Army-McCarthy Hearings - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

's Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954. The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

and Senator Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...

. The Army accused chief committee counsel Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn

Roy Marcus Cohn was an American attorney who became famous during Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into Communist activity in the United States during the Second Red Scare. Cohn gained special prominence during the Army–McCarthy hearings. He was also an important member of the U.S...

of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to G. David Schine

G. David Schine

Gerard David Schine, better known as G. David Schine or David Schine, was the wealthy heir to a hotel chain fortune who received national attention when he became a central figure in the Army-McCarthy Hearings of 1954 in his role as the chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on...

, a former McCarthy aide and a friend of Cohn's. McCarthy counter-charged that this accusation was made in bad faith and in retaliation for his recent aggressive investigations of suspected Communists and security risks in the Army.

Chaired by Senator Karl Mundt, the hearings convened on March 16, 1954 and received considerable press attention, including gavel-to-gavel live television

Live television

Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...

coverage on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

and DuMont

DuMont Television Network

The DuMont Television Network, also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont, Du Mont, or Dumont was one of the world's pioneer commercial television networks, rivalling NBC for the distinction of being first overall. It began operation in the United States in 1946. It was owned by DuMont...

from April 22 to June 17. The media coverage, particularly television, greatly contributed to McCarthy's decline in popularity and his eventual censure

Censure

A censure is an expression of strong disapproval or harsh criticism. Among the forms that it can take are a stern rebuke by a legislature, a spiritual penalty imposed by a church, and a negative judgment pronounced on a theological proposition.-Politics:...

by the Senate the following December.

Background

McCarthy came to national prominence in 1950 when he claimed to have a list of a number of people (McCarthy did not always cite the same number) known to the State Department as Communists, yet who still remained employed there. At the beginning of his second term as senator in 1953, McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. This committee included the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the mandate of this subcommittee allowed McCarthy to use it to carry out his investigations of Communists in the government. McCarthy appointed 26-year-old Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn

as chief counsel to the subcommittee, reassigning Francis Flanagan to the ad hoc position of general counsel.

In 1953, McCarthy's committee began inquiries into the United States Army

United States Army

, starting by investigating supposed Communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps

United States Army Signal Corps

The United States Army Signal Corps develops, tests, provides, and manages communications and information systems support for the command and control of combined arms forces. It was established in 1860, the brainchild of United States Army Major Albert J. Myer, and has had an important role from...

laboratory at Fort Monmouth

Fort Monmouth

Fort Monmouth was an installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, and is located about 5 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The post covers nearly of land, from the Shrewsbury...

. McCarthy's investigations were largely fruitless, but after the Army accused McCarthy and his staff of seeking special treatment for Private G. David Schine

G. David Schine

, a chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a close friend of Cohn's, and who had been drafted into the Army as a private the previous year, McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith.

The Inquiry

The Senate decided that these conflicting charges should be investigated and the appropriate committee to do this was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, usually chaired by McCarthy himself. Since McCarthy was one of the targets of the hearings, Republican Senator Karl Mundt (South Dakota) was reluctantly appointed to replace McCarthy as chair of the subcommittee. John G. Adams

John G. Adams

John G. Adams was the US Army's counsel in the Army-McCarthy Hearings. He was an Army veteran of World War II, and he worked in Washington, DC for the Defense Department before he became the US Army general counsel in 1953. From 1953 to 1955 he was the chief legal adviser to Army Secretary Robert...

was the Army's Counsel. Acting as Special Counsel was Joseph Welch of the Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

law firm of Hale & Dorr (now called WilmerHale). This was the first nationally televised congressional inquiry, and was broadcast on the new ABC

American Broadcasting Company

, DuMont

DuMont Television Network

, and in part by NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. Francis Newton Littlejohn

Francis Newton Littlejohn

Francis Newton Littlejohn, Sr. was the news director at the American Broadcasting Company that made the decision to cover the Army-McCarthy Hearings live, from gavel to gavel. He resigned from ABC in 1961.-References:...

, the news director at ABC, made the decision to cover the hearings live, gavel-to-gavel. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated 80 million people saw at least part of the hearings.

The Photo

During the hearings, a photo of Schine was introduced, and Joseph Welch accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert Stevens

Robert Ten Broeck Stevens

Robert Ten Broeck Stevens was a U.S. businessman and former chairman of J.P. Stevens and Company, which was one of the most established textile manufacturing plants in the U.S...

. On the witness stand Cohn and Schine both insisted that the picture entered into evidence (Schine and Stevens alone) was requested by Stevens himself and that no one was edited out of the photo. Welch then produced a wider shot of Stevens and Schine with McGuire AFB

McGuire Air Force Base

JB MDL McGuire is a United States Air Force base located approximately south-southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. McGuire is under the jurisdiction of the USAF Air Mobility Command...

wing commander Colonel Jack Bradley standing to Schine's right. A fourth person also edited out of the picture (his sleeve was visible to Bradley's right in the Welch photo) was identified as McCarthy aide Frank Carr.

The Hoover Memo

After the discrediting of the photo, McCarthy produced a copy of a confidential letter he claimed was a January 1951 memo written and signed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...

addressed to Army Intelligence warning of subversives in the Army Signal Corps. McCarthy claimed the letter was in the Army files when Stevens became secretary in 1953, and that Stevens willfully ignored it. Welch was the first to question the letter's validity, claiming that McCarthy's "purported copy" did not come from Army files; McCarthy stated he never received any document from the FBI, but when questioned on the stand by special Senate counsel Ray Jenkins

Ray Jenkins

Ray Howard Jenkins was an American lawyer, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the surrounding region, throughout much of the 20th century...

and cross-examined by Welch, McCarthy adamantly refused to divulge his source. Subsequent testimony on Hoover's behalf from an FBI official confirmed that Hoover never wrote or ordered the letter, and that no such copy existed in FBI files, rendering McCarthy's claims meritless, and the letter itself spurious.

Homosexuality

Though the hearings were primarily about government subversion, the hearings also took on occasional accusations of a different taboo: A portion of the hearings were taken up for the express purpose of evaluating the security risk of homosexuals in government and the issue would be brought up on other occasions, as well as being an undercurrent in the investigations.

One such example of this undercurrent during the testimony was this humorous exchange between Senator McCarthy and Joseph Welch

Joseph Welch

Joseph Nye Welch was the head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities, an investigation known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings.- Early life :Welch was born in Primghar, Iowa on...

; Welch was questioning McCarthy staff member James Juliana about the unedited picture of Schine with Stevens and Bradley asking him "Did you think this came from a pixie?", at which point McCarthy asked to have the question re-read:

Senator McCarthy. Will counsel (Welch) for my benefit define-- I think he might be an expert on that-- what a pixie is?

Mr. Welch. Yes. I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy. (laughter from the chamber) Shall I proceed, sir? Have I enlightened you?

Senator McCarthy. As I said, I think you may be an authority on what a pixie is.

Cohn, Schine and McCarthy

At least a portion of the Army's allegations were correct. Roy Cohn did take steps to request preferential treatment for Schine, going so far on at least one occasion to sign McCarthy's name without his knowledge on a request for Schine to have access to the Senators' Baths.

The exact relationship between Cohn, McCarthy and Schine is not precisely known. Cohn and Schine were certainly close, and rather than work out of the Senate offices, the two rented nearby office space and shared bills. McCarthy himself commented that Cohn was unreasonable in matters dealing with Schine. It is unclear if Schine ever had a romantic or sexual relationship with Cohn, who was a closeted homosexual (Three years after the hearings Schine married and eventually had six children). Some have also suggested that McCarthy may have been gay, and even possibly involved with Schine or Cohn.

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.

Joseph Welch confronts McCarthy

In what was the most dramatic exchange of the hearings, McCarthy responded to aggressive questioning from Army counsel Joseph Welch

Joseph Welch

. On June 9, 1954, Day 30 of the hearings, Welch challenged Cohn to give McCarthy's list of 130 subversives in defense plants to the office of the FBI and the Department Of Defense "before the sun goes down". In response to Welch's challenge, McCarthy suggested that Welch should check on Fred Fisher

Fred Fisher (lawyer)

Frederick George Fisher, Jr., was an American lawyer who first entered the public eye in connection with Senator Joseph McCarthy.-Biography:...

, a young lawyer in Welch's own Boston

Boston

law firm whom Welch planned to have on his staff for the hearings. McCarthy then mentioned that Fisher had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild

National Lawyers Guild

The National Lawyers Guild is an advocacy group in the United States "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system . ....

(NLG), a group which U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr.

Herbert Brownell, Jr.

Herbert Brownell, Jr. was the Attorney General of the United States in President Eisenhower's cabinet from 1953 to 1957.-Early life:...

had called "the legal bulwark

Bulwark

Bulwark may refer to:*A bastion or fortifications in general*In naval terminology, an extension of a ship's sides above deck level*HMS Bulwark, any of several Royal Navy ships*USS Bulwark, any of several US Navy ships...

of the Communist Party."

At the time Brownell was seeking to designate the NLG as a Communist front

Communist front

A Communist front organization is an organization identified to be a front organization under the effective control of a Communist party, the Communist International or other Communist organizations. Lenin originated the idea in his manifesto of 1902, "What Is to Be Done?"...

organization, and McCarthy mentioning Fisher's membership violated a pre-hearing agreement to not raise the issue as it was still being litigated. Welch revealed that he himself had already confirmed Fisher's one-time NLG membership some six weeks before the hearings started; after Fisher admitted his membership to Welch, it was decided to send Fisher back to Boston. His replacement by another colleague on Welch's staff was also covered by The New York Times. Welch then gently reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher repeatedly using the adjectives "cruel" and "reckless". But McCarthy, accusing Welch of filibustering

Filibuster

A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is the right of an individual to extend debate, allowing a lone member to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal...

the hearing and baiting Cohn, dismissed Welch's dissertation and casually resumed his attack on Fisher, at which point Welch angrily cut him short:

"Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyer's Guild...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?"

Infuriated by McCarthy's actions, Welch excluded himself from the remainder of the hearings with a parting shot to McCarthy: "You have seen fit to bring it [the Fisher/NLG affair] out, and if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good!" After Welch deferred to Chairman Mundt to call the next witness, the gallery burst into applause.

Conclusion & Aftermath

Near the end of the hearings McCarthy and Senator Stuart Symington

Stuart Symington

William Stuart Symington was a businessman and political figure from Missouri. He served as the first Secretary of the Air Force from 1947 to 1950 and was a Democratic United States Senator from Missouri from 1953 to 1976.-Education and business career:...

sparred over the handling of secret files by McCarthy's staff. Symington hinted that some members of McCarthy's own staff might themselves be subversive and signed a document agreeing to take the stand in the hearings to reveal their names in return for McCarthy's signature on the same document agreeing to an investigation of his staff. But McCarthy, after rudely calling Symington "Sanctimonious Stu", refused to sign the document claiming it contained false statements, and called Symington's accusations an "unfounded smear" on his men. He then rebuked Symington by saying, "You're not fooling anyone!", but then Symington retaliated with a prophetic remark of his own: "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 fell to 34%. In the same polls, those with a negative opinion of McCarthy increased from 29% to 45%.

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 Secretary Stevens

Robert Ten Broeck Stevens

Robert Ten Broeck Stevens was a U.S. businessman and former chairman of J.P. Stevens and Company, which was one of the most established textile manufacturing plants in the U.S...

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." Before the official reports were released Cohn had resigned as McCarthy's chief counsel, and Senator Ralph Flanders

Ralph Flanders

Ralph Edward Flanders was an American mechanical engineer, industrialist and Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Vermont. He grew up on subsistence farms in Vermont and Rhode Island, became an apprentice first as a machinist, then as a draftsman, before training as a mechanical engineer...

(R, Vermont) had introduced a resolution of censure against McCarthy in the Senate.

Despite McCarthy's acquittal of wrongdoing in the Schine matter, the Army–McCarthy hearings ultimately became the main catalyst in McCarthy's downfall from political power. Daily newspaper summaries were frequently unfavorable towards McCarthy while television audiences saw the junior Senator from Wisconsin as foolhardy, dishonest and intimidating. On December 2, 1954, the Senate

United States Senate

voted 67-22 to censure

Censure

McCarthy, effectively eradicating his influence, though not expelling him from office. McCarthy continued to chair the Subcommittee on Investigations until January 3, 1955, the day the 84th United States Congress

84th United States Congress

The Eighty-fourth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1955 to January 3, 1957, during the third and...

was inaugurated. McCarthy died of hepatitis

Hepatitis

Hepatitis is a medical condition defined by the inflammation of the liver and characterized by the presence of inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ. The name is from the Greek hepar , the root being hepat- , meaning liver, and suffix -itis, meaning "inflammation"...

in May 1957.

External links

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