Storm over Birchers

California's mild, patient Senator Tom Kuchel was fed up. A moderate Republican from the state where Chief Justice Earl Warren was once a Republican Governor, Kuchel was tired of getting obviously organized demands for the impeachment of Warren on the ground that he gave "aid and comfort to the Communist conspiracy." By Kuchel's triangulation, the attacks were inspired by the name-calling, semisecret John Birch Society* (TIME. March 10). which has made Warren's impeachment its No. 1 goal.

On the Senate floor, Kuchel attacked the society by name, saving his hardest words for Founder and Leader Robert Welch, a retired candymaker and self-styled Americanist, who rates Harry Truman, John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower, among others, as Communist agents or dupes. "Good God," roared Kuchel while rushing to Ike's rescue, "should the American people and the American Government let that kind of spleen be poured upon one who has given his whole life to freedom?" Connecticut's burly Tom Dodd, a conservative Democrat and tough antiCommunist, joined in. Welch's judgments, said he, are "an affront to decency and intelligence.''

Surprisingly enough, not all Congressmen agreed. In Los Angeles, Arizona's Barry Goldwater said: "A lot of people in my home town have been attracted to the society, and I am impressed by the type of people in it. They are the kind we need in politics." Republican Congressman Edgar Hiestand of California called the attacks "a pro-Communist smear," proudly noted that both he and John Rousselot, another California Republican, are Birchers. Ohio Republican Gordon Scherer, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, said that although he was not a member, he "looked favorably on this organization."

Clearly, a lot more publicity was coming in the society's direction. Kuchel and Congressman Henry Reuss, Wisconsin Democrat, called for a congressional investigation of Welch and his society. A spokesman for Attorney General Robert Kennedy said that the society's activities were "a matter of concern to the Justice Department." Across the land, newspapers began to print articles inquiring into Birch Society techniques in their own home towns.

That much public protest was more than Founder Welch had bargained for. At week's end, he asked the Senate internal security subcommittee to investigate the society, piously promised that "none of our members will plead the Fifth Amendment." He also denied that he had ever called Ike a "card-carrying Communist" or believed him to be a Red agent. "I never had that opinion; I never thought it then with firmness enough to publish it or to say it in public, and I don't today." Of course, Robert Welch admitted, he had written a "private, confidential letter," i.e., his privately circulated book The Politician, "in which I stated some harsh personal opinions of our then President." That harsh personal opinion: "Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."

* Son of missionaries, John Morrison Birch was born in Landour, India, May 28, 1918. He was raised in Macon, Ga., graduated from Mercer University (where he belonged to a group that raised unproven heresy charges against some of the professors), became a fundamentalist Baptist missionary in China. During World War II he joined a U.S. Army intelligence unit in China, served with the rank of captain. Ten days after the Japanese surrender in 1945, he was killed by a band of Chinese Communist guerrillas. Birch Society members regard him as the first victim of the cold war. Birch's parents, who live in retirement in Georgia, are honorary life members of the society. Last week his mother said that they were "heartily in accord with the purpose and the procedure of the John Birch Society."

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