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Their trip was an outrageously brash performance, but it got results of a sort. In Frankfurt, Cohn charged that Theodore Kaghan, in the U.S. High Commissioner's Public Affairs Division, had "once signed a Communist Party petition." Kaghan jeered at Cohn & Schine as "junketeering gumshoes." Two weeks later, Kaghan was called home by the State Department and fired.
Back in Washington, Roy and Dave became inseparable; they plowed through the Voice of America investigation together, and Roy cheerfully shared credits with Dave. They would fly down to Washington from New York on Monday, take adjoining rooms at the Statler Hotel for the week, then fly back on Friday night for a weekend of nightclubbing. (Favorite haunt: the Stork Club's Cub Room.) At McCarthy's wedding last September, Cohn pushed Schine into a family wedding picture (much to Joe's annoyance). This idyllic state of gamboling was suddenly interrupted last summer by the harsh note of a bugle: Gerard David Schine was about to be drafted into the U.S. Army.
A Bad Light. What happened next has now largely been told in biting bureaucratese in the Army's report released last week (see box). Roy Cohn accepted Dave Schine's draft as a personal challenge. He enlisted McCarthy's aid in trying to get Schine a commission. When this failed, Roy personally extended the long arm of the U.S. Senate to protect Dave during his enlisted service.
For a time Roy succeeded remarkably well. Orders went out from the Secretary of the Army's office to the commanding general at Fort Dix that Private Dave Schine was to get night and weekend passes during his eight weeks of basic training. The word was passed down the line that Schine was a VIP, and every weekend a chauffeur-driven Cadillac would whisk him away from his comrades-in-arms (who get a weekend pass about four times in the eight weeks). Only once did Schine pull K.P. duty. One afternoon his squad leader hastily called a group of G.I.'s to clean stoves. After the detail was formed, the squad leader groaned: "Oh, my God! I've picked Schine! What in hell am I going to do?" Later he apologized: "Gee, the light was bad, Schine. I didn't know it was you."
Private Schine (who accepted the rough and the smooth with good grace) suddenly found his privileges curtailed. The Army report made it clear that whole brigades of high Army brass had wasted a disturbing amount of time over Schine. And it had even more interesting personal facets:
1) Joe McCarthy secretly disliked Schine because he was a publicity grabber;
2) McCarthy, when alone with Adams or Stevens, urged them to draft Schine and give him no special privilege at all;
3) McCarthy, in Roy Cohn's presence, or after a session with Cohn, sang an entirely different tune. The implication was embarrassingly clear that, if the Army report was accurate, Kingmaker Roy Cohn had arrived at a new dimension of influence.