Fellow Travelers (16 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

May 12, 1954

“He sounds a little like Mr. Peepers,” said Beverly Phillips. “You know, whatsisname, Wally Cox.”

Listening to John Adams’ clipped, nasal tones on a television set in the State Department cafeteria, Hawkins Fuller and Mary Johnson couldn’t disagree with her. The two of them and Beverly were having a mid-afternoon cup of coffee amidst a few dozen other employees who were generally delighted by the embarrassment the hearings had caused State’s senatorial nemesis, Joe McCarthy.

The committee’s special counsel, Ray Jenkins, had become even more theatrical than Welch, thought Mary. He clearly relished what Senator Mundt called his “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde role” of conducting both the direct and cross-examinations of whoever might be in the witness chair. This afternoon it was Adams, the army counsel, who seemed exasperated by almost everything—especially, Mary thought, the way Jenkins kept calling Schine “this boy.” Instead of helping to establish what Adams suggestively called Cohn’s “extreme interest” in the private, its effect was to make Schine seem just another all-American draftee who couldn’t possibly have stirred up such a fuss.

Adams was now trying to rebut Cohn’s charge that back in December he had offered to trade some juicy leads about homosexual activity on several navy and air force bases—surely a good subject for the McCarthy committee to investigate—in exchange for Cohn’s pledge to drop the Fort Monmouth inquiry.

“I never made such an offer,” Adams now declared. “I never would make such an offer. I never had such information to offer.”

Beverly and Mary avoided each other’s glance. Fuller added another teaspoon of sugar to his coffee.

What, Adams said, he
had
mentioned to Cohn—without ever suggesting a “trade”—was an ongoing investigation of homosexuality, by Secretary Stevens’ office, at a single
army
base, in the South. That was all.

MR. JENKINS
: It wasn’t in Tennessee, Mr. Adams, was it?

MR. ADAMS:
No, sir; it wasn’t.

SENATOR M
c
CLELLAN:
A point of order. Let’s exclude Arkansas.

MR. ADAMS:
I can do that, sir.

SENATOR MUNDT:
The Chair would like to raise a point of order in behalf of South Dakota, which might also be included in the South.

MR. ADAMS:
I can include all of the states of the members of this committee.

The camera panned the room to show the loud, prolonged laughter that was filling it. Roy Cohn’s participation in the merriment, visible for a second or two, was hearty enough that viewers might reasonably think he would now, at this moment of relaxed male fellowship, extend his hand across the table and ask Adams to bury the hatchet.

“
That,
” said Fuller, “would be a hearing worth hearing. Shining a light on Camp Pink Palmetto. I’d say this current show lacks the really dire elements of the committee’s best work.” He went on to tell the tale of how a witness in one of McCarthy’s investigations, accidentally subpoenaed for 10:30 p.m. instead of a.m.—a clerk’s typo—had shown up anyway, trembling before the night watchman.

Mary guessed he’d gotten this story from Tim. She and Fuller spoke of him infrequently, but enough for her to be aware of the Lenten attempt at renunciation and how temporary it had proved. She was surprised that the boy remained in the picture amidst the comings and goings of so many others, attributing his survival to what must be his own desperate persistence.

Adams now spoke of a visit he’d made to the McCarthys’ apartment in mid-January, when things had begun to fray badly between the army and the committee. Jeannie McCarthy had sat at some distance from the two men and claimed to be writing thank-you cards; in fact, Adams felt sure she’d been taking notes on his conversation with her husband. The army lawyer was proud of how, during months of “being pounded and pounded and hounded and hounded about where Schine was going,” he’d had the temerity to tell Cohn that the private, like ninety percent of all draftees, would likely be spending some time overseas.

As Adams went on about this and other matters, Mary noticed in the witness a hint of the same petulance she’d observed in Private Schine himself. “I never asked Dave Schine for a stick of gum,” declared Adams, when questioned about the hotel heir’s largesse with tickets to the theater and the fights; “I am not afraid of Mr. Cohn,” he further insisted.

“I would be
very
afraid of Mr. Cohn,” said Beverly.

The camera looked into the farthest reaches of the audience, catching Perle Mesta in its field of vision; the other day her spot had been filled by Mrs. Longworth in a wide-brimmed hat.

“That’s Jack Kennedy’s wife, isn’t it?” asked Beverly. Mary said she wasn’t certain.

“I’m sure it is,” said Beverly, who noted the newlywed’s cute gamine hairdo. “
He’s
not on the committee, is he?”

“No,” said Fuller, taking a good look at the young senatorial bride. “She’s here to watch her brother-in-law. No one in the family seems able to afford a comb.”

Jenkins’ assistant began questioning Adams about “Senator Potter’s persistent concern” over the army counsel’s leaks of information to members of the press, particularly Joe Alsop.

“I thought Potter was supposed to be a cipher,” said Mary, pointing to his image at the right of the screen.

“He’s been getting some training,” said Fuller. “Or perhaps I should say some marching orders.”

“You seem well informed about what goes on in his office,” she ventured.

Beverly interrupted their banter. “You’re forgetting about your
own
office.” She pointed to her watch, reminding them that Mr. Morton had called a staff meeting for four o’clock. “Maybe you want that new girl putting us all to shame.”

Fuller nodded in the direction of the
former
girl, Miss Lightfoot, who sat close to the television, unhurriedly drinking her tea and taking notes on the proceedings. “It’s just not the same without her, is it?” he asked, feigning a wistful sigh.

Miss Lightfoot’s former colleagues, after hearing one more partial piece of the story from one side of the Caucus Room’s tangled web, began strolling back to the Bureau of Congressional Relations. Fuller and Mary walked a step or two behind Beverly.

“Even the brewer’s been watching,” said Mary. She’d given up and begun referring to her fiancé by the only name for him that Fuller ever used.

“This is turning into a long engagement, isn’t it?” he asked.

Mary pursed her lips.

Fuller pressed her. “Want to talk about it?”

“With you? Heavens, no.”

“Yeah, you do,” said Fuller. “Let me know when and I’ll pencil you in. By the way,” he added, pointing toward her open-toed footwear, “your feet are too cold for those shoes.”

At eight minutes before five, just prior to adjournment, Jenkins’ assistant was moved to ask Adams whether it wasn’t true “that many of these remarks or abuses that you have detailed on the part of Mr. Cohn were actually made in a facetious or jovial vein?”

Quite the contrary, Adams replied. “On the subject of Schine, nothing was funny. Nothing was facetious. Nothing was jovial.” Tim heard this last exchange on the radio in Potter’s Capitol office. He was happy to be overworked, fielding calls while rewriting a speech and folding one stack of papers into another. The more he had to do, the less time there was for being lovesick, which he’d been more often than not since Charlottesville. In the hotel room there, after a ferocious storm of sex that had followed the slap to his face, he had for the first time been allowed to lie all night in Hawkins’ arms. But when the two of them returned to Washington, things reverted to their regular pattern, making him miss the near-hysteria he’d felt during the unexpected travel idyll, and causing him to consider the possibility that there really was no such thing as happiness or unhappiness. Maybe there was only intensity—and then everything else.

He now heard Tommy McIntyre and Senator Potter, fresh from the Caucus Room, coming into the outer office. Tommy’s sharp voice was telling the boss that he needed to get a friendly photograph taken with Welch’s bemedaled brass in the front-row seats.

“Tomorrow, pull yourself out from behind the table the minute Mundt rings the lunch bell. Let the shutterbugs get a shot of
you
instead of Joe. If they see you leaning on your props—one of ’em maybe lit up by mistake—they’ll come over and take a picture, believe me.”

Potter said nothing, and Tommy filled the silence with congratulations for the way the senator had this afternoon “followed the script” in questioning Adams about leaks.

“I still don’t understand,” Potter wondered, “why you didn’t want me going after Schine a couple of weeks ago.”

“Because I don’t want you tearing into a soldier, even that one. Anywho, Charlie, remember the picture when you’re back in there tomorrow.”

With this reminder, Tommy left the premises to head back to the SOB, where he’d get the latest on the Maine campaign from Mrs. Smith’s assistant.

Tim had two letters for Senator Potter to sign. Once he heard him settled down at his desk, he knocked softly on the door of the inner office.

“Come in, son,” said Potter, “though I’m afraid I don’t have long.” The senator explained he was expected at home in Arlington in half an hour.

“Say hi to Mrs. Potter for me,” Tim requested.

The senator smiled. “Will do. What have you got there?”

“A couple of things for signatures. Plus some telegrams from Lansing, and two out-of-state interview requests, if you want to consider them now. The Boulder
Daily Camera
and the
San Francisco Examiner.
”

Potter allowed himself an awed little whistle over the immense circulation of the latter publication. He dropped the slips of paper onto his blotter.

“So what do you make of it all, Tim?”

Surprised to be asked, Tim fought against his stammer to declare that things looked “pretty much as you said, sir. Somebody is not telling the truth.”

“Yes,” said Potter, “but who?”

“I hope it’s the army, sir, but I guess that wouldn’t be much to be happy about, either.”

“No, it wouldn’t be.”

After a pause, Tim became bolder. “Mr. McIntyre thinks McCarthy and Cohn cooked up all the memoranda. He’s sure Mr. Adams
is
telling the truth.”

The senator gave a soft, nervous laugh. “Mr. McIntyre tends toward strong opinions about everything.”

Tim laughed, too. “The other day he told me you’re still trying to get used to him. Which I guess makes sense: he hasn’t been in the office much longer than I have.”

Potter’s smile was suddenly thin and tired. He looked over toward the bookshelf, where a Detroit Tigers cap crowned a cigar humidor. “Oh,” he said softly, “I’ve known Mr. McIntyre for years.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

June 2, 1954

“Sir, I probably don’t have any wisdom on this subject at all.”

Roy Cohn’s testimony had drawn even longer lines than usual to the Caucus Room, but his affectations of modesty, however shrewd, were disappointing those who’d come to see fireworks. For weeks he’d been attracting notice for the mutterings and glares he would exchange with Bob Kennedy, who had encouraged ridicule of Dave Schine’s record as anticommunist gumshoe and thinker. Spectators who came every day like courthouse inveterates were still hoping the two young committee counsels would get into a fistfight before things adjourned
sine die.

But here was Cohn, at last before the footlights of television, expected to thrust and parry and soliloquize—and all he would do was “sir” the committee: “It is hard to answer that, sir.” “Sir, that is a little high for me to pass on.”

He even conceded the likelihood that President Eisenhower opposed communism as strongly as he did, an admission that came in response to a soft question from Senator Potter—a tricky change-up from the series of fastballs the lawmaker was throwing. Tim had seen Tommy McIntyre scripting the queries yesterday afternoon, and the soundness of the Irishman’s approach now became evident: the simple questions seemed more damning than Cohn’s answers seemed exculpatory.

SENATOR POTTER:
Did you threaten to wreck the army?

MR. COHN:
No, sir. Not only did I not threaten to wreck the army, but Mr. Adams never believed that for one minute.

SENATOR POTTER:
Did you threaten to get Mr. Stevens’ job?

MR. COHN:
No, sir, and if I had done that, Mr. Adams would not have acted the way he did, I am sure.

What emerged, however filtered, was Cohn’s sense that last winter Adams had been too dumb to respond sensibly to threats that had indeed been made.

“You can catch your breath, Charlie,” offered Acting Chairman Mundt. Senators were wanted on the floor for two quick votes; the committee would take a ten-minute recess.

Tim used the time to annotate the previous day’s transcript and comb through press requests, as well as to hold a place for Mrs. Potter in the spectators’ front row.

“You got enough room there, son?”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” said Tim to one of Welch’s telegenic officers, a General Airlie, according to the nampelate beside his large fruit salad of decorations.

“What do you do here?” asked the general.

“I work for Senator Potter.”

The officer nodded respectfully. “I had my picture taken with him the other day.”

Tim might have mentioned how his real boss, Tommy, had last week scolded Potter for not yet “watching the birdie with the brass.” But he looked for something else to kindle conversation and came up with the way Senator Potter planned “to propose a law that would ban Communists from joining the army.”

General Airlie smiled. “Son, I can’t say I’ve found them dying to get in.”

Tim laughed.

“Have you been in the service yet?” asked Airlie.

“No, sir,” said Tim, ashamed that the general would surmise how he’d chosen, like most of his friends and classmates, to wait for the draft instead of enlisting. He felt an absurd temptation to confide—as if it were a tale of heroism—the story of how he had at least kept himself vulnerable to call-up by not admitting to “homosexual tendencies” when given the chance.

“I’m guessing you’re a college graduate,” said General Airlie. “Well, you’ll find we’ve still got plenty to offer fellows like yourself—whether you come to us or we come to you.” He smiled gently.

Tim nearly saluted. The army itself—apart from its lawyers and political administrators, what it was when left to do its duty outside this room—sometimes seemed to him the way he imagined Father Beane’s Chinese chapel: “a clean, well-lighted place,” forthrightly positioned on good’s salient against evil.

He nodded to the general and went back to annotating the transcript, which six weeks into the hearings confirmed the near impossibility that any definitive picture would emerge from them. During recent days McCarthy had been arguing the duty of federal employees to leak to him any information they had about ideologically suspect colleagues; he wanted everyone to know how much he missed doing the committee’s real business of fighting “brutalitarian regimes.” Even so, one could measure the embarrassment he had been suffering the past several weeks by a speech in which the vice president had gone out of his way to declare that the real exposure of Communists was being accomplished by J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Brownell. “I prefer professionals,” said Nixon, “to amateurs on television.”

No matter how murky the truth about Schine remained, the hearings were going the army’s way. Twenty-four hours ago, Senator Flanders had taken the Senate floor to ridicule his colleague as an anti-Semitic and possibly homosexual version of “Dennis the Menace.” In contrast to what might have happened even a month ago, there had been no outcry over the denunciation.

The president’s decision to float above the battle, in a kind of military observation balloon, had been vindicated to his strategists. This afternoon, as Cohn retook the witness chair, Ike, the recipient of his Communist-hunting compliments, was at a Washington Senators game to benefit the Red Cross.

“I would like,” said Senator Potter, who now resumed his questioning, “to have you comment on the extent of Communist influence in our government.”

“Yes, sir,” said the still-modest Cohn. “It can only, of course, be a comment, because I don’t know all the facts.”

“When did that ever stop him?” whispered Miss McGrory.

“During the 1930s and 1940s,” said Cohn, “the Communist Party of the United States was, I would say, remarkably and unbelievably successful in placing Communists in a number of key spots in our government.” But sheer numbers, he explained, weren’t important. “One is too many. I think Stalin or Lenin, one of the top Communist theoreticians, once said something to the effect that it takes a thousand people to build a bridge; it takes one person to blow it up.”

For a moment Tim thought he could feel the Caucus Room expand with history and purpose. Something
important
was being offered for discussion. But the senator and the witness soon returned to the question of whether, on or around December 9, Adams had offered to trade Cohn an air force scandal for the Fort Monmouth investigation.

“Somebody is not telling the truth,” said Potter, reiterating what had become his catchphrase.

“Somebody is certainly mistaken, sir,” responded Cohn. “It is certainly not us, sir.”

“So,” said Potter, with the logic Tommy McIntyre had supplied him, “perjury has been committed.”

“Well, sir,” answered Cohn, “somebody is certainly mistaken, and, once again, sir, I am not.”

Tim noticed that Cohn might be denying no more than stupidity; he had not denied lying—let alone denied that the eleven memoranda over his name had been typed on an office machine he was never even near.

When the session ended and the lights went down, the witness gathered his papers and stood up just two feet from Tim, who still occupied the seat Mrs. Potter had decided to pass up for an afternoon’s shopping. Full of anger and a certain relief, as if he could now shed a cloak that had made him itch unbearably, Cohn stepped up to Tim’s left ear and whispered: “If your soldier-boy boss isn’t careful, he may find that his balls go the way of his legs.” Not waiting for McCarthy, he exited the room.

Tim said nothing, just stood there breathing a little hard over the first words Cohn had ever spoken to him directly. When Tommy came to collect the transcript he’d been working on, Tim repeated Cohn’s remark.

“That’s nothing to worry about,” Tommy reassured him. “Charlie’s balls are safe. They’re in my pocket.”

Tim frowned, prompting Tommy to complain. “What are
you
stewing about? It was a good afternoon. For Charlie, for all of us.”

“I’m fine,” said Tim, who wanted to get out of the room as fast as Cohn had. In exiting, he allowed himself one glance in Potter’s direction and realized that Tommy was right: the senator appeared perfectly content, pleased with the crispness of his own performance. He wore the look of serene dignity that he could maintain for hours at a time, the same expression he’d no doubt worn when reading one of Everett Dirksen’s five unpublished novels, a task he’d undertaken, he explained to Tim, “because Senator Dirksen values my opinion.”

“Come on,” called someone from the crowded elevator car that was just about to close. “You’re skinny enough to fit in!”

Tim emerged from his distraction to realize that the voice belonged to McCarthy, who was forgoing, as he often did, the Senators Only car. As Tim squeezed into place, he felt a gentle, almost fatherly, hand on his shoulder. “Pete over there better not complain,” said the senator, indicating the elevator operator. “Not when he’s owed me ten bucks since Thanksgiving!” The tightly packed car, its atmosphere perfumed with bourbon and a moment’s unforced laughter, descended toward the street.