Cohn’s weakest moments on the stand concerned a blowup at Fort Monmouth when he had been barred from entry to the secret labs there and allegedly spouted curses against the Army. Though denying any “vituperative” language, he admitted he was angry and had expressed himself as such. Army witnesses were more explicit about his loss of temper and said he made threats about retaliation for the slight he suffered. All this was extremely negative for Cohn, but also had a downside for the Army: It had nothing to do with Schine, and thus had only marginal relevance to the subject of the hearings.
If Cohn was the most knowledgeable McCarthy witness, seemingly the most impressive to the panel was Frank Carr. The longtime FBI agent, taciturn and stolid, had merely casual interest in Schine—this mostly concerned with seeing that the draftee’s committee work got finished—and there was no evidence from anyone, even John Adams, that Carr had done anything to get improper privileges for Schine.*299
Carr was, however, most definite in backing Cohn on key elements of the conflict. One of these concerned a much-talked-of Manhattan lunch and car ride of mid-December 1953 in which, according to John Adams, Cohn had harangued him about Schine while McCarthy and Carr sat by in embarrassed silence. In fact, said Carr, the Cohn harangue was about an entirely different topic—the crackdown on General Lawton for having cooperated with the panel. (Cohn and McCarthy said the same.) As seen, General Lawton was a subject Adams and Stevens weren’t eager to have brought before the nation.
Given the wide currency of the Adams version of this episode as a Cohn filibuster about Schine, the categorical statements to the contrary by Carr are worth a bit of notice. “…it was,” he said, “a monologue by Mr. Cohn…on the subject of Gen. Lawton and reprisals made against persons who helped the subcommittee in some way. Mr. Adams kept trying to interject himself by making statements which I recall, in substance, as this: ‘Let’s talk about Schine.’ Mr. Cohn replied, rather heatedly, ‘I don’t want to talk about Schine. Let’s talk about Lawton.’…Mr. Adams tried on several occasions to swing the subject to Schine, but it never got there…Mr. Cohn wouldn’t talk about Schine. He wanted to talk about Lawton.”10 (Emphasis added.)
Who, in this maelstrom of conflicting statements, was telling the truth to a baffled nation? The whole thing boiled down to whose word was to be accepted. There was documentary evidence of a sort, but this was itself the subject of many questions. In particular, the eleven memos by McCarthy and his staffers, mostly chronicling contacts with John Adams, were viewed with sardonic skepticism by Army lawyer Welch and others. They seemed too pat and too convenient. In his cross-examination of McCarthy secretary Mary Driscoll, who had done the typing, and also of Frank Carr, Welch voiced serious doubts about the authenticity of these memos.
By his questions, Welch suggested the memos were written after the fact to substantiate the McCarthy version of the story. (There was later reason to believe this was true, at least with certain of the memos.) And, quite apart from when they were written, there was an obvious problem with the memos: They represented strictly the McCarthy version of events and could hardly be expected to include a record of any threats or other malfeasance by committee forces. They were thus no more credible on their face than the live testimony of McCarthy staffers.11
Over against the McCarthy memos was the chronology written by John Adams, which had similar evidential problems. This professed to be a phase-by-phase and sometimes day-to-day account of pressures and threats by McCarthy and Cohn to get privileges for Schine. But this was just as much parti pris as the McCarthy memos, well-shaded with subjective comment and plainly written after the fact—having been compiled in early 1954 about events that in most cases occurred months before then. (A point made by former Ike staffer William Ewald, who had access to the relevant papers on the Army side of the confrontation.)12
Obviously needed in these conditions was some impartial record of what really happened, drawn from a source whose validity wasn’t subject to challenge. But in a he said/he said debate concerning private conversations, could such an account exist? Somewhat improbably, the answer was “Yes.” A source of contemporaneous and accurate data, as opposed to self-serving memos, did exist and had been in the possession of the Army all along: a series of monitored phone calls involving most of the key players and discussing most of the relevant issues.
This store of data had been recorded by an Army stenographic expert who listened in on the office calls of Stevens and prepared transcripts of what was said on both ends of the phone line. The existence of these monitored calls would be initially brought out by Jenkins and confirmed by Stevens. Subsequently, Army lawyer Welch moved to introduce material from these transcripts—specifically, a talk with Stevens in which McCarthy downplayed the importance of Schine, said he didn’t want any favors for him, and said Cohn was “completely unreasonable” on the topic.
This phone call, while showing McCarthy not seeking privileges for Schine, had the advantage for the Army of driving a wedge between McCarthy and Cohn—using McCarthy’s words to help indict his counsel and deflating Cohn’s contention that Schine was essential to the committee’s labors. It’s thus easy to see why Welch and Stevens would have wanted this conversation in the record. There were, however, serious dangers for the Army in this démarche, which Joe McCarthy was quick to notice.
While condemning the practice of monitored calls, McCarthy said he would consent to having this transcript read into the hearing record, provided it was indeed a verbatim transcript, and that all other monitored phone calls among the relevant parties were likewise entered. This was backed up by Democratic members of the panel. “We have the right,” said Henry Jackson, “to subpoena all of these records that are relevant to this hearing.” John McClellan put it as a motion, which was unanimously voted, that “all memoranda, all documents, all notes of monitored conversations as between the parties in this controversy, and all others that are relevant…be subpoenaed.”13
This wasn’t at all what Welch and Co. were after—was, indeed, the reverse. The monitored calls were extensive, including not only conversations between Stevens and McCarthy but further talks with other members of the Senate, various members of the Army, and officials of the Ike administration—conversations Stevens-Adams and those above them by no means wanted in the record. By opening up this Pandora’s box, Army counsel Welch had blundered, and by so doing all but demolished the substantive case he had been building for his clients.
In the event, not all of the monitored phone calls would be obtained, but enough were placed in the record to torpedo the main contentions of the Army. Together with the testimony of Stevens, the calls showed the allegations of dire threats, intolerable pressure, and general hostility toward the Army by McCarthy-Cohn to be completely unsupported (nor, as brought out by Dirksen, did they reveal any vituperative or abusive language by Cohn). Instead, the calls reflected much congeniality and good feeling among the parties, with little or nothing by way of pressure from the McCarthy faction.
On this point, we can hardly do better than quote Army counsel Adams, who would write of the monitored conversations: “In fact, the transcribed calls favored McCarthy’s side…Stevens’ calls had been recorded all along, and they showed more placation from the Army Secretary than pressure from McCarthy…There was certainly no smoking gun in the recorded calls that could be aimed at McCarthy or Cohn.” (Adams would conclude this comment by quoting the Washington Post’s opinion that, “if anything they [the calls] were more damaging to the Army than to the subcommittee.”)14 (Emphasis added.)
While details to this effect were several, of particular interest was a March 8, 1954, conversation between Stevens and Stuart Symington, Democratic member of the panel. Rumors about the chronology had at that time abounded, and Symington was anxious to get a copy. The conversation, McCarthy argued, showed Symington’s attempts to concert an alliance with Stevens against McCarthy-Cohn, which was certainly true enough.*300 But the transcript was still more sug
gestive in showing the views of Stevens on the main issues of the hearings. When Symington prodded him about problems with McCarthy and his staff, Stevens had answered:
I personally think that anything in that line would be very much exaggerated… I am the Secretary, and I have had some talks with the committee and the chairman, and so on, and by and large as far as the treatment of me is concerned, I have no personal complaint. When he got after Zwicker, of course, then I hollered, but as far as I personally am concerned, I don’t have a lot of stuff so far as my contact with Joe, or the committee, is concerned.15 (Emphasis added.)
This previously off-the-record Stevens comment was made just two days before the administration, in his name, made its first public charges against McCarthy-Cohn, alleging a sinister plot to force special treatment for Dave Schine. The contrast between these charges of threat and pressure and the Stevens statement that he had “no personal complaint” could not have been more vivid.
It was of course possible that Stevens was being guarded in these comments and that they weren’t his full and frank opinion. The fact remained that, in the record of conversations provided by the Army’s own transcripts, Stevens was saying the exact reverse of what was in the Army charges. Likewise, there were no disclosures from the transcripts otherwise that sustained the Stevens-Adams accusations. Had those accusations been true, there should have been some evidence of it in the Army’s records, but there wasn’t.
Sen. Charles Potter (R.-Mich.) would later say the main contentions of McCarthy and the Army were both borne out by the hearings. A more considered judgment would seem to be that both sides were, in varying degree, inaccurate in their charges. What actually happened, stated early on by Jenkins and supported by the monitored phone calls, was the opposite of what the Army contended—but also different from the countercharges of McCarthy. Quite obviously, as Stevens admitted, he wanted to have the Monmouth hearings suspended. And having got Schine in their clutches, the Stevens-Adams team believed they had the leverage to do this.
That leverage, however, was wielded mainly in positive rather than negative terms—as an inducement rather than a threat: In handling Schine with velvet gloves, the Army faction hoped to get better cooperation from McCarthy. In this respect, Cohn’s interest in the status of Schine was undoubtedly less offensive to Stevens-Adams than they let on, since it suggested that a strategy focused on Schine might be just the ticket for winding down the hearings. It was never likely this would work, and it didn’t, but the message conveyed by Cohn’s solicitude for Schine could only have encouraged Stevens and Adams in such notions.
There was in sum no evidence that Roy Cohn took or threatened any investigative action against the Army to get privileges for Schine, still less that McCarthy did so. But by combining these subjects in tangled fashion, Cohn, assisted by John Adams, had created the impression that some such attempts were made and that the kid-glove treatment of Schine resulted from these efforts. And in political Washington, then as now, reality often ran second to perception.
CHAPTER 42
On Not Having Any Decency
HAD THE Army-McCarthy fracas been decided on its merits, McCarthy, though suffering plenty of setbacks, would have been declared the winner, and by a substantial margin. Most relevant to the official outcome, the Army conspicuously failed to prove that the Monmouth hearings, subpoenas for the Loyalty Board, or any other investigative effort by McCarthy-Cohn had any linkage to Dave Schine—the essence of the original charges.
Conversely, the appointed judges of the matter were agreed that Stevens-Adams did try to use the famous private as a pawn to get the Monmouth hearings canceled. This didn’t mean Cohn was off the hook for having pestered people about Schine, but that these efforts, instead of causing the Monmouth probe, most probably encouraged Stevens-Adams in attempts to stop it. On these key points, the opinions of Republican and Democratic members weren’t far apart, though differing in the stringency of their comments. The GOP majority put it this way:
We find Mr. Cohn was unduly aggressive and persistent in the contacts he made with various officials in the executive department in regard to his friend and associate, Mr. Schine…We find, however, that the investigation at Fort Monmouth was not designed or conducted as a leverage to secure preferential treatment for G. David Schine…The evidence reasonably inspires the belief that Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth…We find that Mr. Adams, at least, made vigorous and diligent efforts when the subpoenas were issued for the Army Loyalty and Screening Board to halt this action by means of personal appeals to certain members of this committee…1
The view of the Democratic minority was only slightly different:
The record fully warrants the conclusion that Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams did undertake to influence or induce the subcommittee to discontinue at least some parts of its investigation of the Army…We are convinced that Secretary Stevens and Mr. Adams were most apprehensive and deeply concerned about the subcommittee’s investigation of the Army and were anxious to and did undertake to appease and placate Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn. Unwarranted special privileges and preferential treatment were accorded Private Schine…Mr. Cohn, without justification, knowingly and persistently sought and secured special privileges and preferential treatment for Private Schine. To secure such favor, he knowingly misrepresented the record of Private Schine’s service to the Investigations Subcommittee. In doing so, he misused and abused the power of his office and brought disrepute to the subcommittee.2
Thus, as might be expected, the Democrats came down much harder on Cohn than did the GOP contingent. Yet, even here, it’s worth observing, there was no finding that the Monmouth investigation was connected to the fate of Schine. Cohn, on the Democratic reading, had badly overstepped his bounds, allegedly misrepresenting Schine’s worth to the committee, but that wasn’t the reason for the probe of Monmouth.
If that had been all there was, the hearings, though messy, harmful, and a huge distraction from other labors, would have been accounted a victory for McCarthy. However, the truth of the original charges wasn’t to be a crucial factor in rendering a verdict on the inquest, either then or later. Instead, extraneous topics would become decisive, elevating issues of style and manner above the claims of substance. To some extent this was accidental, and some of it was the doing of McCarthy’s gruff comments and demeanor, off-putting to many in TV-land, but most of it was owing to the tactics and improvisational skills of Army Counsel Welch.
Joe Welch, thanks to these hearings, would take his place as one of the more memorable characters of the era, a Dickensian figure transplanted to the 1950s. From a study of his forensic methods, strange way of phrasing things, and self-conscious quaintness, it’s obvious he was a consummate actor and that he approached the hearings in this spirit. Welch treated the whole affair as a kind of melodrama in which fact and reason were distinctly secondary to image and impression. Much of what he said and did was geared to this soap opera conception of the process.*301
As it happened, there was good reason for this approach, beyond the tastes and aptitudes of Welch. He may or may not have been a genius in the courtroom, but he was nobody’s fool and could see his client’s case was deplorably weak—particularly after the collapse of Stevens. It’s thus no surprise that, as events permitted, Welch spent as much time as possible on topics that had only slight relation, or none, to the substance of the hearings. Or that, once he got hold of such a topic, he wrung it dry for dramatic impact.
In pursuing these tactics, Welch was eminently successful—so much so that side issues he developed would be virtually the only things many viewers remembered from the hearings. Even today, people who know little else about the conflict are likely to know something of these digressions—one in particular that’s always mentioned. Nor, as usual with McCarthy cases, are most history books much better—generally treating these Welch asides, with varying degrees o
f accuracy, as the main highlights of the proceedings. Three episodes featured in the standard treatments are instructive.
• The “Doctored” Photo. In cross-examining Robert Stevens, Counsel Ray Jenkins had hammered away at the friendly contacts between the Army Secretary and the McCarthy staffers, especially his several gestures of good will toward Schine. Such behavior, said Jenkins, matched oddly with the contention that McCarthy, Cohn and Co. were abusing the Army in dreadful fashion.
In preparing for this line of questions, Jenkins learned that Schine had a photograph of himself with Stevens taken at McGuire Air Force base, adjacent to Fort Dix, where Schine was stationed. Jenkins asked Schine to obtain this picture, to be used in examining Stevens. The next day, the picture was delivered to the McCarthy staff, prints made from it, and a copy given to Jenkins. The counsel then proceeded to wave this in front of Stevens and question him about it.
Unknown to Jenkins, the picture from Schine’s office had included a third person besides Schine and Stevens—Col. Jack T. Bradley, the commanding officer of McGuire, on hand to welcome the Secretary to the air base. This print showed Bradley and Stevens bracketing Schine, left and right, as they posed on the airport tarmac. In the version supplied to Jenkins, the base commander was cropped out, leaving only Schine and Stevens. The next day, having discovered the omission, Army Counsel Welch opened the hearings by charging “trick,” “doctored photograph,” and other expressions of shock and outrage.3
Thus began a marathon procession in which Stevens, Schine, Cohn, Jenkins, photographers, committee staffers, and others filed before the panel to tell what they knew about the photo. In the end, the situation was matter-of-factly explained by McCarthy aide Jim Juliana when, after others had been heard from at length, he was at last permitted to take the stand. Told Jenkins wanted “the picture of Schine and Stevens,” Juliana said, he had sent the original to the Senate photo shop with this instruction, the picture was cropped accordingly, and the resulting print was delivered to Jenkins. End of story.
Blacklisted By History Page 70
