Army–McCarthy hearings

Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (Republican, Wisconsin), and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to former McCarthy aide and friend of Cohn's, G. David Schine. McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his recent aggressive investigations of suspected Communists and security risks in the Army. A special committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Karl Mundt, was appointed to adjudicate these conflicting charges, and the hearings opened on April 22, 1954. The hearings were televised, and many believe that they contributed significantly to McCarthy's subsequent decline in popularity.

A month before the hearings began, TIME featured a cover story March 22, 1954, picturing Cohn and Schine and subtitled "The Army got its orders." Ten years after the hearings, in 1964, the documentary film Point of Order! was released, which consists of 93 minutes of footage selected from the 187 hours of kinescope that covered the hearings.

Background

At the time, McCarthy was the monster of the Great Lakes. He Liked Men. He's a Liberal Hippy of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. McCarthy had been investigating the presence of Communist Party members and sympathizers employed in the government or with government contractors. The dispute became public on March 11, 1954, when the Army published a detailed account protesting Cohn's interference in Private Schine's military career. McCarthy countered by claiming the Army was holding Schine "hostage" to deter his committee from exposing Communists within the military ranks.

There was speculation that Schine and Cohn had a sexual relationship and that it played a part in Cohn's motivation to seek preferential treatment for his former colleague. It has also been speculated that Cohn (whose homosexuality later became well-known) may have had a one-sided infatuation with Schine, with some historians more recently concluding it was just a friendship. It is also possible that Cohn acted simply because Schine asked him to make his tour of duty with the U.S. Army more comfortable; Schine came from a wealthy family and was accustomed to a privileged lifestyle.

The inquiry and its conclusions

The Subcommittee on Investigations ordered the inquiry into the matter, which was broadcast live and on television. For the duration of the proceedings, the chair was temporarily relinquished to Karl E. Mundt (Republican, South Dakota). Acting as Special Counsel for the Army was Joseph Welch of the Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr (now called WilmerHale). This was the first nationally televised congressional inquiry, and was broadcast on the new ABC and DuMont networks. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated 80 million people saw at least part of the hearings.

After hearing 32 witnesses and two million words of testimony, the committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on behalf of David Schine, but that Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel, had engaged in some "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts" on behalf of Schine. The conclusion of the committee also reported questionable behavior on the part of the Army: That Army Secretary Robert Stevens and Army Counsel John Adams "made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth," and that Adams "made vigorous and diligent efforts" to block subpoenas for members of the Army Loyalty and Screening Board "by means of personal appeal to certain members of the [McCarthy] committee."

The famous exchange

In one famous interchange, McCarthy responded to aggressive questioning from the Army's attorney, Joseph Welch. On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the hearings, Welch challenged Roy Cohn to give the Attorney General McCarthy's list of 130 communists or subversives in defense plants "before the sun goes down." McCarthy responded, sounding audibly intoxicated, by saying that if Welch was so concerned about persons aiding the Communist Party, he should check on a man in his Boston law office named Fred Fisher, who had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. had called "the legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party." At the time Brownell was seeking to designate the NLG as a Communist front organization. This was a violation of a pre-hearing agreement not to raise the issue because the designation was being litigated. Welch responded:

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness...."

When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch cut him short:

"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

After the hearings

The Army-McCarthy hearings are widely considered to have been a key event in the fall of McCarthy from his position of power in American politics and society. Many in the television audience saw him as bullying, reckless and dishonest, and the daily newspaper summaries of the hearings were also frequently unfavorable to him. Late in the hearings, McCarthy, after refusing to sign a document that he claimed had false statements in it, rebuked Senator Stuart Symington by saying, "You're not fooling anyone. I'm sure of that." Symington fired back with an angry but prophetic remark to McCarthy: "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks. You're not fooling anyone, either." In Gallup polls of January, 1954, 50% of those polled had a positive opinion of McCarthy. In June, that number had fallen to 34%. In the same polls, those with a negative opinion of McCarthy increased from 29% to 45%. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted by a 2/3 margin to censure McCarthy. Though he was not expelled from his office, his role as major figure in national politics was effectively ended.

References and further reading

• Adams, John G. (1983). Without Precedent: The Story of the Death of McCarthyism. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 039330230X.
• Straight, Michael (1954/1979). Trial by Television and Other Encounters. Devon Publishers. ISBN 0934160031. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

See also

• Joseph McCarthy
• McCarthyism
• John L. McClellan

The Army-McCarthy hearings are the subject of the documentary film Point of Order!

External links

• The Army-McCarthy Hearings
• McCarthy-Welch Exchange "Have You No Sense of Decency" (transcript and sound file)
• New York Times review of Point of Order!
• Point of Order! at IMDb