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According to an Administration official, requests for special treatment of Private Schine poured in from McCarthy's office. Whether or not Cohn's badgering was effective. Schine led the life of a golden boy at Fort Dix, N.J. Under the pretext of having work to do for McCarthy, Private Schine got extra weekend passes and after-hours passes during his recruit training. Reports reached the Army that Schine's "investigating" work was often conducted at his penthouse apartment in New York's Waldorf Towers, and at such niteries as the Stork Club and "21." At camp, Schine's name only once appeared on K.P. duty lists; Schine's squad leader made his bed and cleaned his rifle.
During McCarthy's hunt for Communists at Fort Monmouth, Army emissaries to McCarthy warned, as quietly as they knew how, that perhaps the Schine affair had gone too far. McCarthy interpreted this as a blackmail threat and tape-recorded the conversations. Then he told his committee, according to Army officials, "The Army is holding Schine hostage to get me to lay off." Cohn had kept a careful eye open for Army cases. When his bellicose boss renewed his interest in the Army, Cohn handed him the Peress case (see box). McCarthy used it on a recent speaking tour, but it attracted little interest. Then it began to boil up. not because McCarthy discovered anything new. but because others made a series of mistakes.
"Fighting Bob." Army Secretary Stevens wrote McCarthy an appeasing letter which confessed the Army's bungling in the Peress case and pledged correction of the procedures which brought it about. Unappeased, McCarthy .called Brigadier (General Ralph Zwicker, commander of Camp Kilmer, N.J., where Peress had been stationed, to the stand. Zwicker, trying to protect his superiors, gave some answers that were less than candid. McCarthy, lashing out, made the outrageous suggestion that Zwicker, an officer with a line combat record, was "not fit to wear that uniform." Zwicker had been insulted, although not publicly pilloried; the hearing was closed, and the insults first came to light through Army channels.
Secretary Stevens, getting from Zwicker an affidavit of what had happened at the closed hearing, was enraged by Zwicker's story of McCarthy's abuse. Without waiting for a transcript of the testimony. Stevens publicly ordered Zwicker not to testify at the next hearing and announced that he would appear in Zwicker's place. McCarthy, warming up, accepted the challenge. Stevens' statement was so worded as to give many the impression that he would shield all Army officers from questioning by McCarthy. Such a position would have scant legal basis and would be unacceptable to the vast majority of Senators, Republican or Democratic.
On Washington's Birthday, both Stevens and South Dakota's Republican Senator Karl Mundt, a member of the McCarthy committee, were due at Valley Forge, Pa. to receive Freedom Foundation awards. Stevens offered Mundt a ride in his Army plane. In flight. Senator Mundt cautioned Stevens to get and read the transcript of Zwicker's testimony before he went any further in counterattacking McCarthy. The angry Stevens replied that the transcript might have been altered. Mundt assured him that the stenotype notes could be read by an expert.