The Redhunter (55 page)

“Well, Sherrill evidently seized on this skepticism and wrote to Waugh—here, I have it: ‘You are quite right; as far as a
foreigner can judge, the comments of Richard Rovere on the McCarthy years are “just.” The pity is that you are not given the
whole story, whence you might judge better.’ Sherrill then offered to send other material.”

“Did he? Did Waugh read it?”

“Yes. Or he claims he did, and Evelyn was a pretty conscientious scholar. He wrote back to Sherrill, ‘McCarthy is certainly
regarded by
most Englishmen as a regrettable figure. Rovere makes a number of precise charges against his personal honor. Until these
are rebutted, those who are sympathetic with his cause must deplore his championship of it.’ ”

Alex smiled. “Pure Waugh. But it remains for us to explore—in your own book, and in mine—whether this ‘bad character’ of Joe
McCarthy had as an enduring result the discrediting of anti-Communist activity.”

“At any rate, Alex, you make it clear what was the British view of things back in those days when all of America was glued
to the Army-McCarthy hearings. … Yes, I’ll have some tea. No. I will not have crumpets. Thanks.”

Jean Kerr McCarthy walked into the restaurant alone. Though highly recognizable, with her great height, striking face, and
figure, she was unrecognized this sleepy Saturday in April at a restaurant that toiled listlessly at noon, saving energy for
the heavy, protracted traffic of Saturday nights. Harry was seated in a remote corner of the restaurant, in the back. She
approached him and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her, and they sat down.

Would she have a drink? “No, but you go ahead, Harry.” He ordered a beer.

“It’s not going well,” Jean said.

“No, it isn’t, Jeanie.”

“Joe’s difficult. Well, I don’t have to tell you. You know,” Jean said, picking absentmindedly on a corner of a roll. “What
Roy did to Joe on Schine was just plain unforgivable. And Joe
knows
that. Joe told me a month ago, ‘Roy thinks that Dave ought to be a general and operate from a penthouse in the Waldorf-Astoria.’
It’s terrible what Roy has done to Joe, but Joe won’t just—get him out.”

“I know that, Jeanie.”

“Yes, you know that, Harry. Oh my, how we miss you. But how do you read the way it’s going?”

“I don’t see anything that can clear Roy of what he did. Call after call to the secretary of the army asking for special treatment
for his—”

“Boyfriend?” Jean interrupted him. “But we don’t want to get into that, do we, Harry? I don’t
want
to get into that, but we’ve got a situation where Roy would call the army, get a weekend pass for Dave—‘to do important committee
work’—then they’d both go to the Waldorf-Astoria and live it up, doing whatever, that’s their business, but they sure weren’t
doing important work, or for that matter any work, for Joe McCarthy.” She released the roll. “… I know, I know, Joe should
have put a stop to it when he found out, and even finding out late, he should have called Roy in and said, So long. But he’s
very stubborn—and very loyal. Now I know that’s part of his nature. But that’s part also of what’s happened to him because
of the solid, I mean
solid
wall of criticism, no matter what he does. If he caught a spy with a hydrogen bomb in his briefcase heading for Moscow, they’d
say the same things,
fake, dishonest, publicity hound, despot
.”

The waiter was standing by. Jean noticed him. “Harry, will you forgive me? I don’t want any lunch. Well, okay. Give me some
soup. What kind? Any kind.” Harry ordered tuna salad.

“I mean, Harry, if we live in a country that thinks Owen Lattimore is innocent after what Joe came up with, and then what
the whole McCarran Committee came up with, then it’s hard to see daylight. And Joe now reacts with, you know, something like
outrage about what they say about him, just routinely. Did you see Flanders yesterday?”

“It wasn’t in the
Times
this morning.”

“Well, maybe even they are embarrassed by it.” She reached in her pocketbook and brought out the clipping. “Read it. Don’t
read it out loud, I couldn’t bear it.”

Harry pocketed it.

“Jeanie, it’s gotten all mixed up. People aren’t talking about Owen Lattimore. They’re talking about Cohn and Schine. And
General Zwicker. But remember, it was
Joe
who spoke those words, not Roy.”

Jean leaned back in the booth. “Yes, he spoke those words. Would he have said them if Roy hadn’t been around egging him on?
I don’t know.”

“They want Roy, and they’ll get him. But they also want Joe. And it doesn’t look good for him—”

She stopped him. “Let me tell you the kind of thing that happens
to Joe. It won’t surprise you, after your time with him. But they come in at him from everywhere, no matter what.

“Look. Last month the Queen Mother—the present queen’s mother—”

“I know who you’re talking about, Jeanie.”

“Well, you read she was in town. All the senators were invited to a State Department reception. We got there, oh, twenty minutes
late. We got in the door and we could see at the other end of the room—you know, the big reception room?—the receiving line:
John Foster Dulles, the Queen Mother, the two ambassadors, a couple of other people. There were still about five or six senators
and their wives waiting to go through the line. Somebody spotted Joe coming in, and presto! like that! the line was dispersed,
and the Queen Mother was led to the far corner of the room. I mean, it was obvious:
Dismantle the line so the Queen Mother won’t have to shake hands with the disreputable McCarthy
. So what happens? Well, there wasn’t any line anymore, so Joe and I went to the corner by the entrance, and a waiter brought
us drinks and hors d’oeuvres; so we’re munching on these, and I look up and—there’s the Queen Mother walking
right across the huge hall toward us
.” Jean ran her index finger in front of her, right to left, tracing the Queen Mother’s path. “She walked to exactly where
we were and—introduced herself!

“Well, Joe behaved like a choirboy. And so he says to her nicely that based on what he had read about her travel and social
schedule, “Your majesty is being given a pretty hard time.’ And she says, I kid you not, with a broad smile, ‘Not as hard
a time as they’ve been giving
you,
Senator!’ I mean, can you beat that? Joe smiled like a baby. He’d have killed for her. We chatted maybe five minutes. The
next day we got word of the headlines and the captions in the London tabloids. One of them read,
‘REDHUNTER SASSES QUEEN MOTHER.’
Another,
‘DOES JOE THINK QUEEN MOTHER IS LOYALTY RISK?’
And the
Mirror,
I think it was: ‘
QUEEN MOTHER TRAPPED BY HATEMONGER
.’ ”

She brought out her handkerchief.

Harry looked away.

An hour later Jean sipped at her cold coffee. “We’re just going to have to do the best we can. It’s good to know we’ve got
friends like you,
Harry. And, Harry, I understand about your leaving, I truly do. Now, listen. And this is
completely
my idea. I haven’t checked it with Joe. But I wouldn’t want even to mention it unless you say okay. I know that back in February
you said to Joe, It’s Roy or me. If I can get Joe to back off on Roy—would you come back?”

Harry thought quickly. He knew he would never go back. But he couldn’t tell her that, not in her distress. He gripped her
hand and reflected: There is no way Joe McCarthy will back off Roy Cohn in the middle of this investigation.

So he thought it all right to say, “Let’s see, then, Jeanie, see what Joe says. After all, I did quit—”

“I told you, I understand about that. And Joe does too. You’ll be a friend of ours as long as—as long as you don’t go to work
for Senator Flanders!” She smiled her big Irish smile. They walked together to the door.

Harry and Willmoore went out to dinner on the night of May 28 and were silent for a little while. The cocktails mobilized
their spirits. They expressed, almost simultaneously, their self-disgust over the time they were giving to the Army-McCarthy
hearings.

“They’re threatening to last for months.” Willmoore sighed, puffing on his cigarette. “And what do we know from watching that
we—sort of—didn’t know already? And what is it we really care about? Cohn and Schine are two calamities. Joe’s jeopardized
his career by getting involved with Cohn, though he was making plenty of mistakes before then. And the Cohn-Schine business
precipitated some pretty ugly things: All of a sudden, McCarthy releases thirty memoranda done by his office over the months
pertaining to calls from Cohn to the army, ‘official reasons’ for making the calls. What a coincidence. Each of these memos
lists, in strangely similar language, the provocation for the
last
Cohn call. Let me practice. Date One. ‘Cohn called Stevens/Adams’—take your pick—’to say that Schine’s service would be needed
to prepare for the first Monmouth hearing.’ Date Two. ‘Cohn called Stevens/Adams to say that the absence of Schine is a real
encumbrance.’ Date Three. ‘Cohn called Stevens/Adams to say that the absence of Schine would not deter the committee from
going forward.’ It looks—wouldn’t you agree?—as if McCarthy’s office flat
invented
that series of memos. Retroactively put together to account
for Cohn’s thirty-odd calls to the army asking for special treatment for his pal. The question before the house, Harry, is,
Why am I glued to it?”

“And why is practically everyone else in America also watching it?” Harry replied as Willmoore turned the key to his quarters
after dinner. “It has a larger audience than the World Series.”

“That’s simple,” Willmoore said. “People watch soap opera, and there’s plenty of that here, though lover-boy doesn’t run off
at night with the girl—wish he did—”

“Quiet a second!” Harry toiled attentively with the sound and with the vertical-hold controls on the television set. He wanted
to get the nine
P.M.
news summary.

“I can understand why
you
are watching, Harry. You’re seeing every day the decomposition of someone who was the central figure in your life, engaged
in what we both thought—continue to think—was a noble cause. A vital democratic society has two functions, one is inclusive—
bring in the new ideas,
assimilate them. The other is exclusive—
reject unassimilable ideas
. That’s what McCarthyism was all about for a while, and what appealed to you. It’s a long way from your Paul Appleby, the
federal official who said, ‘What’s the difference between the Democratic Party and the Communist Party? They’re both entitled
to compete for loyalty.’ Bullshit—you’re seeing part of that cause go up in smoke. How much of it, I don’t know. I’m interested—I
know, you are too—in the policy implications of this inferno. Will they rehabilitate Yalta before they’re through? And Alger
Hiss?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday the St. Louis Bar Association sent a unanimous resolution to Mundt, calling for an end to the hearings.
‘For the sake of preserving the dignity of governmental processes in the United States.’ ”

“Fat chance of doing that. The prevalence of the general will was lost under President Andrew Jackson. I taught you, did I
not, that Calhoun is a ranking American political theorist?”

“Yes. There was the difficulty that his ‘law of the concurrent majority’ would have preserved slavery.”

“Only as long as the general will in the individual states wanted it.”

“All the Negro would have to do was wait, right, Willmoore?”

“When you leapfrog the general will, you get things like civil wars. Right, Harry?”

“When you don’t leapfrog the general will, you get things like the prolongation of slavery, right, Willmoore?”

“You’re slow on the aspect of statecraft. You very nearly got killed in Belgium because of a failure of statecraft. Fifty
million others, less lucky, did get killed. The justification for a military is to avoid military action. The great statesmen
in power during the thirties fucked up. McCarthy’s doing the same thing. So’s Ike, in a way. He might have killed McCarthyism
in the bud.”