After seven tranquil years with a prestigious Wall Street law firm, William A. Rusher joined the legal staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security. He thus exchanged the quiet life for “savage controversy, charge and countercharge, heated denials, shouting headlines, popping flashbulbs”—in short, the cacophony of abuse and malediction reserved for those assigned to investigate Communist skulduggery. He served for seventeen months, in 1956-57, and this is the time-segment he describes in Special Counsel—an important book as recent history, highly pertinent to the present, and fascinating reading.
As assistant to chief counsel Robert Morris, his role was secondary; but since they constituted the whole of the committee’s legal battery, he was completely on the inside. And luckily for the author and the book, those seventeen months compassed a lot of significant investigations and staff studies. From among them Mr. Rusher has selected seven for detailed narration, because of the light they throw on Communist methods and motives; but a few, plainly, made the Rusher hit-parade for 1956-57 also for their exceptional human drama. To all of them, he brings a lawyer’s competence in organizing evidence and a natural writer’s skill in depicting the people on both sides of the confrontations as well as the ambience of the period.
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