The Redhunter

by William F. Buckley Jr.

Genres: Biographical; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

From the celebrated conservative comes a rich and complex novel about one of the most conspicuous political figures in American history--Senator Joe McCarthy.

Release date: December 2, 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 440

Sample

I knew Senator McCarthy and, with my brother-in-law the late L. Brent Bozell, wrote a book about him (McCarthy and His Enemies) in 1953. This book is a novel, but most of the events here recorded are true to life.


The McCarthy library is scant, but one book is central. It was written by Thomas C. Reeves, professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Parkside, is titled The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, and was published in 1982 by Stein and Day. I am very grateful to Professor Reeves.


In chapter 7 I quote almost verbatim for several paragraphs a scene described by Nikolai Tolstoy in his book The Great Betrayal, 1944–47. It was published by Charles Scribner & Sons in 1977.


Christopher Weinkopf, formerly assistant editor at National Review, now at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles, did research for this book over two winters and made fine
suggestions. I am grateful for his work, as for his company. And grateful, too, to Julie Crane, for her useful last-minute
reading.


Frances Bronson of National Review superintended the editorial effort with customary intelligence and dispatch, and Tony Savage patiently produced all seven
drafts of this work, with punctilio and good humor.


I am grateful to several readers who were kind enough to read
drafts and make suggestions. My sister Priscilla Buckley, brother Reid Buckley, Professor Chester Wolford of Penn State, Professor
Thomas Wendel of San Jose State, Mr. Evan Galbraith of New York, Tracy Lee Simmons of National Review, my agent, Mrs. Lois Wallace, and my wife, Pat. Mr. William Phillips, my editor at Little, Brown, made valuable comments.
I owe special thanks to M. Stanton Evans, the author and journalist who is preparing his own book on Senator McCarthy and
is comprehensively informed on the issues of that period.


I come now, with some trepidation, to Samuel S. Vaughan. Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, spoke impatiently of a contributor who in his manuscript had written of an “indescribable” event. Ross pounded into the margin
of that essay, “Nothing is indescribable!—”a dictum that makes you feel good (“It can be done!”), but also a little scared (“But can I do it?”). Perhaps I can get by with saying that what Sam Vaughan did to encourage and refine this venture is unimaginable.
This novel is not, at 400 pages, slight; yet his notes and references and asides and quotations and emendations were more
extensive than my text. I wish this book were written about Mother Teresa, not Joe McCarthy, so that it might serve as a more
fitting conduit for Sam’s productive benignity. I leave it that the best that is here is his responsibility.


W. F. B.

Stamford, Connecticut

October 1, 1998



LONDON, JUNE 1991


Harry Bontecou was tired, but also relaxed. He sat in one of the pleasant, comfortably tatterdemalion clubs patronized by
English literati. He had been warned his host might be late for dinner so he had brought along the morning papers. The headline
in the Telegraph spoke of the rumored capture the day before of Pol Pot in the Cambodian forests. There were two accounts, one in a news article,
the second in the editorial section, telling the minihistory of Pol Pot, sometime plenipotentiary ruler of Cambodia.


They differed on the enumeration of Cambodians executed by Pol Pot during the years 1975 to 1979, when he ruled. The news
account spoke of “over a million executed,” the editorial of “two million.” Harry sipped his sherry. He paused then and reflected
on exactly what he was doing, reading about Pol Pot twenty-five years after the age of the killing fields, drinking sherry.


He supposed that there would not ensue, in the press accounts the next day, lively and informed discussions over which of
the two figures was more nearly correct—one million killed by the self-designated Marxist-Leninist, or two. The population
of Cambodia at the time of Pol Pot’s rule was five million, the Telegraph reminded its readers. So, Harry Bontecou closed his eyes and quickly calculated. The variable estimates meant 20 percent
of the population executed, or 40 percent of the population executed. The Telegraph’s account
told that Pol Pot’s genocide was the “gravest since those of the Second World War.” Harry reflected. The executions in Nazi
Germany might have reached 10 percent of the population; perhaps an equivalent percentage in the Soviet Union (twenty-five
million shot or starved between 1917 and the death of Stalin in 1953 was a figure frequently encountered). Harry remembered
his reaction on that winter day in 1946 when it became his job to expedite a genocidal operation. A mini genocidal operation.
Now he could read the papers and sip sherry and speak softly and securely in this well-protected shelter for British men of
letters. It was very different for him then, and very different those early years. Now he could focus on the statistics, on
the round figures. Now he was Harry Bontecou, Ph.D. History.


The Telegraph noted also the transatlantic debate over whether Marcus Wolf was entitled to a visa to visit the United States. Herr Wolf,
the paper reported, was indignant at having been held off. He had served as chief of intelligence for the Democratic Republic
of Germany, which no longer existed. But when it did, East Germany’s mission had been to do the will of Moscow. This included
guarding the impermeability of the Berlin Wall. That was a special responsibility of Marcus Wolf, Harry knew—he scanned the
story, would the reporter mention the wall? No. He went back to the paragraph reporting Wolf’s displeasure. Harry knew, as
did how many members of the Garrick Club?—70 percent? 10 percent?—that as Secret Police (Stasi) chief, Wolf had engaged in
the torture and killing of anyone who, between 1961 and 1989, when the wall came down, tried to escape from the Democratic
Republic of Germany to West Germany. Marcus Wolf had taken considerable precautions to discourage trespassers to freedom.
They included land mines and electrical fences and barbed wire and spotlights and machine guns and killer dogs. Now, in the
morning paper, Wolf was reported as saying he did not understand being persecuted for carrying out a routine professional assignment. “I didn’t kill anybody personally,” he told the reporter.


Neither did Hitler, Harry reflected.

He was jolted by the hortatory tone of voice from a figure standing by the bar, who now, drink in hand, approached him, an
elderly man stylishly dressed in dark gray. His abundant white hair framed an angular face with heavy tortoise-shell glasses
that magnified the
light blue eyes. Oh, my God, Harry Bontecou thought, Tracy. His freshman-year college roommate.


“Say.” The insistent tone was off register in the quiet of the Garrick Club. One had the impression the leather volumes winced
at Tracy’s voice. “Didn’t you used to be Harry Bontecou?”


Harry was irritated by the question. To begin with, the tired formulation, “Didn’t you used to be …” Harry remembered that
phrase used in the title of a book published in the 1960s, an autobiography of George Murphy. The author had been a genial
Hollywood song-and-dance entertainer in the memory of an entire generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was junior senator
from the state of California. Clever title—back then. In the 1960s; not funny in 1991. There was that, there was the imperious
tone of voice, and there were the—memories, many of them ugly, of the man who now addressed him. Harry remained in his chair
but extended his hand. “Hello, Tracy. How you doing?”


“I’m fine, old boy. And you? I’ll buy you a drink. What will you have?”

“Nothing, thanks. You living in England, Tracy?”

“Yes, old boy. But you—you still hunting political progressives for a living?”

Oh, please, Harry thought. Four decades had gone by. He would not take the bait. He had had more than enough, back then. Back
in the years of the Korean war, of the rise of Mao Tse-tung, of the Soviet explosion of an atom bomb, of the Berlin blockade,
the campaign of Henry Wallace for president. Above all … the years of Joe McCarthy. His mind turned determinedly to the likeliest
way of avoiding the old subject.


“Yes, indeed, Tracy,” he said submissively. And then quickly, “Trust everything is okay with you. Come to think of it, the
last time I got any word about you was from the Washington, D.C., police.”


“Oh?”

“Yes. After your surprise … visit to me … after they—escorted you home, they reported the next day that you were in law school
and evidently had excess energies to spare.” Harry did not tell him about the other call, from the security people. “—But
all goes well for you, I gather.”


“Well, I manage to make ends meet.” Tracy Allshott extended his
hand toward a waiter, who knew to bring him another drink. “You would discover this, dear Harry, if ever while in London—or,
for that matter, anywhere else in the world—you needed a lawyer, and someone was benevolent enough, notwithstanding your Redhunting
past, to give you the name of the … best in America—or in London—you would learn that I am indeed … paying my bills! Though
if you came to me as a client, perhaps I would give you a compassionate discount, as a member of the Columbia class of 1950.”


Talks rather more than he used to, Harry reflected. On the other hand, Allshott had clearly been drinking.

“That would be nice, Tracy.” He permitted his eyes to wander over to the entrance of the lounge. Tracy did not miss the meaning
intended.


“But you are waiting for somebody?”

To Harry’s dismay, Tracy reached over to an adjoining table, drew a chair alongside, and sat down. “Evidently your host has
not arrived yet. So I will take the opportunity. I am writing my memoirs, and I thought to try to dig up an address for you.
I want in my memoirs to talk about Senator McCarthy.”


“Which Senator McCarthy?” Harry asked, affecting innocence, though knowing it was fruitless. Clearly, with his background,
Tracy was not talking about the other McCarthy. Eugene McCarthy, sometime senator from Minnesota, had derailed President Johnson
in 1968 and soon after resigned political office to go back to his poetry. Harry might as well have asked, “Which Pope John
Paul?”


“Don’t waste my time, Harry. My assistant, after a few minutes in the library, confirms my impression: that after Presidents
Truman and Eisenhower, your Senator McCarthy was the dominant figure in the United States from 1950 to 1955.”


“I will not deny that.”

Allshott stared at his drink as though the salons of history were assembled there to hear his charge. His voice was oracular.
“Senator McCarthy was, by the consolidated holding of history, the most dangerous American of the half century, a savage,
unscrupulous, fascistic demagogue—”


“Tracy. Would you please go away?”

“You don’t want to talk about Joe McCarthy.” Allshott’s voice was
insistent, the words rapidly pronounced. Now he paused. “I don’t blame you.”


He rose from his chair. “We’ll leave it that there were those of us back in the fifties during the anti-Communist hysteria
who were far-sighted and courageous enough to resist McCarthy and McCarthyism.”


“Congratulations,” Harry said, lowering his eyes to the newspaper.

“All right. I’ll let you alone. But you’re going to have a place in my memoirs, Harry. Harry Bontecou, the young McCarthyite.
You’ve never written about those years. But I’m not surprised. What the hell would you say?”


Harry bit his lip. He said nothing, keeping his eyes on the paper. Tracy Allshott hesitated only a moment, and then turned
and walked back to the bar.


Harry’s eyes stayed on the newspaper, but they did not focus. It had been a long time since the subject of Joe McCarthy had
been raised. But the memories would never entirely dissipate. When McCarthy died, Pol Pot was a young Marxist student in Paris;
Khrushchev had succeeded Stalin as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the most exalted office in
the Soviet empire; Dwight David Eisenhower was one year into his second term as president. And Harry—


But again he was interrupted. This time by his host.

“We’ve never met.” Lord Herrendon extended his hand.




The letter from Lord Herrendon had reached Harry Bontecou at the University of Connecticut a day or two after Harry’s visit
with Ed Furniss, UConn’s provost. Furniss, age thirty-two, had snow white hair. When two years earlier the trustees nominated
him as provost, he found the color of his hair useful in suggesting a seniority he hadn’t biologically earned. It wasn’t easy
for a thirty-two-year-old to deal with scholars twenty, thirty, even forty years older. But Furniss had to do it, approving
this project, disapproving the other, allocating funds here at the expense of requests there.


Harry Bontecou, sixty-four, had been thirty years with the department of history, teaching the politics and diplomacy of the
nineteenth century. During his year in office Ed Furniss had never interfered with the history department, in which Bontecou
was senior professor.


The summons had social dress—an invitation to Furniss’s house for a drink before dinner. But it had, even so, an instrumental
feel. The subject Harry knew had to come up at some point might now be coming up: the matter of Harry’s retirement. The senior
Storrs community, when the subject of retirement came up (not infrequently), called their talisman the “Old Age Act.” It was
the law-regulation that made it unlawful for any institution that received federal funds to discriminate against an employee
on account of age. Professor Harry
Bontecou was mutely grateful for this protection, while aware that civilized behavior would require him, at some point, to
hang up his hat and make way for younger scholars. But then too, in recent weeks he had found himself restless.


It had been just two months—the day after Valentine’s Day. There had been no theater for a public dispute over whose fault
the accident was, no lawsuits, no arraignments. But for an oppressive week or two, one thousand faculty and ten thousand students
took it for granted that Professor Bontecou privately thought the responsibility for the accident lay with Mrs. Furniss—the
late Mrs. Furniss—and that Professor Furniss privately thought the responsibility for the accident lay with Mrs. Bontecou—the
late Mrs. Bontecou.


The official verdict: The accident was, in every respect, accidental. Approaching the bridge from the south, in a heavy snowstorm,
Mrs. Furniss had swerved left to avoid the fourteen-year-old boy crossing the bridge, walking from right to left (he testified
to seeing the oncoming car for only an instant). A police reconstruction had her slamming on her brakes, skidding diagonally
left into Mrs. Bontecou’s car, which had been approaching the bridge from the west road, going downhill. The impact edged
both the Ford station wagon driven by Mrs. Furniss and the Bontecous’ Volvo over the embankment, the two cars and their drivers
dropping twenty feet into the icy water. The boy’s telephone call from the half-hidden house on the point brought police and
ambulance in fifteen minutes. Both drivers were drowned.


They had agreed, in a crisp telephone call the next morning, not to attend each other’s funerals, and they both declined to
give interviews to the New London Press. A month later the university chaplain invited them to a small dinner party to which just the right other people—two close
friends of each of the widowers—had been invited. The dinner party worked. There had now been a meeting between the two widowers,
who had professional reasons to be in touch.


Ed Furniss was a natural diplomat. He had no problem using his house for official purposes. As a widower, he recognized that
he needed to give extraordinary attention to domestic arrangements. What on earth had his wife done, he made himself wonder
out loud, pencil and pad in hand, to make one guest professor comfortable? On that list today were fresh limes, essential
to a proper gin and tonic. That was the drink Harry Bontecou had requested at the chaplain’s dinner.



“You know, of course, about Campari?” Furniss’s voice sounded to Harry, seated in an armchair in the handsome book-lined living
room with ornithological prints nicely spaced along three walls, as if he were speaking from deep inside the refrigerator.


“What do you mean, Ed? Do I know that Campari exists? Or are you asking me for recondite knowledge about Campari? My field
is history.” He attempted to make his voice sound solemnly reproachful—better to break the ice that way than to answer routinely.


“Don’t slight Campari when you’re making a proper gin and tonic. I use one teaspoonful per jigger of gin. Since I will be
giving you two jiggers of gin, which I would not have been permitted to do by Edith—she insisted on three jiggers—I will be
giving you two teaspoonfuls of Campari.”


“That follows. How much tonic?”

“Ah. People are careless on the subject. The ratio must be exact. One and one-half ounces of tonic water for one ounce of
gin. Otherwise the tonic taste simply takes over. I don’t really like the taste of tonic, come to think of it.”


“You know what, Ed,” Harry moved into the orderly New England kitchen, where Furniss was mixing the drinks, “I don’t know
you very well, but I’d bet you have a cup there that holds five ounces, which is what the average cup holds. So to make it
sound highly calibrated, you come up with the one-point-five measures of tonic for one gin, but what it all boils down to
is a cup of tonic water and a regular two-jigger splash of gin.”


“Plus the Campari bit.”

“Plus the Campari bit.”

Ed Furniss laughed and, seated back in the living room, raised his glass and started talking about the upcoming baseball season.

Harry let him go on a bit. But after the refill was served he took his pen from his pocket and tinkled his glass, as though
summoning a dinner party to a toast. “Ed, you want to talk to me about when I plan to pull out of UConn?”


Furniss raised his own glass and sipped from it, a philosophical smile taking shape. “Well, yes.”

“The Old Age Act no longer shelters me, Ed?”

“Yes, it does. But—well, who knows the situation better than you do? There’s a lot of pressure, and not unreasonable pressure.
All
those young cubs gasping for the pure air of tenure. But,” he said with resignation, “we can’t move any without a corresponding
vacancy, not with Hartford’s budget, and that budget ain’t going anywhere.”


Harry had several years before resolved not to pay out his federal anchor line beyond the point he thought seemly. He had
no financial obligations he couldn’t handle. His third book, Victorian Disharmony, was on its way to the University of Chicago Press. He had fitfully planned to visit Europe (his wife hated to fly, so he
had been there only twice). But everything was now different, and he knew that he really yearned to be away. He’d make it
easy for Furniss.


“Tell you what, Ed. I’m not due for a sabbatical until 1992. Give it to me instead at the end of this semester. I’ll go off
for the summer and fall, come back after that and teach one more year, then quit. Okay?”


“Done,” said the provost.

Harry was oddly grateful for this nudge by Official Connecticut. Before he had finished his second drink, Harry was talking
to Ed about other matters, academic, national, collegiate, though never personal.


Lord Alex Herrendon was tall, spare, well-groomed, his abundant hair silver. A trace of a smile on his face. “I was told you
were waiting for me here,” he said. “I’m sorry if I kept you.”


Harry stood. Herrendon motioned Harry back down with the deferential touch of a hand on his shoulder. “Please sit.” He slid
his limber frame onto the chair Tracy Allshott had left behind. “And I will join you in a sherry. I gave the order to the
steward coming in. You selected the favorite of my father, I discovered.”


Lord Herrendon was animated on a subject he and Harry had resolved by correspondence to pursue.

Herrendon eyed Harry. “It is very important to me that you were so intimately involved with Operation Keelhaul.”

Harry Bontecou had served in the U.S. Army division that was involved in the repatriation of Russian refugees right after
the world war. Three million Russians, against their will, had been sent back to the Soviet Union.


Herrendon addressed Harry. “Which division were you with?”


“The 103rd,” Harry replied.


“Have you written on your experiences in 1946?”

“No,” Harry said. “I never have.”

Herrendon sipped his drink. For a few moments there was silence. Neither spoke. Then Herrendon said, “I had a jolly difficult
time finding out where in the University of Connecticut to find you. Department of history, yes. But I did not know to put
down ‘Storrs.’ ” He sipped and suddenly he smiled. “I should have asked Marcus Wolf to advise me. You noticed the story in
the newspapers? He is angry at having run into some bureaucratic difficulty in getting a visa to visit America—” Harry nodded.
Yes, he had seen the story.


Another pause. And then, “I know about your late wife. I am sorry. But it is always easier, wouldn’t you agree—”he looked
up—“not to get into personal matters?”


“Yes,” Harry said, with some emphasis.

“So let me quickly get to the matter I wrote to you about. My book. But now let me ease into the subject. Let me talk to you
first, oh—permit an eighty-six-year-old historian to digress a little—talk a little about my Operation Keelhaul research,
which will be a part of my bigger book. It will perhaps interest you to know that I received a call from the new Russian ambassador
in February, telling me I would be receiving an invitation to visit the archives housed, as it happens, in Tolstoy’s estate—Leo
Tolstoy’s estate—with permission to examine for my own purposes the archives the Soviet authorities wouldn’t let Nikolai Tolstoy,
when doing his book on the question twenty years ago, look at.”


Harry nodded but said nothing.

“The offer came too late for Nikolai’s book. But they will be important for my own.” Harry looked at the eighty-six-year-old
gentleman, admiring his confidence and apparent good health. “Which is … one reason I wrote to ask you to meet with me. A
book about the Communist scene in the West—after the war. So I wrote back cautiously on the Tolstoy business. I am certain
to want Russian cooperation on the book I am planning.”


“You took the trip to Saint Petersburg?”

“Yes. The man who dealt with me was a General Lasserov. A scholarly gentleman. We spent some time together, and we surveyed
the estate—it is twelve hundred acres. The dwelling places—the main
house and the farmers’ quarters—will sleep four hundred souls. Non-dead souls. Aleksandr Lasserov, I would learn after several
evenings together, was as a young man in Gulag for four years, sent there by Brezhnev, for what infraction I forget. He is
eager to sort out the history of Soviet suffering and to analyze compliant responsibility for it by the West.”


“He is talking mostly about Operation Keelhaul?”

“Yes. Though not exclusively. He cares about American foreign policy and its neglect of Soviet suffering in the years that
followed Keelhaul.”


“You told him about your prospective book?”

“Yes.” Herrendon took a worn leather packet from his jacket and—“Do you mind?—”lit a small cigar. He stretched out his legs.

“So what exactly is his interest in your project?”

“Lasserov is an ethicist. He wants to try to understand why presumably moral people simply stand by when huge crimes are not
merely committed but institutionalized.”


“He wants you to figure that out?”

Herrendon smiled. “You have the point exactly, yes, Professor Bontecou.”

“—Harry.” Odd, Harry thought, to be asking Herrendon to call him by his first name.

Herrendon nodded and went on. “There are not many senior officials alive who took part in the operations. But, at a junior
level, you of course did. Most important, for me, is what came later. The great, turbulent, postwar Communist/anti-Communist/Red
scare/McCarthy period. You were in it, deeply in it. And you are a trained historian. And I am here to ask you to spend time
with me—as much time as is required—to help me to understand, retrospectively.”


Harry drained his glass. His wife, Elena, had often teased him about his impetuosity, sometimes reproachfully. He recalled
her summons to spend more time deliberating commitments he often made offhandedly. Accordingly, with a nod to her memory, he touched his napkin to his lips and said
with mock deliberation, “Let me think about it.” He was not ready to call him Alex.


He would say yes. Tomorrow. Actually—he was busy assembling supporting arguments for his decision—actually, he had nothing

else to do. He had no plans on how to spend the sabbatical suddenly sprung on him. And just one hour ago, reading the news
of Pol Pot, the old questions had stirred: Why? How come? He turned to Herrendon.


“I know. You want me to talk about Senator McCarthy.”

Lord Herrendon took a puff on his cigar. “Yes.”

“You probably know that I have never written about Senator McCarthy. You probably do not know that I have never spoken about
him.”


“I did know that. One of your students was a colleague in Cambridge. Jim Presley. He said he once tried to interview you for
the college paper.”


Harry paused. He had made his resolution in 1957, more than thirty years ago, and hadn’t diverted from it. But he felt now
not merely the weakening of an old resolve but an utterly unanticipated anxiety to reverse himself. The historian who shelters
historical material profanes his calling—the point had been made to Harry before, both by fellow historians and by survivors
of the great McCarthy wars, 1950 to 1954.


He spoke finally. “I’d need a lot of stuff.”

“I’ll bring over everything you want.”

“Nobody can put his hands on everything I’d want. Though I know a bit about his boyhood, and the war years. I collected all
that, way back then.”


“From the widow?”

“Well, Jeanie McCarthy and I were close. But she died in 1979. I’m talking about way back. Let’s put it this way—you can count
on me to help.”


“Even to telling all … telling everything you know about Joe McCarthy?”

Harry closed his eyes. “Even to telling about Joe McCarthy.”

“That is what I hope you can tell me about. When is your next appointment?”

“What’s the date today?”

“June thirtieth.”

“Well, I should get back to Storrs in a year or so.”

“In that case, we’d better get started.”




Joe McCarthy left on the school bus on the opening day of classes. He didn’t respond to the talk of his schoolmates, which
surprised them: Joe was the very best fifteen-year-old to swap stories with, discuss the virtues and weaknesses of the faculty,
all six of them. “What’s the matter?” Billy asked him. “Just thinking,” Joe said. “Well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt that, you agree, Moe?” Joe ducked his head and shot his right elbow back as if preparing to deliver a blow. But he laughed, and
when he turned his head again to the bus window, his companions left him alone.


When he descended the bus, the decision was made. He thought to take Billy to one side—it was 8:20, and class didn’t begin
for ten minutes. Take him aside and tell him what Joe had decided. Joe would tell him he wasn’t learning a