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 unsubstantiated 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 charges. In succeeding years, McCarthy made accusations of
Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Truman,
Voice of America, and the United States
Army. He also used charges of communism, communist sympathies, or disloyalty to attack a number of politicians and other
individuals inside and outside of government. With the highly publicized Army-McCarthy
hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade. Later in 1954, the 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 official cause of death was acute
hepatitis; it is widely accepted that this was brought on by alcoholism.[4]
Early life and career
McCarthy was born in the township of Grand Chute, Wisconsin, on a farm near the town of Appleton.[5] 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 20 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 had better success: he successfully vied
for the elected post of the non-partisan 10th District circuit judge.
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.[6]
Joseph McCarthy in uniform
It is well documented that McCarthy exaggerated his war record. Despite his automatic commission, 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.[6][7]
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 three-term
senator and United States Progressive Party icon,
Robert M. La Follette, Jr.
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. He 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.[8] 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.[9] 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.
This cartoon depicts the end of the forty-year La Follette dynasty, as McCarthy beat three-term incumbent
Robert M. La Follette, Jr., in the 1946 Republican primary in Wisconsin. Drawn by Clifford K.
Berryman.
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.[10]
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 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."[11] He supported the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman's veto, angering labor unions in Wisconsin but solidifying his business
base.[12]
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.[13] Shortly after this, a poll of the Senate press corps voted McCarthy "the
worst U.S. senator" currently in office.[14]
Wheeling speech
McCarthy experienced a meteoric rise in national profile on February 9, 1950, when he gave a Lincoln Day speech to the Republican Women's Club of
Wheeling, West Virginia. His words in the speech are a matter of some debate, as
no audio recording was saved. However, it is generally agreed that he produced a piece of paper that 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."[15]
There is some 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 Truman, and when entering the speech into the Congressional Record, he used the number 57.[16] 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.[16] Since the Byrnes letter was four years old, McCarthy's numbers
were equally out of date.[17] 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.
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 six-hour speech, McCarthy fought Democratic attempts to disclose the actual names of these people. Four times during
McCarthy's February 20 speech, Majority Leader Scott W.
Lucas (D-IL) 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.[18] 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.[19]
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.[20][21]
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 was not 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.[22]
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.[23]
In 1952, using rumors collected by Pearson, Nevada publisher Hank Greenspun wrote that
McCarthy was a homosexual. The major journalistic media refused to print the story and no notable McCarthy biographer has
accepted the rumor as probable.[24] In 1953 McCarthy
married Jean Kerr, a researcher in his office. He and his wife adopted a baby girl in January 1957.
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.[25] It was the Truman Administration's State Department that McCarthy accused of
harboring 205 (or 57 or 81) "known Communists," and Truman's Secretary of
Defense George Marshall who was the target of some of McCarthy's most colorful
and memorable rhetoric. Marshall was also Truman's former Secretary of
State and had been Army Chief of Staff during World War
II. Marshall was a highly respected statesman and general, best remembered today as the architect of the Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction of Europe, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. McCarthy made a lengthy speech on Marshall, later published as a book
titled America's Retreat From Victory: The Story Of George Catlett Marshall (1951). Marshall had been involved in American
foreign policy with China, and McCarthy charged that Marshall was directly responsible for the "loss of China" to Communism. In
the speech McCarthy also implied that Marshall was guilty of treason;[26] declared that "if Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part
of his decisions would serve this country's interest";[26] and most famously, accused him of being part of "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so
black as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man."[26]
During 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."[27]
Support from Catholics and Kennedy family
One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States was the Catholic community, which composed over 20% of the national vote. Although the great majority of
Catholics were Democrats, as McCarthy's fame as a leading anti-Communist grew he became popular in Catholic communities across
the country, with strong support from many leading Catholics, diocesan newspapers and Catholic journals.[28] At the same time, some Catholics opposed McCarthy, notably the
anti-Communist author Father John Francis Cronin and the influential journal
Commonweal.[29]
McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, which had high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a
close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., himself a fervent anti-Communist, and was
a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. He dated two of
Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice,[30][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 and making sizable contributions to McCarthy's campaigns.[32]
Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy, who served in the Senate with McCarthy from
1953 until the latter's death in 1957, never attacked McCarthy. Asked once by Arthur
M. Schlesinger, Jr. why he avoided criticism of McCarthy, Kennedy said, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on
McCarthy as a hero."[33]
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 deleted this defense from later versions of his
speech.[34][35] 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.[36]
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 diminish 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.
McCarthy narrowly won reelection in 1952, defeating former Wisconsin State Attorney General Thomas E. Fairchild. 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.[37]
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.[38]
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."[39] 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."[40]
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.[41] 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 2003–4,[42] 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.[43] |
” |
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.[44] 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."[45]
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.[46] 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."[47]
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,"[48]
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 that McCarthy fire Matthews. McCarthy at first refused, but as the controversy mounted and the majority of his own
subcommittee joined the call for Matthews's ouster, McCarthy finally yielded and accepted his resignation. For some McCarthy
opponents, this was a signal defeat of the senator, showing he was not invincible as he had formerly seemed.[49]
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.[50]
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 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's superiors were therefore ordered to discharge him from the army within 90 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 from the army 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, for which McCarthy had voted.[51]
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."[52]
This abuse of Zwicker,
