Word: peress
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Dates: during 1954-1954
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While signs multiplied that the anti-Communist alliance was under heavy strain, the U.S. public was hardly aware of the danger. Thanks to Joe McCarthy, it was concentrating on the case of a New York dentist named Irving Peress. The Big Sag was caused in part by the Big Wind from Wisconsin...
...tape-recorded the conversations. Then he told his committee, according to Army officials, "The Army is holding Schine hostage to get me to lay off." Cohn had kept a careful eye open for Army cases. When his bellicose boss renewed his interest in the Army, Cohn handed him the Peress case (see box). McCarthy used it on a recent speaking tour, but it attracted little interest. Then it began to boil up. not because McCarthy discovered anything new. but because others made a series of mistakes...
...Fighting Bob." Army Secretary Stevens wrote McCarthy an appeasing letter which confessed the Army's bungling in the Peress case and pledged correction of the procedures which brought it about. Unappeased, McCarthy .called Brigadier (General Ralph Zwicker, commander of Camp Kilmer, N.J., where Peress had been stationed, to the stand. Zwicker, trying to protect his superiors, gave some answers that were less than candid. McCarthy, lashing out, made the outrageous suggestion that Zwicker, an officer with a line combat record, was "not fit to wear that uniform." Zwicker had been insulted, although not publicly pilloried; the hearing was closed...
...McCarthy. Also present: Dirksen, and later, Potter. Stevens started with a complaint about McCarthy's abuse of Zwicker. Retorted McCarthy: How could the Army explain the court-martialing of "a poor, brainwashed G.I."* in contrast to the honorable discharge it handed to a "Fifth Amendment Communist"−Peress...
Before Zwicker testified, Stevens had sent McCarthy a letter saying "We do not defend" the Army's performance in the Peress case, and promising there would be no more such cases. But the letter failed to convince Joe McCarthy that "disgraceful coddling of Communists" in the Army had ended. Said Joe: "I don't think Bob wrote that letter. He was either badly advised or someone wrote it for him-some hungover press-agent." Later Joe elaborated: He had meant "hangover pressagent from the last Administration." With that, the Senator entrained for Albany to keep another date...