Part 19
Toward the end of May, David had telephoned Rosenberg and pleaded with him to come over to his apartment. He told Julius, whom he usually called Julie, that he was “in a terrible jam.” He said he needed a “couple of thousand dollars in cash” and, when his brother-in-law told him that he couldn’t raise that amount of money, he had shouted “... if you don’t get me that money you are going to be sorry!” Outside of an inconsequential meeting a few days later, that was the last time that Julius had seen David until the latter testified at the trial.
Ethel buttressed her husband’s emphatic denials of any espionage activities. She knew that Julius had purchased their console table at Macy’s and that “it was about $20 or $21.” Long after the trial, such a table, which a Macy employee priced at $20.36, was found in her mother-in-law’s apartment. As far as wrist-watches were concerned, the one she had been wearing when she was arrested had been given to her by her husband on her birthday in 1945. She remembered that Julius had lost his watch on a New York Central train in August of 1948. She was certain that neither the console table nor the watches had been given to them by the Russians.
When Saypol took over, both witnesses refused to answer any questions that had to do with their association with the Communist Party. Julius informed Judge Kaufman that “if Mr. Saypol is referring to the Young Communist League or the Communist Party, I will not answer any question on it....”
Q. You mean you assert your constitutional privilege against self-incrimination?
A. That’s right.
Ethel bridled at any reference to the word “Communist” and refused to answer such questions as “Did you ever sign a Communist Party nominating petition for elective office?” and “Were they [friends with whom the Rosenbergs had lived for a time] members of the Communist Party?”
After Thomas V. Kelly, a Macy’s attorney, testified that it was impossible to check the purchase of the console table because the store’s records for 1944 had been destroyed, the defense called it a day. But Saypol had three rebuttal witnesses up his well-tailored sleeve--Evelyn Cox, a domestic who had worked for the Rosenbergs in 1944 and 1945, Helen Pagano, a legal secretary employed by O. John Rogge, and Ben Schneider, a commercial photographer. Mrs. Cox was there to swear that Ethel Rosenberg had once told her that the console table had been given to her husband as “a sort of a wedding present.” Mrs. Pagano said that Louis Abel, who was married to Ruth Greenglass’ sister, had brought $3,900.00 to Rogge’s office on June 16, 1950, the day after David’s arrest, and that this money had been wrapped “in a brown bag.” Schneider identified the Rosenbergs as the couple who had ordered some passport pictures from him on a Saturday in May or June of 1950.
On March 29th, the jury, after deliberating more than eighteen hours, returned verdicts of “guilty as charged” against all three defendants. One week later, Judge Kaufman sentenced the Rosenbergs to death because, as he somewhat awkwardly put it, “... your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians, the A-Bomb ... has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000....” As for Sobell, he thought that “the evidence ... did not point to any activity on your part in connection with the atom bomb project” and sentenced him to thirty years, the maximum prison term provided by the Espionage Act, with a “gratuitous” recommendation that he never be admitted to parole. The next day, David Greenglass, whose sentence had been deferred to the end of the trial, was sentenced to a fifteen-year term.
After more than two years of fruitless appeals and motions for a new trial, the Rosenbergs’ executions were set for eleven p.m. on the night of June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison. But three days before, Irwin Edelman, “an interested citizen,” filed a motion with Mr. Justice William O. Douglas, in which he argued that the penalties of the Atomic Energy Act rather than those of the Espionage Act were applicable and that, under the former, the Rosenbergs could not have been sentenced to death. On June 17th, Douglas granted a stay of execution in order to give Edelman’s attorneys time to argue their point. But Chief Justice Vinson reconvened the Court on the following day and the full bench, by a six-to-three vote, vacated Douglas’ stay at noon on June 19th. After President Eisenhower refused to grant clemency, the couple’s execution was moved ahead three hours in order to avoid a conflict with the Jewish Sabbath. A few minutes after eight p.m., Julius and Ethel Rosenberg passed into what Joseph Conrad once called “the great indifference of things.”
9
_Contempt by Silence_
The United States
_versus_
Corliss Lamont
On February 9, 1950, a comparatively unknown United States Senator from Wisconsin, who was beginning the fifth year of a colorless first term, addressed the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. His subject was “Communism in Government.” Halfway through his talk, in a gesture that was shortly to become his trademark, he held up a sheaf of papers and announced to his startled audience that “I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.” Before he sat down, linotypers, the country over, were busy punching out the words that were to free him from the obscurity he abhored. Whether he said 57 or 81 or 205 didn’t seem to make much difference--Joseph Raymond McCarthy, ex-Democrat, ex-judge, ex-Marine, had struck pay dirt.
Eleven days later, McCarthy took his attack on the State Department to the floor of the Senate. In a tumultuous six-hour presentation, that was interrupted more than one hundred and fifty times, he dredged up eighty-one cases, all of which had been developed some years earlier by State’s own security investigators. Of these eighty-one, he discussed some seventy-six, broken down into varying degrees of risks. He made no attempt to prove that any of these “risks” were “members of the Communist Party,” or even that they were all State employees, as he had alleged at Wheeling, but contented himself with the observation that there was “something radically wrong” with an agency that did not fully investigate its own suspicions. Before the stormy session broke up, a few minutes shy of midnight, the gentleman from Wisconsin was hoarse and incoherent, and his fellow Senators were so thoroughly confused by the discrepancies in his figures that they had given up all pretence of trying to understand them. The Big Lie, or, as one writer later pluralized it, the Multiple Untruth, had rarely gone over so well.
The immediate result of McCarthy’s February 20th speech was Senate Resolution 231, which authorized the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations “to conduct a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State.” On March 8th, a Foreign Relations subcommittee, headed by Senator Millard Tydings, Maryland’s patrician legislator, began what was to be a four-month investigation of McCarthy’s charges. After more than 1500 pages of testimony had been taken, most of it supplied by the parvenu accuser, the hearings ground to a close in late June with Owen Lattimore, a professor of government at Johns Hopkins, being offered up as a blood sacrifice. Lattimore, who had never been a State Department employee, was described by McCarthy as “the chief architect of our Far Eastern policy” and “Alger Hiss’ boss in the espionage ring in the State Department.”
“I’m willing,” he told Tydings, “to stand or fall on this one. If I was wrong on this, I think the subcommittee would be justified in not taking my other cases too seriously.” The subcommittee apparently took him at his word because it found that “starting with nothing, Senator McCarthy plunged headlong forward, desperately seeking to develop some information which, colored with distortion and framed by a blaze of lies, would forestall the day of reckoning.” But, although Tydings and a majority of his colleagues were convinced that the junior Senator from Wisconsin had been guilty of perpetrating a “fraud and a hoax” upon the country at large, the very publicity that the hearings received quickly established McCarthy as a farce to be reckoned with. The wrong man and the right moment had met head-on.
In the Fall of 1951, Senator William Benton of Connecticut persuaded the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate’s Committee on Rules and Administration “to determine whether expulsion proceedings should not be instituted against Joseph R. McCarthy” for lying to the Senate and to the Tydings Committee. As Benton put it, McCarthy, by being unable to substantiate his claimed list of 205 (or 81 or 57) party members in the State Department, was clearly “a calculating dispenser of false and perverted information.” But the change in Senate leadership occasioned by the Eisenhower sweep in 1952 resulted in the tabling of the subcommittee’s report, a document which raised a great many intriguing (and unanswered) questions about its subject’s financial dealings. McCarthy, who had been instrumental in Tydings’ November defeat, became the chairman of both the Senate’s Committee on Government Operations and its roving subsidiary, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the perennially ill-shaven gentleman from the lake country had an open field before him.
On September 23, 1953, the Permanent Subcommittee, consisting (as it so often did) only of its chairman, was ensconced in Room 128 of New York City’s United States Court House. The day before, a subpoena had been served on Corliss Lamont, the maverick son of one of J. P. Morgan’s partners, ordering him to appear at 2:30 the next afternoon to “testify what you may know relative to the subject matters under consideration by said committee,” namely Communist infiltration in the Army. Dr. Lamont, a leading exponent of what he described as “Democratic Socialism,” who was then teaching philosophy at Columbia University, was the author of several books, including one entitled _The Peoples of the Soviet Union_.
When Lamont, who had been cooling his heels for more than an hour in an anteroom, walked into Room 128 a few minutes after 3:30 on the afternoon of September 23rd, he had no way of knowing that his case was to be, in a sense, his interrogator’s epitaph. 1953 had been a big year for McCarthy. Before it ended, he and his road-show juveniles, Cohn and Schine, had been involved in some 157 inquiries concerning mainly the Voice of America and the Signal Corps installations at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During the first two months of 1954, he was, with the unwilling help of an honorably discharged army dentist and an insulted brigadier general, to set the stage for his own _Götterdämmerung_. But Irving Peress, Ralph Zwicker and the Army-McCarthy vendetta were still tomorrow’s headlines when the mild-mannered Lamont eased himself into the witness chair and immediately announced that he had a statement objecting to the subcommittee’s jurisdiction which “I would like to read into the record.”
The chairman, always a great stickler for the amenities, informed him that he would have to be sworn before he made any speeches. The witness indicated that he would rather affirm than take an oath, and McCarthy promptly acceded to his request. As Lamont adjusted his glasses and again prepared to read his statement, the chairman interrupted to ask him, “Why you want to affirm rather than be sworn?” When Lamont objected to having to explain his religious beliefs, the Senator snapped, “You will be sworn unless you tell us you have got some ground for refusing to be sworn.” The exchange ended when McCarthy, who apparently felt that he was getting in beyond his depth, capitulated, after warning Lamont that he hadn’t heard the last of the matter. He couldn’t have been more prophetic if he had tried.
Lamont had barely started reading his prepared statement when the chairman suddenly exhibited a compelling curiosity to learn the names of his two attorneys, although one of them, Philip Wittenberg, had submitted his calling card when the hearing opened. When Wittenberg had formally introduced himself and his associate, Irving Like, McCarthy waved Lamont on. The witness, with a remarkable show of almost saintly patience, picked up where the last interruption had left him, and continued his statement.
After informing the chairman that he was “not now and never had been a member of the Communist Party,” Lamont vigorously attacked the subcommittee’s jurisdiction. As far as he was concerned, McCarthy had no power to inquire into his “personal and private affairs.” Not only was this prohibited by the Constitution’s First Amendment, but no statute or Senate rule gave the Permanent Subcommittee the right to question a private citizen as to his “personal conduct, personal beliefs and associational activity.” Indeed, if any governmental agency had this right, it was the judiciary and not the legislature. Lastly, Lamont maintained that the absence of the subcommittee’s three Democrats, who had resigned in a huff in the late summer of 1953 over the chairman’s insistence on hiring staff personnel without consulting them, “has deprived this committee of its competency to act until it has been properly constituted.”
If McCarthy was impressed by what he had heard, his visage didn’t reflect it. Frank Carr, the subcommittee’s staff director, who was hovering at his elbow, handed him a dark-covered book which turned out to be Ernest J. Simmons’ _U.S.S.R., a Concise Handbook_, to which, it seemed, Dr. Lamont had contributed a chapter entitled “National and Racial Minorities.” After observing darkly that this book was “being used by the military to indoctrinate our troops,” the chairman wanted to know whether the witness had been paid for his chapter. Lamont couldn’t remember whether he had or not, but promised to furnish that information after checking his records.
The next order of business was a mysterious pamphlet called _Psychological and Cultural Traits of Soviet Siberia_, which later turned out to have been prepared by Army Intelligence. Its bibliography referred to _The People of the Soviet Union_ by a “C. Lamont.” Lamont readily admitted that he had written a book by that name in 1946, but had never read or even heard of the long-named work in which it was cited. In fact, he had tried to find a copy after it was mentioned by McCarthy at a pre-hearing press conference, but was unable to locate it. The Senator promptly asked Frank Carr to supply the witness with a copy. He directed Lamont “to examine the document and then mark those passages which come verbatim from your book.”
Up to this point, there had been little to distinguish the proceedings from the almost two hundred that had preceded it since the Wisconsin Republican had decided that the national destiny called for more drastic tactics than the Constitution permitted. Outside of the fact that Louis Budenz, hardly a stranger at Congressional hearings, was sitting in a corner of the room, the executive session seemed destined for next morning’s back pages. But what had all the earmarks of an innocuous little query began to stir things up. The question: “Do you know a Mr. Louis Budenz, Mr. Lamont?”
Lamont refused to answer the question. When McCarthy asked him for his reasons, the witness offered to read his statement again, but the chairman wasn’t having any more of that. Anticipating that Mr. Lamont would still refuse to answer the question, he ordered him to do so.
Q. I say, so the record is complete, you are being ordered to answer, and I assume you are refusing to answer?
A. Yes, on the grounds stated.
The chairman followed up his first question about Budenz with another concerning the ex-Communist. “Did you ever admit to Mr. Budenz, in a telephone conversation” he asked him, “that you were a member of the Communist Party?” Again, the witness failed to give satisfaction. “I refuse to answer that on the same grounds, Mr. Chairman, as set forth in this statement.” But he was quick to point out that he was not standing on the Fifth Amendment.
Q. You are not refusing under your rights under the Fifth Amendment, right?
A. No, no.
With the cavalier observation that “I think it is necessary for the Chair to order him to answer in case the committee decides to take contempt proceedings against him,” McCarthy waited for his man to come to heel.
Lamont, who recognized a crossroads when he entered one, decided to confer with Wittenberg. The chairman, while very solicitous of the right of a witness to consult his attorney, reminded the official stenographer to make a notation of the fact “so that the record is complete.” After a brief parley, Lamont had his answer ready. “I am declining to answer on the ground that I do not wish to involve myself in controversy with a known provocateur, and I am a loyal American. As I said in the statement, I am not and never have been a member of the Communist Party.” No, he would not identify “the known provocateur,” other than the “person you named in the statement, Mr. Chairman.”
Then McCarthy turned to “a Clarence Hathaway.” Had the witness worked with him “in connection with the penetration of various organizations by the Communist Party?” Lamont objected to the form of the question and, when his objection was promptly overruled, went back to his basic point that the subcommittee did not have jurisdiction to interrogate him. When the Senator pumped him as to whether he had been doing any undercover work for any Communist Party members, the witness, after characterizing the questions as “outrageous,” lapsed into stony silence.
Scarcely concealing a growing jubilation, McCarthy decided that it was time to remind the witness that he was digging a hole for himself. After marking Lamont’s statement as Exhibit 1, he ordered the stenographer to “have the record show the only grounds for the refusal on the part of the witness are the grounds referred to in Exhibit 1; that the witness has said that he is not relying on the Fifth Amendment.” When Wittenberg pointed out to him that his client had also objected to the form of the questions, McCarthy brushed him aside. However, like Lamont, Wittenberg, too, had his flinty side. “But, sir, you were dictating to the stenographer the reason for the refusal of the witness, and he should have the full record.” The chairman’s answer was brief and conclusive: “You may show whatever you like in the record.”
Then McCarthy returned to Ernest J. Simmons and his _U.S.S.R., a Concise Handbook_. But Lamont was just as adamant as he had been with Budenz and Hathaway. As far as he was concerned, “the book speaks for itself.” This was all the opening an old infighter, who had learned his trade in the North Woods, needed. “You think the book speaks for itself whether he [Simmons] was a Communist?,” he asked the witness. Wittenberg’s somewhat hurried instructions to “decline to answer” proved to be totally unnecessary since, like all good rhetoricians, the chairman was determined to answer his own question. He leaned back in his chair, tugged at his right ear lobe, and solemnly announced: “This might be the first time today that I would agree with you. I think it does speak for itself. He uses you and other men named as Communists almost exclusively.” Lamont, who had been listening politely, hardly seemed impressed by this revelation.
By the time the five-o’clock shadow on the Senatorial jowls had reached its hirsute zenith, Lamont had refused to answer some twenty-three questions, one of which was framed in Russian and was destined to be lost to posterity because the stenographer’s knowledge of the language was limited to “Da” and “Nyet.” It was obvious that the witness was more than prepared for any eventualities. When McCarthy pointed out to him that “you can make a very good test case, Mr. Lamont,” Thomas W. Lamont’s middle son replied, with some fervor, “I hope so.”
As the long afternoon drew to a close, Lamont was ordered to come back at ten o’clock on Monday morning, this time to Room 318 of the Senate Office Building in Washington. When Wittenberg pleaded a previous engagement, the time was changed to one p.m. Before the session ended, McCarthy informed Wittenberg that, while he could not supply him with a copy of the testimony, he was free to correct any errors in the transcript when it was ready. As the brief cases were being snapped closed, the chairman turned to apostate Budenz, whose role as the silent observer was not his usual one.
Q. Before we go, Mr. Budenz, you have listened to the testimony. Can you identify this as the man whom you discussed in your testimony before?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Good.
No sooner had Lamont and his retinue walked down the courthouse steps than the Senator closeted himself with the waiting reporters who knew that a subcommittee rule that “all testimony taken in executive session shall be kept secret and will not be released for public information without the approval of a majority of the subcommittee” had never stood in its chairman’s way before.
Two days later, Irving Like received a call from a member of the subcommittee’s staff, informing him that there had been a change of plans and that Dr. Lamont’s appearance on Monday, the twenty-eighth, would be quite unnecessary. Like stated that his client would show up in Room 318 of the Senate Office Building at the appointed time unless the oral adjournment was confirmed in writing. At 2:41 p.m. a telegram was dispatched from Senator McCarthy’s office, addressed to Corliss Lamont.
PURSUANT TO CONVERSATION WITH MR. LIKE OF MR. WITTENBERG’S OFFICE THIS DATE, YOUR APPEARANCE BEFORE THIS SUBCOMMITTEE IN WASHINGTON, D. C. ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1953, HAS BEEN POSTPONED. HOWEVER, YOU ARE UNDER CONTINUING SUBPOENA AND BOTH YOU AND YOUR COUNSEL WILL BE NOTIFIED WHEN YOUR APPEARANCE IS REQUIRED.
JOE McCARTHY, CHAIRMAN SENATE PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS.
Wittenberg received a similar wire.
At ten a.m. on Monday morning, McCarthy and five members of his staff marched with measured tread into Room 318. The chairman solemnly called the committee to order. “We had announced last week that Mr. Corliss Lamont would be before the committee today, Mr. Lamont has not been subpoenaed. He was notified that he could come today and purge himself of the contempt for failure to answer last week.” As his words trailed off into ether, McCarthy looked around the room and, with a bemused innocence that would have put Scarpia to shame, asked, “Is Mr. Lamont here?” The official transcript notes that “There was no response.” With a grave shake of his head, the chairman ordered Lamont’s testimony made public “so that the reason for the citation for contempt will be very clear.”
On October 2nd, Dr. Lamont wrote to the Senator and reminded him that he was indeed under subpoena on September 28th, and that his appearance in Washington had been postponed by McCarthy himself. Almost a month later, he received a brief letter from Frank Carr, informing him that he had been entirely correct in his earlier communication and that the transcript of the hearing would be rectified accordingly. The next day, Lamont addressed another letter to McCarthy, asking how he intended “to make the record conform to fact and correct the flagrant injustice to me.” There was no answer.