In context, probably the most distinctive thing about Schine was that he was the McCarthy staffer most eligible for being drafted, though even this was a bit of a stretch. In 1947, he had been classified 4-F and draft-exempt because of a slipped disk in his back. He then obtained a position in the Army Transport Service, serving as the equivalent of a ship’s purser before going on to Harvard. In the summer of 1953, Schine was approaching his twenty-sixth birthday (September 11), much older than the average conscript of that era, still classified 4-F, and helping lay the groundwork for the probe at Monmouth.
At this point, Drew Pearson would come back in the picture and, based on some combination of outside tips and inside sources, manage to obtain the Schine draft records. Pearson then began another press crusade to the effect that Schine was a shirker who ought to be conscripted. After a series of columns on this theme, the Schine case was reopened; he was classified 1-A and would enter the Army in November. When Drew Pearson spoke, it seems, local draft boards listened.
As Schine was at the outer age limit for the draft, this reopening of his file struck some observers as peculiar. One such naturally was Cohn, who believed the only reason Schine was drafted was that he worked for the McCarthy panel. McCarthy believed the same, though he was less vocal on the topic. These views were no doubt to be expected. It’s noteworthy, however, that Army Secretary Robert Stevens was of the like opinion, voiced in January 1954 to Defense official Fred Seaton. “Of course,” said Stevens, “the kid [Schine] was taken at the very last minute, before he was ineligible for age. My guess would be that if he hadn’t been working for McCarthy, he probably never would have been drafted….”3
However it was managed, and for whatever reason, the effect of Schine’s induction was to give the Army a pressure point where influence over the McCarthy panel might at least in theory be wielded. It also created a two-way dynamic between McCarthy and the Ike administration. Schine was now under the thumb of the Army and subject to such treatment as it chose to give him. Meanwhile, the committee where Schine had worked was investigating his new bosses. Not quite two scorpions in a bottle, but the opportunities for mutual leverage were apparent.
At the fulcrum of these events was Cohn. Already believing Schine a victim of discrimination, Cohn soon became convinced of this more firmly. Citing Schine’s educational level, age, and prior experience with the Army Transport Service, Cohn thought his pal and coworker should be eligible for a commission. This view was at first confirmed by Gen. Miles Reber, Army liaison with the Senate. However, Reber then got back to Cohn saying this was in error and that a commission wasn’t going to happen. This persuaded Cohn that somebody in high places was watching over Schine, but not in a friendly manner. (Adding to these misgivings was the discovery that General Reber was the brother of Sam Reber, one of those with whom Cohn and Schine had clashed on their foray to Europe.)
While all this was going on, the Monmouth probe was grinding forward, and John Adams commenced his role as liaison between the committee and Bob Stevens. (Adams assumed his new position on October 1.) Thereafter, Adams and Cohn, and to a lesser extent subcommittee executive director Frank Carr, were in continuing contact on the basis of apparent friendship, with much hanging out together, attendance at prize fights, frequent dinners, and other forms of socializing. A similar if less intense bonhomie would develop between Stevens and McCarthy, and between Stevens and committee staffers—including a series of contacts with Schine himself and also with his family.
In these conditions, there were many informal off-the-record conversations among all the parties on a host of topics: Monmouth, Lawton, the review board, the status and activities of Schine, the linked cases of Peress and Zwicker, targets of other possible investigations. Who said what, who promised whom, who suggested a particular course of action, would in due course become sources of uncertainty and angry conflict.
Illustrative of both the original cordiality and later confusion were arrangements whereby Schine, while undergoing basic training at Fort Dix—yet another New Jersey Army post—would be given time off on nights and weekends to help wrap up committee business on which he was working. This was subject to the stipulation that such absences wouldn’t interfere with Army training. Subsequently, the number of Schine’s departures from the base, and whether he was really engaged in committee work rather than simply gadding about with Cohn, would be disputed fiercely.
The events that apparently turned good feelings into mortal combat occurred in January of 1954, when McCarthy made it plain he would press forward with the Monmouth probe and insist on calling members of the review board that had been reversing security suspensions at the complex. John Adams had done all he could to avert this but failed to get the job done. Accordingly, another and more powerful Adams, former New Hampshire governor Sherman Adams, top staffer in the Eisenhower White House, would enter the fray, moving it up to the highest levels. The result of this intervention would be the single most portentous episode in the entire McCarthy saga.
At a meeting in Herbert Brownell’s office at the Department of Justice on January 21, John Adams, as he later testified, would give Brownell, Sherman Adams, Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, and other key officials (including U.N. Ambassador Lodge) a briefing on the Monmouth inquest, on what the counsel said were improper pressures from Cohn to get perks for Schine, and on Cohn’s alleged threats against the Army. Having heard a fair amount of this, Sherman Adams told the counsel to put it all in writing so as to have a proper record. The next day, John Adams would begin compiling what would be known as the Army “chronology of events,” concerning the activities of Cohn, the treatment of Schine, and related views and actions of McCarthy.4
While writing this account over the next few weeks, John Adams would share portions of it with members of the press corps—including columnist Joseph Alsop, Phillip Potter of the Baltimore Sun, Murray Marder of the Washington Post, and Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune. Allusions to the chronology and its assertions soon began appearing in news columns. On March 10, the Army would make the indictment public, and thereafter proffer formal charges based on the John Adams version of what had happened. The gist of the complaint was that Cohn, with McCarthy’s acquiescence, had used the bludgeon of committee power to get favors for Dave Schine. A further implication was that the Monmouth probe and calling of the loyalty board were efforts to exert such pressure, rather than a proper investigation.5
Alerted by press leaks to what was coming, McCarthy and Cohn had readied their defenses. The day after the Army document appeared, the duo held a press conference in which they made countercharges of their own, backed with a series of eleven internal office memos giving their version of the conflict. Their story was that the Monmouth inquest was legitimate and sorely needed, but unwelcome at the Pentagon, and that Schine was being used as a pawn to get the hearings canceled—the mirror image of the Army charges.
With dueling accusations now before the country, a Senate inquest was convened to sort out the muddle. Such was the genesis of the Army-McCarthy hearings that ran from April 1954 until the middle of June, filled 3,000 pages of printed transcript, and were viewed by an estimated daily TV audience of 20 million people. In the course of this inquiry, the public would hear much about Dave Schine, Fort Monmouth, General Lawton, and other topics, some far afield from the ostensible purpose of the hearings. TV viewers would get a close-up look at Joe McCarthy, Robert Stevens, Roy Cohn, John Adams, Stuart Symington, Everett Dirksen, Karl Mundt, and a then-unheralded lawyer from Boston named Joseph Welch, acting as special counsel to Stevens-Adams.
As the PSI was at the crossroads of the conflicting charges, it was decided the panel should conduct the hearings but that McCarthy as a party at interest would for the time being step aside as chairman. The new temporary chairman would be Mundt, second-ranking Republican on the subcommittee. To take McCarthy’s place, the GOP named Henry Dworshak, a conservative backbencher from Idaho and member of the parent G
overnment Ops committee. All other members of the subcommittee remained as in the previous lineup. Chosen after an extensive search to serve as chief counsel pro tem was Ray Jenkins, a flamboyant Tennessee lawyer of bulldog demeanor, recommended for the job by Dirksen.
As the hearings cranked up toward the end of April, the venerable Senate Caucus Room would again be packed with spectators, press, TV cameras, kibitzers from the Hill, and a glittering array of Army brass showing support for Stevens-Adams. The Army side went first, in an effort to document the alleged efforts of Cohn to get unwarranted perks for Schine. The opening witness was Gen. Reber, the Army liaison with the Senate, who testified that Cohn had been persistent, to the point of being a common nuisance, in repeatedly calling Reber’s office about getting Schine a commission.
Reber was followed on the stand by Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, at this time with the State Department, who also happened to be an acquaintance of Cohn’s. Smith testified that Cohn had come to see him about the possibility that Schine was a victim of discrimination, and that they also discussed the prospect of Schine’s hooking up with the CIA, which Smith had previously headed. Both generals sketched a picture of Cohn as avidly bird-dogging the case of Schine, thus buttressing the Army charges.
However, the testimony of Reber and Smith also supported, in unexpected fashion, the contrasting views of Cohn-McCarthy. Asked if McCarthy had exerted any illicit pressure on behalf of Schine, for instance, Reber said he hadn’t. Similarly asked if Cohn had made any “improper effort to induce or intimidate you to give Private Schine a commission,” Reber answered, “None of Mr. Cohn’s calls to me were of that nature.” The problem, he said, wasn’t “because of the language but because of the frequency.” Smith would likewise testify about two Schine-related talks he had with Cohn:
JENKINS: Did you regard those requests by Mr. Cohn on behalf of Schine as extraordinary or unusual or improper?
SMITH: I did not.
JENKINS: State whether or not on either of those occasions you felt that Mr. Cohn was being too persistent or was trying to high pressure anyone.
SMITH: Not me, sir.
JENKINS: This final question: Do you regard anything said by Mr. Cohn to you on either of the two occasions you mentioned as being improper?
SMITH: I do not.6
Thus on net balance, and to the surprise and probable dismay of many, these Army witnesses were actually helpful to Cohn-McCarthy. Their pro-McCarthy impact was, however, diluted when the senator abruptly raised with Reber his brother’s status with HICOG, his encounter there with Cohn and Schine, and dismissal from his post for alleged security reasons. These questions were ruled relevant by counsel Jenkins as going to possible motives on the part of General Reber in handling the question of a Schine commission, but were otherwise widely viewed as an unfair personal onslaught. It would be the first of several McCarthy problems of this nature.
Following these warm-ups, the main Army witness to take the stand was Stevens, who would testify for fourteen days, spelling out the Army’s case against McCarthy-Cohn and being subjected to withering cross-examination by Jenkins.*298 As all observers were agreed, the secretary’s performance was not impressive. He seemed to have trouble getting his story straight and had great difficulty with specifics. His testimony featured many vague answers, memory lapses, and circumlocutions before the facts of any matter could be established. This was especially true of the Cohn-McCarthy contention that Stevens (and John Adams in his behalf) had wanted to get the Monmouth hearings canceled.
This Jenkins interrogation ran on for several pages, as Stevens at first denied any such intention, then by degrees admitted he was opposed to hearings of “this type” (meaning public), then at last conceded that, indeed, he wanted to get the probe suspended. The admission came, however, in circuitous, hesitant fashion:
“I said I didn’t like this constant hammering in the headlines of the Army, because I thought it gave a picture to the public of considerable espionage or spying at Fort Monmouth, which was not in accordance with the facts. That is what I objected to. I therefore wanted to handle the job myself, but I specifically said, and I think you will find it in my testimony, that I wanted to make progress reports to Senator McCarthy, and that if we weren’t doing the job right, I assumed that he would come right back into the picture.”7
To be able to “come back into the picture,” of course, McCarthy would first have had to step out of it, which is exactly what McCarthy and Cohn said Stevens-Adams were after. Thus, while taking the long way around the barn, Stevens was here confessing that, yes, he did want the hearings halted. This was a ten-strike for McCarthy.
As to the other side of the issue—the alleged threats by McCarthy-Cohn to do unspeakable things to the Army—the Jenkins questions were relentless. They brought out the point that during the period in which supposedly horrific pressures were being wielded against the Army, Stevens and John Adams had been on the friendliest possible terms with McCarthy, Cohn, and others from the panel. Stevens had, for example, visited with Schine’s parents in their home, attended a party put on by Cohn, been driven in the Schine family Cadillac by Dave Schine, and had extended to McCarthy staffers the hospitality of a club he belonged to in Manhattan.
How, Jenkins wanted to know, did all this nonstop socializing stack up with the tale of bloodcurdling menace recited in the Army charges? If Stevens-Adams felt so terribly threatened, why were they on such cordial terms with McCarthy, Cohn, and Schine? Didn’t it really add up to a concerted effort to ingratiate the Army with the committee? And wasn’t the obvious purpose of that to get the panel to call off its hearings? The Stevens response to all of which was that he always tried to have good relations with Congress (though no other cases of such unusual conduct were on record).
The Army did somewhat better when John Adams took the stand and spelled out his basis for saying McCarthy-Cohn, especially Cohn, had been abusive toward his clients. Adams recounted episodes in which he said Cohn had blown his stack, threatened to “wreck” the Army, and otherwise allegedly used the power of the committee to exert improper pressure. This would be followed by other Army officials who sought to document the special treatment given the notorious private. A graphic feature of this session was a display of charts purporting to show the absences of Schine from Fort Dix as compared to the number of leaves enjoyed by other privates—in which respect the discrepancy in Schine’s favor seemed to be immense.
These charts, however, turned out to be of peculiar nature, and to observers following matters closely may have hurt the Stevens-Adams case more than they helped it. There was no question that Schine had many more passes than did the average private, as was implicit in the agreement reached with Stevens. However, Army graphic specialists weren’t content to show this, but enhanced the contrast to make it seem even more enormous than it was. This was done by marking the absences of Schine with heavy black ink, explained in small white lettering, but showing the absences of a hypothetical average private in the opposite manner—white backdrop with small black letters.
As the rest of the chart in both instances was also white, the optical effect was a mass of black markings for Schine as against a chart that looked almost entirely white for others. This was further enhanced by the blacking out on Schine’s chart of eight full days that elapsed between his induction and his arrival at Fort Dix. (See Chapter 42.) Viewers seeing the two exhibits at the hearing or on TV would thus get an impression of Schine’s absences far greater than the ample number he in fact was granted. When McCarthy and chairman Mundt made an issue of this, Army spokesmen said they had been in a hurry to get the graphics finished and perhaps had erred in showing the two cases in such contrasting formats.8
After all this was completed, Cohn and McCarthy would each take the stand and give a totally different version of the matter, from amiable start to dismal finish. The most knowledgeable testimony was that of Cohn, who had been at ground zero of events, the champion of Schine and, until near the
end, in close contact with John Adams. Among other things, Cohn filled in certain blanks pertaining to the investigation of the Army and touched on several topics reviewed in previous chapters. He for instance alluded to the order of December 1944, discussed in Chapter 6, authorizing commissions in the Army for members of the Communist Party. Later he—and McCarthy—would refer to the question of possible pro-Soviet influence in G-2.9
BLACK AND WHITE
Army graphics showing Private David Schine’s absences from Fort Dix, compared with those of the “average trainee.” Note the contrasting formats used, and the emphasis given to Schine’s absences by use of heavy black boxes—including eight full days in early November 1953 before he ever reported to Fort Dix.
Source: McCarthy Papers II
Though these references were brief, and indicated Cohn-McCarthy had not yet nailed down all the facts, they were correct in substance. They made the point that attempted Communist infiltration of the Army was not a fantasy dreamed up by McCarthy but an issue of long standing. (Likewise, Cohn-McCarthy would refer to the infiltration of OSS in World War II, which helped explain their collateral interest in the CIA, inheritor of the foreign intelligence mission, along with many staffers from the wartime unit.)
As to the conduct of Schine, Cohn stoutly if somewhat implausibly maintained that, during all his nighttime and weekend absences, the inductee had been working on committee business, not carousing in New York nightclubs (this even on New Year’s Eve), all per the entente with Stevens. These comments were viewed with obvious skepticism by committee members. However, there were again countervailing statements by Army spokesmen that Schine, contrary to his playboy image, had completed his basic training in proper fashion and was considered a good soldier (and excellent marksman in the bargain).
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