How was the “public interest or the safety of the Nation” to be jeopardized by Army Counsel John Adams’ telling of a meeting on strategy to curb Senator McCarthy’s investigations?
If this Eisenhower letter was “to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power by any branch of Government,” then who was to stop the executive branch from such arbitrary silencing of witnesses?
Were the Army-McCarthy investigating committee and other committees of Congress to be barred from obtaining information on all “conversations or communications, or any documents or reproductions, concerning advice” within the executive branch?
These were the questions that immediately arose in the minds of Senator Jackson, Senator Symington, and Senator John L. McClellan, the Arkansas Democrat. Senator Everett Dirksen, the honey-voiced Illinois Republican, and Karl Mundt, the South Dakota Republican who was serving as chairman, also expressed some concern, although privately.
Stern-faced Senator McClellan was not awed by the popularity of President Eisenhower or by the fact that Senator McCarthy was a highly unpopular figure at that point. He declared that if the barrier to any testimony on the January 21 meeting prevailed, then it would be impossible to establish whether John Adams, Army Secretary Stevens, or some higher officials were responsible for directing actions complained of by Senator McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Private Schine.
“If the committee is going to be left in a dilemma of not knowing whether the Secretary [Stevens] is responsible for the action taken after that date [January 21], or whether the responsibility is at a higher level, then we will never be able to completely discharge our responsibility in this proceeding,” Senator McClellan said.
Senator Jackson expressed the view that the secrecy policy left the committee “in a dilemma of passing on testimony that is incomplete. I think ... that the Executive Branch is doing a great injustice to this committee and to all of the principals in this controversy by exercising the power which the President has, very late in the proceedings.”
There was no question that President Eisenhower’s letter had stalled the hearings at a crucial moment. If witnesses could not testify on an essential point, then there was little more that could be learned.
“I must admit that I am somewhat at a loss as to know what to do at the moment,” Senator McCarthy said. “One of the subjects of this inquiry is to find out who was responsible for succeeding in calling off the hearing of Communist infiltration in Government. That the hearing was called off, no one can question.”
McCarthy continued: “At this point, I find out there is no way of ever getting at the truth, because we do find that the charges were conceived, instigated, at a meeting [of January 21] which was testified to by Mr. Adams.