The Redhunter (47 page)

In a moment he opened the door to what seemed a boy, not more than eighteen, perhaps twenty. The young man was nervous as
he fumbled with one hand in his pocket, pulling out an envelope. He thrust it at McCarthy.

“That’s all, Senator.”

McCarthy reached for the envelope, eyeing the messenger suspiciously. On impulse he grabbed the parcel from the messenger’s
left hand and with his right, the messenger’s wrist.

“Let me see your credentials, sonny.”

The nervous voice replied. “I’m just—freelance, Senator.”

“Who’s your employer?”

“Nobody. Just somebody.” He was not about to betray his benefactor, even though he did not know her name.

McCarthy released his grip and leaned over to pick up the envelope he had dropped. The messenger took that moment to break
away and rush through the open door, barreling down the staircase out to the street. McCarthy went to the window and saw him
lunge into the car he had parked outside the house, its motor left running, and speed off. McCarthy went to the bathroom and
dried off his face. Sitting in his shorts on the bed he opened and read what appeared to be a copy of a letter. It was addressed
to “Honorable George E. Allen, Director, Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Washington, D.C.” It was typed on the letterhead
of the FBI, Office of the Director, marked
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL BY SPECIAL MESSENGER
, dated May 29, 1946. The salutation was “Dear George.” It was signed “Edgar.”

After reading it, Joe continued to sit on the bed. After a moment, he reached into the pocket of his jacket on the chair and
pulled out his telephone notebook. He picked up the phone and dialed FAirview 3232. “This is Senator McCarthy,” he said to
the operator. “I want to talk to the director.”

J. Edgar Hoover had not been quite as accessible in recent months, not as much as he had been during the first year, McCarthy
thought.

The operator reported back that the director was in conference.

“Then put me through to Lou Nichols.”

“Lou? Joe here. Tell the director I want to talk to him like right away, and it’s for his own good not to waste any time.”

“Nothing I can take care of, Joe? Anything I can do … ”

“No, Lou. I’m at home. Will be here—Jean’s mother’s house—LUdgrave 2747—for fifteen minutes. That’s fifteen minutes, Lou.”

“I understand.”

The telephone rang five minutes later.

“Edgar,” McCarthy said, wasting no time in greetings, “we need another of your bubble conferences. As I told Lou, what I want
to see you about is very much in your own professional interest.”

Hoover could be very direct.

“Lou will call your office for a date.”

“A date tomorrow?”

Hoover hesitated for a moment. Was he looking at his calendar?

“A date tomorrow,” he confirmed.

McCarthy was relieved that Jeanie had not come home during his conversation with the director. Something very weird, and conceivably
dangerous, was going on. He’d as soon leave her out of it, at least for the present.

The arrangements were as before. This time McCarthy did not nod off while driving with “Henry” at the wheel. About ten minutes
before the car’s estimated arrival, after apologizing, Henry requested the senator to put on the proffered eye mask. “The
director just plain insists on it. Not that there are that many people who come out here. The director only brings in a very
few people here. But it’s always this way.”

McCarthy donned the mask and, when the car came to a stop, walked, as the autumn light began to fade, from the garage to the
front of the house and up the stairs. He climbed to the second floor. The door opened. The director was in his chair, his
coat off, his suspenders gripping his loose shirt. They shook hands.

“What you got, Joe?”

McCarthy removed the letter from his pocket.

“First: I haven’t the slightest idea how this was slipped to me. None of my usual people. It’s four pages, but I’m just going
to read you two paragraphs. This,” McCarthy said, as he peered intently,
examining the document, “is addressed to George Allen. It’s signed ‘Edgar,’ and it’s dated May 29, 1946. The first paragraph
reads,

“ ‘I thought the President and you would be interested in the following information with respect to certain high government
officials operating an alleged espionage network in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the Soviet Government.’ ”

He looked up at Hoover. The muscles in his face were clenching.

McCarthy returned to the letter. “ ‘Information has been furnished to this Bureau through a source believed to be reliable
that there is an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington’—this is you talking, Edgar—’operating with the view of obtaining
all information possible with reference to atomic energy, its specific use as an instrument of war, and the commercial aspect
of the energy in peacetime, and that a number of high government officials whose identities will be set out hereinafter are
involved.’

“You then go on—this is your letter, not a forgery, right, Edgar?”

Hoover said nothing.

“You then go on to list department heads in federal divisions that touch on atom energy or the atom bomb. And then you say,

“ ‘The individual who furnished this information has reported that all of the above individuals mentioned are noted for their
pro-Soviet leanings, mentioning specifically Alger Hiss of the United Nations Organization.’ Then there are two more pages.”
He looked up at Hoover.

His face was now the famous Hoover red. He ground his back teeth. “What do you want to know, Joe?”

“I want to know if the president of the United States saw your letter. I mean, did you send the same letter to him? You didn’t
send it just to George Allen, did you?”

Again Hoover was silent.

“Because you know what, Edgar, I doubt that you ever did. I can’t imagine Truman, in December 1948, saying the prosecution
of Hiss was a red herring if he heard from you in May 1946 that ‘a source believed to be reliable’ informed the bureau that—”McCarthy
looked down—”Hiss was ‘noted for … pro-Soviet leanings.’ ”

McCarthy sat back. “You know what I think, Edgar? I think you never told the president about this, and I think you wrote that
letter to Allen for the record, and I’m even wondering to myself—Did you
actually
send it to him?
And I’m thinking, McCarthy is thinking, that maybe you were
afraid
to deliver it to Truman.”

Hoover spoke. “You’re not, I mean, you’re not—”

“No.
Obviously
I’m not. But I’m thinking there’s got to be an explanation for Truman exposing himself the way he did on the Hiss business
with you sitting here with incriminating evidence—”

“Whittaker Chambers had plenty of incriminating evidence against Hiss. All of it was available to the president.”

“But a lot of people thought Whittaker Chambers was a liar. Nobody thinks you are a liar. What I got to know, Edgar, is something
about your source. Because I don’t know how many other people have been fingered by this same source who are still in government,
and maybe you, like in the Hiss business, aren’t about to tell the president who they are and where they’re hiding. Edgar,
what I have in my hand is—can be—the biggest explosion of your, or my, lifetime.”

Hoover got up. He peered at the sketch on the wall behind his desk.
Washington, 1860, Awaiting the Arrival of President-elect Abraham Lincoln
. He paused and then said, “There’s one great secret in this town.”

McCarthy waited.

“Six people know it.”

Again McCarthy sat silent.

“We broke the Soviet code in 1946. The Venona files, we call them. They expose Hiss.”

“You didn’t tell Truman?”

“I didn’t tell him. If
he
was told, others surrounding him would know. And some of them were also named in the Venona files—not, presumably, as agents,
like Hiss. The decoding is still going on and will be for years. But the way their names were used—we just had no way of telling.
All we could do was watch them.” Hoover’s normal color had returned. “The one thing I figured we couldn’t afford was word
getting back to the Kremlin that we had cracked their code.”

“You still got it? The Soviet code?”

“Joe, I wouldn’t tell you that, and you shouldn’t ask me.”

“I understand.”

“Do you also understand that if you let out what’s in that letter, the Soviets are going to know we’re onto them? And, incidentally,
I’d get fired—overnight. You willing to see me replaced? You know, Joe,
you owe me quite a few. I’ve stood by you. And you know what I’ve tried to do for—the country.”

McCarthy was again silent. He looked up at Hoover. In slow motion he reached into his pocket, brought out the letter, reached
his hand over the desk, and dropped it in front of the director.

“I made no copy. I trust you. You got a drink in this here bubble, Edgar?”

“Thanks, Joe.”

After Senator McCarthy left, Hoover sat back and pondered the letter left on his desk. McCarthy had guessed correctly. He
had never actually delivered it. He had indeed wanted it in his private file, just in case. There was only one human being
who had access to it, his file clerk.

He picked up his hot line to his office, to the operator whose only duty it was to attend his line.

“Put me through to my file clerk, what’s his name, O’Toole.”

“Sir, Jimmy O’Toole died on Tuesday.”

Hoover put down the phone slowly.

There was nowhere to go. He’d have to hope and pray that the only copy was the copy that lay on his desk.

McCarthy, returned from the Bahamas, convened a meeting of the executive committee of the Government Operations Subcommittee.
He told his colleagues—Republican senators Mundt, Dirksen, Potter, and Democratic senators Symington, Jackson, and McClellan—that
he intended to go immediately to Fort Monmouth to conduct hearings, with his counsel, Roy Cohn.

He left from his office to the airport and caught a flight to Newark. A lieutenant from the public-relations office of Fort
Monmouth was waiting for him. At the base, McCarthy and Cohn entered the room that had been prepared for them together with
the stenographer who had been brought in to record the proceedings.

Two hours later Senator McCarthy emerged. Two reporters were there, and a television cameraman. He advised the reporters that
Fort Monmouth had a severe loyalty/security problem that required immediate attention. He took reporter Annie Stephenson from
the
New York Daily Mirror
to one side. “Annie, keep your eyes on this one. I think we have a real scandal here. Incredible, the army has let this go
on. I’ve scheduled more meetings, tomorrow and maybe the next day.”

Two days later he was back in Washington from New Jersey with Roy Cohn, arriving haggard at his office early in the afternoon.
He sat down at his desk and asked for Harry.

“Harry’s working on your Wilmington speech,” Mary Haskell told him on the intercom. “He’s working at home.”

“Tell Harry—tell Roy to tell Harry—to bring his speech draft to the meeting I’m scheduling. I’m inclined to let the White
House have it, Mary. This is too much—”

“Joe, I have some calls for you you’ll really want to make. There are the usual hundred press calls, but there’s also … ”
Mary looked down at her notes.

“Yes, yes, bring them in, Mary, I’ll do what I can. But important, reserve the room at the Hay-Adams—the usual room—order
dinner for three. We have to work out the speech and the press release and the executive committee report. Just Roy and Harry.
You pacify Don Surine and Frank Carr, I’ll pacify Jeanie. Yes, and we’ll want one of the girls standing by at the Hay-Adams,
maybe from nine o’clock on, to type up the speech. Harry will feed it to her.”

“What’s going on?” Harry asked when Roy called to summon him to the Hay-Adams meeting.

“Wait till you hear! The two army officers. We get up there. We have a pretty full report on what they were willing to tell
us. So we get ready to go, and suddenly they say, ‘Sorry, the presidential order says we can’t talk.’ So then we bring in
a fellow called Carl Greenblum, an electrical engineer over at Monmouth. I tell him what I’ve got on him, and he begins to
cry and pleads sick. Then we get Harry Grund-fest—ever hear of him? Neurologist at our great alma mater, Columbia. He won’t
answer questions. I think Joe’s got a great opportunity here to blow the lid off the whole mess. What were you doing a speech
on?”

“I’ve written on the United Nations business—”

“Forget it. This is hotter. Nobody cares about the UN.”

“Joe cares. I care. A lot of our targets are there under diplomatic immunity—hell, I’m not telling you anything you don’t
know.”

“No, you’re not, Harry. Be at the Hay-Adams at six.”

Harry drew a deep breath. He was about to say, “Yes, six o’clock,” but Roy had hung up.