Six Crises (14 page)

And there were still others who were to mistrust me because of the Hiss case—without exactly knowing why. I remember one amusing incident demonstrating this attitude which occurred during the 1952 campaign. Bill Rogers, who was traveling on our campaign train at the time, used to make a practice of wandering among the audiences while I was speaking so that he could pick up reactions and pass them along to me. He heard one eminently respectable elderly lady say to another, “I like Eisenhower but I don't like Nixon.” When she was asked why, she replied: “Oh, he was mixed up with that awful Alger Hiss!”

In any event, one of the personal aftermaths of the Hiss case was that for the next twelve years of my public service in Washington, I was to be subjected to an utterly unprincipled and vicious smear campaign. Bigamy, forgery, drunkenness, insanity, thievery, anti-Semitism, perjury, the whole gamut of misconduct in public office, ranging from unethical to downright criminal activities—all these were among the charges that were hurled against me, some publicly and others through whispering campaigns which were even more difficult to counteract.

And so, in retrospect, I suppose there may be a grain of truth in both of the observations I quoted at the very beginning of this section: had it not been for the Hiss case, I might have been President of the United States. But equally: had it not been for the Hiss case, I might never have been Vice President of the United States and thus a candidate for President.

But whichever of these propositions is “truer”—and neither of them is subject to proof—of this much I am sure: I shall always be grateful that at a period in my life when I had the requisite energy and drive to cope with it, I had the opportunity to meet the challenge which that case presented. Because through that case, a guilty man was sent
to prison who otherwise would have remained free; a truthful man was vindicated who otherwise would have been condemned as a liar; and the nation acquired a better understanding, vital to its security, of the strategy and tactics of the Communist conspiracy at home and abroad.

Going through the necessary soul-searching of deciding whether to fight a battle, or to run away from it, is far more difficult than the battle itself.

“SENATOR, what is this ‘fund' we hear about? There is a rumor to the effect that you have a supplementary salary of $20,000 a year, contributed by a hundred California businessmen. What about it?”

When Peter Edson, a veteran Washington political columnist, asked me this question, I could not have been less concerned about his inquiry or more confident about what the future held for me. The day was Sunday, September 14, 1952. I was thirty-nine years old, the junior Senator from California, and the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States. I had just finished a half-hour appearance on the nationally televised program, “Meet the Press,” where I had been interviewed by Larry Spivak, Edson, and two other reporters. The program had gone well. Wires and phone calls congratulating me on my appearance had begun to arrive at the station even before the program ended. When we went off the air, I had stayed in the studio for a few minutes to express my appreciation to the technicians who had produced the show and to chat informally with the reporters who had questioned me.

When the other reporters drifted away, Edson took me aside and asked the question about the $20,000 “supplementary salary.” He said he had not asked the question on the air because he had not had an opportunity to check the facts.

Any rumor that I had an extra salary was completely false, I explained to him. I suggested that the stories might be referring to a political
fund which had been set up by my supporters in California. It was used to pay expenses for travel, printing and mailing of speeches, and extra clerical help—expenses which were strictly political in character and for which, therefore, I could not properly be reimbursed by the government. The fund had been set up after my election to the Senate in 1950. Dana Smith, my Finance Chairman in that campaign, handled the collections and disbursements as trustee. I described all this to Edson and gave him Smith's telephone number in Pasadena, California, so that he could call Smith directly if he wanted to get any further details. Edson thanked me and we left the television studio shortly afterwards. I did not give Edson's inquiry another thought. It never occurred to me that from such an innocent beginning would grow the most scarring personal crisis of my life.

The next morning Edson telephoned Dana Smith, who was the Southern California Chairman of Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon, told him of our conversation, and asked him for the details. Smith welcomed the opportunity to tell him more about an idea which he had originated. He had started the fund after the 1950 election so that I, as a newly-elected Senator from California, could continue my political activities on a year-round basis—instead of my being restricted to campaign periods, when funds would be available.

The idea, Smith told Edson, was substantially this: if Republican Party supporters contributed to the election of Senator Nixon, why wouldn't they want to contribute funds between elections which would allow him to travel back to California more often to see his constituents, keep in touch with party workers by regular mailings, and carry on other political activities? The fund had been carefully established, limiting contributions to individuals, not corporations, and to a maximum of $500, so that no one could be accused of trying to buy special favors. The money was solicited from regular party contributors and it was administered by Smith as trustee. The funds were kept in a Pasadena bank and subject to regular audits. It was to be used for transportation, mailing, and office expenses connected with political activity, as distinguished from official government business.

Later that day, by coincidence, three more reporters came to see Dana Smith in Pasadena. Explaining that they were doing background stories on my life, they brought up the same subject as Edson had. The reporters were Leo Katcher of the New York
Post,
Richard Donovan of
The Reporter
magazine, and Ernest Brashear of the Los Angeles
Daily News.
Smith, without hesitation, reviewed the fund's operation and purpose again, and these reporters left to prepare their news stories. Smith did not consider any of the inquiries of sufficient importance to contact me about them.

That same day, I flew to Denver to see General Eisenhower to discuss plans for the start of our campaign on Wednesday night.

As I thought of the campaign ahead, I could not have been more confident. All the public opinion polls and most of the expert political opinion predicted that Eisenhower would beat Adlai Stevenson decisively.

I thought that no one in the world could have been more fortunate than I. In July, when I went to Chicago for the Republican Convention, I knew that my name had been mentioned as one of a number of possible candidates for Vice President, but I did not think I had more than a remote chance to be nominated. I had not even bothered to pack a dark suit for the trip since I did not expect to have an opportunity to speak in Convention Hall.

Two days before Eisenhower's nomination, Jack Knight, publisher and editor of the Chicago
Daily News,
had carried a front-page column speculating that the ticket would be Eisenhower and Nixon. I sent a member of my staff down to the newsstand to buy a half-dozen copies because, as I told him, “That will probably be the last time we'll see that headline and I want to be able to show it to my grandchildren.”

July 11, 1952, was the most exciting day of my life. I received a telephone call from Herbert Brownell (who later became Attorney General) informing me that General Eisenhower had selected me as his running mate. Nothing before or since was to exceed the excitement and emotion Pat and I both felt as we stood with General and Mrs. Eisenhower before the wildly cheering Convention audience. This was true not only because it marked the culmination of what many observers described as a phenomenally fast rise to national prominence, but even more because the event was so unexpected.

After the Convention, Pat and I experienced for the first time the spotlight of intense coverage which is accorded national candidates. Reporters and photographers covered everything that we did and said. Writers for magazines and newspapers interviewed us and members of our families for special stories. I keynoted the Ohio State Convention, was the speaker at Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair,
and completed my “shakedown cruise” as a national candidate with four days of campaigning in Maine, which at that time still held its congressional and gubernatorial elections early. The mechanics and organization of my campaign staff had been worked out. In these early speeches, I had hammered hard at the three great issues of the '52 campaign—Corruption, Communism, and Korea. My speeches had been well received.

There had been a triumphal homecoming with a rally on the football field at Whittier, California, where I had attended college. I was able to point out in my remarks that one of the biggest thrills for me of being a candidate for Vice President was to return home and finally get a chance to stand in the middle of the field, after having warmed the bench for four years in college.

And now, as I went to see Eisenhower that September 15, the road ahead seemed full of promise and no pitfalls. No one should ever take anything for granted in a campaign, but this one seemed easy compared to the others I had been through. Historically, an election campaign is not too hard an assignment for the vice presidential candidate. The presidential candidate wins or loses the election. The number two man goes along for the ride, doing his best to stir up the party faithful but making no major pronouncements. The candidate for Vice President seldom, if ever, makes national news. In fact, a public opinion poll at about this time revealed that only 40 per cent of the voters could name the Republican nominee for Vice President. This might have dampened my high spirits except that the same poll disclosed that only 32 per cent could identify the Democratic nominee.

I saw General Eisenhower that evening in his headquarters at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. The place was swarming with aides, party workers, and visiting dignitaries. It had the aura of a command post. Eisenhower was not the ordinary run-of-the-mill candidate seeking friends and supporters. He had been Commander of all Allied troops in Europe during the Second World War; he was the General who won the war; and even as a candidate he was accorded the respect, honor, and awe that only a President usually receives. Despite his great capacity for friendliness, he also had a quality of reserve which, at least subconsciously, tended to make a visitor feel like a junior officer coming in to see the commanding General.

The first time I ever saw Eisenhower, he was in fact the victorious commanding General. It was shortly after V-E Day. I was thirty-two
years old and a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. After returning from service overseas in the South Pacific, I was assigned the task of negotiating settlements of terminated war contracts in the Bureau of Aeronautics Office at 50 Church Street, New York City. General Eisenhower, the returning hero, was riding through the streets of Manhattan in the greatest ticker-tape parade in the city's history. As I looked down from a twentieth floor window, I could see him standing in the back of his car with both arms raised high over his head. It was a gesture which was to become his political trademark in the years ahead.

I met him again five years later at the Bohemian Grove, near San Francisco, where we were both luncheon guests of former President Herbert Hoover. I had just won the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in California. We were introduced, but he met so many others during his stay there that I doubted then if he would remember me.

Less than a year later, in December of 1951, I met him again at the Headquarters of SHAPE in Paris, and this time we talked for almost forty-five minutes. He made a great impression on me with his grasp of international affairs. I came away from that meeting with my first personal understanding of the Eisenhower popularity: he had an incomparable ability to show a deep interest in a wide range of subjects, and he displayed as much interest when he listened as when he spoke. I recall that he was particularly interested in my role in the Hiss case. He had read accounts of it and pointed out that one of the reasons I had been successful where others in the Communist investigating field had failed was that I had insisted on scrupulously fair procedures in my handling of the case.

In Denver that Monday night we reviewed our campaign strategy. The plan was for General Eisenhower to stress the positive aspects of his “Crusade to Clean Up the Mess in Washington.” I was to hammer away at our opponents on the record of the Truman Administration, with particular emphasis on Communist subversion because of my work in the Hiss case.

I left Denver early the next morning ready for battle and confident of victory. I had scheduled my campaign kickoff rally for Wednesday night in Pomona, California, fifteen miles east of Los Angeles. Pomona was the city where I had launched my successful campaigns for the House and for the Senate. It had spelled “good luck” for us in those campaigns, and we thought that a kickoff there would bring us good luck in the biggest campaign of all.