Ike and McCarthy

by David A. Nichols

  McCarthy got the message. Later that day, he issued a statement backing away from confrontation and expressing “a great deal of admiration for the President.” He labeled as “ridiculous and untrue” suggestions “that I am challenging President Eisenhower’s party leadership.” However, he reiterated his contention that “the question of communism will be an important issue in 1954” because the Democrats were still “soft on communism.” He told reporters he had “no intention or desire” to seek the presidency. Uncharacteristically, McCarthy took no questions.43

  “ATOMS FOR PEACE”

  “Waging peace,” a favorite Eisenhower concept, could be a hazardous activity in the McCarthy era. Nevertheless, on December 8, after returning from meeting with the Allies in Bermuda, Eisenhower delivered a visionary speech before the United Nations, proposing to “move out of the dark chamber of horrors into the light” by making atomic energy available for peaceful purposes throughout the entire world. “It is not enough,” he declared, “to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace. The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military buildup can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.”44

  Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech was warmly received at home and abroad. New York Times columnist William S. White asserted that the president’s talk had “greatly strengthened his hand in world affairs against critics in his own party. At his December 16 news conference, the last of the year, the reporters’ questions were focused mostly on the president’s proposal to share nuclear energy with the world.45

  For the moment, McCarthy had been pushed to the sidelines by Dulles’s and Eisenhower’s strong responses to his televised address and the president’s dramatic proposal to share atomic secrets. That did not mean he had given up his crusade against the army, a cause Roy Cohn continued to press with his boss. Cohn, John Adams recalled, was “hounding me relentlessly to get David Schine assigned to New York.” Adams continued to insist that, except for the concessions Secretary Stevens had already made, Schine be treated like any other soldier. Cohn’s response: “The Army is making Dave eat shit because he works for Joe.”46

  In fact, the privileges Stevens had approved for Schine were generating morale problems among Schine’s peers at Fort Dix. Adams solicited a letter from McCarthy recommending normal treatment for the soldier. Two hours later, Cohn was on the phone, screaming at Adams “The Army is going to find out what it means to go over my head.” “Is that a threat?” Adams asked. “No, that’s not a threat,” Cohn said. “It’s a promise, and I always deliver on my promises.” Adams informed Stevens about Cohn’s threat—that “the Army has double-crossed me for the last time” and “the Army is going to pay for this.” Then, to add fuel to the fire, Cohn learned that Schine’s basic training schedule had been expanded to include Saturday mornings. He raged to Adams that the army had “double-crossed” him four times by (1) denying Schine a promised commission, (2) not assigning him to New York immediately, (3) canceling some weeknight passes, and now, (4) extending basic training to Saturday mornings.47

  Stevens was still trying to be a peacemaker; he scheduled lunches with McCarthy in New York on December 10 and 17. On December 17, Adams brought up the Schine situation, hoping to encourage McCarthy to express the doubts he had expressed privately. In response, Cohn became even “more violent” about Schine, intimidating McCarthy. He had previously agreed to give Adams a ride to the train station in Schine’s Cadillac. Cohn was seething, spouting vulgarities all the way; suddenly—in the middle of the block on Park Avenue near Forty-sixth Street—he slammed on the brakes and screamed at Adams, “Get out and get to the station however you can!” As Adams exited, he recalled, “McCarthy asked me again to ask Secretary Stevens if he could not find a way to arrange for Schine to be assigned to New York.”48

  PEACE WITH MCCARTHY?

  On Christmas Eve 1953, Dwight Eisenhower wrote his old friend Swede Hazlett that the month had been had been “one of the busiest in my life.” Ike had weathered the storm over Harry Dexter White and, in partnership with Dulles, had put McCarthy into his place on foreign policy—at least for the time being. He had conducted important meetings with allies in Bermuda and returned to deliver a triumphant proposal at the United Nations on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Now he was preparing for three grueling days of meetings with Republican congressional leaders to hammer out a bold legislative program. In that long letter to his friend, Ike did not mention McCarthy.49

  The people Reston called “the political gladiators,” including Eisenhower and McCarthy, were present on Saturday, December 12, at the Gridiron dinner, a traditional Washington event where political figures poke fun at one another. A highlight of the evening was “the Eisenhower Waltz,” featuring “one step forward, hesitate . . . one step sideways, glide; one step back, stop.” Harry Truman was satirized for “running against the wrong Hoover” (J. Edgar) in the Harry Dexter White case. A Joe McCarthy impersonator sang a song that ended with the line “Look over your shoulder; I’m walking behind.”50

  Eisenhower ran three days of meetings with Republican congressional leaders on December 17, 18, and 19 with near-military precision. McCarthy was present, a rare occurrence. Eisenhower outlined ambitious proposals regarding foreign aid, his Atoms for Peace program, taxes, a farm aid program, enhancement of Social Security benefits, and an increase in the minimum wage. It would be, without question, the most sweeping legislative program proposed by a Republican president since Franklin Roosevelt.51

  Reporters interpreted Eisenhower’s closing statement on the nineteenth as pledging even more vigorous actions against subversives. Attorney General Brownell had proposed seeking enhanced authority for wiretapping in espionage cases and authority to compel a witness to testify in spite of the Fifth Amendment privilege. McCarthy issued a statement praising the president’s leadership in the meetings; “I was not displeased at anything I heard.” By December 19, Eisenhower had seized control of both the national agenda and the news spotlight. He had survived a tumultuous first year in the White House and was still held in high esteem by the American people. The Gallup Poll at the end of the year reported that if the American public were to name a “Man of the Year,” that man would be Dwight D. Eisenhower.52

  The old soldier understood that the moment to negotiate an armistice is when you are in a position of strength. So he may have sanctioned one last effort to reach an accommodation with Joe McCarthy. Prior to the 1954 elections, there was usually someone, either in or out of the White House, trying to mediate and head off a rupture in the Republican Party. Roy Cohn cited two efforts, both of which he assumed—probably erroneously—had originated in the White House. In his book McCarthy, he reported that Milton Eisenhower had lunched with George Sokolsky and asked, “What can be done to work things out?” McCarthy had responded negatively to that olive branch. Cohn also stated that the same month, probably sometime late in the year, White House congressional liaison Jack Martin secured a private meeting with McCarthy. Martin’s proposition was that the senator end all public hearings, hold only executive sessions, and share the minutes of those hearings confidentially with the president so he could act on their implications. Cohn recalled that McCarthy “rejected the proposal flatly.” He came to believe that McCarthy’s rebuff of the Martin proposal “triggered a high-level decision to destroy the Senator.”53

  Neither of those peace initiatives fits Eisenhower’s mode of operation. It is unlikely that he would have dispatched his brother to lobby a biased news commentator such as Sokolsky. The Martin mission was probably initiated by the congressional liaison aides, headed by Jerry Persons. The proposal, as reported by Cohn, so violated the separation of powers doctrine that Eisenhower, a zealous defender of that constitutional principle, probably neither initiated nor approved the
effort.

  The third effort at peacemaking cannot be linked directly to Eisenhower, although it was more his style. Vice President Richard Nixon had returned from his trip to the Far East on December 14, in time to participate in the Republican leadership meetings. It is conceivable that he and McCarthy found time to plan a get-together at Key Biscayne, Florida, during the Christmas break.54

  Whether planned or accidental, Nixon and William Rogers seized the chance to spend significant time in Key Biscayne with McCarthy, gently encouraging him to support the administration and diversify his investigations. According to a leading Nixon scholar, “They did not try to get any commitments from him, nor did the senator make any promises.” Whether this episode bore Ike’s fingerprints is immaterial; Nixon and Rogers both knew what the president wanted.

  William Ewald describes the scene: “Sitting there in the sunshine, a drink in his hand, Joe seemed to agree with them—seemed to give them reason to hope that in the New Year he would play on the team; be a good boy.” That description fits McCarthy’s comments to reporters on December 30, following the meetings. He said his subcommittee was considering broadening its investigations to include tax cases, “compromised at ridiculously low figures” during the Truman administration.55

  Despite the apparent comradery, Nixon and Rogers had delivered an implicit warning: If Joe McCarthy failed to modify his behavior, especially toward Ike’s army, the old warrior in the White House might deal very differently with him in 1954.

  PART 2

  1954: MOBILIZATION

  CHAPTER 6

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  “EISENHOWER’S FIRST MOVE”

  By the second week in January 1954, the peace policy toward Joe McCarthy was all but dead. For a year, Dwight Eisenhower had endured the tyranny of the Republican one-vote majority that dictated conciliation with McCarthy. In Florida, Richard Nixon and William Rogers, two trusted presidential surrogates, had delivered a velvet-gloved warning. On Monday, January 4, the vice president gave reporters the hopeful impression that McCarthy had decided to “soft-pedal” his Communist-hunting activities.1

  The next day, McCarthy labeled the report that he was changing directions “a lie.” “No administration official,” he told attendees at a news conference, “from Eisenhower on down the line, and no Republican Senator has ever remotely suggested how our committee should operate or what our field of investigation should be.” “Whoever originated those stories,” he declared, “was either lied to or he was deliberately lying.”2

  On January 4, John Adams received another signal from the McCarthy camp that there would be no peace. Roy Cohn called to demand information on “a captain or a major, a doctor or a dentist, who is on duty at Camp Kilmer, and who is a Communist.” Irving Peress, a New York dentist, had been drafted into service under the 1950 Doctor Draft Law to address an acute shortage of medical personnel during the Korean War. Assigned the rank of captain, Peress had been promoted to major because of a congressional grade adjustment act for which McCarthy had voted. Peress, when asked about any relationships to “subversive organizations,” had written “Federal Constitutional Privilege” instead of “yes” or “no”—He had effectively “taken the Fifth.” When that was discovered, the army initiated steps to separate him from the service and on December 30, 1953—five days before Cohn’s phone call to Adams—the army vice chief of staff approved Peress’s discharge. He was granted the standard option for an officer facing involuntary separation: he could select any departure date up to ninety days thereafter. He chose March 31, 1954.3

  The Peress investigation heralded a more intensive phase in McCarthy’s campaign against the army. And with that, the peace policy toward McCarthy would end. When McCarthy escalated his army inquiry, Eisenhower would accept C. D. Jackson’s contention in December that McCarthy had “declared war on the president.” Characteristically, Eisenhower would “wage peace” for as long as possible, but once he decided an enemy was implacable, his response could be lethal.4

  BATTLE PLAN

  In early 1954, Eisenhower implemented phase two of the strategic vision he had conceived for his presidency when he took office. His first year had been dominated by the inevitable problems of organizing a new administration, plus ending the war in Korea and responding to Stalin’s death. His focus in 1954 would be persuading the Congress to pass “a list of legislation of wide scope.” Persistent voices in the White House still argued that McCarthy’s vote and support were essential to that end.

  The third rail of the Eisenhower plan would be running for a second term. He camouflaged that intent by stating that the third and fourth years of his presidency would be the time to “get out and swing for [the] program.” Ike often maintained that he had not sought the presidency, nor did he covet a second term. The hard-driving soldier behind the smile consistently cloaked his ambition in a call to duty. In the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, he could not hope to be ranked as a great president without a second term. In his memoirs, Eisenhower characterized 1954 as “the history of the resolution of a host of problems,” crowning his inventory of that year’s challenges with “McCarthy riding high.” A Gallup Poll published in January reported that 50 percent of the American public held a favorable opinion of the senator, with 29 percent negative.5

  To mobilize for phase two and prepare for the 1954 congressional elections, Eisenhower temporarily brought Henry Cabot Lodge, the UN ambassador, into the White House as a political adviser. On arrival, Lodge quickly concluded that “the McCarthy problem was the most imperative issue facing the President.” He repeatedly whispered in Eisenhower’s ear that McCarthy wanted to be president. When asked in his first news conference of 1954 whether an allusion to “the next three years” implied he would not run again, Eisenhower was coy, responding that political friends—surely including Lodge—had advised him to make that “one thing I should never talk about.”6

  Eisenhower’s golfing vacations often constituted a presidential calm before the storm. As the New Year began, Ike was in Augusta, Georgia, planning a legislative whirlwind once he returned to Washington. He arrived at the White House on Sunday, January 3. On Monday at 8:30 a.m., he chaired a cabinet meeting in preparation for launching his program. That night Ike stole a page from Franklin Roosevelt’s playbook with a “fireside chat”—he did not call it that—with the American people on radio and television. Eisenhower reviewed in simple language the themes in his upcoming State of the Union message, scheduled for Thursday. The talk was short on specifics and long on appeals to “individuals and American families—deeply concerned with the realities of living.”

  Eisenhower sought to reassure Americans traumatized by depression, war, and Cold War tensions that he did not intend to dismantle basic New Deal programs. “This administration,” he said, “believes that no American—no one group of Americans—can truly prosper unless all Americans prosper.” He called for action to eliminate “the slum, the out-dated highway, the poor school system, deficiencies in health protection, the loss of a job, and the fear of poverty in old age”—in short, “any real injustice in the business of living.” The president expressed his “strong belief that the Federal Government should be prepared at all times—ready, at a moment’s notice—to use every proper means to sustain the basic prosperity of the people.”

  Predictably, Joe McCarthy’s name did not appear in the president’s remarks. Neither did he mention communism, only a veiled allusion to “security standards” for government employees.7

  That was all a carefully planned prelude to the State of the Union message on January 7. At noon, Eisenhower made a grand entrance into the House of Representatives, shook hands as he proceeded down the aisle, ascended the platform, and flashed his famous grin at the assembled crowd. He bowed toward the visitors’ gallery, where Mamie and her parents were sitting, but that put McCarthy in his line of sight. At that moment, McCarthy, William S. White reported, “caught his eye with a wave of the hand from a
seat near the front. Eisenhower smiled and waved back” and then turned the other way to respond to the clapping, cheering crowd.8

  In the speech, Eisenhower touted his administration’s accomplishments during “the most prosperous year” in the nation’s history. Racial desegregation had been advanced in the armed forces and the District of Columbia. Fighting had ceased in Korea. He proclaimed “a great strategic change” during 1953; that “precious intangible, the initiative,” he said, “is becoming ours.” He would use that initiative to reach three goals: protect the freedom of the American people, maintain “a strong, growing economy,” and “concern ourselves with the human problems of the individual citizen.” The remainder of the speech was a recitation of the program proposals he had hammered out with his legislative leadership in December.

  The president indirectly addressed the McCarthy challenge in a section of the speech entitled “Internal Security.” He boasted that, under his employee security program, “more than 2,200 employees have been separated from the Federal Government.” In a blatant appeal to McCarthy’s base, the president, who was still learning the political game in Washington, had waded into the Washington numbers game.

  Eisenhower’s other rhetorical gambit aimed at McCarthyites was to suggest that membership in the Communist Party was “akin to treason.” He proposed that Congress deprive such persons of their US citizenship, subject to their being convicted in the courts of conspiring to overthrow the government. According to The New York Times, that pronouncement produced “by far the noisiest demonstration” of the night.9