American Experience (1988–…): Season 32, Episode 3 - McCarthy - full transcript

♪♪

♪♪

Everywhere you turned...

In the evening and morning
newspapers, on television news,

on radio news...

Joe McCarthy was the
main story of the day.

Joe McCarthy was one figure

who came along
and turned anti-communism

into something bigger
and more dangerous

than anyone else ever imagined.

He was the demagogue
of American anti-communism.



He wasn't the inventor of it.

One communist on the faculty

of one university is
one communist too many.

McCarthy is a person who,

for what he thought were
the right reasons,

did all the wrong things.

Even if there were
only one communist

in the State Department,

that would still be
one communist too many.

And really inflicted
a great deal of pain and anguish

on individuals,
but on the society as a whole.

You-you will answer
the question.

There are moments
in American history

when the country is afraid,



when there is a threat
that is hard to define,

and it's in those periods
that demagogues arise.

We don't always show
the best of ourselves

when we're afraid.

McCarthy tested the system,

and the institutions
that should have stopped him

didn't... for a while.

Answer that, yes or no,
do you know this man?

McCarthyism represented
a cyclical phenomenon

in American life.

If we look at that dynamic
that has been connected

to the junior senator
from Wisconsin,

it's a dynamic that has a
particular kind of resilience

in American life.

And so there is a question

as to whether the spirit
that animated McCarthy

and animated McCarthyism
has ever really gone anywhere.

♪♪

♪♪

Every Lincoln's birthday,

the Republican Party holds
its special Lincoln Day dinners

addressed by a major politician,
if they can get one.

♪♪

As Republicans are celebrating
in 1950,

their big guns are being sent
to Chicago

and New York and Los Angeles.

And you can get an idea

of what Joe McCarthy's status
at that moment was

that they sent him
to the Women's Republican Club

in Wheeling, West Virginia.

And no offense
to Wheeling, West Virginia,

the person who gets sent there
to talk

is the person at
the bottom of the totem pole.

Joe McCarthy's Senate career
from 1946 until 1950

is one of repeated failure.

No one is expecting him
to win reelection.

So, what is
most extraordinary here

is that
the most important speech,

in some ways, of that generation
is given in a place

where there is a sense
by the people who sent him there

that nobody really cares
what he has to say

or is going to listen very hard.

The expectation was that

McCarthy was going to give
a standard,

boilerplate speech

that you give to, you know,
a Republican constituency.

In Wheeling, West Virginia,

they really weren't sending him
there to make headlines.

He comes out and says

that there are 205 communists
in the State Department.

Well, that's electrifying.

It's so electrifying that
people are almost distracted

from the question
of who these communists are,

whether they actually exist,

why does McCarthy know this
and other people don't.

It's, in a way,
a kind of brilliant speech.

"We are the most powerful
country in the world.

"We are the most influential
country in the world.

"And yet we're losing
everywhere.

"We are losing in Asia.

"We are losing in Europe.

"We are losing technologically
now to the Soviets.

How do we explain this?"

And what McCarthy does in
Wheeling is to explain it

by waving a list, saying,

"We are being sold out
by traitors."

Joe McCarthy is travelling
through the United States

on his Lincoln Day tour,

and reporters
keep coming up to him,

saying, "Joe, do you really have
the numbers?

Are there really
that many communists?"

And Joe would say,
"Well, you know,

"let me go through my papers.

I think we've got
some names for you."

He realized
he had a thing going.

He'd found his shtick at last.

♪♪

He called back to his office,

and he asked his secretary,
"Are we getting any publicity?"

And she said, "We're getting
a lot of publicity."

His secretary described him
as being almost intoxicated

with the joy and excitement

of getting this much attention
for a story.

♪♪

What is really interesting
about Wheeling

is that it takes a while
for it to sink in.

Once the attention starts
to mount,

the public really began
to sort of link

onto the fact that, "Oh, my God,

"this guy has done his research.

"This guy has names,
this guy has numbers.

"He has really gone in

"and scrupulously looked
for information.

He's doing research."

McCarthy had no list
in his hand.

He had nothing in his hand.

It was a fraud.

McCARTHY:
I often think of the days
I spent back on the farm.

As a small boy,
I had three brothers.

My mother used to raise chickens

to help pay the grocery bills
and get her Christmas money.

And one of the jobs I had
with my three brothers

was to go down into the swamps
and dig out the skunks

that used to come up
and kill our baby chickens.

You learn early in life
that you don't go skunk hunting

with striped trousers, a silk
handkerchief, and a top hat.

You just can't do it.

Joseph McCarthy was born
on November 14, 1908,

outside Appleton, Wisconsin.

He came from a real
working-class farm family.

He is this tough guy

who pulled himself up
completely on his own.

♪♪

DOLLY McCARTHY PLESSER:
His farm was about a mile and
a half from my father's farm.

What was raised on the farm
was mostly milk cows.

He had a very good mind,

and when he got set
on something,

he went through it,

and he worked hard
at what he was doing.

♪♪

He graduated from high school
in one year.

And after that, I guess
there was no stopping him.

His family, I think,
were very proud of him,

and the other boys were kind of
left in the shadows

after Joe started out like that.

♪♪

When he was going to Marquette,

Dad took him up to the barn
and taught him how to box,

'cause he was an Irish boy,

and he should know
how to handle himself,

as my father would have said.

When he did go to Marquette,
he was good enough

that he was given
a little extra money

to be the boxing coach.

Joe McCarthy did not have
the money for tuition.

So he had to take
all kinds of odd jobs.

And among the things
he did as well

was that he played what
I would call professional poker.

And this high-stakes poker
actually was successful enough

to kind of help him
at Marquette,

allow him to move on
to law school.

After Marquette University,

he goes into private practice.

It's the Great Depression,

and partly for that reason,
he doesn't have many clients.

He's been out of law school
maybe three or four years,

very little experience,

and then wants to go
become a judge.

Young Joe McCarthy was
actually a Democrat.

He was going to run against
a Republican incumbent,

someone who had been in power,
in office much longer...

Judge Werner.

This is a man who had been
in this office

for a very, very long time

and was seen
as a kind of institution.

McCarthy viewed him
as vulnerable.

Here was a guy who got
into his automobile

and went from farm
to farm to farm,

introducing himself.

Joe McCarthy basically
personally talked

to every constituent
in that district.

And that kind of what
we might call retail politics

is very, very important.

Werner was beyond this.

♪♪

In the end, McCarthy
does pull off the upset.

There are two versions
of McCarthy as a judge.

One is that
he was a corner-cutter,

that he gave out divorces
too easily.

The other is that he was a judge

who basically cleared the docket

in ways that Werner never had.

One guy described it as,

"Joe just sort of
opened the windows

"and let in fresh air.

He was all piss and vinegar."

What Joe McCarthy offered was a
kind of new, invigorating sense

that people are going
to come in here,

and they're going to get
their justice quickly.

♪♪

This nation is asking
for action, and action now.

A host of unemployed citizens

face the grim problem
of existence,

and an equally great number toil
with little return.

Our greatest primary task is
to put people to work.

The Great Depression was
an existential crisis

for a lot of Americans.

It seemed to indicate, in fact,

that capitalism was done for

and something else was going
to have to rise from its ashes.

With the staggering
economic despair

that people find themselves in,

and an unemployment rate
that is 25% nationally...

With African Americans,

that unemployment rate is
closer to 50%...

The Marxist critique
of the capitalist economy

seems to make more sense
in the 1930s

than it did a decade earlier.

♪ Arise, you prisoners
of starvation ♪

♪ Arise, you wretched
of the earth ♪

♪ For justice thunders... ♪

For many Americans,

it seemed that communism had a
solution to the economic crisis.

Some people are drawn
to the Communist Party

because they like
the ideological battle.

Other people are drawn to it

because they see communists
working very hard

as labor organizers.

Other people are drawn to it
around civil rights.

And so, you actually have

a very, very broad spectrum
of people

who are coming at it
from a kind of interest

in reforming American society.

♪♪

I was quite young,
and I was influenced

by a group of very young, eager,

left-wing students,

and I spent a lot of time
with them.

And it turned out... I didn't
recognize it at the time...

But most of them were members
of the Communist Party.

The answer sounds goody-goody.

You know,

you wanted a better society,
a more just society.

I remember in college,

YCL was the
Young Communist League.

And their recruiting motto,
which was a good one,

was, "For a life with a purpose,
join YCL."

As an institution,

the Communist Party is taking
a lot of money

from the Soviet Union
throughout the '20s and '30s,

and in fact many communists
really deeply believe

that their primary commitment
is actually

to the Soviet government

and to Stalin himself.

And to defend!

And to defend!

The Soviet Union!

The Soviet Union!

Okay.

There was a line,

and you subscribed to the line.

If you didn't,
you were welcome to withdraw,

but criticism was not invited
or listened to.

You accepted the line
or you quit.

Fear of Soviet penetration of
the United States government

in the late 1930s and
World War II is based on fact.

It existed.

The Soviets had informants
in the White House,

in the Treasury Department,
in the State Department,

in the Office
of Strategic Services.

No one knows exactly
how many members there were.

The best estimate was
something like 75 people

in the government

who were active agents.

And you ask yourself,
"Is that a few or is it a lot?"

And the answer is,

"It depends who they are
and what they’re doing."

Yesterday, December 7, 1941,

a date which will live
in infamy.

The United States of America
was suddenly

and deliberately attacked

by naval and air forces
of the Empire of Japan.

♪♪

After Pearl Harbor,
McCarthy joined the Marines.

He didn't have to do so.

Judges were exempt.

Why would Joe McCarthy do this?

And the reason is quite simple.

McCarthy saw military service

as a way to
the political future.

As his best friend,
Urban Van Susteren, told him,

"Look, Joe, if you have got
to be a hero to be a politician,

join the Marines."

McCarthy's job was to debrief
pilots who came back

from bombing runs
over Japanese-held territory.

By all accounts,
he did his job very well.

McCARTHY:
I was what they referred to

as a marine combat
intelligence officer.

That meant you did
about everything,

including procuring food
for the Navy.

What McCarthy did was turn
himself into a tail-gunner.

He would ask fighter pilots

and bomber pilots to take him up
into the back of the aircraft

where the machine gun was,

and Joe would fire bullets
endlessly.

And he actually did set a record

of firing, I think, the most
machine gun bullets in one day

in the history
of-of the Pacific Theater.

The problem was that none
of them was fired in battle.

McCARTHY:
Yes, I got a very interesting
mahogany plaque when I left,

which was inscribed,
"To Father Mac,

"who destroyed
more coconut trees

and less Japs than any man
in the Pacific."

That's wonderful.

How about this Father Mac?

Uh, was that the nickname
the boys tagged you with?

McCARTHY:
Well, I was sort of the old man
of the squadron.

I was 33 years old, and
most of the boys were 21, 22.

He claims to have been wounded
in the war.

What happened to him was
he fell off a ladder

during a celebration

that commemorates the crossing
of the equator.

Once he gets
into political life,

he talks about his leg being
full of shrapnel,

he walks with a limp sometime.

This is all completely made up.

The greatest news story
of all time...

The final,
unconditional surrender

with the whole world waiting
to celebrate.

Thus did V-J Day go
into history.

♪♪

Joe McCarthy becomes
a Republican

when he comes back
after World War II.

The New Deal is really
beginning to fade.

And it's clear that
the Republican Party

seems to be not only the party
of the future,

but the party of the veterans.

1946 is one of these
pivotal midterm elections.

The Democrats have really
dominated American politics

for most of the 1930s
and the 1940s.

The Republicans are saying,

"The Democrats are going to be
soft on communism.

They're going to be soft
on the Soviet Union.

"We're the people
that you can trust, actually,

to make this fight
in the world."

McCarthy sets his sights
on a Senate seat held

by a very popular Republican,
a progressive Republican,

Robert La Follette, Jr.,

the son of the great
Robert La Follette,

who ran for president
in the 1920s.

If you're going to run
for political office,

the one person you don't want to
run against is Bob La Follette.

But McCarthy realizes that,

"I am a young Marine
with a war record

running against someone

who has been spending
too many days in Washington."

Well, for one thing
about La Follette,

he wasn't making
a big, hard fight for it.

He stayed in Washington.

He only came out there
about one time

that any of us could ever
remember.

♪♪

Joe never stopped campaigning
and he drove everywhere

and picked up people
that were active in the politics

and took them with him
to the next place.

McCARTHY:
The 12-odd million men

who were removed from
civilian life during the war

are returning to find
that what was a democracy

has degenerated into a stifling,
smothering bureaucracy.

Since V-J Day,
there have been added

to this bureaucratic octopus a
total of over 300,000 workers.

There is only one way

of destroying this government
by bureaucracy,

and that is to clean out
that administration

from the very top
to the very bottom.

So that you can plunge a knife

into the heart
of this tentacled monster.

He would get
the high school girls,

which I was one of,

and we would take
a telephone book

and rip a page out.

And then we wrote a card

just telling them
Joe would appreciate his vote.

Ever so many people said

that that was why they voted
for him,

was the thoughtfulness,

that he came to see them
or to write the note to him.

♪♪

Everybody was asking
all over America

how Joe McCarthy
could have beaten

the great
Robert La Follette, Jr.

It was a very brave and crazy,
courageous thing to do,

and Joe did it.

♪♪

What McCarthy's victory
sort of shows

is that everyone is fair game.

I mean, if you can knock off
a La Follette,

you really have
a kind of winning formula.

The election itself, when
McCarthy runs against a Democrat

in a largely Republican state,
that's a foregone conclusion.

He's going to win.

♪♪

The whole nation is voting,

and the Truman administration

and the Democratic Party lose
this battle of ballots.

The victorious Republicans
win control

of both branches of Congress,
Senate and House.

♪♪

I shall cooperate
in every proper manner

with members of the Congress.

And my hope and prayer is

that this spirit of cooperation
will be reciprocated.

♪♪

Joe McCarthy arrived in town

and held a press conference
on his first day there.

He had nothing to announce,

but he just wanted the reporters
to pay attention to him.

Joe McCarthy basically is there
to make a name for himself.

What is really striking
about him is his willingness

not only to take on senior
Republicans and Democrats,

but to go against
all of the senatorial courtesies

that have made the body
what it is.

He is not there
to play by their rules.

He makes a lot of the fact that

he is a kind of rough-and-tumble
farm boy from the Midwest,

that he comes
from very humble beginnings.

McCARTHY:
Thank you, fellow Americans.

I certainly am more than happy
to be out here tonight,

away from Washington

for at least one day and back
in the United States.

During McCarthy's early years
in politics,

the Cold War has really
settled in,

the Soviet Union moves
into Eastern Europe.

It really looks as if
potentially a worse form

of totalitarianism is
taking over the world.

One nation after another

seems to fall under communist
influence

in eastern and central Europe.

♪♪

The Soviet forces clamp down
on freedom of speech

and freedom of religion
in Eastern Europe.

You didn't need an intelligence
service to know this.

You could read about it
in the newspapers.

"How did we allow this
to happen?

"How have we allowed
the Soviet Union

to become so expansive
and so powerful?"

There was a sense
that the Democratic Party

had not done enough
to combat the Soviet Union,

it had not stood up
to Soviet expansion.

As far back as the 1930s,

some in Congress had already
been accusing

the Roosevelt administration
and the New Deal

of being filled with communists.

That's when the House Committee
on Un-American Activities

was formed.

♪♪

The growing menace of communism

arouses the
House of Representatives

Un-American Activities
Committee.

Among the well-informed
witnesses testifying

is J. Edgar Hoover, head of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Hoover speaks with authority
on the subject.

The Communist Party of the
United States is a fifth column,

if there ever was one.

Their goal is
the overthrow of our government.

♪♪

In 1947 the House Un-American
Activities Committee... HUAC...

Goes after Hollywood, because

the congressional committees
realize quite quickly

that attacking
high-profile people

is really a great way
to get publicity.

Are you a member
of the Communist Party,

or have you ever been a member
of the Communist Party?

It's unfortunate and tragic that
I have to teach this committee

the basic principles of America.
That's not the question,

that's not the question.

The question is
have you ever been a member

of the Communist Party?

The 1947 hearings are a success

for the House Un-American
Activities Committee,

because they get what they want,
which is

they get Hollywood
to blacklist communist writers.

It was the worst imaginable
kind of hearing.

Stand away from the stand!

There is no defense
for what HUAC did.

The screenwriters, they had
First Amendment freedoms

that were simply stomped upon.

And they paid
a very, very high price

for their political beliefs.

We're America,

people have a right
to their opinions.

♪♪

By 1948 and 1949,

you're beginning to see a series
of congressional hearings

around espionage charges.

The most famous of these
is the Alger Hiss case.

Alger Hiss was one of the kind
of shining boys of the New Deal.

He had been Ivy League educated.

He was this very elegant,
well-spoken, thoughtful man

who had risen through
the State Department,

who was a deep insider.

And then in 1948
comes the accusation

that he is actually a secret
communist and a Soviet spy.

"Who's the liar?" might well be
the title of the drama

which unfolds
before a packed caucus room

where the House Un-American
Affairs Committee members

swear in Alger Hiss, former
State Department executive.

Mr. Hiss is accused
of being a former communist,

and before news cameras
faces his accuser.

I welcome the opportunity to
answer to the best of my ability

any inquiries the members
of this committee

may wish to ask me.

I am not, and never have been,

a member of the Communist Party.

Hiss's real crime was espionage,

but he was found guilty
of perjury,

because the statute
of limitations on espionage

had expired.

♪♪

A major State Department figure
has just been sent to jail.

There's a sense
of enormous vulnerability.

Harry Truman signed
an executive order

setting up loyalty boards
in the government

as a way of trying to make sure
that there were no spies.

How did the loyalty board work?

They said to the FBI,

"Do you have anything
about these people,

these civil servants,
in your files?"

If the FBI had what was called
derogatory information,

then the FBI would then do
a real investigation

of that person.

Now, what's derogatory
information?

It could be being friends with
someone who is a communist

or friends with someone who is
thought to be a member

of a front organization

of the Communist Party
of the United States.

When you see
the Truman administration

enact the loyalty oath program,

it's as a defensive measure.

Are people really concerned

that the people working
for the Post Office

are secretly going to meetings
of the Communist Party at night?

Not really.

But politically speaking,

it's something that
Truman envisions

as a kind of bulwark
against the allegation

that he has been soft
on communism.

♪♪

During his early years
in politics,

there's nothing really
to suggest

that McCarthy is deeply
committed

to any particular set
of political ideas

in the way that we would think
he would become.

Until about 1950,

McCarthy said next to nothing
about communism.

The heavy lifting in these years
was done

by the House Un-American
Activities Committee.

You have to understand
that was a House committee,

and McCarthy was
a United States senator.

Away from the Senate,
Joe lived the bachelor life.

He likes to gamble,
he likes to party.

He was always a heavy drinker.

He likes to live
as well as he can,

and he is willing to take loans

from lobbyists
who want certain things.

♪♪

The soft-drink companies needed
to end rationing

to get enough sugar to produce

the product
they wanted to produce.

Demand for sugar is now
actually larger

than it was during the war.

But the world's supply is
still far behind the demand.

Pepsi is looking for a senator
who will lie quite boldly

in saying that there is no
shortage of sugar

in the United States.

♪♪

Joe McCarthy stood out

as someone who was willing
to do their dirty work.

And McCarthy simply lied.

And his fellow senators
nail him on this.

And what happens very early on
is that

he tends to offend
senior members of both parties,

and he's punished.

He's given the worst imaginable
committee assignments.

He was really worried
about his chances

of running
for re-election in 1952.

He wanted to find something that
would really draw attention.

What McCarthy did was to take
the substance

of a quite lengthy speech
Congressman Richard Nixon,

the prosecutor of Alger Hiss,
had given

on the floor of Congress
and boil it down

into an accusation against
the Truman administration.

That essentially
what he said was,

"All right,
we've got one Alger Hiss,

imagine how many others
must be there."

And McCarthy went off
to Wheeling

and gave the speech.

And a local Associated Press
reporter covered it.

♪♪

Imagine yourself as
a newspaper-reading American

in early 1950.

What's just been happening
around the world and at home?

The Soviets have detonated
their first atomic bomb.

The United States has lost
its nuclear monopoly.

The Chinese Revolution ended

and the most populous country
in the world

is now under
a communist dictator,

Mao Zedong.

At home, Alger Hiss,

the epitome of the
American establishment,

has just been convicted
for perjury.

It looks like people that look
and sound

like the famous sort of
Northeastern establishment

are Soviet agents.

"Where's the world going?

"I mean, if Alger Hiss
is a Soviet agent,

well, Harry Truman could be
a Soviet agent."

♪♪

The Democrats have the feeling

that McCarthy probably doesn't
know what he's talking about,

and so they want to show

that he's been full of hot air.

They appoint a
investigating committee

under Maryland Senator
Millard Tydings,

who's quite conservative,

and Tydings runs a investigation

of McCarthy's charges.

Now, the question that I asked

was simply this:

have you in your possession
any memorandum,

any affidavit, any paper,
any photostat or other material

which would tell us
who this individual is?

Not where you got it.

Not how you got it.

Not who gave it to you.

But have you the material?

Let me answer the first half
of your question first...

McCarthy had a lot of opponents
in the press,

but he had just as many friends.

They were reporters for the big
conservative newspaper chains,

the Hearst chains,

the Scripps-Howard chains,
for instance.

McCarthy called up the head
of the Hearst newspapers,

then said that
he'd shot his mouth off

and that he needed help.

And Hearst sent a series
of reporters to help him.

McCarthy did

bring in, finally, nine names.

I think it's important
that the committee know

that the communist activities
of Miss Kenyon

are not only deep-rooted

but extend back
through the years.

I just heard the shocking news

that Senator McCarthy
had the audacity

to call me a communist today
on the floor of congress.

I want to say here and now
that Senator McCarthy is a liar.

At some point McCarthy must have
gotten the sense

that he needed
something more dramatic.

His brainstorm is
that he would come up

with the boss of Alger Hiss.

And that was going to be...

my father.

We have this man,
Owen Lattimore,

a man commonly referred to

as the architect
of our Far Eastern policy,

a policy which has sold
into communistic slavery

400 million people,

a policy which has resulted

in a batting average of
1,000 percent for the Russians

and a batting average of zero
for the United States.

Owen Lattimore is a professor
from Johns Hopkins University.

He's a Chinese specialist.

He's left-leaning.

Like a lot of others
who studied China,

He thought that
the Chiang Kai-shek regime

was hopelessly corrupt,

and he wanted the United States
essentially

to support
the communist takeover,

recognize China.

My father was in Afghanistan,

and he heard about
the McCarthy accusations.

He told the Associated Press

that the charges were
pure moonshine.

Is Lattimore arrogant?

Yes.

Is Lattimore a traitor?

Absurd.

Is McCarthy gaining traction
from all this?

Unbelievably.

And in his Capitol office
meanwhile,

Senator McCarthy is snowed under
by mail

concerning
his sensational charges,

mail both pro and con.

With Lattimore due back
from Afghanistan

at week's end
to publicly answer McCarthy,

the senator faces a showdown
and perhaps a libel suit.

My mother and I went

to what was then
Idlewild Airport, now JFK.

It was a strange, underground,

almost sort of
Dante-esque setting

with a long corridor that he was
going to have to come down,

running the gauntlet
of, who knows,

a hundred reporters
and photographers

with their big four-by-five-inch
cameras and flashbulbs.

♪♪

The Tydings Committee was
in the Senate caucus room.

Joe McCarthy was there.

My mother and father
were quite close.

The senator stated

that he will stand or fall
on my case.

I hope that this will turn out
to be true,

because I shall show
that his charges against me

are so empty and baseless
that the senator will fall

and fall flat on his face.

When it was over that day,
my grandfather said

that the statement was like

Cicero's oration
against Catiline

in its sort of taunting,
mocking approach

that Cicero was the master of.

McCarthy didn't say anything.

And my father said,
"He would never meet my eye,

he never looked me in the eye."

When Herblock does
his famous cartoon,

the phrase catches on,

and it becomes common parlance
immediately.

Herblock draws a picture of a
stack of tar pots,

and at the top of it,
he puts the word, "McCarthyism."

This anxiety has been swirling
in the air about communism,

but it isn't until that moment
that Herblock names it

that we kind of have
this signifier for it.

I want to assure

the tens of thousands of people
who have written me,

urging that we keep up
this fight

to a successful conclusion,

that the fight will continue

regardless of
how rough the opposition gets,

and rough it will be.

You can be sure of that.

Republicans realize

there's just too much
political capital at stake

for them to desert McCarthy.

Public opinion polls show
this gigantic upsurge

in support
of McCarthy's charges.

So the Republicans are saying
to themselves,

"We have a complete loose cannon
with virtually no information

"at the head of our army
at this moment.

"We're riding along with him,

because we basically have
no alternative."

♪♪

There was also
only one woman senator,

and that was the one senator
who stood up

and spoke against McCarthy,
and she was a Republican,

and that was
Margaret Chase Smith from Maine.

Smith was appalled.

She thought that it was against

all that she stood for
in politics

to try to perpetuate yourself

by using smears
and unfounded allegations.

What Margaret Chase Smith
decided to do

was to write up what was called
a declaration of conscience.

♪♪

About a half a dozen

other moderate Republicans
signed on initially,

but they began to jump ship.

And Margaret Chase Smith was
basically standing almost alone

in the Senate with
her declaration of conscience.

♪♪

At the same time
as the Tydings Committee

is winding up its work,

the North Korean Army crosses
the 38th Parallel

and invades South Korea.

The advent of the Korean War

seems to give
enormous credibility

to these charges...
"Hey, look what happened.

"We lost China, and now here
come the communists

taking over another piece
of the free world."

I really feel very strongly

that had there not been
a Korean War,

McCarthy would have fizzled out.

♪♪

And then, in July,

a engineer in Manhattan named
Julius Rosenberg is arrested

for having passed secrets
to the Russians

about the atomic bomb.

Rosenberg was in fact
an atomic spy.

We now know that.

And his arrest reinforces
the message

that Joe McCarthy is trying
to get out there.

This really is
what gives him power.

The Tydings report, at the end,

basically accused McCarthy of
perpetrating a fraud and a hoax.

Unfortunately the report was
voted on

by almost a party-line vote,

with the Democrats voting for it

and the Republicans voting
against it,

and that diminished
the impact of it.

♪♪

The Tydings investigation
was designed

to show that McCarthy's charges
were untrue,

but by so focusing on McCarthy,

they in a sense made him a hero
of the anti-communist movement,

and they elevated him.

Owen Lattimore's career is
completely destroyed.

He's eased out of any kind
of professional advancement.

He's no longer being consulted.

My father was living 50 percent,
approximately,

on book royalties and fees
for articles and lectures.

All that dried up
with these McCarthy charges.

♪♪

They had lean years.

A lot of people say, Senator,

that they hope you win out
and they're on your side,

but they’re against
your tactics.

If you had to do this
all over again,

would you have changed
any of your tactics?

Miss, Miss Roundtree,

by tactics, I assume you mean
telling the public

what's going on
in our State Department.

I assume you mean that.

I'm not, I'm not equipped

to use lace-handkerchief type
of tactics.

We may have to use
lumberjack tactics,

bare-knuckle tactics.

If those are the only kind
of tactics

the communists understand,

then those are
the tactics we'll use.

In the 1950 election campaign,

McCarthy really went
after Tydings

as basically a tool of
the American Communist Party,

which was outrageous.

Tydings was
a conservative Democrat.

McCarthy and his henchmen fused
together a photograph

of Millard Tydings
and Earl Browder,

the head of the Communist Party.

They had actually talked
at a hearing,

but it was as if they were
best friends in a warm embrace.

From Maryland comes
the upset of the day.

Republican John Marshall Butler,

a lawyer running
for his first office,

defeats Millard Tydings,

who rejected
Senator McCarthy's charges

of communism in government.

The media made it seem
as if Tydings lost

because of McCarthy's
intervention.

And what this meant was,

"If you want to hold
onto your seat,

stay away from Joe McCarthy."

♪♪

McCARTHY:
There are definitely two groups
of Democrats as of today.

Number one, there are the
millions of loyal Americans

who have voted
the Democrat ticket,

individuals who are
just as loyal

as the average Republican.

On the other hand there is
that small, closely knit group

of administration Democrats

who are under
the complete domination

of the bureaucratic,
communistic Frankenstein,

which they themselves
have created.

They shouldn't be called
Democrats.

They should be referred to
properly

as the Commiecrat Party.

♪♪

Joe McCarthy was
a very charming person.

He was very affable,

easy to reach, easy to contact,

talkative.

He was Joe,

and he called you
by your first name,

and he got to know your name.

He just wanted people
to like him,

and in fact, even people that
he attacked on the Senate floor,

when he walked out the door,

he could put his arm
around them,

and it was like, "Well, that was
just politics, you know,

now we can be friends
along the way."

I think a lot of this comes

from McCarthy's experience
as a boxer.

In the ring, anything went.

But then when you got out
of the ring,

you weren't enemies anymore.

You put your arm
around your opponent,

and you walked away.

♪♪

At the Jefferson-Jackson Day
dinner in Washington,

President Truman holds
a bombshell in abeyance.

I have served my country long

and I think efficiently
and honestly.

I shall not accept
a renomination.

I do not feel that it is my duty

to spend another four years
in the White House.

The Democratic candidate was
the governor of Illinois.

His name was Adlai Stevenson.

He was a moderate.

He has a nice, clean record.

Everybody assumed

that there would be
a conservative

who would be running
for president

on the Republican ticket,

and that would be
Senator Robert Taft of Ohio.

The moderates, those
who are afraid of Joe McCarthy,

start this "Draft Eisenhower"
movement.

General Dwight Eisenhower
is a war hero,

head of NATO for a while,

just a very likeable
personality.

♪ Ike for president,
Ike for president ♪

♪ Ike for president,
Ike for president ♪

♪ You like Ike, I like Ike ♪

♪ Everybody likes Ike ♪

♪ For president ♪

♪ Hang out the banner,
beat the drum ♪

♪ We'll take Ike
to Washington. ♪

Although the Republicans were
running a moderate,

they were perfectly willing
to use McCarthy

as an attack dog
against the Democrats

and the Democratic
presidential candidate.

Adlai Stevenson had
a very peripheral relationship

with Alger Hiss.

And during the campaign,

McCarthy made what
we call "the purposeful slip."

I perform this unpleasant task

because the American people
are entitled

to have the coldly documented
history

of this man who says,
"I want to be your president."

Strangely, Alger...
I mean, Adlai, uh...

♪♪

What you had was
a Republican senator

basically saying
that there was no difference

between a man who had been sent
to prison for espionage

and the man who was now
the standard-bearer

of the Democratic ticket
in 1952.

America speaks
at the polling booth.

It's Eisenhower by a landslide.

After 20 years,

the Republican Party is back
in power.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower
is elected.

♪♪

The authors of
the Constitution felt

that they would give
the Congress the ability

to keep an eye
on the executive branch,

to police it, to regulate it.

There's a long history

of congressional investigations
of the executive branch

up to this point,

and much of it had been
very positive.

McCarthy, by seniority, in 1953,
was entitled to be chairman

of the
Government Affairs Committee.

♪♪

Joe McCarthy assigned himself
to be the chairman

of the Permanent Subcommittee
on Investigation.

You going to use
the same tactics

that you have used
right along, sir?

Oh now, you say
the same tactics.

You see, if you have
a committee,

the power to subpoena,
the investigators,

you don't use the same tactics
you use

when you have no committee,

no power to subpoena.

Where you have a committee,

so if you have power of subpoena
you can get the records,

and if we have
a Republican president,

we'll be able to get
those records, I'm sure.

McCarthy actually has
political power now.

He can create
these public spectacles

by investigating individuals
or organizations,

institutions, and so on,

but it's also dangerous,

because now Republicans are
in the majority.

After the first six months
or so,

you start pointing
to the ineptitude

or the incompetence
or dereliction of Republicans,

not Harry Truman, not Democrats.

McCarthy wanted
an aggressive counsel.

There was already a counsel
on the committee,

but McCarthy didn’t think
he was quite aggressive enough.

Roy Cohn is a whip-smart lawyer
from New York.

He's young, he's ambitious.

He is the son of a legal family
in New York,

very wealthy,
influential family.

He uses that family connection

to get in the federal
prosecutor's office.

His prosecution of Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg

is instrumental in getting them
the death penalty,

the first time in
American history, in peacetime,

that two people have been
executed for espionage.

♪♪

When Roy Cohn became
the counsel,

one of the people he appointed
was David Schine.

Schine is an unpaid consultant.

His parents own
a chain of hotels.

His experience in terms
of anti-communism

was he wrote a little pamphlet

that was put into
each of the hotel rooms

that his parents had.

He was a lightweight
on these issues,

but Cohn liked him,
and Cohn wanted him around.

President Eisenhower realizes

that the anti-communist issue
is not going to go away.

So Eisenhower believes that he
really has to tighten up

the loyalty program.

What the Eisenhower
administration also does

is to begin to look
at security risks,

not just in terms
of their politics,

but in terms of their
alleged sexual proclivities.

There is a very, very strong
belief in the early 1950s

that homosexuals,

given the stigma of
homosexuality in the 1950s,

not only should not be working
in government,

but were security risks,

because they could be
so easily blackmailed.

♪♪

Eisenhower originally assumed
that once he took over,

that McCarthy would calm down.

That he would say, "Okay,

we have a Republican in power."

But in fact it didn't happen
at all.

What McCarthy does is
to say publicly...

And this is against the law...

That he is asking people
in government

who think there is subversion

to go and take files and
secretly send them to McCarthy.

What he is really doing

is asking people
in various departments

to rifle through files,

to settle grievances against
workers they do not like.

He is no longer throwing rocks

and breaking
White House windows,

he is now basically
inside the government

with the power to investigate,

and he is going to use that

to what he thinks is
his advantage.

In Washington,

from its new headquarters
near the Capitol,

the Voice of America beams
largest speech around the world.

In 38 languages, the truth,

a powerful ally of freedom,
is being recorded on tape

for broadcasts that will pierce
the Iron Curtain.

The Voice of America was started
during the Second World War.

Basically, the people
who worked there

fled from their countries
during the war,

and they were either
anti-fascists

or anti-communists, essentially.

And the anti-communist faction
collected information

about their colleagues who they
thought were too sympathetic

to the communists.

The anti-communist people began
leaking information to McCarthy.

This morning we've been holding
executive sessions

covering the
information programs

dealing almost entirely today
with the Voice of America,

dealing with incompetence,
waste, subversion.

Committee will come to order.

Mr. Reed Harris.

Your name is Reed Harris?

That's correct.

Reed Harris, who had been
the number two man

at the U.S. Information Service,

was questioned about his loyalty
to America,

because he had written a book
20 years ago

while a student at Columbia.

He had been accused of saying

that the communists should be
retained on college faculties.

My feeling was that professors
should have the right

to express their considered
opinions

on any subject,
whatever they were, sir.

Well then, let's continue
to read your own writings.

And...
21 years ago, again.

Yes well, we'll try to bring you
down to date if we can.

Mr. Chairman, two weeks ago,

Senator Taft took the position
that I took 21 years ago,

that communists and socialists

should be allowed to teach
in the schools.

McCARTHY:
I don't recall
Senator Taft ever having

any of the background
that you've got, sir.

♪♪

I was at the
Reed Harris hearing.

I was shocked
at how he treated him.

I thought he treated Reed Harris
with contempt.

I resent the tone
of this inquiry very much,

Mr. Chairman.

I resent it
not only because it is my neck,

my public neck, that you are,

I think, very skillfully
trying to wring.

The Voice of America buckled,
and Harris left the agency.

They never proved
anything about him.

They just made
lots of allegations.

He was a man
who was very worn down

by what happened to him.

At the end of the
Voice of America hearings,

there was no "aha" moment.

There was no moment
when McCarthy found his spy.

His attention had just moved on
to the next investigation,

and this happened repeatedly.

Almost none of
his investigations had any kind

of culminating climax.

They were always drowned out
by the tremendous revelations

that he had found out
about the next situation

that he was going
to investigate.

McCarthy becomes interested
in this question

about libraries which are run
by the State Department.

These are kind of stores

of American literature,
American books,

American history, fiction,
so on.

These books were supposed to be

across a spectrum
of perspectives,

with all but the
most overtly propagandistic,

anti-American books
being included.

McCarthy looked at that
as an invitation

to see where there was
communist subversion.

I think the committee has
disclosed a fantastic picture

on the information program.

Some 30,000 or 40,000 books
by communist authors,

distributed throughout the world
with our stamp of approval,

allegedly for the purpose
of fighting communism.

How do you start
this investigation?

In their way of thinking,

you call in the authors
of the books,

who have no idea that

their books are
on the U.S.I.A. shelves.

One of the authors says,

"I don't even have a copy
of that book."

It is odd

to decide to haul the authors
before the committee,

because the authors
did not put their books

on the shelves of the libraries.

You could have a group
of librarians, supposedly,

and just bring them
before the committee

and bully them about
why they chose this book

as opposed to that book.

But the real spectacular,
headline-generating potential

is in finding authors,

peoples whose names are known
to the public.

The constitution obligates me to
say a word

or two about
the origins of this.

I am a student
of American history and...

McCARTHY:
Mr. Fast,

you're ordered to answer
the questions only.

We are not going to take
a lecture from a man

who refuses to state
whether he's a member

of the Communist Party
as of this moment.

I must refuse
to answer that question,

basing my refusal
upon the privilege granted to me

in the Fifth Amendment.

And in line
with your words, sir,

I wish you would allow me

to spell out that privilege
and what it means

and why I am invoking it.
All Americans...

No, I don't think everyone
in this room knows this.

Very few people know this.

Why don't you give me a chance
to state this?

At that time,
a lot of occupations

like government workers,
schoolteachers, and others

were subject
to instant dismissal

from their jobs if
they took the Fifth Amendment.

In many cases, it was
people who were quite willing

to admit that they had once been
in the Communist Party,

and they had left
the Communist Party.

But the next question
was always,

"Who did you know when you were
in the Communist Party?"

And that's the thing
that people didn't want to do.

They were willing to talk about
themselves,

but they were not willing to
give a name of somebody else.

♪♪

In April of 1953,
Cohn and Schine went off

on a trip to the
major cities of Europe.

They visited,
among other things,

various U.S.I.A. libraries.

The books that
they're looking for

were not necessarily
communist propaganda...

There wasn't a lot of that...

But books that had been written

by people associated
with communism.

For example, one of them was
the communist Dashiell Hammett,

the author of a number of
hardboiled detective stories.

The American diplomats
who were running these centers

are terrified.

Their careers are on the line.

Some of them pull the books
from the shelves.

Some even burned them.

What could be a worse symbol

of political repression
than burning books?

I listed some of the things you
were called over there,

and they included
"scummy snoopers"

and "distempered jackals"...

That was in the British press.

Why do you think your trip

got such a bad press,
both here and abroad?

Well,

that's not for me to judge.

I suppose the press is entitled
to say exactly what it wants.

I think some papers
did a fair job.

President Eisenhower actually
gets tangentially involved.

Ike makes a speech at Dartmouth

and it clearly is a reference

to what Cohn and Schine
have been doing in Europe.

Don't join the book burners.

Don't be afraid
to go in your library

and read every book

as long as any document
does not offend

our own ideas of decency.

How will we defeat communism
unless we know what it is,

what it teaches, or why does
it have such an appeal for men?

Did you ever discuss
any confidential material

with a member
of the Communist Party?

At all times when you were with
the New York Board of Education

and doing child guidance work,

were you a member
of the Communist Party?

Answer that yes or no.

Do you know this man?

The extraordinary thing
about McCarthy's hearings

were how many he held.

In 1953 alone
he held 143 days of hearings.

One of the newspaper reporters
who covered the hearings

said that subpoenas were
fluttering onto people's desks

like pigeons in the park,

that everybody was a target,
essentially.

Are you writing now

under the direction
of the Communist Party?

The answer is no.

In less than 15 months,

McCarthy had interrogated
almost 600 people.

He basically signed off
on stacks of subpoenas

that his staff could write out
at any time.

The witnesses would get
these subpoenas

the day before
they were going to testify

or the night before
they were going to testify.

My dear sir,
I have never consulted

with the Communist Party
in any manner

regarding the writing of
the four books I have written.

Now, are you a member
of the Communist Party?

I am going to answer your
question, sir,

under my privilege
in the Constitution,

but I am going to answer it
in my own way.

This is a book burning.

You lack only the tinder
to set fire to the books

as Hitler did 20 years ago.

And I am going to get that
across to the American people.

McCarthy would not allow
the Democrats

to hire any staff on their own,

so they actually walked off
of the committee.

There was a period

in which there were no
minority-party senators.

And also because Roy Cohn
enjoyed holding hearings

in New York where Schine's
family owned a suite

at the Waldorf Astoria,

often none of
the Republican senators

except for Joe McCarthy
could be present.

And so he could do
what he wanted,

his staff could do
what they wanted.

In 1953

I was in graduate school

at Harvard's Department
of Social Relations,

working on a PhD.

McCarthy was investigating
Harvard,

and he wanted to find communists
or ex-communists.

There weren't that many around.

I was it.

It's, it's as simple as that.

You didn't need spies
inside the party to get my name.

I never tried to hide
my membership

in the Communist Party.

Indeed, I was proud of it.

The thing to know
about Leon Kamin

is that he was not
McCarthy's target.

He was a little fish.

McCarthy was going
after a big fish,

and his big fish was
Nathan Pusey,

who was the president
of Harvard University,

who was one of McCarthy's
outspoken opponents.

♪♪

I knew I was not going to use
the Fifth Amendment.

It made you unemployable
in the American situation.

Nobody was going to employ
a graduate student

who would refuse to say

whether or not he was then a
member of the Communist Party.

It's an interesting thing.

In some ways,
he was quite a charming guy.

I meet him in the corridor
in the courtroom.

And without my doing anything,

he throws his arm around me
and says, "Hi, Leo."

And I was somewhat taken aback,
you know.

This guy is trying
to crucify me.

I must confess,
I sank to obscenity,

and he looked hurt.

He really looked hurt.

What have I got against him?

I'm, gee whiz, he's got
nothing personal against me.

He's just doing his...

It really was that,
that attitude.

♪♪

I knew I would certainly
not say anything

that endangered the wellbeing
of other people

who were members of the party
at the same time that I was.

When I look back at it,
I wasn't protecting them.

I was protecting my own sense
of dignity, I guess.

I said, "I will refuse
to answer any question

"seeking to establish
the identity of any person

"or persons with whom
I was associated

within or on the periphery
of the Communist Party."

This is because I could not in
good conscience

become an informer
against persons

whom I have no reason to believe

were ever engaged
in unlawful activities.

McCarthy would say things like,
"Don't answer that one too.

"Pile up the counts, mister.

Pile them up."

But I knew that was nonsense.

I was not going to get 20 years
in jail.

I might have to go for a year.

Two years?

I don't know.

And that was just
a risk one had to take.

I was less nervous than
I thought I was going to be.

And feeling, in a way,
self-righteous.

A line from Shakespeare comes,

"Thy threats pass by me
as the idle wind,

for I am armed so strong
in honesty."

In the beginning,

Eisenhower doesn't understand
McCarthy.

He is assuming
that McCarthy will stop.

Now a Republican is
in the White House.

But he doesn't.

Eisenhower actually said
to his aides,

"I will not get into
the gutter with that guy.

"I will not get down
to his level,

"because not only will it make
me look bad,

"but it really will sprinkle mud
on the White House itself,

on the authority
of the presidency."

♪♪

Eisenhower blamed the press for
much of McCarthy's popularity.

He didn't understand

why newspapers and
magazines kept reporting

all of McCarthy's allegations.

There was a media benefit
to McCarthy existing.

Editors knew that if you put
a quote from Joe McCarthy

on a headline above the fold,
front page of the newspaper,

people were going to pick
that newspaper up,

that McCarthy was good copy.

There's a kind of hyperbolic,
sensational quality

to McCarthy's rhetoric
that was very marketable.

It sold papers.

The America media wanted
to be objective.

And that meant that
if you were an elected official,

you'd get press
regardless of what you said.

McCarthy understood this.

McCarthy was willing
to assert things

that he knew weren't true,

and he did it with aplomb.

He tells a lie,

and people go to track
this down,

and by the time you responded
to that,

he's told three others.

It's a sheer exercise
in fatigue.

If there are communists in
the Government Printing Office,

it means they have access
to our top-most secrets...

Atomic energy, hydrogen bomb,
everything else.

Where Alger Hiss only had access

to material
from the State Department,

a communist in
the Government Printing Office

would have access to all
of our top-secret material.

Basically, it might be more
important than the Hiss case.

Oh, it could be infinitely more
important and may I say that

this man Rothschild was before
the committee last week...

Dugout chatter was
a term related

to the daily meetings

that the wire service
representatives

would have with Joe.

He would pour, in my case,
a glass of bourbon.

He would always,
with great fanfare,

pour himself a black Russian.

He would giggle and say,

"The vodka comes straight
from Russia."

And it did.

In McCarthy's case,
there are just lots of incidents

that clearly indicated that he
had been drinking excessively.

At one point, he gets
into a fight with a columnist,

Drew Pearson,
at the Sulgrave Club,

and kicks him savagely,
knocks him to the ground.

And, apparently, this was
after a night of drinking.

If you were a journalist,
and you criticized McCarthy,

you might get a subpoena.

This was what happens

to the The New York Post editor,
James Wechsler,

who's actually called
before the McCarthy Committee

to defend himself.

Wechsler had been a communist
in his youth...

He had since left the party...

Turns The New York Post

into a-a kind of mainstream
liberal publication,

one that, however,
is critical of McCarthy.

So McCarthy calls Wechsler

before the McCarthy Committee
to defend himself.

I think the issues raised
by Senator McCarthy's attack

on the Post and on myself
are perfectly plain.

I believe that the conscience
of the country and the press

will finally rise up

against this attempt
to intimidate newspapers

whose only crime is
that they have been critical

of Joe McCarthy.

The notion that as a journalist

you should be fearing
a subpoena,

even in America
in the context of the Cold War,

is pretty extreme.

I mean, the House Un-American
Activities Committee

didn’t do that.

Senator Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin and Miss Jean Kerr

are married
at Saint Matthew's Cathedral

in the nation's capital.

The crowd is the biggest ever

to attend a Washington
church wedding

and includes Vice President
Nixon and his wife,

arriving with hundreds of other

politically prominent
invited guests.

♪♪

One of the very few people
in McCarthy's office

was a very attractive,
tall woman

whose name was Jean Kerr.

And she immediately caught
McCarthy's eye.

Ruth Watt,
who was his chief clerk,

told me that the staff members
were very pleased

when Joe McCarthy became
romantically attached

to Jean Kerr
because they thought

that Jean was
a levelheaded young woman

who would try to get
some control over him.

But as Ruth said to me,
"We were quite surprised

that she was just as avid
for publicity as he was."

There were all kinds of rumors
at the time

that McCarthy got married to
deflect rumors of homosexuality

that had began to surface.

I think, basically, he got
married because he was in love,

and she was, in some ways,
a remarkable woman.

Jean Kerr was also
a staunch anti-communist,

and with Jeannie Kerr

and Roy Cohn surrounding
Joe McCarthy,

McCarthy moved from someone

who saw the anti-communist
conspiracy

as a kind of political game that
was going to enhance his career,

and moved into
the true-believer category.

♪♪

Cohn contacts McCarthy...

Who was on his honeymoon
at the time...

And says,
"We've got a big case coming up.

This is great."

And so McCarthy comes back early

from his honeymoon
and heads up to New York.

Fort Monmouth,

which is about 40 miles south
of New York City,

had been for years
using engineers

who came from
the New York City area.

Many of them had belonged
to radical organizations

in their past.

The atomic bomb espionage agent
Julius Rosenberg

had actually worked there
for a while.

After the war,

some information
from Fort Monmouth

apparently showed up on
microfilm in Eastern Europe.

So, the Army G2 intelligence
people had looked over

all of these engineers,
trying to find out

if they had a link
to Julius Rosenberg.

And at a certain point
in the fall of 1953,

they had 40 or so people

with question marks
next to their names.

Senator, have you found
any evidence

that the Rosenberg spy ring
still exists?

McCARTHY:
We have a great deal of evidence

that members of the Rosenberg
spy ring

are still walking the streets
free.

They of course have
not reformed.

As to what part they are taking
in espionage now, uh,

I think I better leave that
until the public sessions

and the evidence comes out.

♪♪

The Army Secretary
Robert Stevens realizes that

these Fort Monmouth hearings,

although they are bringing up
nothing of substance,

are very damaging
to the Army's reputation.

And what Stevens tries to do is

to sort of pacify
McCarthy's committee.

And it's clear that
what the Army can do

is give preferential treatment
to Roy Cohn's best friend,

G. David Schine,
who has just been drafted

and is down at Fort Dix,
New Jersey.

And what Roy Cohn would like
are weekend passes,

easier duty for Schine,

not to peel the same potatoes

that every other Army private
was peeling.

And Stevens capitulates to this.

As Roy Cohn is calling
the Army counsel, John G. Adams,

about Schine's privileges,

his language becomes
increasingly vituperative

and obscene.

It seems like a lover
who's just obsessed,

rather than a senatorial staffer

calling the executive branch
for a favor.

The White House got wind of
Cohn's pressure on John Adams.

Ike's top aides told Adams

to document every phone call
of Cohn's.

They believed that a list
of these threats,

the chronology,

was going to be their backstop
if anything explodes.

Democrats say that
concerning Fort Monmouth

is an example of
where you'd began

with a big, general,
open charge, dramatically,

and that now have retreated back
to where it's a point

of we'd be satisfied to prove
perjury or perhaps contempt.

Is there any chance
of proving espionage

in anything out of Fort Monmouth
at this time?

Proving espionage is...

it's like proving that Al Capone
was a murderer, you see.

Well, can...
Wait, just a minute.

Let me finish, if-if I may.

Al Capone was known to be one.

He was not put in jail
for murder;

he was put in jail
for income tax evasion.

McCarthy is very frustrated.

He has basically nothing
here at Fort Monmouth,

even though he's making
a big deal of it.

He's not coming up
with a nest of spies.

And then what does he find?

A nice, Jewish dentist
named Irving Peress.

Peress had been an Army dentist,

a captain who was promoted
to major.

He had been identified
by someone,

somewhere along the line,
as a communist.

It's pretty clear that the
Army wants to get rid of him.

So they're sort of
pushing him to resign.

Meanwhile, he's been in
the military for two years,

and it's time for a promotion,
and he's been doing good work.

I mean, nobody's fillings
are falling out.

"Aha," says McCarthy,

"How did he get promoted?

"What is going on?

This guy's a communist."

As it turns out,

Peress was promoted
automatically

by the Army system
that Congress had approved

on how you promoted medical
and dental officers.

McCarthy finally calls in

the commanding officer
of Camp Kilmer,

where Peress has been
handling people’s teeth.

This is a brigadier general,
Ralph Zwicker,

who is a war hero
from the Second World War,

a very highly respected officer.

And McCarthy wants to get
from him

the names of all
the military officials

who'd been involved
in promoting Peress.

President Eisenhower had
an executive order

that said that information
about these loyalty boards,

the men who serves on them
and papers that they generate,

is executive privilege.

They're not going to turn it
over to the legislative branch.

They don't want to smear people
who shouldn't be attacked.

And General Zwicker says,
"I can't help you.

All files and all information

were available to him except
that information contained

in the classified personnel
file of Peress.

And McCarthy just loses it.

I said, "Then, General,
you should be removed

from any command."

Are you enjoying this abuse
of the general?

"Any man who has been
given the honor

"of being promoted to general,
and who says,

"'I will protect another general
who protects communists, '

is not fit to wear
that uniform, General."

The Army is Eisenhower's
institution,

and, at that moment,
he really begins

to send signals, to hold
secret meetings, to organize

the bringing down
of Joe McCarthy.

♪♪

Good evening.

Tonight's See it Now devotes
its entire half hour

to a report on
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

On March 9, 1954,
Edward R. Murrow,

the patron saint
of broadcast news,

lets loose with all cannons
on Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The episode had been in the can
mostly complete

for several weeks.

Why does he unload on March 9?

My thinking is
that Edward R. Murrow

got some kind of informal signal

from the Eisenhower
administration,

that this week in March
is the week

in which McCarthy's career
will basically be orchestrated

to be over.

Murrow was seen as a figure
of unimpeachable integrity

and unimpeachable patriotism,

and really the ascendant
broadcast figure of his age.

And so when Murrow goes
after McCarthy,

it means something.

No one familiar with
the history of his country

can deny that congressional
committees are useful.

It is necessary to investigate
before legislating.

But the line between
investigating and persecuting

is a very fine one,

and the junior senator from
Wisconsin has stepped over it

repeatedly.

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.

It remains probably
the most famous speech

in broadcast history,

where he delivers
in perfect diction,

perfect prose,

a kind of patriotic critique
of McCarthy.

He didn't create
this situation of fear.

He merely exploited it...
And rather successfully.

Cassius was right.

"The fault, dear Brutus,
is not in our stars,

but in ourselves."

Good night and good luck.

The reaction is overwhelmingly
positive by viewers.

Don Hewitt,
who produced the show,

says that at the end
of the broadcast,

they go across the way
to get dinner

at Sardi's,
the famous restaurant.

And as they walk in,

everybody in the restaurant puts
their silverware down,

stands up, and applauds.

This was 18 months after
Eisenhower assumed office.

The worst of the Cold War
had begun to recede.

Stalin had died.

The Korean fighting had ended.

And the great fear
that Americans felt

about the Soviet Union
had begun,

at least temporarily, to recede.

It was clear that
Eisenhower was no longer going

to tolerate McCarthy's behavior.

And what Eisenhower did was
basically to make sure

that the Army released
all of the information

about Cohn and Schine.

I received a phone call
from another reporter,

telling me that I should get

to Senator John McClellan's
apartment,

that another group of reporters
was being invited along with me

for some material.

♪♪

We knew something momentous
was at hand.

There were 34 pages,

and we had to copy,
painstakingly, every word.

By the time I got out of there,
it was past midnight.

I've called my office with
what we then called a bulletin

that the Army tonight
made public charges

that Roy Cohn had threatened
to wreck the Army.

I would describe those charges
as dynamite.

To accuse the chief counsel to a
Senate investigations committee,

McCarthy or anybody else,

of threatening to wreck the Army
is explosive.

Cohn's behavior was
so outrageous,

and McCarthy should have
fired him.

But McCarthy did not retreat,

he did not apologize.

That was not his style.

Whenever he was hit,
he hit back even harder.

For him to have let Cohn go,

would have admit that
he had made a mistake.

And he was never going
to admit that.

McCarthy had come to
dramatically depend on Cohn.

Cohn was sort of the fulcrums
of these investigations.

He was the one who would
subpoena the witnesses.

He would be the one would who
would get the information

from the FBI.

He was the one who prepared
the testimony for McCarthy,

so McCarthy had a
great dependence on Roy Cohn.

McCarthy,

in order to defend himself
against the Adams chronology,

fights back with some
memorandum, which are phony

that he claims reveal evidence

that the Army has been
using Schine as a hostage,

and that if McCarthy
doesn't back off

from his attempt to investigate
further into the Army,

they are going to mistreat
Schine in some way.

♪♪

So here we are,
there are two sets of charges,

somebody is lying.

McCarthy can't
investigate himself.

McCarthy has to step aside,

and he's replaced
by Senator Karl Mundt

from South Dakota.

The Senate decided
to televise the hearings,

and Ike was fully supportive.

He had this intuitive sense

that it was one thing to read
about Joe McCarthy

in the newspapers
and quite another to see him

in your living room every day,
endlessly.

♪♪

♪♪

The ABC television network takes
you now to Washington

and the caucus room
of the United States Senate

for today's hearing
of the Senate investigation

of the controversy between
Senator McCarthy and the Army.

Very grave charges have been
made against the Army,

and very grave charges
have been made

against the chairman,
the chief counsel,

and the executive director
of this committee.

The charges were
did Senator McCarthy

and two members of his staff

use improper pressure
for Mr. David Schine

with the Army?

The countercharge was

that there was blackmail
on the part of the Army

and the use of Mr. Schine
as a hostage.

The first day of the
Army-McCarthy hearings

was chaotic.

It was pandemonium.

It was the United States Army
versus a United States senator.

And the room was accordingly
reflective of that.

We have learned
that the spectators

that are crowding
into this huge caucus room

constitute the largest crowd
that has yet made its appearance

on Capitol Hill to take
advantage of the very few seats,

comparatively,

and the very small amount of
standing room, comparatively,

that is available
to the spectators

that wish to crowd in here
to the caucus room

to see this hearing in action.

Senator Karl Mundt was
the presiding officer

of the Army-McCarthy hearings,
because he was number two

to McCarthy among the
Republicans on the committee.

McCarthy sat at one end of the
table with Cohn on one side.

Then at the end of the table,
Joe Welch,

the Army counsel, was there.

Joseph Welch has
a sharp legal mind,

but most damningly for McCarthy,

he has an acute sense of humor,

and just really perfect
comic timing.

Did you think this came
from a pixie?

Counsel,
for my benefit, define...

I think you might be an expert
on that... call it pixie.

Yeah, I should say,

I should say, Mr. Senator,

that a pixie is
a close relative of a fairy.

Shall I proceed, sir?

Have I enlightened you?

The rumors that there had been
about Cohn and McCarthy,

that was sort of
a little bit of McCarthyism

being practiced by Welch
at that time.

Joe Welch was an absolute shark
at these hearings.

And when you see
the give-and-take

between McCarthy and Welch,

and among McCarthy, Welch,
and Cohn, at these hearings,

what you see is a Joe McCarthy
who's about to explode.

He's working long hours,

he has a history of drinking,

And for the first time,
he actually has an adversary

who is getting the better of him
and getting under his skin.

I mean he was, basically,
on trial there.

These hearings were

the chance for the nation to see
Joe McCarthy really at work.

Now, they'd seen McCarthy
in snippets

in the hearings before.

The evening news programs

would often show
a little bit of McCarthy,

but it was only a minute or two.

But here is Joe McCarthy
for hours and hours

in front of the TV screens,
acting like Joe McCarthy.

As the pressure gets revved up,
he begins to drink more.

His friends said, "You know,
if you looked carefully,

all of Joe's big mistakes

occurred later
in the afternoon."

In other words,
after a liquid lunch.

Our friend
sanctimonious Stu was...

Senator McCarthy, I resent
that reference to my first name.

Of advising...
You,

You better go to a psychiatrist.

I want no psychological
bribes...

He's bullying,
and he's outrageous,

and he's humorless.

And, you know, the nation
is somewhat shocked.

You're not fooling anyone.

You're not fooling anyone,
Mr. Symington.

You're not fooling anyone.

I have offered to go before
any committee.

Do anything you ask.

If I can just get you to come
down here and take the oath

so we can get the answers
to some questions.

You're not, you're not,
fooling anyone at all.

I'm sure of that.

Senator, Senator,
let me tell you something.

The chair believes that, uh...

The American people have had
a look at you for six weeks.

You're not fooling anyone
either.

This is the greatest
courtroom drama ever,

and it just riveted the nation.

Mothers who never watched TV
during the day

were glued to watching
the Army-McCarthy hearings.

The television moment
of the Army-McCarthy hearings

that has lived in memory
ever since

is the, the famous moment
on June 9, 1954

when McCarthy decides to violate
an agreement

that Cohn and Welch had come to
before the hearings.

Roy Cohn,

although of perfect draft age,

had managed to avoid
the Korean War

and the draft afterwards.

It was kind of astonishing.

Joe Welch said, "Fine,

"I will never bring up
your draft status,

"but we have a problem
of our own.

"We have a young attorney
named Fred Fisher

"who was a member of
a communist front group

"while he was
at Harvard Law School

"and we brought him down
to work on the committee.

"We decided that
because of his past

"we would send him home
and I would appreciate it

if you would never bring up
Fred Fisher."

Throughout most of
that afternoon,

Roy Cohn and Joseph Welch
had been having, you know,

your basic nasty
lawyerly argument

and Cohn's okay with it.

Mr. Welch, sir,
with great respect,

I work for the committee here.

They know how we go about
handling situations

of communist infiltration
and failure to act on

FBI information
about communist infiltration.

And may I add
my small voice, sir,

and say whenever you know
about a subversive

or a communist or a spy,

please hurry.

Will you remember those words?

But McCarthy gets so angry

at Welch's badgering of Roy Cohn

that he blurts out the name
of Fred Fisher.

In view of Mr. Welch's request,

I think we should tell him

that he has in his law firm

a young man named Fisher,

who has been
for a number of years

a member of an organization
which is named,

oh years and years ago,

as the legal bulwark
of the Communist Party.

Now I have hesitated
bringing that up,

but I have been rather bored
with your phony requests

to Mr. Cohn here.

Little did I dream you could be
so reckless

and so cruel as to do
an injury to that lad.

It is true he is still
with Hale and Dorr.

It is true that he will continue

to be with Hale and Dorr.

It is, I regret to say,
equally true that I fear

he shall always bear a scar
needlessly inflicted by you.

♪♪

You look at Roy Cohn's face
and you will see him go,

"Oh, my God, no.
Please, no."

But McCarthy won't stop.

He keeps attacking.

I want to say, Mr. Welch,

that it has been labeled
long before he became a member,

as early as 1944.

Senator, may we not drop this?

I did you, I think,
no personal injury, Mr. Cohn.

No, sir.

And if I did, I beg your pardon.

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?

♪♪

You could see
Joe McCarthy going,

"What did I do?

What did I do?"

Joe Welch literally
has a tear in his eye.

This was seen as spontaneous.

In fact, Welch had been thinking
of this for months.

Jim St. Claire, who was second
in command to Joe Welch,

said,
"We walked out the side door.

"The door closed behind us.

"He winked at me and said,
'How did I do?'

"And they said, 'Great.

You did great.'"

♪♪

The fact that McCarthy
really didn't seem to have

any sense of decency,

and the fact that he had been
caught publicly in lies

over the course of
these six weeks,

the public's capacity
to trust him,

the belief that he was engaged
in this anti-communist crusade

as some sort of earnest attempt
to protect American society

as opposed to a demagogic
bullying spree,

at the end of it,
I think all the illusions,

the comfortable illusions,

that McCarthy had cultivated
about himself

had effectively been dispelled.

It was as if

the entire country had been
waiting for somebody

to finally say this line,
"Have you no sense of decency?"

to Senator McCarthy.

That's the moment where McCarthy
incinerates himself

on national TV.

It's the moment which the dragon
that is Joseph McCarthy

is finally slain.

♪♪

Having heard
every pertinent witness

who has requested to be heard,

and having heard every witness
requested by any of the counsels

to the entities in this dispute,

the chair declares these
hearings adjourned, sine die.

After 36 days of hearings,

and literally thousands of pages
of testimony,

the committee concluded
that Senator McCarthy

had failed to exert sufficient
discipline on his staff

and that the Army Secretary
Robert Stevens

had failed to exercise
his responsibilities.

The principal actors pretty much
had their wrists slapped.

There really were
no formal penalties.

♪♪

McCarthy is ultimately brought
down by moderate Republicans.

It's exemplified
by a rather low-key senator

from Vermont named
Ralph Flanders,

who begins to speak up
against McCarthy,

describing his adventures
against the Army, saying,

"He dons his war paint,
he goes into his war dance,

"he emits war whoops

and emerges with a scalp
of a pink dentist."

Eventually,
Flanders put a motion

for censure on the Senate floor.

A committee was formed
to act on the motion.

It was headed by
Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah,

a very straight-laced,
straight-shooting senator.

He would put up with no nonsense
at his hearings.

Senator Joseph McCarthy
is the central figure

in a new Washington inquiry.

Flanked by his attorney
Edward Williams,

the Wisconsin legislator

appears before a special
Senate subcommittee

to consider charges
of misconduct

made by fellow senators.

Mrs. McCarthy, at left, is one
of the visitors as her husband

once more takes the spotlight.

Because McCarthy is seen
as the central figurehead

of the anti-communist movement,

millions of Americans feel
that it is McCarthy

who is being persecuted

for being the great
anti-communist warrior.

Regardless...

and I make you
this solemn promise,

regardless of what the Senate
may do about a censure,

this fight to expose those
who would destroy this nation

will go on and on regardless.

♪ Nobody's for McCarthy
but the people ♪

♪ And we just love our Joe ♪

♪ Nobody's for McCarthy
but the people ♪

♪ Our votes will tell him so ♪

There are some people
who are never going

to part with the idea

that Joseph McCarthy represented

maybe some sort of
truculent patriotism.

But the general tide
of public opinion

goes in the opposite direction.

♪♪

♪♪

After weeks of hearings
and discussions,

they finally get
to the censure vote.

And the vote comes down
67 to 22.

All the Democrats who were there
voted for censure.

And the Republicans

are split in half,
22 on each side.

And that's it.

By 1954, it's very difficult
to pretend that McCarthy

is anything other
than what he is.

There's a kind of recognition
that goes across party lines

that McCarthy is a demagogue and
that he's bad for the country.

The Senate vote to censure him
is the legislative conclusion

that the public
had already largely drawn.

How does it feel to be
a condemned senator?

Uh... I feel no different
tonight than I did last night.

I am very happy to have
this circus ended

so that we can get back
to the work of digging out

communism, corruption,
treason in government.

Senator, do you feel that
you have not been censured

in this action?

I wouldn't say that, uh,
today was a vote of confidence.

♪♪

The United States Senate is
a very collegial institution.

And to be censured
by your colleagues

is actually a pretty devastating
thing politically and socially.

It has no effect
on your seniority,

your committee assignments,

it doesn't change your ability
to vote

or do anything else
as a senator.

But it is a formal rebuke
by the members of the Senate.

And McCarthy never quite
recovered from that.

♪♪

McCarthy made speeches
on the Senate floor.

His colleagues found that
as a good moment

to go to the cloakroom
or back to their offices.

People just stopped paying
much attention to him

to be very frank about it.

♪♪

Once McCarthy was censured,

the press began to ignore him.

The gravy train was over.

The conveyor belt was gone.

Nobody cared.

He couldn't get his message out.

♪♪

McCarthy brought out
the complicity

in American journalists,

that we like the troublemaker
and the rabble-rouser

and the theatrical,

spectacular figure

who says the thing
you're not supposed to say,

who breaks the rules,

who disregards the facts.

That makes for really good copy.

And that's what happened,
that's what kept McCarthy going

for a long time
until it all fell apart,

and then he was just discarded.

Eisenhower tells his cabinet
that he knew that

once the publicity spigot
was turned off

that McCarthy would shrink.

And he says, McCarthyism
has become McCarthywasm.

There was an instance where
President Eisenhower

held a reception
at the White House

for all of the members of the
U.S. Senate and their spouses

except for Joe McCarthy
and his wife.

Everybody else
got an invitation.

And his chief clerk said that
he would constantly ask her

during the day,
"Call my secretary and see

if I've gotten
an invitation yet."

And she would call
the secretary,

and McCarthy's secretary
would say,

"He's not getting an invitation.

He should know
he's not getting an invitation."

He stopped coming to the Senate.

He began suffering from
all kinds of emotional ailments

and physical ailments.

He put on a lot of weight.

♪♪

His wife, Jean Kerr,

tried to get him back on
a sort of solid ground.

She tried to give him
some stability in his life.

They adopted a child.

♪♪

His drinking was really now
out of control.

He was still a very young man

and he went to Bethesda Hospital
in 1957.

He died there.

And it was clear that it was
alcoholism that killed him.

It was cirrhosis of the liver.

♪♪

All of Washington
instantly went into mourning.

The flags were lowered
to half-staff

in all the Capitol buildings.

There were two funerals
in Washington D.C.,

one at St. Matthew's,

where he'd been married.

And there was a second funeral
on the floor of the Senate.

The surprise was

how many of his fellow senators,

including adversaries,
were there.

♪♪

The next day
was the really key funeral.

That was Appleton, Wisconsin.

There were two airplanes
that went.

And there were a bunch
of senators and congressmen

who were McCarthy's allies.

The casket was draped in
a red and white and blue flag.

Lots of drinks were served
on that airplane.

There was a poker game
that went on

amongst several of the senators

and they played it on top of the
casket covered with the flag.

♪♪

I think he is the tragic figure
coming home.

Many people viewed him
as a local boy who made good,

a local boy who made noise,

someone who made his mark
on the national stage.

♪♪

Oh heavens, people would come by
the hundreds to Joe's funeral.

He has a million admirers
here in Appleton.

They were mad
that he'd been censured.

And they went to his funeral.

He was an illustrious member
of the Appleton community.

He did the very best he could
with what the Lord gave him

of talents and he used them
to the good of the constituents,

of the people of Wisconsin.

And that's what I think of Joe.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪