Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy
(Republican, Wisconsin), and his
chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to former
McCarthy aide and friend of Cohn's, G. David Schine. McCarthy claimed that the
accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his recent aggressive investigations of suspected Communists and security
risks in the Army. A special committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Karl Mundt,
was appointed to adjudicate these conflicting charges, and the hearings opened on April 22,
1954. The hearings were televised, and many believe that they contributed significantly to McCarthy's subsequent decline in
popularity.
A month before the hearings began, TIME featured a cover story March 22, 1954,
picturing Cohn and Schine and subtitled "The Army got its orders."[1] Ten years after the hearings, in 1964, the documentary film
Point of Order! was released, which consists of 93 minutes of footage
selected from the 187 hours of kinescope that covered the hearings.
Background
At the time, McCarthy was chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on
Investigations. McCarthy had been investigating the presence of Communist
Party members and sympathizers employed in the government or with government contractors. The dispute became public on
March 11, 1954, when the Army published a detailed account
protesting Cohn's interference in Private Schine's military career. McCarthy countered by claiming the Army was holding Schine
"hostage" to deter his committee from exposing Communists within the military ranks.
There was speculation that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship and that it played a part in Cohn's motivation to seek
preferential treatment for his former colleague. It has also been speculated that Cohn (whose homosexuality later became
well-known) may have had a one-sided infatuation with Schine, with some historians more recently concluding it was just a
friendship.[2][3][4] It is
also possible that Cohn acted simply because Schine asked him to make his tour of duty with the U.S. Army more comfortable;
Schine came from a wealthy family and was accustomed to a privileged lifestyle.
The inquiry and its conclusions
The Subcommittee on Investigations ordered the inquiry into the matter, which was broadcast live and on television. For the
duration of the proceedings, the chair was temporarily relinquished to Karl E. Mundt
(Republican, South Dakota). Acting as Special Counsel for the Army was Joseph Welch of the
Boston law firm of Hale &
Dorr (now called WilmerHale). This was the first nationally televised congressional inquiry, and was broadcast on the new
ABC and DuMont
networks. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated 80 million people saw at least part of the hearings.
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, McCarthy's chief counsel, had engaged in some "unduly
persistent or aggressive efforts" on behalf of Schine. The conclusion of the committee also reported questionable behavior on the
part of the Army: 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."
The famous exchange
In one famous interchange, McCarthy responded to aggressive questioning from the Army's attorney, Joseph Welch. On June 9, 1954, the 30th day
of the hearings, Welch challenged Roy Cohn to give the Attorney General McCarthy's list
of 130 communists or subversives in defense plants "before the sun goes down." McCarthy responded, sounding audibly intoxicated,
by saying 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 (NLG), a group which U.S.
Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. had called "the legal mouthpiece of
the Communist Party." At the time Brownell was seeking to designate the NLG as a Communist
front organization. This was a violation of a pre-hearing agreement not to raise the issue because the designation was
being litigated. Welch responded:
- "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness...."
When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch cut him short:
- "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?"
After the hearings
The Army-McCarthy hearings are widely considered to have been a key event in the fall of McCarthy from his position of power
in American politics and society. Many in the television audience saw him as bullying, reckless and dishonest, and the daily
newspaper summaries of the hearings were also frequently unfavorable to him.[5][6] Late in the hearings,
McCarthy, after refusing to sign a document that he claimed had false statements in it, rebuked Senator Stuart Symington by saying, "You're not fooling anyone. I'm sure of that." Symington fired back with an
angry but prophetic remark to McCarthy: "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks. You're not
fooling anyone, either."[7] 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%.[8] On December 2, 1954, the Senate
voted by a 2/3 margin to censure McCarthy. Though he was not expelled from his office, his role as major figure in national
politics was effectively ended.
Notes
- ^ TIME cover of March 22, 1954
- ^ Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and
Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage Books.
- ^ Wolfe, Tom (April 3, 1988). Dangerous Obsessions. The New York Times.
- ^ Baxter, Randolph (November 13, 2006). An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. glbtq, Inc.
- ^ Morgan, Ted (2004). Reds:
McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America. Random House, pg. 489. ISBN 0-8129-7302-X.
- ^ Streitmatter, Rodger (1998).
Mightier Than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History. Westview Press, pg. 167. ISBN
0-8133-3211-7.
- ^ Powers, Richard Gid (1998).
Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism. Yale University Press, pg. 271. ISBN
0-300-07470-0.
- ^ Fried, Richard M. (1990). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. Oxford University
Press, pg. 138. ISBN 0-19-504361-8.
References and further reading
- Adams, John G. (1983). Without Precedent: The Story of the Death of
McCarthyism. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 039330230X.
- Straight, Michael (1954/1979). Trial by Television and Other Encounters.
Devon Publishers. ISBN 0934160031.
See also
The Army-McCarthy hearings are the subject of the documentary film Point of Order!
External links
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