(5 of 9)
¶ Decided to work up a new set of rules for investigating committees to keep McCarthy's one-man show within bounds.
¶ Agreed to keep President Eisenhower; out of the fracas for the time being.
Meeting No. 2. From Nixon's hideaway, Dirksen strolled over to Mundt's office, where he found Joe McCarthy, Said Dirksen: "Joe, would you sit down and talk it over? There is nothing to lose." It took some persuading to break; down the obdurate McCarthy, but at; length he agreed. Mundt phoned Stevens, suggesting lunch the next day. Stevens assented−and he made the fantastic mistake of taking literally Mundt's request, not to tell "anyone" about the date.
Meeting No. 3. Next day, in Stevens' Pentagon office, Assistant Defense Secretaries Struve Hensel and Frederick Seaton were advising the Secretary how to handle McCarthy at the still-scheduled public hearing. Suddenly Stevens marched out without telling Hensel, Seaton or anyone else that he was going to a meeting with McCarthy and without taking an adviser with him. At this point, the press of the world had Stevens poised, in fighting pose, ready to take on the Wisconsin slugger.
Meeting No. 4. Bob Stevens, a man-of-good-will trained in a family textile business, walked with Karl Mundt into the Capitol's room P-54. Later, a Washington quipster observed that when Stevens entered the room, he was "like a goldfish in a tank of barracuda." Meeting No. 4 featured fried chicken, peas, french fries, head-of-lettuce salad and Joe McCarthy. Also present: Dirksen, and later, Potter. Stevens started with a complaint about McCarthy's abuse of Zwicker. Retorted McCarthy: How could the Army explain the court-martialing of "a poor, brainwashed G.I."* in contrast to the honorable discharge it handed to a "Fifth Amendment Communist"−Peress?
The words forecast the kind of slugging tactics that McCarthy might use on Stevens in an open hearing. Fighting Bob barked back: "I'm not going to have my officers browbeaten." McCarthy snapped back with another attack on Zwicker: "I'm not going to sit there and see a supercilious bastard sit there and smirk."
Conciliator Mundt broke in: "Joe, you're not dealing with Dean Acheson any longer. Let's look to the future." This remark was the turning point of Meeting No. 4; it led to Stevens' next big mistake. The discussion shifted to a friendly, businesslike tone, which lasted half an hour. The Senators appealed to Stevens to help preserve party solidarity by avoiding a televised clash with McCarthy which could only, they said, help the Democrats. Soothing words by a mellifluous Dirksen and smiles from McCarthy somehow convinced Bob Stevens that he had the committee's promise of better future treatment for Army officers. The change of tone became, in Stevens' mind, an important feature of the meeting. Unhappily, this was not recorded anywhere except in Stevens' mind.
Mundt sat down at a typewriter and pecked out a "Memorandum of Understanding." Its four points:
1) "Communists must be rooted out."
2) Stevens will order completion of the Army's investigation of the Peress case; make "everyone involved" available as witnesses before McCarthy's committee.