Office of the Historian

Hickerson–Murphy–Key files, lot 58 D 33, “Memoranda—Ambassador Lodge”

Memorandum by the Deputy United States Representative at the United Nations (Wadsworth) to the United States Representative at the United Nations (Lodge)

secret
New York, August 7, 1953.
  • Subject:
  • Proposal by Mr. Roy Cohn to Mr. Frank Begley re McCarthy Subcommittee Hearings Involving UN Personnel

Mr. Hammarskjold asked me to remain after I officially transmitted the text of the Armistice Agreement with annexes. He told me that Mr. Roy Cohn, of the McCarthy Subcommittee, had approached Frank Begley, who is head of the security force at the UN Secretariat, and proposed that the McCarthy Subcommittee would hold a series of hearings to which they would call various employees of the Secretariat. Mr. Begley indicated he would have to report this approach to Hammarskjold, which he did.

Mr. Hammarskjold left no doubt whatever in Begley’s mind that a short-cut approach from a Senatorial Committee to a Secretariat employee could not be tolerated. He instructed Begley to inform Cohn that the Secretary General could not under existing agreements deal with representatives of the U.S. Government otherwise than through the regular channels; namely, the United States Mission to the United Nations.

He wished us to know about this oblique approach in the event something might come up in the future.