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When Stevens said he was determined to blast McCarthy anyway, Mundt asked: "Are you going to the basic issue involved? Are you going to step between the Senate of the U.S. and your officers?" Mundt answered his own question: "Bob, it is a most unfortunate issue. Joe's worst enemies would support him on this one. I think that would lick you hopelessly."
Stevens, missing the point, said: "I'm just going to take the position that they can't abuse my officers." Mundt explained that Senators would read Stevens' stand as a demand for some kind of censorship over Senate committees, and warned, "That's something for you to think about pretty carefully."
At Valley Forge, Stevens won the hearts of Army officers (and the nickname. "Fighting Bob") when he said: "I intend to accept responsibility . . . pleasant or unpleasant ... I intend to support the loyal men and women of our Army."
An Incidental Witness. Meanwhile, McCarthy was in nearby Philadelphia to receive an award. He said, "I was too temperate" in his remarks to Zwicker. Michigan Republican Senator Charles Potter reached McCarthy by phone in Philadelphia, got him to call off another hearing of Zwicker, which was scheduled for the next day.
Bustling Roy Cohn, in McCarthy's absence, decided to keep the heat on the Army by bringing up the next day a subversion charge against an Army employee. Members of the committee, who had been letting McCarthy go it alone, showed up next morning. For two Democratic committee members, it was the first hearing since they bolted the committee last summer. The witness, a onetime FBI plant in the Communist Party, testified that a woman named Annie Lee Moss was a Communist in 1945.
Annie Lee Moss had been a Pentagon cafeteria custard cook; in 1950 she was promoted to communications clerk in the Pentagon. The Army's reply to McCarthy was that though she worked in the Teletype room, she handled no uncoded secret information. Nevertheless, she had passed a security check. Next day Mrs. Moss, bundled to the temples in a heavy overcoat, appeared and shuffled painfully to the witness chair. McCarthy decided she was too sick to testify, waved her away, saying: "The witness is of no importance."
What was chiefly of importance to McCarthy at that point was to keep up the pressure on the Secretary of the Army, a job that the case of Annie Moss helped to do. The main engagements in the McCarthy-Stevens struggle were fought in a series of ten meetings.
Meeting No. 1. To his Capitol hideaway. Vice President Nixon invited Senate Republican Leader William Knowland, Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen, Army Lawyer John G. Adams, Deputy Attorney General William P. I Rogers. Stevens and two White House: aides. This group (except for Stevens): believed that Stevens would get the worst of it if he had to face McCarthy in open hearing as scheduled. The Nixon meeting:
¶ Told Stevens frankly that the Army looked weak on the Peress case record, that McCarthy would surely shift the! issue from Zwicker back to Peress.
¶ Decided to ask McCarthy to reach an agreement in private and call off his public confrontation with Stevens. This assignment was handed to Dirksen.