(3 of 4)
Dirksen reached North Dakota's Milton Young at remote Devils Lake, N. Dak. through the county sheriff's office. Young set off in an Air Force jet tanker, but in mid-air got a radio message from Dirksen that his vote was not needed: the Democrats had agreed to pair him with Montana's Democrat Mike Mansfield.
Unproved Accusations. Meanwhile, the filibuster was turning into a rear-guard defense of Lewis Strauss. "He has amply demonstrated character, integrity, emotional stability, absence of conflict of interest, intellectual and moral competence, patriotism and experience," said New York's Kenneth Keating in a three-hour speech. "What more can we ask?" Keating's fellow New Yorker, Jacob Javits, took over, then Arizona's Barry Goldwater.
But it remained for a Democrat, Connecticut's Thomas J. Dodd, to make the debate's most ringing defense. "If I could briefly summarize all the charges made against Strauss," said Dodd, "I would divide them into three groups:
"Accusations that are grave but not proved."
"Accusations that are proved but not grave."
"Accusations that are both grave and proved but which, in my judgment, reflect credit and not discredit upon Admiral Strauss."
In the last category Dodd took up the accusation that Strauss had "persecuted" Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in the wrangle over Oppenheimer's security clearance in 1953-54. "Nine people judged the Oppenheimer case. Seven of them, including Strauss, ruled against Dr. Oppenheimer. I suppose I should not be too surprised or shocked, as I am, that . . . the leftwing extremists should attribute this decision to the sinister motives of one man, and that they should persevere in their attempts to destroy him. Strauss's conduct on the Oppenheimer matter was exemplary throughout."
If Strauss's public record had been "unobtrusive and unspectacular," said Dodd, he would have been "confirmed with ease and dispatch. It is, therefore, precisely because he has played a commanding role, an aggressive role, a decisive role in Government that his confirmation is in doubt . . . The record as a whole, in my judgment, reveals a man who has courage, competence, intellectual power, a sincere and deep patriotism, and an essential integrity."
Gasping Galleries. Near midnight, Barry Goldwater abruptly yielded the floor. Morton was in from Denver and Bennett from Salt Lake City. Besides North Dakota's Young, the only Senator absent was Arkansas Democrat William Fulbright. (Fulbright, who had supported Strauss on Dixon-Yates, yet did not want to be counted against his fellow Democrats, went home to avoid the vote, agonized through the night as he won the flabby distinction of being the only member of the Senate unrecorded.)
With the outcome in doubt, the vote at 12:35 a.m. was the most dramatic and suspenseful roll call on Capitol Hill since the Senate killed the Bricker Amendment by a single nay back in 1954. The galleries gasped when Maine's well-tailored, frosty-eyed Margaret Chase Smith, head downward, spoke her hush-voiced no. A murmur swept across the Senate floor. Barry Goldwater slapped his desk and let out an audible "goddam!"