Back in the Gutter

After treatment for his ailing sinuses, Joe McCarthy strode out of Bethesda Naval Medical Center one day last week and immediately began splashing around in the political gutter. Summoning the press, the Wisconsin Senator announced that he is "supporting all of the Republican candidates" this year except one. The exception: New Jersey Senatorial Candidate Clifford Case, who early in the campaign denounced McCarthy as a "distracting and divisive" force in the Republican Party and in the nation. McCarthy was opposed to Case for "reasons I think will be made public before election." With a sneer, he vaguely referred to some "material" about Case.

Seams of McCarthyism. At that point the McCarthyite Newark Star-Ledger took over. Under a six-column headline, hard by a two-column picture of a smiling Joe McCarthy, the Star-Ledger reported that the "material" concerned Case's sister Adelaide. The newspaper said that former Communist Bella V. Dodd remembered Adelaide Case "as an active member of several Communist-front groups I helped organize." When Clifford Case saw the story, he canceled all other campaign activities to prepare his reply to this "gutter politics."

Within a few hours after the story was published, more seams of McCarthyism began to show. Bella Dodd, a New York lawyer, said that she had known a "middleaged" Adelaide Case in Communist-front organizations in 1940 and 1941, but she "never related her to" Clifford Case and did not know Case's sister. There was another, older Adelaide Case, no kin, who was a teacher at Teachers College, Columbia University, and who died in 1948.

This week Clifford Case sat before the television cameras and quietly called the story about his sister a dirty smear. His sister, a physical-education teacher at the exclusive Kingswood School for Girls near Detroit, had flown to New York to help him draft the reply. Said Case: "The Adelaide Case mentioned by Bella Dodd was not my sister . . . The Adelaide Case Miss Dodd knew in 1943 was then a middle-aged woman . . . my sister Adelaide was only 31 at that time . . . was then teaching physical education in Boston . . . She never heard of Miss Dodd or the activities described by Miss Dodd."

"Smear Me If You Can." With obvious pain, Clifford Case added that "Adelaide and I believe there are some other things you should know." Then he revealed the little stain from which the big smear had grown. About a year ago his sister was hospitalized with a severe nervous disorder. When her illness was acute, she said she was concerned because she once belonged to a left-wing study club. Case did everything he could to check her disconnected story, even asked the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover for help. Finally, Case concluded there was nothing to the story. Now recovered from her illness, Adelaide recalls "that she met with a small group of people . . . several times a month to discuss political issues of the -wartime period. There is nothing that she told me to suggest that this had been anything more than a completely open association . . . which ended years ago."

With that, Clifford Case had a final sharp word: "I have just one thing to say to these character assassins: Adelaide Case is not running for the Senate. Clifford Case is the candidate. Smear me if you can. Leave my sister alone."

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