(See Cover)
For the twelfth day, Secretary of the Army Robert Ten Broeck Stevens sat, grey-faced, before the stare of the television cameras. Across a crouched pack of news photographers, he faced the glower of Senator Joe McCarthy. The Secretary's right eye blinked irregularly and his right cheek twitched as he tried to follow the curves and hooks in McCarthy's questions. Using all of his formidable tricks of crossexamination, the Senator was trying to confuse the Secretary into a key admission: he wanted Stevens to say that McCarthy & Co. had never "threatened" the Army in an effort to get special treatment for G. David Schine, the drafted McCarthy consultant.
Suddenly, from the center of the investigation committee's table, there came a voice that sounded somewhat like the tired moan of a laryngitic lion. Ray Jenkins, the committee's special counsel, abruptly interrupted the Senator from Wisconsin and took over the questioning. In the next ten minutes, while McCarthy squirmed, scribbled, glared and tried to interrupt, Jenkins led Stevens through a sharp series of questions and answers that brought the Army's case back into clear focus after days of obfuscation.
The Intertwined Pattern. Had not Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel, proclaimed a "declaration of war" against the Army? He had. Had not Cohn said the McCarthy committee "would investigate the Army from now on?" He had. Did Stevens regard that as a threat? He did.
Jenkins: Did you have in mind at that time that many different requests had been made of you by some members of the McCarthy investigating committee for preferences of Schine?
Stevens: I had it in mind.
Q: Including a direct request from the Senator for a commission for Schine?
A: Yes, sir ...
Q: I believe you . . . stated that in addition to ... 65 telephone calls there were 19 personal contacts by the McCarthy investigating committee with reference to Schine. Is that correct?
A: That is right . . .
Q: Then in the light of those personal contacts and those telephone calls, were those words uttered by ... Mr. Cohn, weighty words in your mind, and conveying a threat . . . against the Army . . .?
A: That's right.
As Jenkins led Stevens on through the heart of the Army case, McCarthy broke in ("Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman . . . Just a minute! Just a minute! Just a minute!"), frantically trying to shut off Stevens' testimony. Chairman Karl Mundt ruled that Jenkins' questions were proper. The big man from Tennessee went on.
Jenkins: I'll ask you whether or not in those telephone conversations there were discussions not only with reference to Schine but with reference to the McCarthy investigating committee's work at Fort Monmouth. Were those two subjects discussed in the same conversations?
Stevens: Yes, they were . . .
Q: So that the conversations with reference to the investigation of Monmouth and with reference to Schine were intertwined, so to speak, in one telephone conversation . . .?
A: Yes, sir ...
Q: Now, Mr. Secretary, is that why you say that you regard the whole thing, all of these contacts ... as constituting one pattern ... of unfair or unusual requests for preferences for Schine . . .?
A: That is correct.