Joseph McCarthy

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Joseph Raymond McCarthy
United States Senator, Wisconsin
In office January 3, 1947–May 2, 1957
Preceded by	Robert M. La Follette, Jr.
Succeeded by	William Proxmire
Born	November 14, 1908 Grand Chute, Wisconsin
Died	May 2, 1957 Bethesda, Maryland
Political party	Republican
Signature

Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period of extreme anti-communist suspicion inspired by the tensions of the Cold War. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government. Ultimately, his tactics led to his being discredited and censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist pursuits. Today the term is used more generally to describe demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.^[1]

Born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, McCarthy earned a law degree at Marquette University in 1935 and was elected as a circuit judge in 1939, the youngest in state history.^[2] At age 33, McCarthy volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and served during World War II. He successfully ran for the United States Senate in 1946, defeating Robert M. La Follette, Jr. After several largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department.^[3]

However, McCarthy was never able to substantiate his sensational claims. In succeeding years, McCarthy made charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department, the administration of President Truman, Voice of America, and a United States Army research laboratory. He also used charges of communism, communist sympathies, or disloyalty to attack a number of individuals outside of government. With the highly publicized Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade. Later in 1954, a special Senate committee was appointed to study and evaluate McCarthy's methods and actions. Following the recommendations of this committee, the full Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The cause of his death was variously reported as acute hepatitis and cirrhosis.

Contents 1 Early life and career 1.1 Military service 1.2 Senate campaign 2 United States Senate 2.1 Wheeling speech 2.2 Tydings Committee 2.3 Fame and notoriety 2.4 McCarthy and the Truman administration 2.5 Support from Catholics and Kennedy family 2.6 McCarthy and Eisenhower 2.7 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations 2.8 Investigating the army 2.9 The Army-McCarthy hearings 2.10 Edward Murrow, See It Now 2.11 Public opinion 2.12 Censure and the Watkins Committee 3 Final years 4 Ongoing debate 5 HUAC 6 McCarthy in popular culture 7 Notes 8 References and further reading 8.1 Secondary sources 8.2 Primary sources 9 External links

[edit] Early life and career

McCarthy was born in the township of Grand Chute, Wisconsin, on a farm near the town of Appleton.^[4] McCarthy's mother, Bridget Tierney, was from County Tipperary, Ireland. His father, Tim McCarthy, was American; the son of an Irish father and a German mother. McCarthy dropped out of junior high school at age 14 to help his parents manage their farm. He entered high school when he was twenty and graduated in one year. McCarthy worked his way through college, from 1930 to 1935, studying engineering and law, earning a law degree at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He was admitted to the bar in 1935. While working in a law firm in Shawano, Wisconsin, he launched an unsuccessful campaign to become District Attorney as a Democrat in 1936. However, in 1939, McCarthy's luck was better: he successfully vied for the elected post of the non-partisan 10th District circuit judge, making him the youngest to ever hold the post in Wisconsin.

[edit] Military service

In 1942, shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, McCarthy commissioned into the United States Marine Corps, despite the fact that his judicial office exempted him from compulsory service. His position as a judge qualified him for an automatic commission as an officer, and he entered basic training as a second lieutenant. He would leave the Marines with the rank of captain. He served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville. McCarthy reportedly chose the Marines with the hope that being a veteran of this branch of the military would serve him best in his future political career.^[5]

It is well documented that McCarthy exaggerated his war record. He claimed to have enlisted as a "buck private." He flew 12 combat missions as a gunner-observer, but later claimed 32 missions in order to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross, which he received in 1952. McCarthy publicized a letter of commendation signed by his commanding officer and countersigned by Admiral Chester Nimitz, but it was revealed that McCarthy had written this letter himself, in his capacity as intelligence officer. A "war wound" that McCarthy made the subject of varying stories involving airplane crashes or antiaircraft fire was in fact received aboard ship during an initiation ceremony for sailors who cross the equator for the first time.^[5][6]

McCarthy campaigned for the Republican Senate nomination in Wisconsin while still on active duty in 1944 but was defeated for the GOP nomination by Alexander Wiley, the incumbent. He resigned his commission in April 1945, five months before the end of the Pacific war in September 1945. He was then re-elected unopposed to his circuit court position, and began a much more systematic campaign for the 1946 Republican Senate primary nomination. In this race he was challenging four-term senator and United States Progressive Party icon, Robert M. La Follette, Jr.

[edit] Senate campaign

In his campaign, McCarthy attacked La Follette for not enlisting during the war, although La Follette had been 46 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. McCarthy also claimed La Follette had made huge profits from his investments while he, McCarthy, had been away fighting for his country. In fact, McCarthy had invested in the stock market himself during the war, netting a profit of $42,000 in 1943. La Follette's investments consisted of partial interest in a radio station, which earned him a profit of $47,000 over two years.^[7] The suggestion that La Follette had been guilty of war profiteering was deeply damaging, and McCarthy won the primary nomination 207,935 votes to 202,557. It was during this campaign that McCarthy started publicizing the nickname "Tailgunner Joe", using the slogan "Congress needs a tailgunner". Arnold Beichman later reported that McCarthy "was elected to his first term in the Senate with support from the Communist-controlled United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, CIO," which preferred McCarthy to the anti-communist Robert M. La Follette.^[8] In the general election against Democratic opponent Howard J. McMurray, McCarthy won by a 2 to 1 margin, and thus joined Senator Wiley (whom McCarthy had challenged two years earlier) in the Senate.

[edit] United States Senate

McCarthy's first three years in the Senate were unremarkable. McCarthy was a popular speaker, invited by many different organizations, covering a wide range of topics. His aides and many in the Washington social circle described him as charming and friendly, and he was a popular guest at cocktail parties. He was far less well-liked among fellow senators, however, who found him quick-tempered and prone to impatience and even rage. Outside of a small circle of colleagues, he was soon an isolated figure in the Senate.^[9]

He was active in labor-management issues, with a reputation as a moderate Republican. He fought against continuation of wartime price controls, especially on sugar: his advocacy in this area, a "solidly Republican issue" of decreasing government regulation of business, was associated by critics with a $20,000 personal loan McCarthy received from a Pepsi bottling executive, earning the Senator the derisive nickname "The Pepsi Cola Kid."^[10] He supported the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman's veto, angering labor unions in Wisconsin but solidifying his business base.^[11]

In an incident for which he would be widely criticized, McCarthy lobbied for the commutation of death sentences given to a group of Waffen-SS soldiers convicted of war crimes for carrying out the 1944 Malmedy massacre of American prisoners of war. McCarthy was critical of the convictions because of allegations of torture during the interrogations that led to the German soldiers' confessions. He charged that the U.S. Army was engaged in a coverup of judicial misconduct, but never presented any evidence to support the accusation.^[12] Shortly after this a poll of the Senate press corps voted McCarthy "the worst U.S. senator" currently in office.^[13]

[edit] Wheeling speech

McCarthy experienced a meteoric rise in national profile after he gave the Lincoln Day speech on February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. His words in the speech are a matter of some dispute, as they were not reliably recorded at the time. It is generally agreed, however, that he produced a piece of paper which he claimed contained a list of known Communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is usually quoted to have said: "I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."^[14]

There is a great deal of dispute about whether or not McCarthy actually gave the number of people on the list as being "205", "57", or gave any number at all. In a later telegram to President Truman, and when entering the speech into the Congressional Record, he used the number 57.^[15] The origin of the number 205 can be traced: In later debates on the Senate floor, McCarthy referred to a 1946 letter that then-Secretary of State James Byrnes sent to Congressman Adolph J. Sabath. In that letter, Byrnes said State Department security investigators had resulted in "recommendation against permanent employment" for 284 persons, and that only 79 of these had been removed from their jobs; this left 205 still on the State Department's payroll. On the Senate floor, McCarthy said that while he did not have the names of the 205 mentioned in the Byrnes letter, he did have the names of 57 who were either members of or loyal to the Communist Party. McCarthy stated he referred to 57 "known Communists"; the number 205 was referring to the number of people employed by the State Department who, for various reasons, had been recommended for removal by the State Department's security investigators.^[15] Since the Byrnes letter was four years old, McCarthy's numbers were equally out of date.^[16] The exact number stated by McCarthy would later become a matter of some importance when the matter was brought before the Tydings Committee.

At the time of McCarthy's speech, Communism was a growing concern in the United States. This concern was worsened by the actions of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the fall of China to the Maoists, the Soviets' development of the atomic bomb the year before and by the recent conviction of Alger Hiss and the confession of Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs. With this background and due to the sensational nature of McCarthy's charge against the State Department, the Wheeling speech attracted a flood of press interest in McCarthy.

[edit] Tydings Committee

The Tydings Committee was a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was set up in February 1950 to conduct "a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State." The chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Millard Tydings, a Democrat, told McCarthy at the opening of the hearings: "You are in the position of being the man who occasioned this hearing, and so far as I am concerned in this committee you are going to get one of the most complete investigations ever given in the history of this Republic, so far as my abilities will permit."

McCarthy himself was taken aback by the massive media response to the Wheeling speech, and he was accused of continually revising both his charges and his figures. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a few days later, he cited a figure of 57, and in the Senate on February 20, he claimed 81. During a marathon 6-hour speech, McCarthy fought Democratic attempts to disclose the actual names of these people. Four times during McCarthy's February 20 speech, Democratic Senator Scott W. Lucas demanded McCarthy make the 81 names public, but McCarthy refused to do so, saying: "If I were to give all the names involved, it might leave a wrong impression. If we should label one man a Communist when he is not a Communist, I think it would be too bad." In fact, McCarthy had no actual names; his evidence for this particular list came from summaries of State Department loyalty review files, from which the names had been removed.^[17] Eventually McCarthy moved on from his original list of unnamed individuals and used the hearings to make charges against ten others for whom he had names: Dorothy Kenyon, Esther and Stephen Brunauer, Haldore Hanson, Gustavo Duran, Owen Lattimore, Harlow Shapley, Frederick Schuman, John S. Service and Philip Jessup. Some of them no longer, or never had, even worked for the State Department, and all had previously been the subject of various charges of varying worth and validity. Owen Lattimore became a particular focus of McCarthy's, who at one point described him as a "top Russian spy." Throughout the hearings, McCarthy employed colorful rhetoric, but produced no substantial evidence, to support his accusations.

From its beginning, the Tydings Committee was marked by partisan infighting. Its final report, written by the Democratic majority, concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program. Tydings labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax," and said that the result of McCarthy's actions was to "confuse and divide the American people[...] to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves." Republicans responded in kind, with William E. Jenner stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history." The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.^[18]

[edit] Fame and notoriety

From 1950 onward, McCarthy continued to press his accusations that the government was failing to deal with Communism within its ranks. These accusations received wide publicity, increased his approval rating and gained him a powerful national following.

McCarthy's methods also brought on the disapproval and opposition of many. Barely a month after McCarthy's Wheeling speech, the term "McCarthyism" was coined by Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block. Block and others used the word as a synonym for demagoguery, baseless defamation and mudslinging. Later, it would be embraced by McCarthy and some of his supporters. "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled," McCarthy said in a 1952 speech, and later that year he published a book entitled McCarthyism: The Fight for America.

McCarthy has been accused of attempting to discredit his critics and political opponents by accusing them of being Communists or communist sympathizers. In the 1950 Maryland Senate election, McCarthy campaigned for John M. Butler in his race against four-term incumbent Millard Tydings, with whom McCarthy had been in conflict during the Tydings Committee hearings. In speeches supporting Butler, McCarthy accused Tydings of "protecting Communists" and "shielding traitors." McCarthy's staff was heavily involved in the campaign, and collaborated in the production of a campaign tabloid that contained a composite photograph doctored to make it appear that Tydings was in intimate conversation with Communist leader Earl Browder. A Senate subcommittee later investigated this election and referred to it as "a despicable, back-street type of campaign," as well as recommending that the use of defamatory literature in a campaign be made grounds for expulsion from the Senate.^[19][20]

In addition to the Tydings-Butler race, McCarthy campaigned for several other Republicans in the 1950 elections, including that of Everett Dirksen against Democratic incumbent and Senate Majority Leader Scott W. Lucas. Dirksen, and indeed all the candidates McCarthy supported won their elections, and those he opposed lost. The elections, including many that McCarthy wasn't involved in, were an overall Republican sweep, but still McCarthy was credited as a key Republican campaigner. He was now regarded as one of the most powerful men in the Senate and was treated with new-found deference by his colleagues.^[21]

McCarthy was physically violent toward his critics on at least one occasion. In 1950 he assaulted journalist Drew Pearson in the cloakroom of a Washington club, reportedly kneeing him in the groin. McCarthy, who admitted the assault, claimed he merely "slapped" Pearson.^[22]

In 1952, using rumors collected by Pearson, Nevada publisher Hank Greenspun wrote that McCarthy was a homosexual. The major media refused to print the story and no notable McCarthy biographer has accepted the rumor as probable.^[23] In 1953 McCarthy married Jean Kerr, a researcher in his office. He and his wife adopted a baby girl in January 1957.

[edit] McCarthy and the Truman administration

There was considerable enmity between McCarthy and President Truman while they were both in office. McCarthy characterized Truman and the Democratic party as soft on or even in league with Communists, referring to "twenty years of treason" on the part of the Democrats. Truman, in turn, once referred to McCarthy as "the best asset the Kremlin has," calling McCarthy's actions an attempt to "sabotage the foreign policy of the United States" in a cold war and comparing it to shooting American soldiers in the back in a hot war.^[24] It was the Truman administration's State Department that McCarthy accused of harboring 205 (or 57 or 81) "known Communists."

George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff during World War II and Truman's Secretary of State (1947–49), was Truman's Secretary of Defense (1950–51) during the early years of the Korean War and was the target of some of McCarthy's most direct attacks. In late 1945 Truman sent Marshall to China amid the Chinese Civil War to broker a coalition government between the Communists under Mao Zedong and America's allies, the ruling Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. Marshall's mission failed; the civil war was won by the Communists, who took control of mainland China, forcing the Nationalists to the island of Taiwan.^[25] As American forces appeared poised for victory in Korea in late 1950, large Communist Chinese armies suddenly entered Korea and rolled back the Allies, forcing a stalemate by Spring 1951. In this context, on June 14, 1951, McCarthy charged that Marshall, then the Secretary of Defense, was directly responsible for the "loss of China."^[26] McCarthy charged that Marshall was sent to China with "secret State Department orders" to embargo "all arms and ammunition to our allies in China," and that this turned the Communists' losing position into victory.^[27] McCarthy concluded that the Communist takeover of China could be explained only by "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man." McCarthy declared General Albert Coady Wedemeyer's plan to support America's Chinese allies had been sabotaged: "only in treason can we find why evil genius thwarted and frustrated it."^[28]

Later in the Korean War, when President Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur, McCarthy charged that Truman and his advisors must have planned the dismissal during late-night sessions when "they've had time to get the President cheerful" on Bourbon and Benedictine. McCarthy declared, "The son of a bitch should be impeached."^[29]

[edit] Support from Catholics and Kennedy family

One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment was the Catholic community, which composed over 20% of the national vote. The great majority of Catholics were Democrats, so to reach this base McCarthy sought alliances with anti-Communist Catholic Democrats. McCarthy became enormously popular in Catholic communities across the country, with strong support from many priests, bishops, and diocesan newspapers.^[30] He established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, which had presidential ambitions and high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. He was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice,^[31] and was godfather to Robert F. Kennedy's first child, Kathleen Kennedy. Joseph Kennedy had a national network of contacts and became a vocal supporter, building McCarthy's popularity among Catholics.^[32] Kennedy contributed generously to McCarthy's campaign fund^[33] and encouraged his friends to do the same.

In the 1952 U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, pitting Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge against Congressman John F. Kennedy, "the last thing [Joseph Kennedy] wanted was for the popular Irish Catholic McCarthy to campaign against his son in a state with an Irish Catholic constituency estimated to number three-quarters of a million people."^[34] There were suggestions that Joseph Kennedy and McCarthy struck a deal that McCarthy would not campaign for Lodge; these were later denied by John Kennedy.^[35] McCarthy supporter William F. Buckley, Jr. was present when McCarthy received a phone call from the Lodge campaign asking McCarthy to make an appearance for Lodge. McCarthy said that as a Republican he had an obligation to do so, but suggested to Buckley that his preference was for Kennedy. McCarthy told the campaign he would have to be publicly asked by the senator, which was impractical as it would hurt Lodge among liberals.^[36] While McCarthy campaigned across the nation for other Republicans, he never did help out Lodge in Massachusetts. Lodge lost the race, even as Republican presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower took the state by a wide margin. Newly elected Senator John Kennedy remained friendly with McCarthy; unlike many Democrats, he never attacked his fellow senator. Asked why he avoided criticism of McCarthy, Kennedy said, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero."^[37]

[edit] McCarthy and Eisenhower

During the 1952 Presidential election, the Eisenhower campaign toured Wisconsin with McCarthy. In a speech delivered in Green Bay, Eisenhower declared that while he agreed with McCarthy's goals, he disagreed with his methods. In draft versions of his speech, Eisenhower had also included a strong defense of his mentor George Marshall, a direct rebuke of McCarthy's frequent attacks. However, under the advice of conservative colleagues who were fearful that Eisenhower could lose Wisconsin if he alienated McCarthy supporters, he cut these parts from later versions of his speech.^[38][39] The deletion was discovered by a reporter for the New York Times and featured on their front page the next day. Eisenhower was widely criticized for giving up his personal convictions, and the incident became the low point of his campaign.^[40]

With his victory in the 1952 presidential race, Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican president in 20 years. The Republican party also held a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. After being elected president, Eisenhower made it clear to those close to him that he did not approve of McCarthy and he worked actively to squelch his power and influence. But he never directly confronted McCarthy or criticized him by name in any speech, thus perhaps prolonging McCarthy's power by showing that even the President was afraid to criticize him directly.

Those who expected that party loyalty would cause McCarthy to tone down his accusations of Communists being harbored within the government were soon disappointed. Eisenhower had never been an admirer of McCarthy, and their relationship became more hostile once Eisenhower was in office. In a November 1953 speech that was carried on national television, McCarthy began by praising the Eisenhower Administration for removing "1,456 Truman holdovers who were [...] gotten rid of because of Communist connections and activities or perversion." He then went on to complain that John P. Davies was still "on the payroll after eleven months of the Eisenhower Administration," (Davies had been fired three weeks earlier) and repeated an unsubstantiated accusation that Davies had tried to "put Communists and espionage agents in key spots in the Central Intelligence Agency." In the same speech he criticized Eisenhower for not doing enough to secure the release of missing American pilots shot down over China during the Korean War.^[41]

By the end of 1953, McCarthy had altered the "twenty years of treason" catch-phrase he had coined for the preceding Democratic administrations and began referring to "twenty one years of treason." to include Eisenhower's first year in office.^[42]

As McCarthy became increasingly combative towards the Eisenhower Administration, Eisenhower faced repeated calls that he confront McCarthy directly. Eisenhower refused, saying privately "nothing would please him [McCarthy] more than to get the publicity that would be generated by a public repudiation by the President."^[43] On several occasions Eisenhower is reported to have said of McCarthy that he didn't want to "get down in the gutter with that guy."^[44]

[edit] Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

With the beginning of his second term as Senator in 1953, McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. According to some reports, Republican leaders were growing wary of McCarthy's methods and gave him this relatively mundane panel rather than the Internal Security Subcommittee--the committee normally involved with investigating Communists--thus putting McCarthy "where he can't do any harm," in the words of Senate Majority Leader Robert Taft.^[45] However, the Committee on Government Operations included the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the mandate of this subcommittee was sufficiently flexible to allow McCarthy to use it for his own investigations of Communists in the government. McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as chief counsel and 27-year-old Robert Kennedy as an assistant counsel to the subcommittee.

This subcommittee would be the scene of some of McCarthy's most publicized exploits. When the records of the closed executive sessions of the subcommittee under McCarthy's chairmanship were made public in 2003-2004,^[46] Senators Susan Collins and Carl Levin wrote the following in their preface to the documents:

“

Senator McCarthy’s zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of our government. His freewheeling style caused both the Senate and the Subcommittee to revise the rules governing future investigations, and prompted the courts to act to protect the Constitutional rights of witnesses at Congressional hearings... These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur.[47]

”

The subcommittee first investigated allegations of Communist influence in the Voice of America (VOA), at that time administered by the State Department's United States Information Agency. Many VOA personnel were questioned in front of television cameras and a packed press gallery, with McCarthy lacing his questions with hostile innuendo and false accusations.^[48] A few VOA employees alleged Communist influence on the content of broadcasts, but none of the charges were substantiated. Morale at VOA was badly damaged, with one of its engineers even committing suicide. Ed Kretzman, a policy advisor for the service, would later comment that it was VOA's "darkest hour when Senator McCarthy and his chief hatchet man, Roy Cohn, almost succeeded in muffling it."^[49]

The subcommittee then turned to the overseas library program of the International Information Agency. Cohn toured Europe examining the card catalogs of the State Department libraries looking for works by authors he deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and the press. The State Department bowed to McCarthy and ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers, etc." Some libraries actually burned the newly-forbidden books.^[50] Shortly after this, in one of his carefully oblique public criticisms of McCarthy, President Eisenhower urged Americans: "Don't join the book burners. […] Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book."^[51]

Soon after receiving the chair to the Subcommittee on Investigations, McCarthy appointed Joseph Brown Matthews (generally known as J. B. Matthews) as staff director of the subcommittee. One of the nation's foremost anti-communists, Matthews had formerly been staff director for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The appointment became controversial when it was learned that Matthews had recently written an article titled "Reds and Our Churches"^[52] which opened with the sentence "The largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States is composed of Protestant Clergymen." A group of Senators denounced this "shocking and unwarranted attack against the American clergy" and demanded of McCarthy that he fire Matthews. McCarthy at first refused, but as the controversy mounted and the majority of his own subcommittee joined the call for Matthew's ouster, McCarthy finally yielded and accepted Matthew's resignation. For some McCarthy opponents, this was a signal defeat of the Senator, showing he was less invincible than he formerly seemed.^[53]

[edit] Investigating the army

In the fall of 1953, McCarthy's committee began its ill-fated inquiry into the United States Army. This began with McCarthy opening an investigation into the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth. McCarthy garnered some headlines with stories of a dangerous spy ring among the army researchers, but after weeks of hearings, nothing came of his investigations.^[54]

Unable to expose any signs of subversion, McCarthy focused instead on the case of Irving Peress, a New York dentist who had been drafted into the army in 1952 and promoted to major in November of 1953. Shortly thereafter it came to the attention of the military bureaucracy that Peress, who was a member of the left-wing American Labor Party, had declined to answer questions about his political affiliations on a loyalty-review form. Peress' superiors were therefore ordered to discharge him from the army within ninety days. McCarthy subpoenaed Peress to appear before his subcommittee on January 30, 1954. Peress refused to answer McCarthy's questions, citing his rights under the Fifth Amendment. McCarthy responded by sending a message to Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens demanding that Peress be court-martialed. On that same day, Peress asked for his pending discharge to be effected immediately, and the next day Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, his commanding officer at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, gave him an honorable separation from the army. At McCarthy's encouragement, "Who promoted Peress?" became a rallying cry among many anti-communists and McCarthy supporters. In fact, and as McCarthy knew, Perress had been promoted automatically through the provisions of the Doctor Draft Law, which McCarthy had voted for.^[55]

McCarthy summoned General Zwicker to his subcommittee on February 18. Zwicker, on advice from army counsel, refused to answer some of McCarthy's questions and reportedly changed his story three times when asked if he had known at the time he signed the discharge that Peress had refused to answer questions before the McCarthy subcommittee. McCarthy compared Zwicker's intelligence to that of a "five-year-old child," and said he was "not fit to wear that uniform."^[56]

This abuse of Zwicker, a battlefield hero of World War II, caused considerable outrage among the military, newspapers, civilian veterans, Senators of both parties and, probably most dangerously for McCarthy, President Eisenhower himself.^[57] Army Secretary Stevens ordered Zwicker not to return to McCarthy's hearing for further questioning. Hoping to mend the increasingly hostile relations between McCarthy and the army, a group of Republicans met with Secretary Stevens and convinced him to sign a "memorandum of understanding" in which he capitulated to most of McCarthy's demands. McCarthy later told a reporter that Stevens "could not have given in more abjectly if he had got down on his knees."^[58] Reaction to this agreement was widely negative. Secretary Stevens was ridiculed by Pentagon officers,^[59] and The Times of London wrote: "Senator McCarthy achieved today what General Burgoyne and General Cornwallis never achieved--the surrender of the American Army."^[60]

A few months later, the army, with advice and support from the Eisenhower Administration, would launch a counterattack against McCarthy. It would do this not by directly challenging and criticizing McCarthy's behavior toward army personnel, but by bringing charges against him on an unrelated issue.

[edit] The Army-McCarthy hearings

Main article: Army-McCarthy hearings

Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of pressuring the army to give favorable treatment to G. David Schine, a former aide to McCarthy and a friend of Cohn's. McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his questioning of Zwicker the previous year. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, usually chaired by McCarthy himself, was given the task of adjudicating these conflicting charges. Republican Senator Karl Mundt was appointed to chair the committee, and the Army-McCarthy hearings convened on April 22, 1954.

The hearings lasted for 36 days and were broadcast on live television, with an estimated 20 million viewers. After hearing 32 witnesses and two million words of testimony, the committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on behalf of David Schine, but that Roy Cohn had engaged in "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts." The committee also concluded that Army Secretary Robert Stevens and Army Counsel John Adams "made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth," and that Adams "made vigorous and diligent efforts" to block subpoenas for members of the Army Loyalty and Screening Board "by means of personal appeal to certain members of the [McCarthy] committee."

Far more important to McCarthy than the committee's inconclusive final report was the effect the extensive exposure had on his popularity. Many in the audience saw him as bullying, reckless and dishonest, and the daily newspaper summaries of the hearings were also frequently unfavorable to McCarthy.^[61][62] Late in the hearings, Senator Stuart Symington made an angry but prophetic remark to McCarthy: "The American people have had a look at you for six weeks," he said. "You are not fooling anyone."^[63] In Gallup polls of January 1954, 50% of those polled had a positive opinion of McCarthy. In June, that number had fallen to 34%. In the same polls, those with a negative opinion of McCarthy increased from 29% to 45%.^[64] An increasing number of Republicans and conservatives were coming to see McCarthy as a liability to the party and to anti-communism. Congressman George H. Bender noted "There is a growing impatience with the Republican Party. McCarthyism has become a synonym for witch-hunting, star chamber methods and the denial of...civil liberties." Frederick Woltman, a reporter with a long-standing reputation as a staunch anti-communist, wrote a five-part series of articles criticizing McCarthy in the New York World-Telegram. He stated that McCarthy "has become a major liability to the cause of anti-communism," and accused him of "wild twisting of facts and near facts [that] repels authorities in the field."^[65]

The most famous incident in the hearings was an exchange between McCarthy and the army's chief legal representative, Joseph Welch. On June 9, the 30th day of the hearings, Welch challenged Roy Cohn to provide U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. with McCarthy's list of 130 Communists or subversives in defense plants "before the sun goes down." McCarthy stepped in and said that if Welch was so concerned about persons aiding the Communist Party, he should check on a man in his Boston law office named Fred Fisher, who had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, which Attorney General Brownell had called "the legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party." In an impassioned defense of Fisher that some have suggested he had prepared in advance,^[66] Welch responded, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness[...]" When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch interrupted him: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" He then left the room to loud applause from the spectators, and a recess was called.

[edit] Edward Murrow, See It Now

One of the most prominent attacks on McCarthy's methods was an episode of the TV documentary series See It Now, hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast on March 9, 1954.

The episode consisted largely of clips of McCarthy speaking. In these clips, McCarthy accuses the Democratic party of "twenty years of treason," makes several misstatements, including describing the American Civil Liberties Union as being listed by the Attorney General as a Communist front organization, and berates and harangues various witnesses, including General Zwicker.

In his conclusion, Murrow said of McCarthy:

“

His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.[67]

”

The Murrow report, together with the televised army-McCarthy hearings of the same year, were the major causes of a nationwide popular opinion backlash against McCarthy, in part because for the first time his statements were being publicly challenged by noteworthy figures. To counter the negative publicity, McCarthy appeared on See It Now on April 6, 1954, and made a number of charges against the popular Murrow. This response did not go over well with viewers, and the result was a further decline in his popularity. President Eisenhower, now free of McCarthy's political intimidation, referred to "McCarthywasm" in conversation with a reporter.

[edit] Public opinion

McCarthy's Support in Gallup Polls^[68]

Date	Favorable	No Opinion	Unfavorable	Net Favorable
1951 August	15	63	22	−7
1953 April	19	59	22	−3
1953 June	35	35	30	+5
1953 August	34	24	42	−8
1954 January	50	21	29	+21
1954 March	46	18	36	+10
1954 April	38	16	46	−8
1954 May	35	16	49	−14
1954 June	34	21	45	−11
1954 August	36	13	51	−15
1954 November	35	19	46	−11

[edit] Censure and the Watkins Committee

Several members of the U.S. Senate opposed McCarthy well before 1953. Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, delivered her "Declaration of Conscience" on June 1, 1950, calling for an end to the use of smear tactics without mentioning McCarthy or anyone else by name. Six other Republican Senators, Wayne Morse, Irving M. Ives, Charles W. Tobey, Edward John Thye, George Aiken and Robert C. Hendrickson joined her in condemning McCarthy's tactics. McCarthy referred to Smith and her fellow Senators as "Snow White and the six dwarfs."^[69]

Vermont Republican Senator Ralph E. Flanders had also condemned McCarthy on the floor of the Senate, comparing McCarthy to Hitler, accusing him of spreading "division and confusion" and saying, "Were the Junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them."^[70] In June 1954, Flanders introduced a resolution to have McCarthy removed as chair of his committees. Although there were many in the Senate who believed that some sort of disciplinary action against McCarthy was warranted, there was no clear majority supporting this resolution. Some of the resistance was due to concern about usurping the Senate's rules regarding committee chairs and seniority. Flanders next introduced a resolution to censure McCarthy. The resolution was initially written without any reference to particular actions or misdeeds on McCarthy's part. As Flanders put it, "It was not his breaches of etiquette, or of rules or sometimes even of laws which is so disturbing," but rather his overall pattern of behavior. Ultimately a "bill of particulars" listing 46 charges was added to the censure resolution. A special committee, chaired by Senator Arthur V. Watkins, was appointed to study and evaluate the resolution. This committee opened hearings on August 31, 1954.^[71]

After two months of hearings and deliberations, the Watkins Committee recommended that McCarthy be censured on two of the 46 counts: his contempt of the Subcommittee on Rules and Administration, which had called him to testify in 1951 and 1952, and his abuse of General Zwicker in 1954. The Zwicker count was dropped by the full Senate on the grounds that McCarthy's conduct was arguably "induced" by Zwicker's own behavior. In place of this count, a new one was drafted regarding McCarthy's statements about the Watkins Committee itself.^[72]

The two counts on which the Senate ultimately voted were:

• That McCarthy had "failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Rules and Administration," and "repeatedly abused the members who were trying to carry out assigned duties..."
• That McCarthy had charged "three members of the [Watkins] Select Committee with 'deliberate deception' and 'fraud'. . . that the special Senate session... was a 'lynch party'," and had characterized the committee "as the 'unwitting handmaiden,' 'involuntary agent' and 'attorneys in fact' of the Communist Party," and had "acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity."^[73]

On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to "condemn" Senator Joseph McCarthy on both counts by a vote of 67 to 22. Those Democrats present unanimously favored condemnation and the Republicans were split evenly. The only senator not on record was John F. Kennedy, who was hospitalized for back surgery; Kennedy never indicated how he would have voted.^[74] Immediately after the vote, Senator H. Styles Bridges, a McCarthy supporter, argued that the resolution was "not a censure resolution" because the word "condemn" rather than "censure" was used in the final draft. The word "censure" was then removed from the title of the resolution, though it is generally regarded and referred to as a censure of McCarthy, both by historians^[75] and in Senate documents.^[76] The Senate had invoked censure against one of its members only three times before in the nation's history.

[edit] Final years

After his censure, McCarthy continued in his senatorial duties for another two and a half years, but his career as a major public figure was unmistakably over. His colleagues in the Senate avoided him; his speeches on the Senate floor were delivered to a near-empty chamber or were received with conspicuous displays of inattention.^[77] The press that had once recorded his every public statement now ignored him, and outside speaking engagements dwindled almost to nothing. Still, McCarthy continued to rail against Communism. He warned against attendance at summit conferences with "the Reds", saying that "you cannot offer friendship to tyrants and murderers. . . without advancing the cause of tyranny and murder." He declared that "coexistence with Communists is neither possible nor honorable nor desirable. Our long-term objective must be the eradication of Communism from the face of the earth."

McCarthy's biographers are agreed that he was a changed man after the censure; declining both physically and emotionally, he became a "pale ghost of his former self" in the words of Fred J. Cook.^[78] It was reported that McCarthy suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and was frequently hospitalized for alcoholism. Numerous eyewitnesses, including Senate aide George Reedy and journalist Tom Wicker, have reported finding him alarmingly drunk in the Senate. Journalist Richard Rovere (1959) wrote:

“

He had always been a heavy drinker, and there were times in those seasons of discontent when he drank more than ever. But he was not always drunk. He went on the wagon (for him this meant beer instead of whiskey) for days and weeks at a time. The difficulty toward the end was that he couldn't hold the stuff. He went to pieces on his second or third drink. And he did not snap back quickly.

”

He died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The cause of his death was variously reported as acute hepatitis and cirrhosis. He was given a state funeral attended by 70 Senators, and St. Matthew's Cathedral performed a Solemn Pontifical Requiem before over a hundred priests and 2,000 others. Thousands of people viewed the body in Washington. He was buried in St. Mary's Parish Cemetery, Appleton, Wisconsin, where more than 30,000 filed through St. Mary's Church to pay their last respects. Three senators—George Malone, William E. Jenner, and Herman Welker—had flown from Washington to Appleton on the plane carrying McCarthy's casket. He was survived by his wife Jean, and their adopted daughter, Tierney.

[edit] Ongoing debate

In the view of some modern conservative authors, McCarthy's place in history should be re-evaluated. Ann Coulter's book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism is the best known example of this. Coulter devotes a chapter to her defense of McCarthy, and much of the book to a defense of McCarthyism. She states, for example, "Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis."^[79] Other authors who have voiced similar opinions include William Norman Grigg of the John Birch Society,^[80] and M. Stanton Evans.^[81] Another recent defense of McCarthy is William F. Buckley, Jr.'s sympathetic fictionalized biography, The Redhunter: a Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy.^[82]

These authors frequently cite new evidence, in the form of Venona decrypted Soviet messages, Soviet espionage data now opened to the West, and newly released transcripts of closed hearings before McCarthy's subcommittee, asserting that these have vindicated McCarthy, showing that many of his identifications of Communists were correct. It has also been said that Venona and the Soviet archives have revealed that the scale of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s was larger than many scholars suspected,^[83][84] and that this too stands as a vindication of McCarthy. These attempts to "rehabilitate" McCarthy have not received much attention from scholars, though there have been some responses from such authors as Kevin Drum^[85] and Johann Hari.^[86]

Of the many individuals that figured in McCarthy's investigations or speeches, most were already suspected of being Communists or at least of having leftist politics. There are several cases where Venona or other recent data has confirmed or increased the weight of evidence that a person named by McCarthy was a Soviet agent. However, there are few, if any, cases where McCarthy was responsible for identifying a person, or removing a person from a sensitive government position, where later evidence has increased the likelihood that that person was a Communist or a Soviet agent.^[87]

Below are listed the names that various authors have alleged were "correctly identified by McCarthy." As the footnotes show, in almost all cases this assessment is questionable or demonstrably incorrect.

Solomon Adler[88] Cedric Belfrage[89] T.A. Bisson[90] Lauchlin Currie[91] Gustavo Duran[92]

Theodore Geiger[93] Haldore Hanson[94] Mary Jane Keeney[95] Owen Lattimore[96] Leonard Mins[97]

Annie Lee Moss[98] Franz Leopold Neumann[99] Edward Posniak[100] William Remington[101] John Carter Vincent[102]

[edit] HUAC

McCarthy is often incorrectly described as part of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (technically, HCUA, but generally known as HUAC). HUAC is best known for the investigation of Alger Hiss, and for its investigation of the Hollywood film industry, which led to the blacklisting of hundreds of actors, writers and directors. HUAC was established in May 1938 as the "Dies Committee" before McCarthy was elected to the Federal office, and, being a House committee, had no connection with McCarthy, who served in the Senate.

[edit] McCarthy in popular culture

• In 1953, the popular comic strip Pogo introduced Simple J. Malarkey, a pugnacious and conniving wildcat with an unmistakable physical resemblance to McCarthy.

• The radio comedy team Bob and Ray parodied McCarthy in 1954 with the character Commissioner Carstairs in their soap opera spoof "Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife."

• The Investigator (1954), a satirical radio play first broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, associates the title character, who clearly represents McCarthy, with several historical "witch hunters."

• In Allen Drury's 1959 novel Advise and Consent, later adapted into a film of the same name, the character of Fred Van Ackerman is a sort of "reverse McCarthy." Like McCarthy a junior senator, in this case from Wyoming, Van Ackerman is a leftist demagogue who uses unscrupulous tactics, including blackmail, in his attempts to confirm a nominee for Secretary of State with alleged Communist ties.

• In the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate, the character of Senator John Iselin, a demagogic anti-communist, is closely modeled on McCarthy, even to the varying numbers of Communists employed by the federal government of whom he purports to have evidence—the number of subversives Iselin ultimately cites, 57, is inspired by a Heinz ketchup bottle.

• The Emmy-winning television movie Tail Gunner Joe (1977) is a dramatization of McCarthy's life.

• Rock band R.E.M.'s album Document (1987) includes a song called "Exhuming McCarthy."

• In Wu Ming's novel 54 (2003), Cary Grant and David Niven mock McCarthy's sloppy manner of dress. At the end of the novel, the apparition of Frances Farmer appears to Grant and expresses relief at McCarthy's demise.

• Archival footage of McCarthy is used in the 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow and the See It Now episode that challenged McCarthy. The film stars David Strathairn as Murrow and costars George Clooney.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References and further reading

[edit] External links

• Tanenhaus, Sam. Un-American Activities. New York Review of Books. A lengthy review of Arthur Herman's Joseph McCarthy
• BBC coverage
• Spartacus Biography
• The History Net page on McCarthy
• The McCarthy-Welch exchange
• Joseph McCarthy Papers, Marquette University Library
• Joseph McCarthy: Address To The Chicago Irish Fellowship Club (listen online)
• FBI Memo Referencing 206 Communists in Government
• Infoage Information on McCarthy's investigations of the Signal Corps, including transcripts of the hearings and more recent interviews.
• Transcript: "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy" - Edward R. Murrow, See It Now, CBS Television, March 9, 1954 via UC Berkeley library
• Transcript: "Joseph R. McCarthy: Rebuttal to Edward R. Murrow", See It Now, CBS Television, April 6, 1954 via UC Berkeley library

Defense of McCarthy:

• By Human Events Online, a conservative weekly:
  • Editor Taints Recently Published Hearings: How Senate Historian Botched Data on McCarthy
  • Levin and Collins Trigger Disinformation: Senate Historian Clams Up When Queried On McCarthy
• By The New American, John Birch Society:
  • McCarthy's "Witches'
  • The Real McCarthy Record
• By Opinion Editorials, a conservative website:
  • The 1950's Reign Of Terror Was AGAINST McCarthy - Not By Him!

Criticism of McCarthy:

• Excerpt from Richard Rovere's book Senator Joe McCarthy
• Essay on McCarthyism and modern threats to liberty
• Critical reviews of Ann Coulter's defense of McCarthy, Treason:
  • A Conspiracy So Vast by Dorothy Rabinowitz
  • Has she no shame? by Joe Conason
  • The Trouble with “Treason” by David Horowitz

McCarthy's Early Years

• Morgan, Ted (2003). Judge Joe: How the youngest judge in Wisconsin's history became the country's most notorious senator. Legal Affairs Magazine.

Preceded by Robert M. La Follette, Jr.

United States Senator (Class 1) from Wisconsin 1947–1957 Served alongside: Alexander Wiley

Succeeded by William Proxmire

Persondata
NAME	McCarthy, Joseph Raymond
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Wisconsin politician
DATE OF BIRTH	November 14, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH	Grand Chute, Wisconsin, United States
DATE OF DEATH	May 2, 1957
PLACE OF DEATH	Bethesda, Maryland, United States