SPECIAL COUNSEL

This book is the story of my seventeen months as a special counsel to the Internal Security Sub-committee of the United States Senate in the years 1956-1957"" reads the first sentence of the Foreword. The author wrote it up because some young people could not remember those degraded days of televised cross-examinations by Congressmen and Senators of glib confessed ex-Communists and uncooperative suspected Communists. It's the sort of book that will elicit savage comments from knee-jerk Liberals and Klaxon exclamations of delight from the up-tight Right. Mr. Rusher left his post to become publisher of the National Review, so there's your audience. He says he liked Senator Joe McCarthy and McCarthy's post-censure days and ways are observed with sympathy. He also hashes over the unmemorable cases he worked on. None of them came to anything but they serve to reveal the author's past and present state of mind--he doesn't care for the First Amendment and scorns the Fifth, etc. One whole chapter is devoted to the recollection of the Subcommittee's attempts to incriminate Republican Senator Jacob Javits. It's ludicrous or persuasive, according to how you split you ticket. But if you just read a great deal without a political blood pressure, it's just ineffably dull.