Ike and McCarthy

by David A. Nichols

  That meeting with Republican senators had gotten Joe McCarthy’s attention. About 1:30 p.m., he called Seaton. Instead of yielding to the pressure to fire Cohn, McCarthy had decided to launch a counterattack. Reflecting on his luncheon with Secretary Wilson, he argued that Wilson “should get [the] full story” by hearing McCarthy’s perspective: “I called you to get all of the story.” Seaton smoothly replied, “You have no argument with me on this.” He added, “The Secretary had nothing to do about putting out [the] report.”

  McCarthy’s objective was to delay delivery of the report and persuade Seaton to include his response. “You are public relations advisor on this. Make it appear they want to get both sides.” He said he had “stuff available” that Seaton could “incorporate” into the report, including memoranda and “written notations on any dealings with the Army.” Seaton shrewdly placed responsibility for releasing the report beyond the Pentagon, saying that the army “has been bombarded on all sides from Senators and Congressmen.” McCarthy roared back that the “Army should not make [a] report without checking with me.” He offered to make his information “available by tonight or tomorrow morning.”

  That conversation reinforced what Seaton had already decided: it was imperative to get the report out that day, March 11, as planned. McCarthy knew too much and might manage to mitigate its impact. Seaton, the smooth operator, knew just what to say; he told the senator he would “personally guarantee” that McCarthy’s request to include additional material would be passed on to his superiors and that such information would be available “for inclusion by tomorrow.” But he knew that tomorrow would be too late.32

  Copies of the thirty-four-page Schine chronology were scheduled for delivery just after working hours. After McCarthy hung up, Seaton met with Stevens, undoubtedly to report on the conversation with McCarthy. Following that meeting, Stevens gave the army press aide, Colonel Lloyd Lehrbas, a heads-up that “this whole business is going to break.” He had learned from Seaton “that they will probably be sent up there around 5:00 to all the senators that have asked for a copy of this report” and to the press shortly thereafter. “Therefore,” he surmised, “it will probably all break in the morning papers.” The report would be “finally released by Seaton, who is really carrying the ball on it now.”33

  At 4:10 p.m., Stevens phoned Seaton to ask if the report was ready, and Seaton said it was. However, Seaton reported that McCarthy had “sent me a message . . . a document that he thought I would be extremely interested in.” He had also received word that McCarthy, then on the Senate floor for the vote on a bill on Alaskan and Hawaiian statehood, “was trying to reach me.” Stevens confirmed that the target time was 5:00 p.m. “Or a little before,” Seaton said. “If there is any hold on it, I had better get in touch with you.” He asked, “You will be here until 5:00?” Stevens responded, “Yes.”34

  The activity in Seaton’s and Hensel’s offices accelerated in an effort to get the report out before McCarthy could act. At 4:35 p.m., Seaton called Stevens to tell him that he had informed McCarthy that the report “would be delivered to the Hill this afternoon” in response to “long-standing requests” from other senators.35

  At 4:56 p.m., Stevens called Hensel to verify that he understood the procedure for release of the report. “I have instructed our people not to give out any copies of this thing,” he said. Hensel asked if, “copies are going to the senators?” Stevens responded, “Yes.” Hensel asked, “But you gave nothing to the press?” Stevens replied affirmatively, showing he understood that “the motivating force must come from the Senate” in order to maintain the appearance that “we are not handing this stuff out to pick a battle with McCarthy.” The report would be released in its entirety to the press when the senators, ready with copies and primed, demanded it. Stevens asked Hensel, “Will you be talking with Fred [Seaton] again?” Hensel responded, “He is going to duck out, and he thought you were.” That, too, was part of the plan. When calls began to flood into the Pentagon from the McCarthy camp and the news media, the operation’s commanders planned to be unavailable.36

  Over in the White House, Jim Hagerty knew, as did his boss, that the “Army report on Schine-Cohn-McCarthy [is] going up on [the] Hill today.” He had read it with a public relations expert’s eye. “It’s a pip,” he confided to his diary; “shows constant pressure by Cohn to get Schine soft Army job, with Joe in and out of threats.” He believed that the report “should bust things wide open.” No one was closer to the president on the McCarthy operation, with the exception of Seaton. If Hagerty had seen the final version, so had Ike.37

  As Fred I. Greenstein accurately stated a generation ago in The Hidden-Hand Presidency, the Schine chronology was released by the army, “ostensibly on its own but actually at White House instigation.” However, Eisenhower, even in his memoirs, never acknowledged his role. Instead, he wrote that “the Army”—not the White House—had “moved over to the attack.” Regarding the Schine report, he wrote, “The Army put it to use.” He did not mention Fred Seaton, who had been operating under his orders.38

  Seaton retained the schedule for delivery in his “Eyes Only” file, gathered at Eisenhower’s direction. Copies were to be distributed between 5:20 and 5:40 p.m. on March 11 to two chairmen of House committees and eleven senators, including McCarthy. Six senators who were not on McCarthy’s committee and one additional House chairman would receive copies in the morning. William F. Knowland, the Republican majority leader, would not get his copy until the next day at 11:00 a.m. The White House did not intend to permit the unpredictable Knowland, so frequently a McCarthy supporter, to see the report before it got to the press.39

  That night, Eisenhower hosted a stag dinner including some of his best friends, prestigious business executives, his brother Milton, Sherman Adams, and Fred Seaton. Perhaps the commander in chief’s invitation on that special night constituted a modicum of recognition for Seaton’s clandestine service that day.40

  PART 3

  1954: VINDICATION

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  * * *

  “A WAR OF MANEUVER”

  The morning of March 12, Jim Hagerty warned the White House staff; if asked, they were to state that “they didn’t know anything about [the] Army report on Schine-Cohn-McCarthy.” He cheerfully noted in his diary that the document was getting “big play in papers” and the headlines were “taking play away from McCarthy.”1

  “Big play” was an understatement. The papers published the entire text of the thirty-four-page document, rigorously edited and fact-checked by Seaton and Hensel: the July 1953 effort to secure a commission to assign Schine to duty in New York; McCarthy’s subsequent attack on the army regarding alleged subversives at Fort Monmouth; the constant, abusive phone calls and ugly encounters with Roy Cohn; the pressure for special passes whenever Schine was assigned weekend or night duty; and Cohn’s threats, using “vituperative language,” to “wreck the army” and get Secretary Robert Stevens and John Adams fired. The report ended with the February 16 phone call requesting that General Ralph Zwicker be made available for testimony two days later.2

  That day, the man at the center of the storm, Private G. David Schine, was at Camp Gordon in Georgia, enduring what the newspapers called “a rugged soldier’s training.” He was “sleeping in an undisclosed spot in Georgia’s piney woods” about twelve miles from the camp.3

  AN ANGRY MAJORITY LEADER

  The president was pulled out of his cabinet meeting at 10:10 a.m. to take an angry phone call from William Knowland. The Senate majority leader had seen the papers and was furious that he and other Republican leaders had not received a copy of the Schine report. Eisenhower pleaded ignorance; the report had been issued, he claimed, because members of the McCarthy committee had demanded it. “Someone just said there is a report about a man named Cohn,” he said. “I don’t know a damned thing about it.” Eisenhower sounded clueless. “There has been a blunder and I am sorry,” he said. Defense
Secretary Charles Wilson was out of town, but Eisenhower said he would ask Deputy Secretary Roger Kyes to call the majority leader.

  The president, besides feigning his own ignorance, purposely avoided mentioning the men who were truly knowledgeable: Seaton, Hensel, and Stevens. Kyes, who had recently announced his intention to resign, could plead a lack of knowledge, but his assignment was to pour oil on troubled waters, a task he performed with consummate skill. “I am very disturbed to know that someone in our outfit did a flap on you,” he told Knowland. “I am just as shocked as you.” He added, “I personally don’t know about this Schine document. I have not read its contents.” Kyes claimed not to know “who specifically handled it” and pledged that “someone will be in trouble.” He promised to let the senator know when the report would be delivered. In fact, it was scheduled for delivery within the hour, as planned.4

  Hagerty’s diary leaves little doubt that Eisenhower himself had decided to delay delivery to Knowland. Ike was not upset with anyone in the Pentagon for what he had labeled a “blunder” when talking to Knowland. In fact, he sounded downright pleased. “You know, Jim, I suppose if those leaders had seen the report, it would have never gotten out in the papers,” he said. “They always want to play everything the hard way—compromise, compromise—nuts!”5

  MCCARTHY FIGHTS BACK

  About noon that day, Stevens called Hensel to take the temperature of the operation. McCarthy had scheduled a news conference for 1:00 p.m. at the Pentagon, he said, “so the blast will be coming over at lunch.” It was a “blast,” all right; McCarthy was ready to fight. He christened the army report “blackmail” and declared that he did not intend to fire Roy Cohn. Cohn sat “pale-faced” beside McCarthy and labeled the charges in the report “untrue.” “No improper influence,” he said, “was ever exerted by me or by anybody else to my knowledge on the Army in behalf of Mr. Schine.” Cohn denied that he had ever threatened “to wreck the Army, Stevens or any other such thing.”6

  Then McCarthy distributed documents he claimed would “throw a different light on the whole episode.” Overnight, his staff had produced eleven memoranda that mixed occasional fact with outright fabrication. Years later, Chicago Tribune reporter Willard Edwards, a McCarthy staff intimate at the time, told William Ewald he had witnessed a half-dozen of McCarthy’s secretaries typing furiously through the night to reconstruct events and backdate memoranda.7

  According to McCarthy biographer Thomas Reeves, the McCarthy memoranda portrayed Robert Stevens and John Adams as “the foulest of villains,” truly guilty of “blackmail.” In a memorandum dated December 9, subcommittee director Frank Carr had complained to McCarthy, “I am getting fed up with the way the Army is trying to use Schine as a hostage to pressure us to stop our hearings on the Army.” The press highlighted an unsigned memorandum alleging that Stevens and Adams, in return for McCarthy’s ending his investigation of the army, had offered to provide “dirt” on communists in the navy and air force—a claim the army fiercely denied. A Roy Cohn memorandum, also dated December 9, alleged that Adams had followed through on that alleged bargain by providing information on “a large number of homosexuals” at an air force base.8

  However, the McCarthy forces remained on the defensive. Bipartisanship bloomed among the senators on McCarthy’s subcommittee, supporting the contrived scenario that senators had demanded the army’s report. Senator John McClellan, on behalf of the Democratic members, confirmed that the army had released the thirty-four-page document “pursuant to the request made more than a month ago.” He and Republican senator Charles Potter both called for “an immediate executive session of the subcommittee.” Potter charged that the report carried “shocking charges” and, if it was accurate, “Mr. Cohn should be removed immediately.”9

  McCarthy’s staff scrambled to get on top of the story. On March 12 the senator composed a telegram to Stevens denying he had ever urged the army to give Schine a special commission or special treatment. To Stevens’s amusement, McCarthy’s secretary had lost that document. In great embarrassment, she called Stevens to seek a copy. The next day Stevens and Hensel agreed to send one, keep the original, and write an answer, which was composed after they met with Seaton over lunch.10

  McCarthy’s telegram was reported in the Sunday papers. The senator claimed he had “an unbreakable rule” that neither he nor anyone on his staff would attempt “to interfere with or influence the Army in its assignments.” No one on his staff, he stated, had “any authority to request any consideration for Mr. Schine other than what other draftees get.” In his response, Stevens effectively accused McCarthy of lying: “Am astounded [at] your wire of March twelve suggesting that you never urged the army to confer on David Schine a direct commission or to treat him specially after his induction as a private.” He reinforced the manufactured stimulus for releasing the Schine report: “You also know that you never made any claim to me that you or anyone else was being blackmailed” until the report had been issued “in reply to requests by members of the Senate.”11

  A CONFIDENT COMMANDER

  Shortly after lunch on March 12, Eisenhower escaped the political ruckus for the peaceful environment of Camp David. At such moments, he preferred to keep controversy at a distance, leaving his subordinates to tiptoe across the hot political coals. He was confident that his operation against McCarthy was proceeding, in Jim Hagerty’s terms, according to “carefully prepared plans.” He wrote William Robinson, an executive of the New York Herald Tribune, how pleased he was that editorial writers had begun to understand that the president “cannot be one of the parties in a gutter brawl.” Ike embraced the big picture. “There is a certain reactionary fringe of the Republican Party,” he said, “that hates and despises everything for which I stand or is advanced by this Administration.” He pondered that the Republican Party might have to face “the complete loss of the fringe of Old Guarders,” except for procedural matters. However, he concluded, “I, for one, have always thought that we cannot afford to appear to be in the same camp with them.”12

  IKE DEPLOYS THE VICE PRESIDENT

  Flanders’s and Murrow’s assaults on McCarthy had been delivered on March 9, the Schine report released on March 11. An every-other-day drumbeat of anti-McCarthy publicity would continue on Saturday night, the thirteenth, with Richard Nixon’s televised address. Ostensibly, Nixon was responding to Adlai Stevenson’s March 6 address charging that his party was “half Eisenhower and half McCarthy.”

  On Friday, Nixon, seeking seclusion to prepare his speech, checked into a hotel room and left word that he should be interrupted “only in case of an emergency.” Nevertheless, his work was disrupted twice. The first time was by a call from William Knowland, still irate over the distribution of the Schine report. Nixon had just started back to work when the White House called. Eisenhower wanted him to come to the Oval Office to discuss his speech. Feeling frustrated, Nixon did as requested. When he arrived, Ike lectured him to make the case that Republicans had “a progressive, dynamic program which benefited all the people.” He urged the vice president to cite the fact that the president “had commanded 5 million troops in Europe.” Eisenhower culminated his speech-making micromanagement by advising the vice president to “work a smile or two into the program.”13

  Ike got what he wanted. Nixon delivered a soaring hymn of praise for Dwight Eisenhower. He asserted that the president “is not only the unquestioned leader of the Republican Party but he has the confidence and support of the great majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike.” However, the country was being distracted from the president’s program by men who, “by reckless talk and questionable method, made themselves the issue instead of the cause they believe in so deeply.” Excepting a mild allusion at the outset, Nixon did not mention the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

  The name the vice president invoked repeatedly was Eisenhower’s. Ike was, he said, “not only an American leader; he is a world leader.” He talked about having watched th
e president make “great decisions during the past year” and proclaimed, “I have never seen him mean, I have never seen him rash, I have never seen him impulsive. I have never seen him panicked. And I have never seen him make a decision which was motivated by political purposes.” Ike’s only concern, he maintained, was “what is good for America.” Nixon crowned his rhetorical homage with “I think we are lucky to have this man as President of the United States.”14

  Meanwhile, McCarthy defended himself against a rising torrent of criticism. In a Saturday-night speech in Wisconsin, he warned he would “get rough” with his adversaries: “I don’t care how high or low those who scream at what we are doing.” James Reston concluded that “Senator McCarthy is getting careless”; instead of asking people about communists, “he is asking them whether they think he tells the truth. That is a reckless question.” William Lawrence found McCarthy on the defensive in response to “a series of crushing defeats within his own Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations,” engineered by a White House pushing for the dismissal of Roy Cohn. The New York Times editors concluded that “as the week ended, it could be said that the legend of Senator McCarthy’s invincibility has been punctured.” They invoked a military metaphor befitting the five-star general in the White House: “This has been a war of maneuver rather than of desperate assault, but the outcome begins to appear. We are coming in out of the wilderness.”15

  That Sunday, Roy Cohn appeared on Meet the Press and lied shamelessly. He insisted that he “did not ask for preferential treatment for Dave Schine at any time.” Schine, he said, had a legitimate need to “devote himself to completing this committee work in which he was involved.” The army had “reneged” on the agreement to permit that service. Cohn asserted, “At no time did I or anybody else on the committee ever suggest that he should be relieved from KP or any other unpleasant duty that any draftee had to go through.”16