Force of Nature- The Life of Linus Pauling

by Thomas Hager

  When he returned in August, Pauling opened another front in his battle with Dodd. He mounted a legal attack on the SISS, asking a judge to make a declaratory judgment affirming his right to refuse to answer the subcommittee's request on the basis that it was not pertinent to their inquiry and would constitute unreasonable search and seizure. This was a clever constitutional move, adding a Fourth Amendment argument to the First and using the judicial branch of government to fight the perceived abuses of Congress. But it was not successful. In district court, government lawyers argued that a ruling in Pauling's favor "would be the death of any legislative process," allowing every hearing witness to run to the courts before answering a question. In late August the judge agreed, dismissing the case because it was a legislative matter not appropriate for judicial review. Pauling and Wirin appealed the decision.

  In the meantime, Pauling continued his public relations pressure. He attacked the SISS in every speech he made, and hundreds of protest letters began coming to Dodd and his Senate colleagues. Many carried dozens of signatures; some, scores. At Washington University in St. Louis, the birthplace of Pauling's petitions, more than a hundred faculty members signed a letter of protest; 178 professors at the University of Pennsylvania sent another. Pasadena residents and Caltech faculty members sent in scores of letters. There were cries of protest from around the world, from Germany and Japan, Norway and Mexico, England and India, from Nobelists, nationally known peace activists, and ordinary citizens. The writers lauded Pauling's "rugged individualism" and decried the harassment of this "great American . . . caught in the ebb tide of McCarthyism."

  Dodd was kept busy through the summer and early fall penning responses and overseeing the preparation of a report on Pauling's June appearance. When Pauling saw the galley proofs, he was incensed. For one thing, Dodd was planning to title the report "Communist Infiltration and Use of Pressure Groups." Then, by carefully comparing the galleys to a stenographic transcript of the hearing, Pauling discovered not only that some of his testimony was missing— edited out, he felt, because it was favorable to him—but that the senators had been allowed to edit their remarks for clarity, while he had not. Reading it over, Pauling saw indications as well that Dodd had purposely asked misleading questions. Dodd had made much of the discrepancy between the number of signatures that Pauling claimed to have sent the United Nations versus the number that actually showed up, for instance, but now Pauling saw that a full and correct copy of the petition from the United Nations—proving that he had reported the number correctly—had been placed into the record on the day of the hearing. Similarly, Sourwine had implied that Pauling had for some reason hidden the fact that Russians had signed his petitions, but it was clear from documents in the subcommittee's hands that he had not.

  All of this and other matters—"known by you to be false," Pauling told Dodd in a long letter of correction that he asked be attached to his testimony—made Pauling believe that Dodd and his subcommittee were less than honest. He held yet another press conference where he accused the SISS of harassment and called it "a discredit to the United States and to the people of America."

  "One way or another, we shall be busy with this thing for some time yet, but we haven't much anxiety about the final outcome," Ava Helen told a friend. "It is just a shame for Linus to be wasting his talents in this way."

  - - -

  By the end of summer, Dodd had had his fill of Pauling's insults and decided to fight back in his own way, in his own forum. A contempt citation was looking less likely—it would have to be approved by the full Senate, and many senators had received pro-Pauling letters from constituents—but there were other ways to make Pauling uncomfortable and display to the nation what his true motivations were. His staff began putting together a master list of Pauling's Communist-front activities.

  The public relations battle reached a climax in the days leading up to Pauling's second appearance before the subcommittee, scheduled for October 11. Pauling prepared a half-page newspaper advertisement detailing Dodd's harassment and asking the help of all Americans to rid the nation of congressional committees "that exceed their authority and subvert the Constitution and the Bill of Rights." The New York Times rejected the ad as libelous, but the Washington Post ran it. Dodd countered with another long release defending his "simple request for cooperation on the basis of honor and reasonableness." Pauling asked for a delay in the hearing; Dodd refused. The Emergency Committee for Civil Liberties ran an advertisement supporting Pauling signed by scores of liberals; Dodd had his research staff comb through the names to uncover those linked to Communists. New York Times editors called the SISS's pursuit of Pauling "part of its usual policy of harassment"; Dodd sent out unsolicited copies of the June hearing transcript to people he thought might have influence over public opinion.

  Outside his Washington hotel on the night of October 10, Pauling was served a subpoena commanding him to appear the next morning and to bring the requested signatures and letters of transmittal.

  - - -

  The hearing room was packed with reporters and onlookers, including Ava Helen in a prim dress and hat. But the subcommittee's chairs were empty. Dodd was the only member who showed up for the October 11 hearing. Everyone else, it seemed, had pressing business that urgently required their presence elsewhere. The lack of support did not seem to trouble the senator from Connecticut, who opened the proceedings by reading a twelve-page statement defending the integrity of his inquiry. Six pages into it, he asked Pauling and Wirin if they minded if he cut it short and simply put the rest into the record. Wirin agreed, with the stipulation that Pauling have a chance to read and respond to it before it was published. Then Dodd moved briskly to the main questions. Have you brought the requested original signatures? Pauling had, in volumes bound in red covers.

  Then came the main event: Have you brought the requested letters of transmittal with the names of the petition circulators?

  Before Pauling could answer, a nondescript man in the back of the chamber stood and announced in a loud voice that he himself was proud to be one of the people who had circulated a petition. Pauling turned around. As applause rippled through the chamber, Herbert Jehle, a local university professor, gave a deep bow to Dodd, another to the audience, and sat down. Pauling smiled.

  Pauling then turned to Dodd and gave him his answer. "I am unwilling to subject these people to reprisals by this subcommittee," he said. "I could protect myself by agreeing, but I am fighting for other persons who could not make a fight themselves." He refused to provide the names of the circulators.

  This was the point at which Dodd was expected to rise up and cite Pauling for contempt. There was an expectant hush in the hearing room. And there was an anticlimax. Dodd simply said, "Very well," and motioned to his chief counsel, Sourwine.

  The real purpose of the second hearing then became apparent. There was to be no citation for contempt, no further chance for Pauling to appear in the role of a martyr. Instead, there was going to be an old-fashioned loyalty inquiry. Sourwine asked nothing about the circulation of the petition and everything about Pauling's background as a supporter of Communist causes. Have you ever been to East Berlin? Have you ever met Ethel Rosenberg? Did you not participate in the San Francisco HUAC protests?

  At the noon break Pauling was confronted in the hall by an angry young man who told him he should be deported. Pauling replied that that would be problematical, since he was native born and would have nowhere to go.

  In the afternoon Sourwine's questions droned on. Some were ridiculous—Are you aware that there were known Communists among the members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences who signed your petition?—others were pointed, all were dedicated to proving that Pauling was guided by and aligned with Communist goals and aims. Did you know that one of the signers of your petition, Dr. Hideki Yukawa of Japan, had won the Lenin Prize? No, Pauling replied, he knew Dr. Yukawa only as a winner of the Nobel Prize for physics. Didn't you support the passport fight of Mar
tin Kamen, whose right to travel was denied after he had been investigated for passing secrets on to the Russians? Pauling replied that he had, then reminded Sourwine that Kamen had been cleared of all charges, had won a lawsuit on the issue, and had had his passport reinstated. It appeared, as New York Post columnist Murray Kempton put it, that Pauling was "on trial in this place where, of course, everyone knew he was not on trial."

  During the afternoon session, Wirin got a copy of Dodd's complete opening statement and saw that the last six pages constituted a direct attack on Pauling, including a list, "Affiliations with Communist Controlled Organizations or Activities Supporting the Communist Party," of more than twenty suspect organizations with which Pauling had been associated. The SISS staff had already distributed it to the press at the noon break. Senator Dodd, it appeared, was making certain that it was Pauling who would be put on the defensive this time.

  The hearing dragged on, with Sourwine questioning Pauling about more than thirty organizations and twenty-five individuals. It took on the stylized format and rhythm established back in the days of the Hollywood Ten: Do you know Mr. X, who signed your petition? Do you know that Mr. X has been accused of membership in a known Communist-front organization? Have you ever been a member of organization Z? Are you aware that organization Z has been listed by HUAC as a Communist-front organization? It was an exercise in character assassination through association. It was a smear.

  After five hours, Dodd gaveled the inquiry to a close, then strode up to Pauling and said, "That wasn't such a strain, was it?" Without an answer, Pauling turned and walked out.

  CHAPTER 21

  Peace

  Egghead Millionaires

  Publicly, it appeared that Pauling had won. He had forced the Senate Internal Security Committee to back down from its threat of a contempt citation. Dodd's last-day attempt at a smear did not even seem to have much effect; the media for the most part ignored his litany of old charges. Less than a month after it was over, John F. Kennedy would win the White House, and American politics would take a new direction. The Pauling hearing would prove to be the last of the Communist witch-hunts.

  Pauling's resolute stand made him an even greater hero in the peace movement. Two weeks after his SISS ordeal, a SANE rally in New York turned spontaneously into a Pauling testimonial. More than two thousand people jammed the Hotel Commodore ballroom after it was announced that Pauling would speak, hundreds more overflowed to nearby rooms fitted with loudspeakers, and several hundred had to be turned away. Everyone wanted to see the man who had defeated the SISS. They clapped as Pauling accepted a petition signed by one thousand local university students supporting his defiance of Congress, listened avidly as he talked about his experiences with the subcommittee, and cheered when he called for an end to war and a rebirth of civil rights. His experience had taught him something. "The fight for peace," he told the crowd, "cannot be carried on independently of the fight for freedom."

  - - -

  He should have walked away from the SISS hearings in triumph and put the experience behind him. But Pauling could not. The hours of grilling and the concerted attempt to smear his reputation constituted a deep personal insult, and one that Pauling, in his anger, elevated to a symbol of the rebirth of McCarthyism rather than its last gasp. Instead of walking away, he overreacted, continuing to attack Dodd in speeches and television appearances, calling the SISS and the House Un-American Activities Committee "immoral" and the senator "an evil person."

  "We have, I understand, only a few thousand Communists in the United States, as compared to many millions in France and Italy," Pauling wrote soon after the Dodd hearings. "I don't see how the sensible American people could be endangered by a few thousand Communists. Communists may represent a threat to our civil rights and liberties that we should be aware of and prepared to guard ourselves against if it ever becomes serious . . . [but] the anti-Communist forces of repression that are now in positions of great authority are more than a threat—they are taking our rights away from us right now." He devoted part of his time now working for the abolition of the investigatory committees, throwing himself against old enemies who were already close to dying a natural death.

  And Dodd fought back. When Pauling succeeded in delaying publication of the report on his last SISS appearance—arguing through early 1961 over the inclusion of the unread portion of Dodd's opening statement and other matters—Dodd's committee released a separate report on the Pugwash movement outlining the suspect backgrounds of the participants, including more than nine pages devoted to Pauling's "marked bias for Communist causes and . . . willingness to aline [sic] himself with Communist-held views having no scientific bearing or interest." When the SISS report was finally published in March 1961, it included all of Dodd's opening statement and was accompanied by an SISS press release noting that there was "reason for suspecting that the Communist apparatus played an important role in circulating the [Pauling] petition in the United States and other free countries." The evidence offered was primarily Pauling's history of left-wing associations. "Dr. Pauling has figured as the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist Peace offensive in this country," the report concluded, a series of links that "have not been entirely accidental or unconscious on his side." To make certain that Pauling's peers got the message, Dodd sent unsolicited copies of his report to National Academy of Sciences (NAS) members and other prominent scientists.

  "Scandalous . . . offensive . . . the worst smear job I've ever seen," Wirin told Pauling after he saw the report. Pauling agreed. In a speech to the American Humanist Association the next day, he lashed out at Dodd, daring him or any other member of the subcommittee to come out from behind congressional immunity so he could sue them. In an earlier time, he said, he would have challenged Dodd to a duel.

  His reaction extended to anyone and anything that echoed Dodd's attack, including publications that hewed too closely to the SISS line and made what Pauling considered defamatory statements about his character. "The newspapers have been partners in the resurgence of McCarthyism," he said. "They need to be stopped." He launched a one-man war to do it. He and his lawyers mounted five libel suits during the next year, seeking $60,000 from the Bellingham, Washington, Herald for printing letters to the editor that questioned Pauling's patriotism; $100,000 from the Anti-Communist League of York County, Pennsylvania, for publishing a pamphlet based on the SISS report; $300,000 from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat for an anti-Pauling editorial; $500,000 from the New York Daily News for calling Pauling a pro-Communist "semi-prominent American loudmouth"; and $1 million from the Hearst organization and King Features Syndicate for a piece by right-wing columnist and chronic Pauling critic Fulton Lewis, Jr.

  The SISS episode, coupled in some way, perhaps, to the emotional trauma of the cliff experience, seemed to have thinned Pauling's skin. He moved from routinely ignoring criticism to being highly sensitive to it, whether it came from the Right or Left. In the two years following the SISS appearance Pauling also took on many of his former allies in the fight for peace. He quit his position as a sponsor of SANE and stopped speaking with founder Norman Cousins, who Pauling felt had given in to Dodd. He seriously considered bringing a $1 million lawsuit against the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a magazine he had helped support through Einstein's Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, after it printed an article in which prominent bomb-control activist Bentley Glass lumped him with Teller as two scientists whose political aims colored their interpretation of bomb-test data. It took weeks of effort by members of the magazine's editorial board to talk Pauling out of bringing suit, and for years after that he had little use for either the Bulletin or its editor, Eugene Rabinowitch. He had a falling out with the organizers of the Pugwash conferences for continuing to invite Glass, Rabinowitch, and others he disapproved of to their meetings; the Pugwash discussions, he felt, had degenerated from a free and open airing of new ideas from outside the political process into a parroting
of official government lines.

  Another factor in his shift in sensitivity may have been Ava Helen, who had always been a more doctrinaire left-winger than her husband. She personally considered most of the old religious-based peace groups "reactionary" and the newer ones like SANE not much better. None of them seemed willing to place their antibomb activism in the context of a critique of capitalist society. How could you end war, she thought, unless you transformed the economic systems that spawned war? Now Pauling, too, was more pointed in his critique of American society. Capitalism was a factor, coupled with the obscene deals made between the defense industry and Washington. Why was there a continued opposition to a test ban? "No doubt cold-war profits are an important motive," he noted.

  There was no one more despicable in his mind than an educated person, especially a scientist, who made money from war and suffering. From a news magazine Pauling picked up a new term that he began to use in his speeches, "egghead millionaires," a hundred or so scientists who had parlayed their research talents into fortunes in the defense industry. To Pauling, the egghead millionaires, along with Teller, were the ultimate symbols of the betrayal and corruption of a once-noble calling.

  But from the lofty vantage point now occupied solely by himself, Ava Helen, Bertrand Russell, and a handful of their activist friends, it looked as if almost no one measured up to their standards of antibomb purity.

  Pauling was still popular—in 1960 the Rationalist Society named him Rationalist of the Year, for instance, and he made the cover of Time as one of the scientists named "Men of the Year' in January 1961—but to the leaders of the peace movement he was beginning to appear less a hero than a loose cannon, a popular speaker and a necessary counterweight to Teller, but also unreliably independent, increasingly litigious, and ever more comfortable in the farther fringes of the left wing.