One Man's Army

If the millions of Americans who deplore and despise Senator McCarthy want to understand the millions who admire McCarthy, "despite his methods," they could ponder McCarthy's record of the week. The bully-boy manners, the sneer and the smear are conspicuous in the record. But alongside such trademarks of the McCarthy operation there was also the record of a week packed with investigative achievement. McCarthy scored heavily, and some of his points were of real and current importance. Among them:

P:Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens admitted "defects in the Army procedures" that promoted an Army dental officer while his loyalty was seriously in question and gave him an honorable discharge a few days after he pleaded self-incrimination to avoid answering McCarthy's questions about Communist activity. The effect of the discharge was to put the officer beyond the reach of military law.

P:Communist activity in the General Electric Co.'s atomic laboratory and other plants in Schenectady, N.Y. was clearly spotlighted.

P:Felix Inslerman, the man who made the photographs that became Whittaker Chambers' pumpkin film, broke his 15 years' silence, corroborated Chambers' account of his activities. It is not clear how much McCarthy had to do with Inslerman's change of heart, but at least McCarthy was the channel through which Inslerman's revelation reached the public. The Inslerman testimony last week was McCarthy's first solid connection with the Hiss-Chambers case.

The Army's Arms. McCarthy's week opened in Manhattan's Federal Courthouse when New York City Policewoman Ruth Eagle appeared as a witness before McCarthy, an unruffled chairman despite a traffic accident the night before.* Policewoman Eagle, who was assigned to join the Communist Party and was shot at when Communists discovered her police connection, testified that she had known Dr. Irving Peress and his wife as "full-fledged members" of the Communist Party, had sat with them in party cell meetings. Then Dentist Peress took the witness stand and refused, on the ground of selfincrimination, to answer 33 questions relating to Communist activity.

Caught by the doctors' draft in the fall of 1952, Peress was commissioned, no questions asked. When an Army officers' loyalty questionnaire was sent to him, Peress refused to fill it out. While one arm of the Army was investigating him, another arm gave Peress a routine promotion to major. Last Jan. 18 the Army ordered Major Peress, then stationed at Camp Kilmer, N.J., to be honorably discharged within three months. On Jan. 30, McCarthy grilled him in secret session. Peress refused to answer, pleading the Fifth Amendment. Three days later he was a civilian with an honorable discharge.

Swinging Doors. Why, McCarthy wanted to know, did "this Fifth Amend ment Communist [get] a hurry-up honorable discharge after I had written Secretary Stevens asking he be court-martialed?" To find out, McCarthy called to the stand Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, Camp Kilmer's commander. Said the general: regulations prevented him from discussing security cases. Whereupon Joe McCarthy ordered the doors shut for a closed session.

Chairman McCarthy bore in on General Zwicker. Excerpts from a transcript released this week:

McCarthy: Did you know that [Peress] refused to answer questions about his Communist activity?

Zwicker: Specifically, I don't believe so.

McCarthy: Did you have any idea?

Zwicker: Of course I had an idea.

McCarthy: What do you think he was called down here for?

Zwicker: For that specific purpose.

McCarthy: Then you knew that those were the questions he was asked, did you not? General, let's try and be truthful. I am going to keep you here as long as you keep hedging and hemming.

Zwicker: I am not hedging.

McCarthy: Or hawing.

Zwicker: I am not hawing, and I don't like to have anyone impugn my honesty, which you just about did.

McCarthy: Either your honesty or your intelligence; I can't help impugning one or the other . . . Did you take any steps to have him retained . . .?

Zwicker: No, sir.

McCarthy: Did it occur to you that you should?

Zwicker: No, sir . . .

McCarthy: If this man, after the order [to discharge Peress] came up ... were guilty of some crime . . . could you then have taken steps to prevent his discharge?

Zwicker: I would definitely have taken steps to prevent discharge.

McCarthy: Let us say he went out and stole $50 the night before.

Zwicker: He wouldn't have been discharged . . .

McCarthy: But when you heard that he was part of the Communist conspiracy . . . that would not allow you to hold up his discharge?

Zwicker: I was never officially informed by anyone that he was part of the Communist conspiracy, Mr. Senator.

McCarthy: You would not need any official notification so far as the fifty bucks is concerned?

Zwicker: Yes.

McCarthy: But you say insofar as the Communist conspiracy is concerned, you need an official notification.

Zwicker: Yes, sir, because I was acting on an official order having precedence over that.

McCarthy asked if a hypothetical general who approved a Peress-like discharge should be cashiered; Zwicker did not think so.

McCarthy: Then, general, you should be removed from any command. Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to general and who says, "I will protect another general who protected Communists," is not fit to wear that uniform. General . . . You think it is proper to give an honorable discharge to a man known to be a Communist?

Zwicker: No, I do not.

McCarthy: Why do you think it was proper in this case?

Zwicker: Because I was ordered to do so.

McCarthy: Do you think to order the honorable discharge for a Communist major was improper conduct?

Zwicker: I think it was improper procedure, sir.

The general tried to state, but failed to make clear, the main point in his defense: that the information on Peress was known to Zwicker's superiors before the discharge order was issued and that Zwicker, therefore, saw no reason to hold up a discharge action ordered by his superiors.

Before Zwicker testified, Stevens had sent McCarthy a letter saying "We do not defend" the Army's performance in the Peress case, and promising there would be no more such cases. But the letter failed to convince Joe McCarthy that "disgraceful coddling of Communists" in the Army had ended. Said Joe: "I don't think Bob wrote that letter. He was either badly advised or someone wrote it for him--some hungover press-agent." Later Joe elaborated: He had meant "hangover pressagent from the last Administration." With that, the Senator entrained for Albany to keep another date.

"I Was Too Temperate." The date was with Jean Arsenault Jr., onetime Albany and Schenectady correspondent for both the Communist Daily Worker and the FBI. Arsenault named six G.E. workers as card-carrying Communisms. As members of the Communist-dominated United Electrical Workers, who packed the courtroom, applauded, the six hid behind the Fifth Amendment.

After the hearing, both G.E. and the U.E. issued statements. The company said that none of the accused witnesses had security clearances or worked at sensitive jobs. Said the U.E.: McCarthy & Co. are "not after sabotage; they are after unions."*

But then McCarthy was back after the Army, keeping his Red-hot irons in the fire and dealing further with Secretary Stevens, who charged McCarthy with "unwarranted treatment" of officers. Replied the Senator, "I was too temperate." McCarthy called Stevens "one of the finest dupes I've ever met," and summoned him to testify this week in person.

*A motorist named Bengt Nordberg plowed into a taxicab carrying McCarthy and his wife Jean. Result: a fractured ankle for Mrs. McCarthy; a drunken-driving charge for Nordberg. McCarthy said that he would not prosecute.

*But the U.E.'s rival union, the C.I.O.'s Inter national Union of Electrical Workers (I.U.E.) has repeatedly charged that the Communist-dominated U.E. is a menace to national defense and that the company has favored the Red-led union.

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