The Party Line

A generation of Americans with party telephone lines learned the fascination of listening in on their neighbors. They also learned to converse guardedly, on the assumption that their neighbors were eavesdropping. While the old-fashioned party line is becoming an ever rarer luxury, a new kind of party-line was installed in Washington last week: the televised monitored phone call.

The new gadget has advantages over the old: instead of a handful of eavesdroppers, millions can listen: instead of guarded talk, the callers have unlimited misplaced confidence in their privacy.

Joe McCarthy held for weeks to his position that no transcripts of monitored phone calls could go in the Mundt committee record unless all of them went in. Gradually, this position melted, and last week the calls began to pour into the record. So far the results added up to a substantial advantage for McCarthy's side of the case.

Roy to Bob. The earliest of the published monitored conversations occurred on Sept. 23, when Roy Cohn called Army Secretary Stevens about having Major General Richard C. Partridge, chief of Army intelligence, appear before McCarthy's committee. Excerpts:

Cohn: Maybe we won't be doing much if we make the head of G-2 look awfully silly.

Stevens: You won't be gaining much from our standpoint to make the G-2 look awful silly . . . [But] I think you had better . . . handle it as you think best, but let's don't have too much of a spectacle.

Bob to Dave. On Oct. 21 Draftee Schine was awaiting induction into the Army, when Stevens telephoned to report on his earnest discussion of Schine's case with the Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson:

Stevens: I have reviewed this whole situation with Mr. Wilson, and it adds up to this: neither he nor I can see an appropriate way to avoid the basic training . . . That is the wise thing to do, Dave, and that having done that, then I think there is an excellent chance that we can pick you up and use you in a way that would be useful to the country and to yourself. Just what they would be, I don't know ... I personally would like to arrange it . . . in such a way that you could use the knowledge and ability you have in certain fields . . .

Schine: I am certainly happy to know you have talked it over with Mr. Wilson, and that you are both thinking about it.

Stevens: We are . . .

Schine: We will probably have to talk this over at greater length some time.

Stevens: If you come down, I will be delighted to see you.

Roy to Bob. A week later, Cohn suggested to Stevens that it might "save embarrassment all around" to get Schine a job at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cohn: How do you think we should go at that?

Stevens: Do you want me to talk with Allen Dulles. I think I might do it.

Cohn: I would appreciate that.

The next day Stevens called back to say that Dulles had turned down the idea. But Roy Cohn had another idea:

Cohn: How about this deal of picking up somebody once he's in [the Army] . . .?

Stevens: On the question of the pickup, I can probably do a better job on that than [Dulles] could.

Joe to Bob. Four days after Schine was inducted. McCarthy called Stevens.

Excerpts:

McCarthy: I would like to ask you one personal favor. For God's sake, don't put Dave in service and assign him back to my committee . . . The newspapers would be back on us. He is a good boy, but there is nothing indispensable about him . . . It is one of the few things I have seen [Cohn] completely unreasonable about. He thinks Dave should be a general and work from the penthouse of the Waldorf.

Stevens: That [Cohn] is where-- my problem has come from . . . You never have done or said anything that spurred me on in this situation at all, other than to take a friendly interest . . .

McCarthy: I think for Roy's sake if you can let him come back for weekends or something, so his girls won't get too lonesome--maybe if they shave his hair off, he won't want to come back.

Bob to Joe. Stevens' big day for telephoning was Feb. 20. after General Zwicker had been berated by McCarthy in a secret hearing. At 10 a.m. Stevens complained about it to McCarthy:

McCarthy: Let me ask you this: Is it your position that you are going to try to keep from us the names of the officers who protected these men?

Stevens: I am going to try to prevent my officers from going before your committee until you and I have an understanding as to the abuse they are going to get.

McCarthy: You will not protect them from going before our committee . . . Just go ahead and try it, Robert. I am going to kick the brains out of anyone who protects Communists. If that is the policy of you . . . I will guarantee you that you will live to regret it . . . Would you consider yourself subpoenaed for 10 o'clock Tuesday morning?

Stevens: I will take that under advisement.

McCarthy: I am telling the press that you have been told to appear . . . I am all through with this covering up of Communists. I am sorry that Bob Stevens is one that is doing it too. [McCarthy hung up.]

Stevens to Symington (10:05 a.m.):

Stevens: He really started to beat my brains out.

Symington: Don't worry about that.

Stevens: I am a coddler of Reds, you see.

Symington: Did you have anybody on the phone?

Stevens: Yes. I did.

Symington: That's good. Keep the recording. [Laughter in the hearing room.]

Stevens: He blew his lid.

tu to Bob (2:30 p.m.):

Symington: I think you are in shape to protect your Army, provided you don't miss one and provided you stay tough. I don't mean silly tough. I mean firm . . .

Stevens: I've got to do that, Stu . . .

Symington: This fellow might be sick, you know.

Then, on March 8, three days before the Army's report on Schine was released, Symington called to ask for a copy of it, "if the Army is willing to release it."

Stevens: Stuart, I doubt very much that they are. Whatever they have got on that would have to be pulled together and so forth and so on . .

Symington: Have you seen it?

Stevens: I would know of certain things that Adams has transported to me that have transpired . . . I think there has been some talk around that has been very much exaggerated over anything that is there . . . I have no personal complaint. . . . I don't think there is much there. That would be my guess.

Biggest laugh of the week came when Symington's telephoned remark to Stevens was read: "Incidentally, I would appreciate this being private between you and me." More serious was the information that Stevens, three days before he brought charges against McCarthy, had not read the Schine material and, from what he had heard, thought little of it.

Out of the calls came two important points favoring McCarthy: 1) Symington, now one of the senatorial "judges," was disclosed as an intense partisan and close collaborator of Stevens, one of the accused, in the Zwicker case; 2) Stevens carried his appeasement of Cohn and Schine to the point where he virtually invited the Cohn-McCarthy aggression against him.

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