From this action grew the Maryland election probe, important mostly as a warm-up but not without significant aspects of its own. This was the inquiry that focused on a tabloid newspaper called “From the Record,” published by pro-Butler forces, attacking Tydings for his conduct of the State Department loyalty hearings. The contents of the tabloid tracked closely with material earlier noted—the thirty-five pages of lost transcript, the kid-gloves treatment of “Dr.” Lattimore, and the records of other McCarthy suspects cleared by Tydings. Its most noteworthy feature was a composite photograph of Tydings and former Communist Party boss Earl Browder (see inset, Chapter 33). This photograph and other elements of the tabloid are referred to in the usual histories as showing McCarthy and his staffers did something terribly wrong in helping contrive the defeat of Tydings.
Given this standard treatment of the topic, some notice of the Maryland inquest and its more curious sidebars is in order. For one thing, the way the investigation developed was unusual from the outset. Though Tydings could have challenged the legitimacy of the election under relevant rules and statutes, he never actually did this. In fact, even when he brought his charges before the Senate, he specifically said he wasn’t trying to overturn the outcome of the voting. The evident purpose of the complaint was thus simply to make an issue against McCarthy—which was in fact what happened.
In its report, the Gillette-Monroney subcommittee found against the Butler campaign on one substantive legal count—that its campaign manager had not properly reported information about financial contributions as required by law (for which offense he was indicted and convicted). Also, the report raised other questions about the compliance of the campaign with Maryland election statutes and the scope of its political spending, allegedly in excess of stipulated limits. There were no intimations, however, that these details about the Butler operation had other than marginal relevance to McCarthy, so there wasn’t that much political mileage in them from the standpoint of the Tydings forces.
While not making any legal finding on the matter, the Gillette-Monroney committee did denounce the “From the Record” tabloid, saying it was “scurrilous” and “defamatory,” though exactly what was defamatory about it isn’t apparent from the report and hearings. As the tabloid consisted almost entirely of allegations that Tydings hadn’t properly conducted his investigation of the State Department, this unalloyed description of its contents would seem to have reflected the pro-Tydings version of the issue rather than an impartial verdict.
Somewhat tipping its hand in this respect, the committee also held forth about commentaries on the election by radio personality Fulton Lewis Jr., himself a resident of Maryland, whom Tydings accused of aiding Butler and who was called as a witness in the hearings. However, no parallel interest was shown in the countervailing efforts of columnist/radio commentator Drew Pearson, who took the opposite position on the contest. Likewise, the committee denounced the “From the Record” flyer for its statement that Tydings by inaction had impeded delivery of arms to South Korea, but made no similar critique of Tydings’s almost identical charges against the GOP, made in the course of his campaigning.*241 1
THE COMPOSITE
The famous “composite photo” from the 1950 Maryland Senate election in which John Marshall Butler defeated Millard Tydings. The Syracuse Post-Standard, among others, falsely blamed McCarthy for “framing” Tydings with this “fake photograph.”
Source: McCarthy Papers I
More telling than these items—and just about the only thing from the Maryland inquest that would be remembered—was the composite photo. This showed Tydings obliquely face-to-face with longtime Communist Party chieftain Browder, making it appear they had been photographed together. Though the caption described the picture as a “composite,” it’s likely many people looking at the tabloid might not have read the caption carefully or caught the significance of the term “composite.”
This photo was the subject of much outrage at the time, and has been since, as no treatment of McCarthy would be complete without a mention of it. And, up to a point, some outrage was in order, as the most likely effect of the composite would have been to lead readers to think it was a single photo when in fact it wasn’t. However, as the hearings made clear, neither McCarthy nor his staffers, though supplying other material for the tabloid, had anything to do with the composite. As shown in some detail by the committee sessions, the tabloid had been put together by Frank Smith, chief editorial writer for the Washington Times Herald, and the composite was the handiwork of Smith’s colleague Garvin Tankersley, assistant managing editor of the paper.
THE TRUTH COMES OUT
The Post-Standardissues a retraction acknowledging, inter alia, that McCarthy “was not responsible” for the composite photo of Tydings and Communist Party chief Earl Browder.
That McCarthy had no connection to the photo would later be established in a court of law, after the Syracuse Post-Standard of New York had run an editorial accusing him of, among other things, having “framed Sen. Tydings…with a fake photograph.” McCarthy sued the paper for falsely charging him with things he hadn’t done, and in an unusual outcome involving a politician and a major daily, won a favorable verdict. The Post-Standard thereafter made a small monetary settlement and—even more important for the historical record—issued a retraction, reproduced on Chapter 33, acknowledging that McCarthy wasn’t responsible for the picture.*242 2 As to further details about the matter, we are once more indebted to the offstage candor of Senator Benton’s aide John Howe. Commenting on the composite photo and Post-Standard ruling, Howe would write to Benton:
“We showed that McCarthy had helped arrange for the printing of the tabloid; that members of his staff had contributed material to the tabloid and that McCarthy had later defended the tabloid. But in my opinion it would have been impossible for the Post-Standard to prove that McCarthy ‘was the one who framed Senator Tydings of Maryland with a fake photograph.’ All the evidence is that McCarthy himself had nothing to do with the inclusion of any particular story in the tabloid (he was in Wisconsin through its preparation); the then managing editor of the Times Herald has testified that he himself had the idea and ordered the work on the ‘composite photograph.’ And even the Senate subcommittee castigation of McCarthy would not have borne out the phrase, ‘was the one who framed,’ etc.”†243 3
All this was by way of preface to a much more significant investigation of McCarthy by the same subcommittee—this sparked by Senator Benton and following almost immediately in the wake of the election probe. Reading over the Maryland report, and reflecting on the earlier findings of the Tydings panel, Benton became seized of the notion that McCarthy should be ejected from the Senate. This was, it appears, a very quick decision, or possibly one that had been marinating for a while in Benton’s mind, or someone else’s, before he suddenly acted on it. The Maryland report was handed down by the Gillette-Monroney committee on August 3, 1951; on August 6, Benton rose on the floor of the Senate and offered a resolution—S.R. 187—saying McCarthy should be investigated with a view to ousting him from the chamber.
This resolution, framed as a follow-on to the Maryland inquest, was also referred to the Gillette committee, which thus would continue its preoccupation with McCarthy for months thereafter. On September 28, Benton went before the panel and presented what he described as evidence proving McCarthy guilty of numerous trespasses against the Senate and the nation. In a lengthy indictment, Benton offered alleged documentation for his charges—this mostly derived from the Tydings report of the previous year, garnished with items pulled together by McCarthy critics in the press and Congress.
It was an audacious move, with few precedents in the history of the Senate. However, as a recent addition to that body, Benton was himself in many ways just as much an outsider and maverick as McCarthy, and not much concerned about its traditions and procedures. A former advertising executive, he had made a fair amount of money before entering government service in
the 1940s. He had been the partner of Chester Bowles in a successful ad firm and had thereafter gone on to involvement with a host of media ventures ranging from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to Muzak, with other projects in between.
This experience apparently made him in the eyes of someone a good candidate for diplomatic duty, as during the early years of World War II he played divers roles with the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, some of whose strange staffers have been noted. Then, in the late summer of 1945, he would be brought directly into the State Department as part of the mysterious and crucial appointments package through which Dean Acheson became Under Secretary of State. Benton’s title was Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Affairs, and numerous transferees from OWI and CIAA would be under his direction. Only in 1950 had he ascended to the Senate.*244
Benton had thus been in the Senate for about a year and a half when he made his move against McCarthy. Why he did so has been a subject of speculation. The new senator seems to have had conventionally liberal Democratic notions on most issues, but the obvious motivating factor for his unusual action was his background in the State Department, which had made him at least an indirect McCarthy target in ways that other senators weren’t. Indeed, outside the Far East division, it’s doubtful any other branch of the State Department contained as many suspects on McCarthy’s several lists as did Benton’s.
Benton’s charges mostly concerned political statements, speeches, and actions by McCarthy that were deemed offensive. The counts were ten in number: (1) that McCarthy lied about the Wheeling speech and numbers when he testified to Tydings; (2) that he engaged in a questionable deal with Lustron, a manufacturer of prefab housing, accepting a fee of $10,000 for a housing booklet put together by McCarthy; (3) that he defamed General Marshall in his speech of June 14, 1951; (4) that he falsely said Senator Tydings “forced” him to give the names of his anonymous suspects in public hearings; (5) that he was guilty of defaming Tydings in the Maryland election tabloid; (6) that he falsely promised to forgo congressional immunity for his charges; (7) that he falsely claimed to have an FBI “chart,” as discussed in Chapter 23; (8) that he misrepresented the source of his eighty-one cases given to the Senate (and didn’t even know their names); (9) that he ill-treated a committee chairman, Sen. Raymond Baldwin, in the Malmedy investigation; and (10) that his aide Don Surine misrepresented the circumstances under which he left the FBI, and that McCarthy encouraged and suborned the actions of one Charles Davis, who allegedly forged a telegram concerning John Carter Vincent.4
Of this list of charges, only one, that involving the Lustron booklet, had anything to do with McCarthy’s finances, everything else relating to his political statements and alleged actions, or those of his assistants. As matters developed, however, the financial angle would be the subject of constant embellishment and expansion, grow at an exponential pace, and eventually become the main, indeed virtually the only, point of the investigation. When the final report of the subcommittee was printed, McCarthy’s financial doings were in effect the only subject dealt with, and this in most extensive fashion, while all the other charges vanished. Considering the way the inquest started, this seemed a peculiar outcome.
To get to this odd result, a couple of adjustments had been needed in the proceedings of the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. One concerned the fact that its main ostensible province, as the name suggests, was the matter of elections. With a few exceptions, and these a bit of a stretch themselves, McCarthy’s financial records had no relevance to his election to the Senate, or anybody else’s, but these records would be examined in minute detail by subcommittee staffers. McCarthy, in several angry letters to Gillette, vehemently protested this pursuit of his strictly personal doings, but to no avail, as the subcommittee answered that, given its plenary powers, it could pretty much look into anything about McCarthy that it cared to.
A second adjustment required to give the investigation of McCarthy’s finances the widest possible ambit involved the wording of Benton’s resolution. In his original motion, Benton had asked for an investigation of McCarthy’s activities “since his election to the Senate,” which occurred in the fall of 1946. (Emphasis here and elsewhere in this discussion added.) However, Benton for some reason soon had second thoughts about the matter and asked that the scope of the inquest be broadened. On October 5, a week after his testimony to Gillette, Benton wrote the committee saying he would now also like an investigation of McCarthy’s activities “before his election to the United States Senate.” This widening of the mandate was required, he said, to evaluate McCarthy’s general fitness to sit in that august chamber and was needed in “fairness” to McCarthy as well as others.5
This suggestion to extend the investigation backward in indefinite fashion was promptly acted on by the committee. On October 15, Chief Counsel JohnP. Moore notified his staffers that the initial focus on McCarthy’s Senate conduct was now to be expanded to include his private actions in the past, and that they were to launch an investigation and make a report “concerning the senator’s pre-election conduct also.” This would, said Moore, allow senators on the panel to widen or narrow the lens at their discretion—an idea no doubt also prompted by a desire for greater fairness to McCarthy.
From that point on, the investigation became an unlimited fishing expedition into McCarthy’s earnings, bank statements, loan records, stock market activity, taxes, and anything else of financial nature the probers could think of, extending back through his whole career since hanging out his lawyer’s shingle. Similar data were sought on his father, brothers, brother-in-law, friends, staffers, and supporters, the total inquiry reaching back to 1935—the year McCarthy got out of law school and more than a decade before he was elected to the Senate. The result was a huge batch of personal financial information on McCarthy and just about everyone he ever dealt with—a considerable mass of which would then be spread out on the public record. Following are a few of the items the subcommittee assembled on McCarthy, his family, friends, and staffers:
Appleton State Bank: Bank Examiners re McCarthy loan
Bentley, Alvin and Arvilla P.: income tax return
Bentley, Arvilla P.: Riggs National Bank ledger account
Gomillion, Otis: income tax returns, 1945–1950
Kerr, Jean F.: income tax returns, 1948–1950
Kerr, Jean F. and Elizabeth: Hamilton National Bank/bank account
Kornely, Roman and Olive: Income Tax Returns, 1948–1950
Mack, Walter S. Jr.: Income Tax Returns, 1943–1950
McCarthy, Joseph R.
Appleton State Bank, Checking Account
Bank of Commerce and Savings, Washington, D.C.: Account
Income Tax Return, 1942–1950 (also Tax Return Analysis, 1935–1950)
Wisconsin State Income Tax Returns, 1948
Wisconsin State Income Tax Returns, 1949
Wisconsin State Income Tax Returns, and Analysis, 1935–1951
McCarthy, Stephen T. and Alice: Income Tax Returns, 1945–1950
McCarthy, Timothy C.: Income Tax Returns, 1945–1946
McCarthy, William P. and Julia: Income Tax Returns, 1947–19506
And so forth and so on—the above selections representing only a fraction of the total data assembled. From this trove of information the subcommittee put together a report running to better than 35 pages, backed up by a staggering 266 pages of photographic reproductions of McCarthy’s bank records, loan statements, political spending, and stock market dealings, plus financial information relating to his family, friends, supporters, and staffers.
Somewhat strikingly, having had the opportunity to ransack McCarthy’s financial records extending back for seventeen years, the committee would make no finding that he had done anything illegal—though its report was heavy on innuendo and loaded questions. What the records mainly showed was that McCarthy typically was strapped for cash, had drastically uneven earnings from one year to the next, borrowed heavily from time to tim
e, once made considerable profit in a stock transaction but more often lost than gained, and engaged in financial dealings with his friends and family. Money was flipped back and forth among funding sources according to whether he fell behind or got somewhat ahead in this ongoing series of transactions.
What all this contributed to the well-being of the republic or dignity of the Senate wasn’t immediately apparent, nor is it apparent now.*245 What it did do, however, was systematically invade McCarthy’s privacy, along with that of his family, friends, and staffers, subject him to constant harassment, and allow his political foes to run barefoot through his financial records in search of possible incriminating data.
The other thing accomplished by all this financial sleuthing was to crowd out of the committee’s report the other nine counts Benton brought against McCarthy, though these had been investigated at exhaustive length by the panel’s staffers. We have already seen the manner in which the investigative memo compiled for this committee on the Wheeling numbers was disposed of. Though this was Benton’s foremost supposed proof of McCarthy’s lying, constantly harped on by Benton and by Tydings, and backed by the alleged data assembled by the State Department, it dropped completely out of view when the investigators who went up to Wheeling made their report, in essence supporting McCarthy’s version of the issue.
A similar fate now befell all other nonfinancial charges in the original Benton lineup: the alleged lying about the Lee list, the FBI chart, the question of being forced to name the names, the Charles Davis business, and so on. These were summarized briefly in the opening passages of the report, then disappeared entirely. The nominal basis for this silent treatment was that the “subcommittee is reluctant to become involved in matters of speeches and statements”—this despite the fact that speeches and statements were involved directly or indirectly in the vast bulk of Benton’s charges, and that the subcommittee had spent countless hours of staff time investigating these very topics. What remained, therefore, were 300-plus pages of a committee report devoted almost exclusively to McCarthy’s finances.7
Blacklisted By History Page 54
