Vicuña Coat Scandal
When Honor Still Meant Something
Sherman Adams may have been destined to serve in the White House, as he was a descendant of the second and sixth presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Born in Vermont, Adams lived most of his life in the Green Mountain State and neighboring New Hampshire. In the first forty years of his life, Adams was lumberman. He was very successful in the timber industry, until his co-workers encouraged him to run for political office.
Adams ran as a Republican and won a seat in the New Hampshire General Assembly in 1940. After he was reelected in 1942, Adams was elected Speaker of the House. Two years later, he won a seat in the US House of Representatives. Then in 1946, Adams challenged incumbent New Hampshire Governor Charles Dale and lost by a whisker in the Republican primary.
Two years later, Adams won the primary and general elections. He set the example as a loyal and dedicated public servant. He encouraged others to follow his lead. Adams received widespread praise when he took control of state spending and implemented an austerity program in the famously low-tax state. After having conquered New Hampshire state politics, Adams looked toward national politics.[i]
Americans were feeling fatigued after two decades of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents. The next president was likely to be a Republican. Adams was not a supporter of Republican Senator Robert Taft of Ohio who was considered an early front-runner for the 1952 nomination for President. Taft was in the isolationist wing of the Republican Party. Adams preferred a candidate who was more likely to engage in foreign affairs.
There was a small but growing movement of Republicans who were encouraging World War II hero General Dwight Eisenhower to run for president. At the time, Eisenhower was the Commander of Supreme Headquarters of Allied Forces in Europe. Adams organized a draft-Eisenhower movement for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Eisenhower scored an impressive victory in the March 1952 New Hampshire primary, which led to a winning general election campaign. After he was elected president, Eisenhower rewarded Adams by appointing him to a position referred to as “presidential assistant.” In its functioning, the assignment was modeled after a position prevalent throughout the military: chief of staff.
In his new role, Adams was the gatekeeper to the president. Some called him the “second most powerful figure in the executive branch.” He reviewed and filtered the minutiae that previous presidents faced. Adams set the agenda, approved presidential meeting requests, synthesized policy papers, and made administrative decisions on behalf of the president. Adams turned down so many requests to see Eisenhower he was dubbed the “Abominable No Man.”
Adams created the role of presidential chief of staff. He quickly developed a reputation as a straitlaced, no-nonsense, “frugal public servant, eating ham and cheese sandwiches at his desk, rather than accepting pricey meals.”
In early 1958, the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight was conducting hearings on the functioning of federal regulatory agencies. In the course of its investigation, the committee learned New England textile manufacturer Bernard Goldfine sent lavish gifts to several government officials in an attempt to gain assistance in battles he was having with a pair of regulatory agencies. The committee learned Adams was one of the recipients. Adams insisted he personally testify before the committee in order to clear his name.
In a June 17 appearance, Adams told the committee he accepted from Goldfine a vicuña coat and an Oriental rug, which he maintained was merely loaned for his Washington, DC, home. Adams also admitted Goldfine paid about $2,000 in hotel expenses, including a stay at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. In return, Adams called the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to inquire about the status of two different investigations involving Goldfine’s East Boston Company.
No evidence was uncovered of any wrongdoing by Adams. Still, the appearance of impropriety was devastating to Adams’s reputation. More significantly, the Republican Party saw the scandal as scuttling the party’s opportunity to retake control of Congress in the 1958 mid-term elections. Twelve of the fourteen Republicans running for reelection in the Senate demanded Adams’s resignation.[ii]
On September 22, 1958, Adams resigned from his White House role in the most public way possible. He did so in a live, eight-minute television appearance. In his national broadcast, Adams delivered fiery remarks in which he charged the Democratic Congress with engineering a smear campaign intended to damage Eisenhower.
“These efforts, it is now clear, have been intended to destroy me, and, in so doing, to embarrass the administration and the President of the United States,” he told a television audience. While his actions were clearly imprudent, Adams confessed, he insisted he did nothing wrong. “I had never influenced nor attempted to influence any agency, or any officer or employee of any agency in any case, decision or matter whatsoever,” he told viewers. Then he charged the committee with accepting “completely irresponsible testimony and, without conscience, gave ear to rumor, innuendo and even unsubstantiated gossip.”
Upon his resignation, Adams ended eighteen years of public service and began retirement. In what can be viewed as a metaphor, after he left the television studio at the conclusion of his resignation remarks, Adams climbed behind the wheel of his station wagon. In the back was a set of golf clubs.[iii]
[i] Birkner, Michael J., Sherman Llewelyn Adams, “American National Biography,” 1999.
[ii] Robert Healy, “Sherman Adams Out: Quits Under Fire, but Says: ‘I Have Done No Wrong,’” Daily Boston Globe, September 23, 1958.
[iii] Ibid.
Mark Hyman is a 35-year military veteran and an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
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