A Call for State

Joe McCarthy picked up the trail of Frank Coe just before election last fall. In his big Chicago Palmer House speech, the Wisconsin Senator listed Coe as a prime example of subversives in public office. A New Deal economist who had become the $20,000 secretary of the International Monetary Fund, Coe had been identified before congressional investigators as a Red agent. The State Department had even refused him a passport. But not until McCarthy spoke did the Truman Administration demand Coe's dismissal from his sensitive post. And not until Coe himself refused to say whether he was a Communist spy, in testimony before the McCarran committee, did the IMF finally force him to resign (TIME, Dec. 15).

Last week McCarthy was in full bay again on Coe's trail. A new scent had been picked up by the Senate investigations subcommittee chaired by McCarthy. It led back to postwar Austria, where the IMF had apparently sided with the Communists in trying to block a currency devaluation. When the subcommittee hinted that Coe may have been responsible, the former IMF official broke up a trip in Mexico (no passport required), flew back to Washington for an indignant appearance before McCarthy.

High point of the televised hearing: McCarthy:

Did you contact any member of the Russian secret police on your recent trip to Mexico?

Coe: So far as I know, no one I saw on that recent trip was such a member.

McCarthy: Were some of the people whom you contacted members of the Communist Party in Mexico?

Coe: I decline on grounds of the Fifth Amendment to answer that question.

McCarthy (addressing the spectators): Is the representative of the State Department here? [He was.] I suggest you tell [State] the borders should definitely be closed to this . . . extremely dangerous individual. I know they don't want anyone running around the world who's refused to answer the questions he has.

Coe (shouting): . . . Further persecution . . . I am not an espionage agent. . . I was looking for a job . . . You would prefer, apparently, that I remain here unemployed and that the Government feed my family ...

This week the subcommittee summoned Coe for more questions. McCarthy asked whether, on Coe's trip to Mexico, he "discussed the shipment of arms into Central America by the Communists." Coe again declined to answer. Then, while Coe shouted "Outrageous!" McCarthy announced that the State Department had alerted U.S. border agents to keep Coe from leaving the country.

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