The Conference

Senators' political radarscopes blipped wildly in the Army-McCarthy hearings last week when Army Counselor John Adams told of a meeting Jan. 21 with top Administration officials to discuss the Mc-Carthy-Cohn-Schine problem. Present at the conference, said Adams, were Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, U.N.

Ambassador (and sometimes Presidential Adviser) Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and White House Aide Gerald Morgan. Said the Army's John Adams: "At this meeting Governor Adams asked me if I had a written record of all the incidents with reference to Private Schine . . . and when I replied in the negative, he stated he thought I should prepare one." The names of Sherman Adams and Cabot Lodge sent the hearings careering off in new directions. One path led toward the President, the other toward Cabot Lodge, a favorite quarry for both Democrats and anti-Eisenhower Republicans, who still resent Lodge's management of Eisenhower's pre-convention campaign against Taft.

Hungry for more information, Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington started to ask John Adams about the specifics of the conference. But the Army's Lawyer Joseph Welch said: "This witness has been instructed not to testify as to the interchange of views on people at the high level at that meeting."

"To Save the People." Committee members protested. Joe Welch finally got the weekend to seek clarification of the order.

This week the answer came in the form of a letter from President Eisenhower to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson. Its net: John Adams was forbidden to testify about the top-level meeting.

Attached was a ten-page legal opinion from Attorney General Brownell, documenting the constitutional principle of the separation of powers--a principle which gives to the executive branch the right to conduct its own business in its own domain without Congress forever peeping over the transom.

Wrote Brownell: "One of the chief merits of the American system of written constitutional law is that all of the powers entrusted to the Government are divided into three great departments, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. It is essential to the successful working of this system that the persons entrusted with power in any one of these branches shall not be permitted to encroach upon the powers confided to the others . . . The doctrine of separation of power was adopted to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power and to save the people from autocracy."

A Familiar Issue. This principle has long been a highly practical limitation on the activities of congressional committees. Many Presidents, from Washington to Truman, have vigorously asserted it, and Eisenhower's Administration continues to maintain that the Congress has no right to read all executive-branch papers, or learn about all executive-branch conversations.

Despite the sweeping language in which the inviolability of executive-branch autonomy is sometimes stated, all Presidents have recognized that Congress does, under many circumstances, have the right to look into certain actions of the executive.

In many specific cases the line is hard to draw. For years McCarthy has lived with--and in opposition to--the rules protecting the independence of the executive. He knows, for instance, that he is allowed to see ordinary personnel files, but not loyalty files or FBI reports. He knows he cannot make a presidential adviser tell what he said to the President, or what one Cabinet officer said to another, or dozens of other matters.

When Brownell's memorandum was read, McCarthy knew that he had been blocked from what looked like a good opening into more diversionary headlines, Such as LODGE DENIES HE TOOK KREMLIN ORDERS. Despite his familiarity with the issue on which Brownell repeated the traditional stand of the executive, McCarthy professed the utmost bewilderment. He asked for a five-minute recess to consult with his aides about "this unbelievable situation."

"A Razor at the Throat." Returning, Joe said that "an Iron Curtain has been pulled down." He cried that "we can only hear evidence about the conference that is damaging to Mr. Cohn, Mr. Carr and myself. Suddenly, halfway through this, we are not going to get the complete story." The fact of the Administration conference, said McCarthy, cast new doubt on who was really behind the "issuance of the smear that has held my committee up for weeks and has allowed Communists to continue in defense plants, handling secret documents, with a razor at the throat of the American people." Because of the President's order, McCarthy added ominously, he had "no way of getting at the truth," and therefore it was "completely impossible" for him to question any more witnesses.

This was a rather reckless position for McCarthy to take in view of his previous stand against the whole truth in the matter of the bogus letter. He had simply refused to name the officer who illegally gave him the letter, or any other informer. And in this refusal McCarthy had not brought forward any time-honored constitutional argument such as that out lined in the Brownell letter.

Neither from McCarthy nor anyone else had come the slightest indication that by putting Sherman Adams, Lodge or even Eisenhower on the stand he could get any thing specific that would help his case. John Adams had already testified as to the result of the conference. How it reached that result would have little bearing on the case. What then was McCarthy after?

Like the infighter he is, he was trying to turn a setback into an advantage. What he wants is an end to the hearings, which have hurt painfully and are still hurting.

He could count on the resentment, shown by generations of Senators, against any invocation of the executive defense against congressional fishing expeditions. True to form, both Democratic and Republican Senators fell for Joe's line that the investigation would be crippled because of Eisenhower's instructions to Witness Adams. The committee decided to adjourn the hearings until next week. Meanwhile, Chairman Mundt was instructed to seek modification of the President's decision against testimony on the Adams-Adams-Lodge conference.

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