Evidently the higher-ups at the Intelligencer found this too hot for handling in the newsroom, as the answer Tydings received was the letter from newspaper executive Austin Wood, already noted. Wood said he had talked with Desmond and “he tells me there can be no doubt that Senator McCarthy did use the figure ‘205’ in referring to his list of men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring.” (The Desmond story and letter from Wood are featured in the Tydings record as exhibits A and B going to show McCarthy lied about the Wheeling numbers.)*116 5
A less helpful sequence played out with Connors, who had reported that McCarthy’s written text at Reno contained the passage on the 205 but that this was not in fact delivered. Seemingly intrigued by this, Tydings-Morgan planned to send someone out to Reno to talk to Connors or else bring him to Washington for that purpose. In the event, neither of these things would happen, but the episode did show the Ahab-like zeal of Tydings in tracking down his quarry. As later revealed by Connors, Tydings called him long distance to question him on the 205, its deletion from McCarthy’s Reno talk, and related matters. Verifying the magic number was so important that it required the personal sleuthing of the chairman.6
None of this, needless to remark, looked like an investigation of loyalty risks in the State Department, in keeping with the Tydings mandate from the Senate. However, it also wasn’t, to this point, a very effective investigation of McCarthy. As the Gillette committee analysts would find, neither the Desmond-Wood account from Wheeling nor the Connors Reno story, severally or jointly, was enough to sustain a perjury charge about McCarthy’s numbers. These were thin reeds to support so large a burden, and something more robust was needed. By the latter part of April, even as Tydings plumbed the depths of worry about the hearings, his staffers and political allies began to think that they had found it.
On April 12, the day after Tydings sent the strategy memo and cover note to Morgan, the chief counsel would return the favor. He advised the chairman that he had a contact in Wheeling—the attorney for radio station WWVA—who told him the text of the McCarthy speech had been supplied beforehand to the station and that technicians there had monitored its delivery. Specifically, said Morgan, WWVA program director Paul Myers could attest that “McCarthy did not depart from the same in any material respect. It was obvious during the talk that he was reading from the prepared text.”7
Accepting Morgan at his word, this seems to have been the genesis of the Wheeling affidavits, the allegedly clinching proof of McCarthy’s lying, and surrogate for the lost recording. At this stage, however, the story would take an O. Henry twist that equaled in peculiarity anything else that happened in the Tydings saga. As it turned out, not only were Tydings-Morgan stalking McCarthy from town to town to nail him on a perjury count, they were doing so in collusion with the State Department—which they were supposed to be investigating. Indeed, to judge from fairly copious records, it was State that henceforth took the lead in hunting down McCarthy, with Tydings-Morgan simply tagging after.
Exactly how and why the State Department became the chief investigator in an alleged investigation of itself isn’t clear, but that it did so is apparent. As Tydings would later explain about the Wheeling affidavits:
Mr. [Adrian] Fisher, counsel of the State Department, got in touch with the Wheeling, West Virginia radio station over which McCarthy spoke…as a result of this conversation, Mr. Rine, the station manager of Radio Station WWVA, sent to Mr. Fisher the manuscript of McCarthy’s remarks at Wheeling…Following the receipt of this manuscript by Mr. Fisher, a State Department investigator was sent to Wheeling to look into the matter. The result was that the two officials of Radio Station WWVA gave the investigator affidavits to which were attached photostats of the McCarthy manuscript…*117 8
That Tydings was not mistaken in this recollection is shown by a letter from Carlisle Humelsine of State to Sen. Harley Kilgore (D-W.Va.), explaining why the department wanted the affidavits and how it came to get them. Noting that State had been accused of misfeasance by McCarthy, Humelsine said it had a strong interest in obtaining whatever information it could about the charges. It had accordingly sent its agents up to Wheeling, where the Whitaker-Myers affidavits had been obtained by “a representative of this department.”9
In fact, as shown by the Gillette inquiry, State Department involvement with the affidavits was a good deal closer than suggested by these comments. According to the Gillette committee memo, the station officials “explained to our investigators that their original affidavits were prepared for their signatures by a State Department representative (whose identity they do not know) and the managing director of station WWVA (Bill Ryan [Rine])…”10 (Emphasis added.) Thus, State not only got the affidavits, it helped prepare them in the first place. They were at every step along the way a State Department product.
Much the same was true regarding the other main count in the indictment—that McCarthy in his remarks before the Senate had merely plagiarized the Lee list. The contention that McCarthy had nothing but this list, and that his charges were therefore baseless, would be stressed repeatedly in the Tydings report as proof that he inflicted a “fraud and a hoax” upon the Senate. In these comments the majority members of the panel, or whoever actually did the drafting, would say these Lee list findings were based on “our investigation.” But there is in the Tydings record no hint of such investigation beyond the most perfunctory gestures.*118
Rather, as with all individual McCarthy suspects, “our investigation” consisted of merely asking the State Department for answers to his charges, then treating the replies as gospel. And of these there was no shortage. Both Peurifoy and Adrian Fisher were prolific in supplying State-friendly memos and purported backup data relating to McCarthy’s cases, all received uncritically by Tydings, large chunks of which would surface in the report and appendix to the hearings. (The report alone reprints some seventy pages of State Department press releases—more than a fifth of the total volume.) This visible work product of State’s researchers was but a fraction of the material shared with Tydings on a more private basis.
One such back-channel communiqué is a Peurifoy-to-Tydings memo dated May 25, 1950, providing the supposed facts about McCarthy’s cases, the names of his anonymous suspects, and keys to coded symbols in the underlying data. Also passed on privately to Tydings were documents produced by Fisher’s legal office under the heading “His Own Assertions Classified and Systematized,” the acronym for which was HOACS (State Department humor). This was a running tally of McCarthy’s statements, with State Department answers, cross-referenced by name and subject matter and updated on a regular schedule. Several hundred pages of this material may be found in Tydings’s personal papers.11
An equally impressive effort, and even more useful for McCarthy’s foes, was a mammoth 168-page “Confidential Memorandum” that summed up the State Department version of his cases and their supposed nexus to the Lee list. This is on its face a veritable hornbook on the subject: a detailed history of how the list was put together, State Department reactions to it at the time, a correlation with McCarthy’s cases, and a concordance of parallel quotes from the two rosters.
This weighty though less than totally accurate document reposes in Tydings’s personal papers along with the Peurifoy memo of May 25 and various HOACS reports and updates. Unlike these, which clearly indicate the State Department as the source, this one is carefully anonymous—with every page, both top and bottom, labeled “confidential.” Its State Department provenance, however, is shown by several features—one of the more obvious being that the above-noted Peurifoy-to-Tydings memo bears the identical top-and-bottom “confidential” markings.*119 12
As significant as the contents of this huge confidential memo was its timing. The document is dated April 14, a few days after the strategy blueprint Tydings sent to Morgan and the chairman’s message to the White House urging a concerted plan against its accuser. Equall
y serendipitous for Tydings, it also coincided with the Morgan memo pointing toward the radio affidavits, which would complete the data package to be used in a well-synchronized offensive against McCarthy. However, these pivotal documents weren’t yet secured and would be needed to buttress the Desmond-Wood account of what McCarthy said at Wheeling.
This last piece of the mosaic would be obtained by the State Department during the final week of April. The Whitaker-Myers depositions were prepared/acquired by the department’s representative in Wheeling on Tuesday, April 25. The next day, Harley Kilgore, a Tydings ally, would write John Peurifoy at State, asking if he by any possible chance just happened to have hard evidence of what McCarthy said at Wheeling. The day after that, Carlisle Humelsine, in Peurifoy’s behalf, supplied the depositions to Kilgore. The whole thing was done in three days flat.†120 Time, apparently, was of the essence.
With the radio affidavits and State’s Lee list information now in hand, Tydings met the following evening with Truman and shared with him the data that would “finish the discrediting of McCarthy,” as Truman later told his staffers. As also relayed by Truman, according to one aide, the main emphasis of this discussion was on the Lee list cases. Concerning these, the aide reported Truman as saying that “Tydings proposes to have Democrats in the House bring these facts out through a speech on the floor; he believes that, if this plan is followed through, it may go so far as to result in the Senate acting to throw out McCarthy.”13
Thereafter, on Sunday, April 30, Tydings convened a meeting in his D.C. apartment to put the various pieces together. A rare journalistic version of these backstage doings was supplied contemporaneously by Newsweek, which obviously had excellent sources at State and/or the subcommittee. Present at this meeting, said Newsweek, were Tydings, Peurifoy, and Morgan, the investigators thus meeting in ex parte manner with the agency under investigation. The object of their conclave—related by Newsweek in offhand and unattributed quote marks—was the “total and eternal destruction” of McCarthy. As to how this was to be accomplished:
The time had come, said Senator Tydings, to expose McCarthy. He had discussed it with the President and advised him that the counterattack was to be launched on the floor of the House and Senate. Peurifoy had prepared a memo for Rep. Frank Karsten [D-Mo.], who would reveal on the floor of the House the origin of McCarthy’s cases…Sens. Harley Kilgore and Matthew Neely*121 would flash affidavits proving McCarthy had lied to the Senate about his Wheeling speech. The whole strategy was to be kept strictly secret…14
In the next few days, events would unfold almost exactly as Newsweek suggested. On Monday, May 1, the day after the Tydings apartment session, Representative Karsten read into the Congressional Record a learned discourse on the Lee list, its history and meaning, all tracking with the “Confidential Memorandum,” this obviously being the Peurifoy memo alluded to by Newsweek. (See below.) In this Karsten was assisted by Democratic representatives John Rooney of New York and John McCormack of Massachusetts, who likewise displayed a wealth of esoteric knowledge about the Lee list, its supposed obsolescence, and its innocuous nature.15
On Tuesday, back at the State Department, John Peurifoy had a press statement at the ready, saying the department had been asked to comment on Karsten’s charge the preceding afternoon that McCarthy had inflicted a “fraud and deceit” upon the nation. Peurifoy modestly declined to make this judgment, saying that was for the Senate panel to decide. (Nor did he say who, precisely, had asked for this comment on such exceedingly short notice.) He then proceeded to repeat, yet again, the full-blown State Department version of the Lee list issue, concluding that Joe McCarthy had once more proved to be a flagrant liar.†122 16
The rhetorical chain reaction would conclude the following day in a riotous session of the Senate, as Democratic leader Lucas read into the Record, over strenuous GOP objections, the entirety of the Peurifoy press release on the Lee list cases, describing it as the definitive statement on McCarthy’s plagiarism and deceptions. “So far as I’m concerned,” said Lucas, “the statement of Mr. Peurifoy…which he makes at this time after weeks of investigation, carries a considerable amount of weight on the question of truth and veracity.”17
Thus was the identical version of the Lee list issue pounded home on three straight days and in three separate forums, by a seemingly diverse but in reality well-coordinated group of critics. And thus also, it may be noted, did Scott Lucas say in so many words that the Lee list “investigation” that struck him as compelling was done by the State Department, not by anyone in Congress. The point would be repeated later in the day, in connection with the Wheeling numbers, when Senators Kilgore and Neely took the floor to make their contributions. Kilgore, flourishing the radio affidavits, read these into the Record also, saying they raised the most serious questions about McCarthy’s candor. (Nor did Kilgore make any bones about the fact that the affidavits had been supplied to him by State.)
All this was punctuated by another bit of byplay. After reading the Wheeling affidavits, Kilgore turned to Tydings, who fortuitously happened to be present, and asked if the chairman would like to have these depositions for the use of his subcommittee. Tydings responded, “I shall be very glad to have them. I assume they are pertinent.”18 This assumption turned out to be correct, as Tydings would ever after cite these State Department–provided affidavits, not only in the report he gave the Senate, but in many other settings, as conclusive proof that McCarthy lied about the speech at Wheeling.*123
Finally, as advertised, Senator Neely pitched in as well, though not quite in the way Newsweek suggested. Rather, he harped on the Desmond Intelligencer story, coupling this with a flowery tribute to Col. Austin Wood as a great stickler for the facts who would never let something erroneous appear in his newspaper. Then followed a terrific rhetorical onslaught against McCarthy, by obvious implication though not by name, suggesting he was a modern Ananias, the famous liar in the Bible. In which event, said Neely—here closely tracking the Newsweek version—McCarthy’s “usefulness to the Senate and the country would be totally and eternally destroyed.”19
All the points thus made on the floor of Congress concerning the Wheeling numbers, the radio affidavits, and the Lee list would thereafter be repeated in the Tydings report, using all of the same arguments and documentation cited by Karsten, Kilgore, and Co. in their well-orchestrated blitzkreig. Throughout, the coordination of the several players, the timing of their contributions, and the interlocking nature of their statements were impressive. (In which respect, we need only note that Peurifoy, in “responding” to Frank Karsten, was actually responding to himself, as he had per the Newsweek account personally supplied the material Karsten was using.) The cumulative impact was all the greater thanks to the notice given these various statements by major media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many others.
A coda to the above, in further illustration of the pivotal role of the State Department and collegial nature of the project, would be supplied by a White House memo a few days later (May 8), addressed to Truman staffer Donald Dawson, headed: “Continuing the Counter-Offensive Against McCarthy.” Attached to this was yet another State Department missive arguing the need for still more saturation bombing of McCarthy. This referred with approval to the rhetorical efforts of Karsten-Rooney-Kilgore-Lucas and urged that “a senator, either Senator Neely, Senator Kilgore, or Senator Lucas…should review other violations of senatorial propriety by Senator McCarthy and should indicate that this type of behavior warrants disciplinary action by the Senate either by way of censure or expulsion.”20
The oddities in all this were striking—perhaps chief among them the argument Karsten, Rooney, Tydings and Co. chose to stress in framing the Lee list part of the indictment: that McCarthy was guilty of gross deceit and should be severely punished for using material from that list without telling the Senate where it came from. Such unattributed use of sources, apparently, was a despicable act deserving censure, expulsion from th
e Senate, and political annihilation of the offender. This was an interesting charge for them to make, as it’s clear beyond all cavil that these alleged Lee list experts were themselves reciting—not just in substance but often enough verbatim—material prepared by others, fobbed off as their own researches.*124
Indeed, McCarthy’s congressional critics, up to and including the Tydings panel, displayed great economy of effort, repeatedly using language, as well as alleged documentation, supplied by their unacknowledged helpers. Consider, in the graphics on the following pages, four passages on the Lee list issue taken from the “Confidential Memorandum” in the left-hand columns, in comparison with matching statements made by McCarthy’s foes in Congress, appearing to the right.
Confidential Memorandum, April 14, 1950
“On August 8, 1947, the [State] Department announced to all employees that the investigative staff of the House Committee on Appropriations, consisting of Robert E. Lee, Harris Huston, James Nugent and Wilfred Sigerson, was making a study of the department, and that they would be interviewing members of the Department’s staff during the next few weeks. Departmental officers were requested to cooperate in making available the information which the investigators would require.”
Rep. John Rooney, May 1, 1950
“On the 8th August 1947, the Department announced to all employees that the investigative staff of the House Committee on Appropriations, consisting of Robert E. Lee, Harris Huston, James Nugent and Wilfred Sigerson were making a study of the department and that they would be interviewing members of the Department staff during the next few weeks. Departmental officers were requested to cooperate in making available the information which the investigators would require.”
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