MCCARTHY V. THE ARMY: The Men and the Issues

As the McCarthy-Army investigation unfolds, ten men, because of their intrinsic involvement or their professional assignment, are likely to play the key roles—to make the critical tactical decisions, provide the critical testimony, or reach the critical conclusions. The ten:

MCCARTHY’S TEAM

Joseph Raymond McCarthy, 44, Wisconsin’s junior Senator, tried hard last month to convince the public that “this isn’t my case.” But last week, by his own actions, Joe McCarthy left no doubt that he is the dispute’s most prominent figure.

He forced a change in the committee’s rules to enable him, as well as Army lawyers, to question witnesses. Then he issued his bill of 46 particulars against his adversaries “on behalf of Frank Carr . . . Roy Cohn . . . and of myself.”

The document included: 1) denials of the Army’s charges that “improper means” were used to get favors for Private Schine; 2) a charge of “misconduct and possible law violation” by Assistant Defense Secretary Hensel; 3) 20 charges that Army Counselor Adams had tried to obstruct McCarthy’s investigations in various ways; 4) four similar charges against Army Secretary Stevens.

Francis Patrick Carr Jr., 37, McCarthy’s staff director, succeeded J. B. Matthews, who resigned under fire last year after he charged in a magazine article that 7,000 Protestant clergymen were Communist dupes. Before that, Carr was an FBI-man for eleven years. The Army accused Carr of abetting Cohn’s and McCarthy’s threats to keep probing the Army unless favors for Schine were granted.

Roy Cohn, 27, McCarthy’s chief counsel, is the son of a politically powerful New York judge, Democrat Albert Cohn. In World War II Cohn held off his draft board by getting two nominations to West Point, failing each time to meet the Point’s physical standards. Just before the draft started up again in 1948, Cohn joined the National Guard, now holds a first lieutenant’s commission. By his cleverness, obtrusiveness and passion for intrigue, he won a place in McCarthy’s book as “the most brilliant young fellow I have ever met.”

Gerard David Schine, 27, private, U.S. Army Military Police, was transferred last week from Camp Gordon, Ga. to Fort Myer, Va., across the Potomac from Washington, to be available for the great investigation, whose central question is: Did McCarthy threaten to blackmail the Army on Schine’s behalf or did the Army threaten to use Schine as its blackmail weapon against McCarthy? When newsmen spotted Schine in the Senate Office Building last week, he ignored their questions, bounded up a staircase, three steps at a stride.

THE ARMY’S TEAM

Robert Ten Broeck Stevens, 54, Secretary of the Army, believes that he has one primary mission in the dispute with McCarthy: to safeguard servicemen’s morale and the public’s confidence in the Army. Last week Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway made a conspicuous entrance to the floodlit hearing room in mid-session, and sat down right behind Witness Stevens. By this mute signal, the world learned that Stevens’ fight had the professional Army behind it.

Yaleman Stevens was a second lieutenant (field artillery) in World War I, a colonel (quartermaster corps) in World War II. Two of his sons were in the Navy. Stevens’ third son, William, is now an Army corporal in Europe. In his family textile business, J. P. Stevens & Co., Bob Stevens made a reputation as a highly intelligent and progressive businessman. During the 24 years he was president and board chairman, he made the company one of the nation’s largest textile manufacturers.

Though he lacks a politician’s taste for Washington infighting, Stevens is the Eisenhower Administration’s entry in its biggest infight to date. At last week’s hearings, it was clear that gentle Bob Stevens was just as determined to win as tough Joe McCarthy.

H. (for Herman) Struve Hensel, 52, Assistant Defense Secretary for Internal Security Affairs, has been the Army’s chief behind-the-scenes legal strategist in the McCarthy fight, last week became a downstage “principal” in the case as a result of McCarthy’s charges against him.

An alumnus of three of Manhattan’s most noted law firms (Cravath; Milbank; Carter, Ledyard), Hensel went to Washington in 1941, has been there on & off ever since.

McCarthy charged that Hensel, while a Navy lawyer and then the Assistant Secretary, drew $56,526.64 in wartime profits from a “ships’ supply firm which was operating with Government sanction and with Government priorities.” Hensel answered with the hottest blast against McCarthy by any Administration official to date, calling the charges “barefaced lies.” As an inactive partner of a firm doing business with private steamship companies, not the Government. Hensel declared that he had done nothing illegal or unethical. McCarthy, he said, “is cornered and is attempting a diversionary move.”

John Gibbons Adams, 42, Army Department counselor, was assigned by Stevens to work closely with McCarthy and Cohn during the Fort Monmouth investigation and the Peress case. Last month he drew up the Army’s report on the Schine case.

Lawyer Adams graduated from the University of South Dakota Law School (’35), but never went into private practice. Commissioned an Army First Lieutenant soon after Pearl Harbor, Adams fought in North Africa and Europe, earned a Bronze Star. After the war, he became national director of the Young Republicans, then clerk of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and in 1949 moved to the Pentagon.

Last week McCarthy accused Adams, among other things, of 1) suggesting the Navy, Air Force and Defense Department proper as “substitute targets” for McCarthy’s investigations,

2) offering to supply tips on homosexuals in the other services.

3) threatening to punish servicemen who supply McCarthy with tips, 4) offering to break a general in return for McCarthy’s promise of silence, 5) threatening to expose the Schine case unless McCarthy abandoned his probe of the Army’s Loyalty Board.

Joseph Nye Welch, 63, the Army’s special counsel for the investigation, speaks with a honeyed fluency and a meaningful grin that hints of legal cunning. Iowa-born Welch, a Boston lawyer, when in his Boston office, does most of his work standing at a high, old-fashioned clerk’s desk.

THE UMPIRES

Karl Earl Mundt, 53, acting committee chairman, South Dakota’s senior Senator, once before was an acting chairman during a dramatic episode: in 1948, when the pumpkin film in the Alger Hiss case was disclosed, he was head of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator-elect, having won his promotion with the help of the Hiss case. Mundt. who was a teacher for 13 years, has a schoolteacher’s patient manner. Now, torn between his allegiance to the Administration and his friendship for McCarthy, Karl Mundt obviously needs all his patience. In his opening remarks last week, Mundt observed that his responsibility was one “which I do not welcome and which I did all that I honorably could to avoid.”

Ray Howard Jenkins, 57, the Mundt committee’s chief counsel, is known around Knoxville as the “terror of Tellico.” after his home town of Tellico Plains, Tenn. Last week, when Jenkins started questioning witnesses with a deep, roaring Tennessee drawl and fixing them with a tiger-like stare, they might have felt just a bit terrified. Jenkins has a simple definition of the problem he was hired to untangle: “Apparently everybody can’t be telling the truth.”