INVESTIGATIONS: The Abuse That I Took

Faced with a Republican-backed move to bobtail the Army-McCarthy hearings, Committee Chairman Karl Mundt sighed over the prospect of continuing with "this miserable business." But Mundt reluctantly cast the deciding vote against the motion when Army Secretary Robert Stevens said curtailment would be unfair. The decision to go on with public hearings cleared the way for an important witness: Army Counselor John Adams, who had acted as the Army's liaison man with the McCarthy investigating subcommittee.

Adams' voice was low, often inaudible to committee members, but his words were precise and devastating in their detail as he told of repeated attempts by Joe McCarthy & Co. to get preferential Army treatment for Private G. David (Golden Boy) Schine.

The Ride. Last Dec. 17, for example, Adams had lunch in downtown Manhattan with McCarthy, Subcommittee Staff Director Frank Carr and Committee Counsel Roy Cohn, the most lordly 27-year-old since Alexander of Macedon. Adams suggested that they discuss the Schine matter.

Recalled Adams: "That started a chain of events, an experience similar to none which I have had in my life.

"Mr. Cohn became extremely agitated, became extremely abusive. He cursed me and then Senator McCarthy. The abuse went in waves. He would be very abusive, and then it would kind of abate and things would be friendly for a few moments. Everybody would eat a little more, and then it would start in again. It just kept on.

"I was trying to catch a 1:30 train, but Mr. Cohn was so violent by then that I felt I had better not do it and leave him that angry with me and that angry with Senator McCarthy because of a remark I had made. So I stayed and missed my 1:30 train. I thought surely I would be able to get out of there by 2:30 . . . I missed the 2:30 train also."

Trying desperately to catch a 3:30 train, Adams accepted a ride in Cohn's car. The surges of anger were still coming, said Adams, but were directed mostly at Senator McCarthy, who, two or three times during the ride, asked Adams to see about a New York assignment for Private Schine.

Unable to make a left turn at an intersection, Cohn kept on driving. Said Adams: "I. complained to Mr. Cohn. I said, 'You are just taking me away from the station,' and in a final fit of violence he stopped the car in the middle of four lanes of traffic and said, 'Get there however you can.' So I climbed out of the car in the middle of four lanes of traffic . . . ran across the street and jumped into a cab to try to make the 3:30 train." The committee room was breathless with suspense as Committee Counsel Ray Jenkins asked the inevitable question: Did Adams catch the 3:30 train? Replied John Adams: "The 3:30 train was ten minutes late, so I made it." Then he added: "Mr. Carr told me a few days later that he didn't think I should feel badly about the way I was put out of the car because he said I should have seen the way Senator McCarthy left the car a few blocks later"—in front of the Waldorf-Astoria.