Senator McCarthy's first three years in the Senate were unremarkable. McCarthy was a popular speaker, invited by many different organizations, covering a wide range of topics. His aides and many in the Washington social circle described him as charming and friendly, and he was a popular guest at cocktail parties. He was far less well liked among fellow senators, however, who found him quick-tempered and prone to impatience and even rage. Outside of a small circle of colleagues, he was soon an isolated figure in the Senate, who was often widely criticized. McCarthy was active in labor-management issues, with a reputation as a moderate Republican. He fought against continuation of wartime price controls, especially on sugar. His advocacy in this area was associated by critics with a $20,000 personal loan McCarthy received from a
Pepsi bottling executive, earning the Senator the derisive nickname "The Pepsi-Cola Kid". With the support of the
Lustron Corporation, a manufacturer of prefabricated houses, he sponsored what became the Housing Act of 1948, a less sweeping alternative to President Truman's preferred bill. Truman complained, on signing the act, about the "emasculated housing bill, which fails to include several of the most important provisions of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill." Truman's preferred bill passed the following year, and became the
Housing Act of 1949. McCarthy supported the
Taft–Hartley Act over Truman's veto, angering labor unions in Wisconsin but solidifying his business base.
Malmedy massacre trial In an incident for which he would be widely criticized, McCarthy lobbied for the commutation of death sentences given to a group of
Waffen-SS soldiers convicted of war crimes for carrying out the 1944
Malmedy massacre of American prisoners of war. McCarthy was critical of the convictions because the German soldiers' confessions were allegedly obtained through torture during the interrogations. He argued that the U.S. Army was engaged in a coverup of judicial misconduct, but never presented any evidence to support the accusation. Shortly after this, a 1950 poll of the Senate press corps voted McCarthy "the worst U.S. senator" currently in office. McCarthy biographer
Larry Tye has written that antisemitism factored into McCarthy's outspoken views on Malmedy, and noted that McCarthy frequently used anti-Jewish slurs. In this and McCarthy's other characteristics, such as the enthusiastic support he received from antisemitic politicians like
Ku Klux Klansman Wesley Swift and his tendency, according to friends, to refer to his copy of
Mein Kampf, stating, "That's the way to do it," McCarthy's critics characterize him as driven by antisemitism. However, Tye argues that McCarthy's criticisms of the Malmedy trial were driven not only by antisemitism, but by opportunism to gain favor with the political right by scapegoating marginalized groups.
"Enemies within" McCarthy experienced a meteoric rise in national profile beginning on February 9, 1950, when he gave a
Lincoln Dinner speech to the Republican Women's Club of
Wheeling, West Virginia. His words in the speech are a matter of some debate, as no audio recording survives. However, it is generally agreed that he produced a piece of paper that he claimed contained a list of known Communists working for the
State Department. McCarthy is usually quoted as having said: "The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the
Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." There is some dispute with whether McCarthy actually gave the number of people on the list as being "205" or "57". In a later telegram to President Truman, and when entering the speech into the
Congressional Record, he used the number 57. The origin of the number 205 can be traced: in later debates on the Senate floor, McCarthy referred to a 1946 letter that then–Secretary of State
James Byrnes sent to Congressman
Adolph J. Sabath. In that letter, Byrnes said State Department security investigations had resulted in "recommendation against permanent employment" for 284 persons, and that 79 of these had been removed from their jobs; this left 205 still on the State Department's payroll. In fact, by the time of McCarthy's speech only about 65 of the employees mentioned in the Byrnes letter were still with the State Department, and all of these had undergone further security checks. At the time of McCarthy's speech, communism was a significant concern in the United States. This concern was exacerbated by the actions of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the
victory of the communists in the Chinese Civil War, the Soviets'
development of a nuclear weapon the year before, and by the contemporary controversy surrounding
Alger Hiss and the confession of Soviet spy
Klaus Fuchs. With this background and due to the sensational nature of McCarthy's charge against the State Department, the Wheeling speech soon attracted a flood of press interest in McCarthy's claim.
Tydings Committee McCarthy himself was taken aback by the massive media response to the Wheeling speech, and he was accused of continually revising both his charges and figures. In
Salt Lake City a few days later, he cited a figure of 57, and in the Senate on February 20, 1950, he claimed 81. During a five-hour speech, McCarthy presented a case-by-case analysis of his 81 "loyalty risks" employed at the State Department. It is widely accepted that most of McCarthy's cases were selected from the so-called "Lee list", a report that had been compiled three years earlier for the
House Appropriations Committee. Led by a former
Federal Bureau of Investigation agent named Robert E. Lee, the House investigators had reviewed security clearance documents on State Department employees, and had determined that there were "incidents of inefficiencies" in the security reviews of 108 employees. McCarthy hid the source of his list, stating that he had penetrated the "iron curtain" of State Department secrecy with the aid of "some good, loyal Americans in the State Department". In reciting the information from the Lee list cases, McCarthy consistently exaggerated, representing the hearsay of witnesses as facts and converting phrases such as "inclined towards Communism" to "a Communist". of Maryland, who chaired the
Tydings Committee investigation into McCarthy's accusations In response to McCarthy's charges, the Senate voted unanimously to investigate, and the
Tydings Committee hearings were called. This was a subcommittee of the
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations set up in February 1950 to conduct "a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State". Many Democrats were incensed at McCarthy's attack on the State Department of a Democratic administration, and had hoped to use the hearings to discredit him. The Democratic chairman of the subcommittee, Senator
Millard Tydings, was reported to have said, "Let me have him [McCarthy] for three days in public hearings, and he'll never show his face in the Senate again." During the hearings, McCarthy made charges against nine specific people:
Dorothy Kenyon,
Esther Brunauer, Haldore Hanson,
Gustavo Durán,
Owen Lattimore,
Harlow Shapley,
Frederick Schuman,
John S. Service, and
Philip Jessup. They all had previously been the subject of charges of varying worth and validity. McCarthy came to focus particularly on Lattimore, who at one point he described as a "top Russian spy". From its beginning, the Tydings Committee was marked by intense partisan infighting. Its final report, written by the Democratic majority, concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program. The Tydings Report labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax," and described them as using incensing rhetoric—saying that the result of McCarthy's actions was to "confuse and divide the American people ... to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves". Republicans were outraged by the Democratic response. They responded to the report's rhetoric in kind, with
William E. Jenner stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history". The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.
Fame and notoriety ", coined the term "
McCarthyism" in this cartoon in the March 29, 1950,
Washington Post. From 1950 onward, McCarthy continued to exploit the
fear of Communism and to press his accusations that the government was failing to deal with Communism within its ranks. McCarthy also began investigations into homosexuals working in the foreign policy bureaucracy, who were considered prime candidates for blackmail by the Soviets. These accusations received wide publicity, increased his approval rating, and gained him a powerful national following. In Congress, there was little doubt that homosexuals did not belong in sensitive government positions. As historian
David M. Barrett would write, "Mixed in with the hysterics were some logic, though: homosexuals faced condemnation and discrimination, and most of them—wishing to conceal their orientation—were vulnerable to
blackmail." Director of Central Intelligence
Roscoe Hillenkoetter was called to Congress to testify on homosexuals being employed at the
CIA. He said, "The use of homosexuals as a control mechanism over individuals recruited for espionage is a generally accepted technique which has been used at least on a limited basis for many years." As soon as the DCI said these words, his aide signaled to take the remainder of the DCI's testimony off the record. Political historian David Barrett uncovered Hillenkoetter's notes, which reveal the remainder of the statement: "While this agency will never employ homosexuals on its rolls, it might conceivably be necessary, and in the past has actually been valuable, to use known homosexuals as agents in the field. I am certain that if
Joseph Stalin or a member of the
Politburo or a high satellite official were known to be a homosexual, no member of this committee or of the Congress would balk against our use of any technique to penetrate their operations ... after all, intelligence and espionage is, at best, an extremely dirty business." The senators reluctantly agreed the CIA had to be flexible. McCarthy's methods also brought on the disapproval and opposition of many. Barely a month after McCarthy's Wheeling speech, the term "McCarthyism" was coined by
Washington Post cartoonist Herbert "
Herblock" Block. Block and others used the word as a synonym for
demagoguery, baseless defamation, and mudslinging. Later, it would be embraced by McCarthy and some of his supporters; "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled," McCarthy said in a 1952 speech, and later that year he published a book titled
McCarthyism: The Fight For America. McCarthy sought to discredit his critics and political opponents by accusing them of being Communists or communist sympathizers. In the 1950 Maryland Senate election, McCarthy campaigned for
John Marshall Butler in his race against four-term incumbent Millard Tydings, with whom McCarthy had been in conflict during the Tydings Committee hearings. In speeches supporting Butler, McCarthy accused Tydings of "protecting Communists" and "shielding traitors". McCarthy's staff was heavily involved in the campaign and collaborated in the production of a campaign tabloid that contained a composite photograph doctored to make it appear that Tydings was in intimate conversation with Communist leader
Earl Russell Browder. A Senate subcommittee later investigated this election and referred to it as "a despicable, back-street type of campaign", as well as recommending that the use of defamatory literature in a campaign be made grounds for expulsion from the Senate. The pamphlet was clearly labeled a composite. McCarthy said it was "wrong" to distribute it; though staffer Jean Kerr thought it was fine. After he lost the election by almost 40,000 votes, Tydings claimed foul play. In addition to the Tydings–Butler race, McCarthy campaigned for several other Republicans in the
1950 elections, including
Everett Dirksen against Democratic incumbent and Senate Majority Leader
Scott W. Lucas. Dirksen, and indeed all the candidates McCarthy supported, won their elections, and those he opposed lost. The elections, including many that McCarthy was not involved in, were an overall Republican sweep. Although his impact on the elections was unclear, McCarthy was credited as a key Republican campaigner. He was now regarded as one of the most powerful men in the Senate and was treated with new-found deference by his colleagues. A 2014 study found little evidence that McCarthy's campaigning against other Senators mattered in the election outcomes. In the 1952 Senate elections McCarthy was returned to his Senate seat with 54.2% of the vote, compared to Democrat Thomas Fairchild's 45.6%. As of 2020, McCarthy is the last Republican to win Wisconsin's Class 1 Senate seat. {{Election box begin no change
McCarthy and the Truman administration McCarthy and President
Harry S. Truman clashed often during the years both held office. McCarthy characterized Truman and the Democratic Party as soft on, or even in league with, Communists, and spoke of the Democrats' "twenty years of treason". Truman, in turn, once referred to McCarthy as "the best asset the
Kremlin has", calling McCarthy's actions an attempt to "sabotage the foreign policy of the United States" and comparing it to shooting American soldiers in the back. It was the Truman Administration's State Department that McCarthy accused of harboring 205 (or 57 or 81) "known Communists". Truman's
Secretary of Defense,
George Marshall, was the target of some of McCarthy's most vitriolic rhetoric. Marshall had been
Army Chief of Staff during World War II and was also Truman's former
Secretary of State. Marshall was a highly respected general and statesman, remembered today as the architect of victory and peace, the latter based on the
Marshall Plan for post-war reconstruction of Europe, for which he was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. McCarthy made a lengthy speech on Marshall, later published in 1951 as a book titled ''America's Retreat From Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall''. Marshall had been involved in American foreign policy with China, and McCarthy charged that Marshall was directly responsible for the loss of China to Communism. In the speech McCarthy also implied that Marshall was guilty of treason; declared that "if Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest"; Unlike other women targets of McCarthyism, Rosenberg emerged with her career and integrity intact. When the smear campaign fizzled out, journalist
Edward R. Murrow said "the character assassin has missed."
Support from Catholics and the Kennedy family One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States was the Catholic community, which constituted over 20% of the national vote. McCarthy identified himself as Catholic, and although the great majority of Catholics were Democrats, as his fame as a leading anti-Communist grew, he became popular in Catholic communities across the country, with strong support from many leading Catholics, diocesan newspapers, and Catholic journals. At the same time, some Catholics opposed McCarthy, notably the anti-Communist author Father
John Francis Cronin and the influential journal
Commonweal. McCarthy established a bond with the powerful
Kennedy family, which had high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a close friend of
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., himself a fervent anti-Communist, and he was also a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He dated two of Kennedy's daughters,
Patricia and
Eunice. It has been stated that McCarthy was
godfather to
Robert F. Kennedy's first child,
Kathleen Kennedy. This claim was acknowledged by Robert's wife and Kathleen's mother
Ethel, Robert Kennedy was unusual among his Harvard friends for defending McCarthy when they discussed politics after graduation. He was chosen by McCarthy to be a counsel for his investigatory committee, but resigned after six months due to disagreements with McCarthy and Committee Counsel
Roy Cohn. Joseph Kennedy had a national network of contacts and became a vocal supporter, building McCarthy's popularity among Catholics and making sizable contributions to McCarthy's campaigns. The Kennedy patriarch hoped that one of his sons would be president. Mindful of the
anti-Catholic prejudice which
Al Smith faced during his
1928 campaign for that office, Joseph Kennedy supported McCarthy as a national Catholic politician who might pave the way for a younger Kennedy's presidential candidacy. Unlike many Democrats,
John F. Kennedy, who served in the Senate with McCarthy from 1953 until the latter's death in 1957, never attacked McCarthy. Due to his friendship with the Kennedys and, reportedly, a $50,000 donation from Joseph Kennedy, McCarthy did not campaign for incumbent Republican senator
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. when John F. Kennedy challenged him in
1952. Lodge lost despite Eisenhower winning the state in the presidential election. When a speaker at a February 1952
final club dinner stated that he was glad that McCarthy had not attended
Harvard University, an angry Kennedy jumped up, denounced the speaker, and left the event; when
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. asked John Kennedy why he avoided criticizing McCarthy, Kennedy responded by saying, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero".
McCarthy and Eisenhower , 34th President of the United States. During the
1952 presidential election, the Eisenhower campaign toured Wisconsin with McCarthy. In a speech delivered in
Green Bay, Eisenhower declared that while he agreed with McCarthy's goals, he disagreed with his methods. In draft versions of his speech, Eisenhower had also included a strong defense of his mentor, George Marshall, which was a direct rebuke of McCarthy's frequent attacks. However, under the advice of
conservative colleagues who were afraid that Eisenhower could lose Wisconsin if he alienated McCarthy supporters, he deleted this defense from later versions of his speech. The deletion was discovered by William H. Laurence, a reporter for
The New York Times, and featured on its front page the next day. Eisenhower was widely criticized for giving up his personal convictions, and the incident became the low point of his campaign. McCarthy won reelection in 1952 with 54% of the popular vote, defeating former Wisconsin State Attorney General
Thomas E. Fairchild but, as stated above, badly trailing a Republican ticket which otherwise swept the state of Wisconsin; all the other Republican winners, including Eisenhower himself, received at least 60% of the Wisconsin vote. Those who expected that party loyalty would cause McCarthy to tone down his accusations of Communists being harbored within the government were soon disappointed. Eisenhower had never been an admirer of McCarthy, and their relationship became more hostile once Eisenhower was in office. In a November 1953 speech that was carried on national television, McCarthy began by praising the Eisenhower Administration for removing "1,456 Truman holdovers who were ... gotten rid of because of Communist connections and activities or perversion." He then went on to complain that
John Paton Davies Jr. was still "on the payroll after eleven months of the Eisenhower administration," even though Davies had actually been dismissed three weeks earlier, and repeated an unsubstantiated accusation that Davies had tried to "put Communists and espionage agents in key spots in the
Central Intelligence Agency." In the same speech, he criticized Eisenhower for not doing enough to secure the release of missing American pilots shot down over China during the Korean War. By the end of 1953, McCarthy had altered the "twenty years of treason" catchphrase he had coined for the preceding Democratic administrations and began referring to "twenty-
one years of treason" to include Eisenhower's first year in office. As McCarthy became increasingly combative towards the Eisenhower Administration, Eisenhower faced repeated calls that he confront McCarthy directly. Eisenhower refused, saying privately "nothing would please him [McCarthy] more than to get the publicity that would be generated by a public repudiation by the President." On several occasions Eisenhower is reported to have said of McCarthy that he did not want to "get down in the gutter with that guy."
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations With the beginning of his second term as senator in January 1953, McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. According to some reports, Republican leaders were growing wary of McCarthy's methods and gave him this relatively mundane panel rather than the
Internal Security Subcommittee—the committee normally involved with investigating Communists—thus putting McCarthy "where he can't do any harm", in the words of Senate Majority Leader
Robert A. Taft. However, the Committee on Government Operations included the
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the mandate of this subcommittee was sufficiently flexible to allow McCarthy to use it for his own investigations of Communists in the government. McCarthy appointed
Roy Cohn as chief counsel and 27-year-old
Robert F. Kennedy as an assistant counsel to the subcommittee. Later, McCarthy also hired
Gerard David Schine, heir to a hotel-chain fortune, on the recommendation of George Sokolsky. This subcommittee would be the scene of some of McCarthy's most publicized exploits. When the records of the closed executive sessions of the subcommittee under McCarthy's chairmanship were made public in 2003–04, Senators
Susan Collins and
Carl Levin wrote the following in their preface to the documents: Senator McCarthy's zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of our government. His freewheeling style caused both the Senate and the Subcommittee to revise the rules governing future investigations, and prompted the courts to act to protect the Constitutional rights of witnesses at Congressional hearings. ... These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to re-occur. The subcommittee first investigated allegations of Communist influence in the
Voice of America, at that time administered by the State Department's
United States Information Agency. Many VOA personnel were questioned in front of television cameras and a packed press gallery, with McCarthy lacing his questions with hostile innuendo and false accusations. A few VOA employees alleged Communist influence on the content of broadcasts, but none of the charges were substantiated. Morale at VOA was badly damaged, and one of its engineers committed suicide during McCarthy's investigation. Ed Kretzman, a policy advisor for the service, would later comment that it was VOA's "darkest hour when Senator McCarthy and his chief hatchet man, Roy Cohn, almost succeeded in muffling it." Shortly after this, in one of his public criticisms of McCarthy, President Eisenhower urged Americans: "Don't join the book burners. ... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book." Soon after receiving the chair to the Subcommittee on Investigations, McCarthy appointed
J. B. Matthews as staff director of the subcommittee. One of the nation's foremost anti-communists, Matthews had formerly been staff director for the
House Un-American Activities Committee. The appointment became controversial when it was learned that Matthews had recently written an article titled "Reds and Our Churches", which opened with the sentence, "The largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States is composed of Protestant Clergymen." A group of senators denounced this "shocking and unwarranted attack against the American clergy" and demanded that McCarthy dismiss Matthews. McCarthy initially refused to do this. As the controversy mounted, however, and the majority of his own subcommittee joined the call for Matthews's ouster, McCarthy finally yielded and accepted his resignation. For some McCarthy opponents, this was a signal defeat of the senator, showing he was not as invincible as he had formerly seemed.
Investigating the Army In autumn 1953, McCarthy's committee began its ill-fated inquiry into the
United States Army. This began with McCarthy opening an investigation into the
Army Signal Corps laboratory at
Fort Monmouth. McCarthy, newly married to Jean Kerr, cut short his honeymoon to open the investigation. He garnered some headlines with stories of a dangerous spy ring among the army researchers, but after weeks of hearings, nothing came of his investigations. Unable to expose any signs of subversion, McCarthy focused instead on the case of
Irving Peress, a New York dentist who had been drafted into the army in 1952 and promoted to major in November 1953. Shortly thereafter it came to the attention of the military bureaucracy that Peress, who was a member of the left-wing
American Labor Party, had declined to answer questions about his political affiliations on a loyalty-review form. Peress's superiors were therefore ordered to discharge him from the army within 90 days. McCarthy subpoenaed Peress to appear before his subcommittee on January 30, 1954. Peress refused to answer McCarthy's questions, citing his rights under the
Fifth Amendment. McCarthy responded by sending a message to
Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, demanding that Peress be court-martialed. On that same day, Peress asked for his pending discharge from the army to be effected immediately, and the next day
Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, his commanding officer at
Camp Kilmer in
New Jersey, gave him an honorable separation from the army. At McCarthy's encouragement, "Who promoted Peress?" became a rallying cry among many anti-communists and McCarthy supporters. In fact, and as McCarthy knew, Peress had been promoted automatically through the provisions of the
Doctor Draft Law, for which McCarthy had voted.
Army–McCarthy hearings Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused McCarthy and his chief counsel,
Roy Cohn, of improperly pressuring the army to give favorable treatment to
G. David Schine, a former aide to McCarthy and a friend of Cohn's, who was then serving in the army as a private. McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his questioning of Zwicker the previous year. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, usually chaired by McCarthy himself, was given the task of adjudicating these conflicting charges. Republican senator
Karl Mundt was appointed to chair the committee, and the
Army–McCarthy hearings convened on April 22, 1954. (right) at the
Army-McCarthy hearings. The army consulted with an attorney familiar with McCarthy to determine the best approach to attacking him. Based on his recommendation, it decided not to pursue McCarthy on the question of communists in government: "The attorney feels it is almost impossible to counter McCarthy effectively on the issue of kicking Communists out of Government, because he generally has some basis, no matter how slight, for his claim of Communist connection." The hearings lasted for 36 days and were broadcast on
live television by
ABC and
DuMont, with an estimated 20 million viewers. After hearing 32 witnesses and two million words of testimony, the committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on Schine's behalf, but that Cohn had engaged in "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts". The committee also concluded 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". Of far greater importance to McCarthy than the committee's inconclusive final report was the adverse effect that the extensive exposure had on his popularity. Many in the audience saw him as bullying, reckless, and dishonest, and the daily newspaper summaries of the hearings were also frequently unfavorable. Late in the hearings, upon being told by McCarthy that "You're not fooling anyone", Senator
Stuart Symington replied: "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 favorable opinion of McCarthy. In June, that number had fallen to 34%. In the same polls, those with a unfavorable opinion of McCarthy increased from 29% to 45%. An increasing number of Republicans and conservatives were coming to see McCarthy as a liability to the party and to anti-communism. Representative
George H. Bender noted, "There is a growing impatience with the Republican Party. McCarthyism has become a synonym for witch-hunting,
Star Chamber methods, and the denial of ... civil liberties."
Frederick Woltman, a reporter with a long-standing reputation as a staunch anti-communist, wrote a five-part series of articles criticizing McCarthy in the
New York World-Telegram. He stated that McCarthy "has become a major liability to the cause of anti-communism", and accused him of "wild twisting of facts and near-facts [that] repels authorities in the field". the 30th day of the hearings, Welch challenged Roy Cohn to provide
U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. with McCarthy's list of 130 Communists or subversives in defense plants "before the sun goes down". McCarthy stepped in and said 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. In an impassioned defense of Fisher, Welch responded, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness ..." When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch interrupted him: "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?" When McCarthy once again persisted, Welch cut him off and demanded the chairman "call the next witness". At that point, the gallery erupted in applause and a recess was called.
Edward R. Murrow, See It Now , pioneer in broadcast journalism. Even before McCarthy's clash with Welch in the hearings, one of the most prominent attacks on McCarthy's methods was an episode of the television documentary series
See It Now, hosted by journalist
Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast on March 9, 1954. Titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy", the episode consisted largely of clips of McCarthy speaking. In these clips, McCarthy accuses the Democratic party of "twenty years of treason", describes the
American Civil Liberties Union as "listed as 'a front for, and doing the work of', the Communist Party", and berates and harangues various witnesses, including General
Ralph Wise Zwicker. In his conclusion, Murrow said of McCarthy: The following week,
See It Now ran another episode critical of McCarthy, this one focusing on the case of
Annie Lee Moss, an African-American army clerk who was the target of one of McCarthy's investigations. The Murrow shows, together with the televised Army–McCarthy hearings of the same year, were the major causes of a nationwide popular opinion backlash against McCarthy, in part because for the first time his statements were being publicly challenged by noteworthy figures. To counter the negative publicity, McCarthy appeared on
See It Now on April 6, 1954, and made a number of charges against the popular Murrow, including the accusation that he colluded with
VOKS, the "Russian espionage and propaganda organization". This response did not go over well with viewers, and the result was a further decline in McCarthy's popularity.
"Joe Must Go" recall attempt On March 18, 1954,
Sauk-Prairie Star editor Leroy Gore of
Sauk City, Wisconsin, urged the
recall of McCarthy in a front-page editorial that ran alongside a sample petition that readers could fill out and mail to the newspaper. A Republican and former McCarthy supporter, Gore cited the senator with subverting President Eisenhower's authority, disrespecting Wisconsin's own General Zwicker, and ignoring the plight of Wisconsin dairy farmers. Despite critics' claims that a recall attempt was foolhardy, the "Joe Must Go" movement caught fire and was backed by a diverse coalition including other Republican leaders, Democrats, businessmen, farmers and students. The
Constitution of Wisconsin stipulates the number of signatures needed to force a recall election must exceed one-quarter the number of voters in the most recent gubernatorial election, requiring the anti-McCarthy movement to gather some 404,000 signatures in sixty days. Despite little support from organized labor or the state Democratic Party, the roughly organized recall effort attracted national attention, particularly during the concurrent Army-McCarthy hearings. Following the deadline of June 5, the final number of signatures was never determined because the petitions were sent out of state to avoid a subpoena from
Sauk County district attorney Harlan Kelley, an ardent McCarthy supporter who was investigating the leaders of the recall campaign on the grounds that they had violated Wisconsin's Corrupt Practices Act. Chicago newspapermen later tallied 335,000 names while another 50,000 were said to be hidden in Minneapolis, with other lists buried on Sauk County farms. On March 9, 1954,
Vermont Republican senator
Ralph E. Flanders gave a humor-laced speech on the Senate floor questioning McCarthy's tactics in fighting communism, likening McCarthyism to "house-cleaning" with "much clatter and hullabaloo". He recommended that McCarthy turn his attention to the worldwide encroachment of communism outside North America. In a June 1 speech, Flanders compared McCarthy to
Adolf Hitler, accusing him of spreading "division and confusion" and saying, "Were the Junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them." On June 11, Flanders introduced a resolution to have McCarthy removed as chair of his committees. Although there were many in the Senate who believed that some sort of disciplinary action against McCarthy was warranted, there was no clear majority supporting this resolution. Some of the resistance was due to concern about usurping the Senate's rules regarding committee chairs and seniority. Flanders next introduced a resolution to
censure McCarthy. The resolution was initially written without any reference to particular actions or misdeeds on McCarthy's part. As Flanders put it, "It was not his breaches of etiquette, or of rules or sometimes even of laws which is so disturbing," but rather his overall pattern of behavior. Ultimately a "bill of particulars" listing 46 charges was added to the censure resolution. A special committee, chaired by Senator
Arthur Vivian Watkins, was appointed to study and evaluate the resolution. This committee opened hearings on August 31. After two months of hearings and deliberations, the Watkins Committee recommended that McCarthy be censured on two of the 46 counts: his contempt of the Subcommittee on Rules and Administration, which had called him to testify in 1951 and 1952, and his abuse of General Zwicker in 1954. The Zwicker count was dropped by the full Senate on the grounds that McCarthy's conduct was arguably "induced" by Zwicker's own behavior. In place of this count, a new one was drafted regarding McCarthy's statements about the Watkins Committee itself. The two counts on which the Senate ultimately voted were: • That McCarthy had "failed to co-operate with the Sub-committee on Rules and Administration", and "repeatedly abused the members who were trying to carry out assigned duties ..." • That McCarthy had charged "three members of the [Watkins] Select Committee with 'deliberate deception' and 'fraud' ... that the special Senate session ... was a 'lynch party, and had characterized the committee "as the 'unwitting handmaiden', 'involuntary agent' and 'attorneys in fact' of the Communist Party", and had "acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity". On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to "condemn" McCarthy on both counts by a vote of 67 to 22. The Democrats present unanimously favored condemnation and the Republicans were split evenly. The only senator not on record was
John F. Kennedy, who was hospitalized for back surgery; Kennedy never indicated how he would have voted. Immediately after the vote, Senator
H. Styles Bridges, a McCarthy supporter, argued that the resolution was "not a censure resolution" because the word "condemn" rather than "censure" was used in the final draft. The word "censure" was then removed from the title of the resolution, though it is generally regarded and referred to as a censure of McCarthy, both by historians and in Senate documents. McCarthy himself said, "I wouldn't exactly call it a vote of confidence." He added, "I don't feel I've been lynched." However,
Indiana Senator
William E. Jenner, one of McCarthy's friends and fellow Republicans, likened McCarthy's conduct to that of "the kid who came to the party and peed in the lemonade." ==Final years==