Hearings Started With Conflicting Charges, Key West Citizen (Article, June 1954)
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Hearings Started With Conflicting Charges And Wound Up With Conflicting Testimony
By JOHN CHADWICK
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The televised probe of the McCarthy-Army row started out with a tangle of conflicting charges and wound up with a mass of conflicting testimony.
The drama, played out before the Senate Investigations subcommittee and a vast TV audience, ranged far from the original outline before the lights went out in the Senate caucus room late yesterday.
For 36 days, beginning in April 22, the hearings went on--compounded a mixture of charges made and denied, of moments of furor and humor, of political in-fighting, of the strengths and weaknesses of men.
The big-name antagonists were Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis), the subcommittee's regular chairman, and Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, appointed soon after the Eisenhower administration came into office in January 1953.
Accusations Made
McCarthy and two of his aides were accused by Stevens and Army Counselor John G. Adams of exerting improper pressures on the Army in an effort to win preferential treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former unpaid subcommittee consultant.
To this the McCarthy side retorted that Stevens and Adams had used Schine as "a hostage" in an attempt to "blackmail" the subcommittee into dropping a search for Communists in the Army.
At the windup, neither had backed down.
In his opening statement, Acting Chairman Mundt (R-SD) described the charges as of "a grave and serious nature." He stated this aim: "To make a full and impartial effort to reveal that which is true and to expose that which is false."
Flow of Words
From that beginning flowed like [1.75 million] words of testimony and oratory.
The first witness called, tall and trim in his uniform, was Maj. Gen. Miles Reber, former chief Army liaison officer at the Capitol and now a commander of U.S. troops in Germany.
Reber said McCarthy told him last July 8 that he was "very much interested in obtaining" a direct Army commission for Schine and felt Schine was "fully qualified."
When McCarthy later took the witness chair, he swore he never asked for a commission for Schine. He said he had inquired of Reber only whether Schine was qualified and how to go about applying for a commission.
This was just one of the many conflicting statements now being studied by the Justice Department should be prosecuted for perjury.
Secretary Stevens, who did the longest stint in the witness chair, also testified on the opening day and detailed incidents he said showed continuing efforts by McCarthy and his aides from last July to mid-February to win favors for Schine.
Range of Requests
He said requests in behalf of Schine ranged from several for the wealthy New Yorker before he was inducted into the Army last Nov. 3 to many for special assignments, relief from routine KP duties, and extra time off while he was in training at Ft. Dix, N.J.
"During my tenure as secretary of the Army," Stevens said, "there is no record that matches this persistent, tireless effort to obtain special consideration and privileges for this man." He called it an example "of the wrongful seeking of privilege, of the perversion of power."
What did McCarthy have to say about these charges? "I state under oath they are untrue," he said.
And just as emphatically McCarthy swore that his countercharges against Stevens and Adams "are true"--all of the, he said.
At the first hearing McCarthy made a statement that, in one form or another, was to be repeated over and over.
Repeated Statemetn
"I am firmly convinced," he said "the reason we are here spending out time on the question of whether or not Pvt. Schine received special consideration is because we are getting close to the nerve center in the Pentagon of the old civilian politicians over the past 10 or 20 years who have covered up."
The clashing nature of Stevens' and McCarthy's testimony can be pointed up by what they had to say about a charge termed perhaps the most serious of all by the Army's special counsel Joseph N. Welch.
This was that Stevens had offered up the Navy, the Air Force and the Defense Department as "substitute targets" in an effort to halt the subcommittee's probe of the Army.
On the very last day, McCarthy said he had personal knowledge of this occurring at a Nov. 6 luncheon in Steven's Pentagon office.
"That is true, then?" asked Sen. McClellan (D-Ark).
"Yes, sir," McCarthy replied.
Stevens' Denial
When Stevens was testifying, he swore, "At no time.. did I suggest the committee 'go after' the Navy and Air Force."
There were sharp conflicts of opinion as well as conflicts of fact.
Welch, after a sudden attack by McCarthy on a young member of his Boston law firm, cried out in anguished tones, 'Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness... Have you left no sense of decency?"
On another day, Roy M. Cohn, regular chief counsel of the subcommittee and a principal target of the Army charges, said of the Wisconsin senator:
"I have never known a man who has less unkindness, less lack of charity, in his heart and soul, than Sen. McCarthy."
Second In Line
Next to Stevens and McCarthy, Adams and Cohn were the principal antagonists. Their testimony collided, too.
There was Adams' charge--and Cohn's denial--that Cohn had told him Stevens would be through as secretary and the Army "wrecked" if Schine were sent overseas.
And there was Cohn's charge--and Adams denial--that Adams had offered to trade him information about homosexuals in the Air Force if Cohn would tip him to the subcommittee's plans for its next investigation of the Army.
Another episode about which the subcommittee heard different versions was teh barring of Cohn from a secret radar laboratory at Ft. Monmouth, N.J., last Oct. 20.
Col. Kenneth E. BeLieu, aid to Stevens and a combat veteran who lost a leg in Korea, testified that Cohn blew up and declared, "This is war... we are going to investigate the heck out of the Army."
Cohn Was Angry
Cohn told the subcommittee he was angry all right, but he denied voicing threats. McCarthy said Cohn was justly angered and that whatever language Cohn may have used was not as strong as he would have used.
Countless words were uttered pro and con about McCarthy's search for suspected subversives at Ft. Monmouth.
McCarthy and Cohn maintained that the army suspended 35 suspected security risks at a Signal Corps center only after the subcommittee began its investigation.
Stevens and Adams testified some suspensions took place before the subcommittee hearing began; they said the McCarthy probe speeded up the suspension of other [employees]. And they said McCarthy turned up only some minor new information about one person.
The Army secretary testified: "I did not need spurring by anyone" to weed out subversives. He said he had asked the FBI as early as April 1953 to undertake a full-scale investigation at Ft. Monmouth.
Warnings Ignored
McCarthy said the Army had ignored warnings from the FBI. He and Cohn testified that Stevens and Adams repeatedly tried to get the subcommittee to halt its investigations, lest Stevens be forced to resign.
Stevens testified he felt the Army was being "hammered over the head" by the type of publicity McCarthy was giving out after closed hearings.
"I did not welcome the damaging effect upon the Army of Sen. McCarthy's statements to the press which gave the impression that there was much current espionage at Ft. Monmouth, which was not the case," Stevens testified.
Also in dispute was whether, as McCarthy contended, Stevens had planned to relieve Maj. Gen. Kirke B. Lawton from his command at Ft. Monmouth "in reprisal" for cooperating with the subcommittee.
Lawton Issue
Stevens said he had considered relieving Lawton, but only because of "unfortunate" statements by Lawton about Communist suspects being graduates of certain universities.
Another issue that roiled the hearings was touched off by Adams' testimony about a Jan. 21 meeting at the Justice Department attended by Att. Gen. Brownell; Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams and other aides of President Eisenhower.
Adams said they discussed McCarthy's move to call Army loyalty board members for questioning. He said he believed this stemmed from his saying that Schine might be assigned overseas.
Sherman Adams suggested to him, he said, that he put in writing an account of the whole Schine matter. Such an account was the basis for the Army's charges.
