Philip Potter and Joe McCarthy - A commie behind every door
From an article in the 16 December 2015 issue of the INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIGEST titled : Yes, the Press Might Do a Joe McCarthy on Trump; Just Not the Way You Think by Peter Lee
In 1946 I went home to cover the Red Beat and McCarthy, then Korea where I was shot. I asked McCarthy, and Schine why they didn’t go kill the Commies. Schine was evasive and I decided to probe his draft status.
William Manchester, a colleague on the Sun, in his book The Glory and the Dream, wrote of Schine’s induction that he heard that Roy had been busy running the sub-committee because “Joe was a lazy demagogue and “left the job to them.” They had felt, and seemed to be invulnerable. If nobody in the Capital dared strike back at them, who would? The answer was Schine’s Gloverville, N.Y. draft board. There was an irony here. The good citizens of Gloverville were too far from the power structure to know of Schine’s mighty friends. They were also safe from a political fix: the one thing Washington feared more that McCarthy was a Selective Service scandal.
That was beautifully put except for one thing. His Draft Board was not in Gloverville, as I found out after much investigation, it was out in Los Angeles. I had asked the two gum shoes why, in view of their anticommunist fervor, they hadn’t gone to Korea to fight them since they seemed of the right age. Roy said that he was in the National Guard and his unit had not been called up. Schine wanted to know if I was trying to crucify him. I smelled something funny, and with some help from Scoop Jackson and Bobby Kennedy, who had connections, I found out his draft board and at 1AM got hold of the retired Army man who ran it and found out that Schine was 4F. But as the exam had not been conducted in Los Angeles, he could be subjected to another.
It was some months later when I was in New York City covering a McCarthy hearing at the Federal Courthouse, there in connection with his probe of the Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey that Schine informed me that he had been inducted into the Army a day earlier. I wrote the following story that appeared on the inside page of the Sun:
Schine, Top Aide To McCarthy, Is Inducted By Army
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By a Sun Staff Correspondent
The 25 year old investigator, son of a wealthy hotel chain owner, said the Defense Department was allowing him time to “clean up” work for the committee, but that he hoped to begin his service soon.
Schine said that at the age of 18 he went into the Army Transport Service as a civilian with simulated Army rank of Lieutenant and performed “overseas duties.”
His Los Angeles Draft Board disclosed several months ago that he was then classified as 4F. When the classification was changed is not known. Previous page: Home
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