Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy (November 15, 1908 - May 2, 1957) was a United States Republican Senator from the state of Wisconsin. He is famous for lending his name to McCarthyism, the period of intense anti-communism that occurred in America from around 1948 to the mid-1950s.
Joseph McCarthy (1954 photo)
Early career
McCarthy was born on a farm in the town of Grand Chute, Wisconsin. He worked his way through a law degree at Marquette University in Milwaukee from 1930 to 1935, and was admitted to the bar in 1935. While working in a law firm in the town of Shawano, he launched an unsuccessful campaign to become District Attorney as a Democrat in 1936. In 1939, he campaigned successfully for election as a circuit judge.
In 1942, shortly after the United States joined the Second World War, McCarthy took a commission as a lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, although his judicial office would have exempted him from compulsory service. He saw combat as an observer and gunner on bombing missions in the South Pacific. This earned him the handle "Tailgunner Joe".
He campaigned for the Republican Senate nomination in Wisconsin while still on active duty in 1944, but was easily defeated by incumbent Alexander Wiley. After resigning his commission in April, 1945 and being re-elected unopposed to his circuit court position, he began a much more systematic campaign for the 1946 Senate election, challenging the other Wisconsin incumbent, Robert M. LaFollette Jr. McCarthy enjoyed the support of the state party organization, and won the nomination narrowly. He easily defeated his Democratic Party opponent in the election.
Senator
As a first-term senator, McCarthy was unremarkable, and his voting record was conservative but not entirely in line with party policy. He was hungry for popular and media attention, however, and made a large number of speeches to many different organisations, covering a wide range of topics. His most notable early campaigns were for housing legislation and against sugar rationing. His national profile was to rise meteorically after his infamous speech of February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
McCarthy's exact words in the speech are a matter of some dispute, as they were not reliably recorded at the time, the media presence being minimal. It is generally agreed, however, that he produced a piece of paper which he claimed contained a list of known communists working for the State Department. One version of the speech reports his words as "I have in my hand a list of 205 cases of individuals who appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party." McCarthy himself stated that he referred to 57 known communists, the number 205 referring to the number of people employed by the state department who, for various security reasons, should not be. The exact number stated became a matter of some moment when it was used as the basis of an accusation of perjury against Senator McCarthy.
There was indeed a State Department document which listed employees over whom there were various concerns, not merely related to loyalty but also including issues such as drunkenness and incompetence. The effect of McCarthy's speech, however, in a nation already worried by the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union in Europe and alarmed by the trial of Alger Hiss, which was in progress as McCarthy made his speech, was electric. McCarthy himself was taken aback at the massive media response to the speech, and continually revised both his charges and his figures over the following days, a characteristic feature of his method of operation. In Salt Lake City a few days later he cited a figure of 57, and in the Senate on February 20 he claimed 81. He made a marathon speech discussing all these cases in detail, but the evidence for many was tenuous or non-existent; nevertheless, the impact of the speech was considerable. The Senate convened the Tydings committee to examine the charges, which eventually found them to be groundless. Against an effective demagogue such as McCarthy, however, this was ineffective; he simply reformulated his charges slightly and continued making them both in the Senate and to the press.
In 1995, when Venona transcripts were declassified, it was learned that regardless of the specific number, McCarthy consistently underestimated the extent of Soviet espionage. Venona specifically references at least 349 people in the United States--including citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents--who cooperated in various ways with Soviet intelligence agencies. Among them were some high-ranking officials in the United States government, such as Harry White, who was explicitly named in Venona intercepts. (See Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr.)
It is generally believed that McCarthy had no access to Venona intelligence, deriving his information from other sources. Venona does confirm that some individuals investigated by McCarthy were indeed Soviet agents. For example, Mary Jane Keeney was identified by McCarthy simply as "a communist"; in fact she and her husband were both Soviet agents. Another individual named by McCarthy was Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to President Roosevelt. He was confirmed by Venona to be a Soviet Agent.
Anti-Communist crusade
From 1950 to 1953 McCarthy continued to press his accusations that the government was failing to deal with communism within its ranks, while his overnight stardom gave him a powerful national following and a source of considerable income. His finances were investigated by a senate panel in 1952; its report cited questionable behaviour in his campaigns and irregularities in his finances, but found no grounds for legal action. He married Jean Kerr, a researcher in his office, on September 29, 1953.
After the Republican electoral triumph of 1953 - a triumph his charges assisted; it is probable that the defeat of more than one Democratic candidate for national office in 1953 was due at least in part to accusations against him by McCarthy - the party leadership, recognising his immense popularity and his value as a stick with which to beat liberal Democrats, appointed him chairman of the Permanent Investigating Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. His unreliability and evasiveness, however, meant he was never completely trusted by the party (and particularly by President Dwight Eisenhower).
His committee, unlike the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, focused on government institutions. It first made an investigation into bureaucracy at Voice of America, then forced the withdrawal of supposedly pro-communist literature from the State Department overseas information library. Meanwhile, McCarthy continued to make accusations of communist influence within the government, notwithstanding the fact that it was now a Republican government. This angered Eisenhower. He was not willing to oppose McCarthy publicly due to his continuing popularity, but he now considered McCarthy a dangerous loose cannon and began behind-the-scenes work to remove him from his position of influence.
McCarthy brandishing one of his infamous lists
Fall of McCarthy
In the fall of 1953, McCarthy's committee began its ill-fated inquiry into the United States Army. It attempted to uncover a spy ring in the Army Signal Corps, but failed. The committee came to focus its attention on an Army dentist, Irving Peress, who took the Fifth Amendment twenty times under sustained questioning. Peress was accused of recruiting military personnel into the Communist Party. It is known for certain that Peress refused to answer questions on Defense Department forms concerning membership in "subversive organizations", and that the Army Surgeon General had recommended his dismissial early in 1953. McCarthy expressed serious concerns that Peress had not been discharged after that recommendation, but instead had been promoted to the rank of Major.
In examining this latter question, Senator McCarthy brought hostile media attention upon himself concerning his treatment of General Ralph W. Zwicker. Among other things, McCarthy compared Zwicker's intelligence to that of a "five-year-old child", and stated that Zwicker was "not fit to wear the uniform of a General." Early in 1954, the Army accused Senator McCarthy and his assistant, Roy Cohn, of pressuring the Army to give favourable treatment to another former aide and friend of Cohn's, David Schine. McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his questioning of Zwicker the previous year.
One of the most prominent attacks on McCarthy's methods came in an episode of the TV documentary series See it Now, by respected journalist Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast on March 9, 1954. Murrow's program was devoted to McCarthy's treatment of Annie Lee Moss, a clerk in the Pentagon code room. McCarthy claimed that she was a member of the Communist Party, and consequently should not be allowed to work in a sensitive Pentagon position. Moss was a very sympathetic figure, an elderly African American woman. When asked by McCarthy's committee about Karl Marx, she replied "Who's that?" She stated that there were three entires for "Annie Lee Moss" in the Washington, DC phone book, and suggested that the "Annie Lee Moss" appearing in the membership list of the Communist Party was somebody else, and the fact that this "Annie Lee Moss" was listed with her address was due to a mistake. She also received the Communist periodical The Daily Worker delivered to her house, but contended that this too was the result of a mistaken address. There was no other "Annie Lee Moss" listed in the phone book, but this fact was not checked at the time.
Upon his ascension, McCarthy essentially restaffed his Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, often not dismissing the predecessor. One noted figure was Roy Cohn. Mr. Cohn was known for his zealous prosecution of William Remington (a former Commerce Department employee whom he convicted of perjury relating to his membership in the Communist party), Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, and a trial of the top Communist Party leaders in the U.S. The 1995 release of the Venona transcripts later proved that both Remington and the Rosenbergs were in fact working for the Soviets.
When McCarthy appointed him to serve as subcommittee council, Cohn, a brash 26 year old procescutor with no legislative experience, continued to perform as if he were a prosecutor rather than grand jury. Cohn tended to be uninclined to hold the hearing in open forums. This mixed well with McCarthy's preference for holding "executive sessions" and "off-the-record" sessions far away from the Capitol in order to minimize public scruitny and question witnesses. Cohn, though chosen in part to avoid accusations of an anti-semitic motivation for the investigations, was given free reign in pursuit of investigations. McCarthy would come to admit in regards to Cohn that "putting a young man in charge of other men doesn't work out too well."
Several noted persons resigned from the committee fairly early into McCarthy's administration of it including Robert F. Kennedy who literally came to blows with Roy Cohn. These resignations lead to the appointment of B. Matthews as executive director. Matthews was a former member of several "Communist-front" organizations, in which he claimed to have joined more than any other American. However, when he fell out of favor with the radical groups of the 30s, he became a fevorant anti-Communist. Matthews was an ordained Methodist Minister and was therefore often referred to as a "Doctor Matthews" though he held no degree. Matthews later resigned due to a portrayal of Communist sympathy in the nation's protestant clergy in a paper called "Reds in Our Churches" which outraged several senators. Through this however McCarthy maintained control of the subcommittee and whom it employed or chose not to. This resulted in several more resignations.
McCarthyism
The phrase "McCarthyism" came from the senator's impatience for due process and the rights of witnesses. This impatience lead to McCarthy's use of "executive" sessions (the term was previously reserved primarily to debate treaties and other "executive" business) to question witnesses. These sessions were classified for a term of 50 years however were declassified on schedule in May, 2003. These sessions were not really closed as cronies and favored reporters of McCarthy were allowed in. The names of witnesses and McCarthy's associated interpretations were often, therefore, printed in the press. McCarthy also ignored Senate rules requiring a vote of subcommitee members in order to bring in whitnesses. Instead, he issued blank subpoenas which his staff members could issue at will. Generally witnesses were not given fair notice in advance. These hearings were often away from Washington and were therefore chaired solely by McCarthy with no peer-oversight. During these sessions McCarthy would inform witnesses of their right to refuse to answer questions. Later he'd contact their employer and have them fired if they did so. To this effect he coined the term "Fifth-Amendment Communists".
While McCarthy was best known for his investigations of Communists, he also investigated other socially unacceptable groups. Among these groups, McCarthy conducted security investigations of homosexuals and produced a report entitled "Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government".
As the investigations continued, press coverage became more and more hostile to McCarthy. The Army was by now engaged on a fightback, supported and aided covertly by Eisenhower. The final disaster of the investigation for McCarthy was the now famous riposte by Joseph Welch, the Army's chief attorney, to an attack by McCarthy on one of his team. Welch asked McCarthy "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?"
While it was not well known at the time, while this compelling interchange seemed a most impressive bit of "unrehearsed theater", it was actually rehearsed on Welch's part. Welch reached an agreement (probably with the full intention of having McCarthy break it) that in exchange for not bringing up Roy Cohn's draft dodging, McCarthy and his cohorts would not bring up the communist record of one of Welch's attorneys. Welch reportedly rehearsed his retort in advance and after leaving the room in tears winked at an associate and said, "How'd I do?"
The hearings came to an ignominious close soon afterwards, and the whole affair prompted a Senate measure to censure McCarthy, passed by 67 votes to 22. This ended McCarthy's career and effectiveness as a politician.
McCarthy was not the soley responsible for this era of communist "witch-hunting". In fact it predated his ascent by a few years with similar tactics being used in the House Commmittee on Un-American Activities. McCarthy, however, took this to new levels and thus rightly or wrongly took the fall perhaps in part for not only his own but the wrongdoing of the era.
McCarthy had always been a heavy drinker, one of the things that had helped him develop amicable relationships with many members of the press. His discrediting in the Senate seems to have caused anger and depression which turned his heavy drinking into full-scale alcoholism. This seems to have aggravated his existing weak health, and caused serious diseases. He finally died of acute hepatitis in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957. He was survived by his wife Jean and their adopted daughter Tierney.
External links
Defenses of McCarthy
- By Human Events Online, a conservative weekly:
- By The New American, a conservative magazine:
- By Opinioned Editorials, a conservative website: