The Second Day

As the hearings went into their second day, Joe McCarthy seemed more assured, less willing to heed the gadfly advice of Aide Roy Cohn, who soon lapsed into a brooding silence. By prearrangement, the Army side and the McCarthy group changed places at the big table, so that neither could have an advantage in television camera angles. Army Secretary Stevens, back as a witness, also seemed more at ease--despite the fact that he had finished his prepared statement and was on his own. Committee Counsel Ray Jenkins speeded the pace of his questions, often cutting off answers.

Stevens told how one morning last October, David Schine picked him up in New York to drive the Secretary to hearings then being held by the McCarthy subcommittee. The testimony:

Q. (by Jenkins). Was there anything said to you on that day by the Senator or any member of his staff with reference to any preferential treatment to be accorded Schine?

A. Well, Mr. Schine and I had quite an interesting talk in the car, riding downtown.

Q. Will you relate what the conversation was, Mr Secretary?

A. Well, the conversation was along the line that I was doing a good job ferreting out Communists.

Q. Very well.

A. That he thought I could go a long way in this field. And that he would like to help me. He thought that it would be a much more logical plan for him to become a special assistant of mine . . .

Q. Than to do what?

A, To assist in the Communist .program, Communist-seeking program in the Army, and he thought that it would be a much more logical assignment than being drafted into the Army . . .

Sobering quickly after joining in the general laughter, Stevens continued: "I said to him that one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life was my opportunity for serving in the U.S. Army in two world wars; that I felt that if he would face up to his forthcoming induction, and approach it in the right way, that he would look back on it all his life as one of the greatest experiences that he had had, and that if for any reason he did not take his military training, in my opinion he would regret it for the rest of his life."

Cupid? Near the end of the morning session, the committee got into a snarl that was to tie it up for the rest of the day. Describing a telephone call he got last Nov. 7 from McCarthy, Stevens said: "Now in that conversation Senator McCarthy said that one of the few things he had trouble with Mr. Cohn about was Dave Schine. He said that 'Roy thinks that Dave ought to be a general and operate from a penthouse on the Waldorf-Astoria' or words to that effect. Senator McCarthy then said that he thought a few weekends off for David Schine might be arranged, or words to that effect. Perhaps for the purpose of taking care, of Dave's girl friends."

That telephone conversation had been monitored by Stevens' appointment clerk --a common Pentagon procedure and, indeed, more the rule than the exception in many Washington offices--who took shorthand notes of what was said. The Army's Counsel Joseph Welch said the record of the talk could be entered as evidence, along with the subpoena ordering Stevens to produce it, by majority vote of the committee. (Later, Welch agreed that the monitor's notes could also be admitted in evidence if McCarthy consented.)* Glared McCarthy:"I think it is one of the most indecent and dishonest things I have ever heard of."

Crossroads. Stevens' Appointment Clerk John Josiah Lucas was called to testify. When he arrived, his brown suit was splattered with raindrops. He peered anxiously through half-rim glasses into the spotlight in which he, an inconspicuous career civil servant, found himself. He said that he had taken shorthand notes ("I won the 200 Gregg diamond medal years ago") on the McCarthy-Stevens telephone call, but that he had failed to record all of at least one McCarthy sentence. Said Counsel Ray Jenkins: Because of this fact, he would advise that Lucas' notes not be accepted as evidence.

Joe Welch disagreed. Said he: "I think we have in this courtroom a witness as completely prepared to testify to a telephone conversation as any witness I ever looked at in my life." Welch called the decision on Lucas' notes "a crossroads in this case."

After McCarthy had learned through questioning that Lucas had monitored between 50 and 100 telephone conversations dealing with Joe, his committee and his staff, Washington's Democratic Senator Henry Jackson demanded that all of them be subpoenaed immediately. Grinned Lawyer Welch: "Nothing will delight the Army more than to make every such telephone conversation available." Welch succeeded in enraging McCarthy. Cried the Senator: "I don't think Mr. Welch can speak for the Army ... I think I represent the Army just as much as you do; in fact, I think more so."

Welch jabbed the needle a little deeper. "Senator McCarthy, once more, sir, if you will consent, this committee and the country will hear it [the transcript] today; and if you will not consent and the committee votes that my witness can testify to it, this committee and the country will hear it today." McCarthy, a pretty good small-town lawyer up against a very good big-town lawyer, shouted: "I think Mr. Mundt is still the chairman of the committee, Mr. Welch." Welch laughed in McCarthy's face.

Senator John McClellan started making motions to subpoena all relevant documents having to do with monitored conversations in the case. McCarthy asked that the introductions be made in chronological order. McClellan unwarily agreed; the committee unanimously approved his amended motion--and spent the weekend regretting it.

* The legal problem on admitting the monitored transcript into evidence arose from this clause in the Federal Communications Act: "And no person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person . . ."

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