presented, he stated with a straight face, "There was never any request by us for any kind of preferential treatment for Schine." And he adopted a deferential tone when asked about the eleven memoranda. "As far as I know, sir, they are memoranda from Senator McCarthy's file concerning various of these matters in our relations with Mr. Adams and Mr. Stevens."
R
ay Jenkins, the subcommittee's legal counsel, began his cross-examination of Cohn with the question that was on everyone's mind. What had made Cohn seek Schine's company so often while his colleague was undergoing basic training? By raising the issue so early in the proceedings, Jenkins hoped to defuse it.
Cohn was ready with a quick response. Schine, he said, was absolutely indispensable. He learned quickly and knew more about the subcommittee's business than anyone else. But when Jenkins asked Cohn to produce examples of projects Schine had worked on during his frequent leaves from his military duties, Cohn stalled. At last he came up with a single six-page document.
Jenkins left the matter at that. When it was Joseph Welch's turn to cross-examine the witness, he pointed to the six-page document and asked Cohn, "Who wrote that?"
"I believe David Schine did," Cohn replied.
"At what time?"
Cohn paused. "I don't know, sir."
"Prior to his induction?" Welch asked.
"I don't know. It might very well have been."
Welch was persistent. "You wouldn't say it was afterward?"
"No, I can't say that, sir."
"So," Welch said, "the first document I pick up is one that he might very well have done before his induction."
Cohn was clearly flustered. "Yes, sir," he muttered.
Then Welch embarrassed Cohn further by producing receipts from several New York nightclubs and expensive restaurants. When questioned about the receipts, Cohn was forced to admit that he and Schine had gone to the establishments while Schine was on weekend passes from Fort Dix. Although Welch didn't hammer it home, he had made his point. Obviously the "indispensable" Schine hadn't spent all of his leave time working on subcommittee business.
Next Welch zeroed in on the eleven interoffice memoranda that McCarthy and Cohn were relying on to disprove the Army's case. He made no attempt to hide his opinion of the documents: "I do not wish to conceal from anyone in this room that I have grave suspicions about the authenticity of these memoranda."
Roy Cohn did his best to deflect Welch's incessant questioning, but Welch kept finding new angles to pursue. On June 9, he got Cohn into a corner by asking why Cohn had climbed three flights of stairs to dictate one of the memoranda to McCarthy's secretary, Mary Driscoll, when there were two secretaries on the floor where Cohn was working who could have done the job. In response, Cohn could only splutter unconvincingly that that was what he had done.
Mrs. Driscoll was no help when she took the stand. Through his questioning, Welch demolished her nervous attempts to back up Cohn's claim that she had typed the memoranda as Cohn dictated them to her over the course of several months. At one point, she blurted out that she had "no independent recollection" of any of the documents. When Welch asked her to produce the notebooks in which she had taken down Cohn's dictation, she fumbled for an answer and finally said she had destroyed them. The audience in the hearing room greeted several of her least convincing answers with outbursts of laughter.
Joe sat through most of Welch's June 9 interrogations without interrupting, but observers said later that his grim expression revealed how hard it was for him to restrain himself. After the lunch break, Welch brought Cohn back to the stand and started to question him further about his and Schine's work habits when the Army private was on leave. Joe finally lost control. He waited until there was a brief break in the questioning and called out, "Mr. Chairman, point of order—point of order!"
Sen. Mundt recognized him, and Joe launched, slowly and deliberately, into a typical attack, this one aimed directly at Welch. "I think we should tell him [Welch] that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, incidentally, to do work on this committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named ... as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party, an organization which always swings to the defense of anyone who dares to expose Communists."
McCarthy was referring to Frederick Fisher, the young lawyer from Welch's Boston law firm whom Welch had initially invited to be a member of his staff in the Army-McCarthy hearings. When Welch had learned of Fisher's past affiliation with the leftist National Lawyers Guild, he had asked the young lawyer to leave the staff before the hearings began.
McCarthy must have known the facts of the Fisher story. But the facts of a case had never mattered to him when he launched one of his attacks, and they obviously didn't matter to him now. In his zeal, he failed to notice the worried looks Roy Cohn, seated near him, was aiming in his direction, or that his colleague was silently mouthing the words, "No! No!"
Cohn and Welch had reached an agreement two days earlier, by which Cohn promised not to bring Frederick Fisher's name into the hearing if Welch would not mention the embarrassing fact that Cohn had twice found ways to avoid the draft. Cohn had told Joe of the agreement, and Joe had okayed it. Why was he ignoring it now?
Cohn dashed off a note and passed it to McCarthy. "This is the subject which I have committed to Welch we would not go into," the note said. "Please respect our agreement as an agreement because this is not going to do any good." Joe skimmed the note, then turned and smiled at Cohn. "I know Mr. Cohn would rather not have me go into this," he said, "but I feel I must."
Switching his attention back to Welch, he continued. "I am not asking you at this time to explain why you tried to foist him [Fisher] on this committee. Whether you knew he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don't know. I assume you did not, Mr. Welch, because I get the impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh. I don't think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist Party."
Roy Cohn reminds McCarthy of the deal he, Cohn, has made with Joseph Welch, but the senator ignores him. The Library of Congress
Chairman Mundt interrupted to point out that Welch had never promoted Fisher as an assistant counsel, but McCarthy barged on, repeating much of what he'd said earlier about Fisher, before finally coming to a halt.
Then Welch launched his counterattack. "Until this moment, Senator," he said, "I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." Some observers thought they detected tears in his eyes; certainly there was deep emotion in his voice.
"Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us," Welch continued. He went on to say that he had invited another lawyer in the firm, James St. Clair, to be his chief assistant in his work for the subcommittee, and had asked St. Clair to pick someone else in the firm to work with him. St. Clair had chosen Frederick Fisher.
After arriving in Washington, the three of them had had dinner together. Welch now reported that he had said, "'Boys, I don't know anything about you except I have always liked you, but if there is anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case, you speak up quick.'
"Fred Fisher said, 'Mr. Welch, when I was in law school and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers Guild,' as you have suggested, Senator." Welch fixed his gaze on McCarthy. "I said, 'Fred, I just don't think I am going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come out and go over national television and it will just hurt like the dickens.'"
He paused briefly. "So, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr [Welch's Boston law firm]. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you.
"If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me."
A hush had fallen over the hearing room, but Joe appeared to be unaware of it. He tried to pick up where he had left off in his attack on Fisher, but Welch cut him short. "Senator, may we not drop this? We know he
[Fisher] belonged to the Lawyers Guild, and Mr. Cohn nods his head at me. I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn."
"No, sir," Cohn said quickly.
Still looking at Cohn, Welch said, "I meant you no personal injury, and if I did, I beg your pardon." He focused again on McCarthy. "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
Joe, stubborn as ever, started in again on Fisher's membership in a "Communist organization." Welch refused to hear it. "Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this with you further.... If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness."
The hearing room resounded with loud, sustained applause. Chairman Mundt made no move to stop it. Joe, his face red, sat silently in his seat. For once in his life, he had nothing to say.
26. Censured
THE MEDIA MADE THE MOST of the clash between Welch and McCarthy. Newspapers across the country ran photographs of Joseph Welch in tears as he spoke of Fred Fisher, and then smiling afterward amid stacks of congratulatory messages. By contrast, most photos of Joe showed him either smirking or glowering. Even some of McCarthy's strongest supporters among the press, like the Wisconsin State Journal, called his performance "reprehensible."
Joe's closest friends realized how deeply he had been humiliated. Urban Van Susteren, who watched the hearings on television, said, "It made me sick," while Roy Cohn commented later, "The blow was terribly damaging to Senator McCarthy."
And how did Joe react? On the surface, he seemed as cocky and confident as ever. But when he himself took the stand on June 9 as a witness before the subcommittee, he wasn't as quick on his feet as he'd been when the hearings began. Perhaps he'd been more affected by Welch's condemning words than he'd let on. Or perhaps too much alcohol and too little rest were finally taking their toll.
The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy Page 24
