Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (left) and Roy Cohn
June 9, 1954: Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, goes too far, and the country sees it, and sees him for what he really is: A liar and a bully.
McCarthy was a Marine tail-gunner in World War II, although stories of his heroism appear to have been exaggerated, including by himself. In 1946, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and the 1st 3 years of his term (1947, 1948 and 1949) were unremarkable.
But at a "Lincoln Day" speech in Wheeling, West Virginia early in 1950, he held up a piece of paper he claimed was a list of employees of the U.S. Department of State who were active members of the Communist Party. He would repeat this charge many times, but the number would change: Sometimes, it was 205; others, it would be 57; sometimes, another number.
It made McCarthy a national celebrity, at a time when most U.S. Senators were not well-known outside their respective home States. This was before 24-hour news networks, before C-SPAN, before social media.
Conservatives jumped to his support. Liberals said he was wrong, even lying. Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block, who signed his cartoons "Herblock," created the term "McCarthyism," in his "tower of tarbuckets" drawing. It shows a Republican elephant, pushed and pulled on by Guy Gabrielson, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and a former Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly; and Senators Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, the Minority Leader; Robert Taft of Ohio, the man so conservative he was known as "Mr. Republican," and later to be Majority Leader; and Styles Bridges of New Hampshire.
(By the time McCarthy fell, it was over for 3 of the 4: Wherry died of surgical complications in 1951; Gabrielson stepped down as Chairman after the 1952 Republican Convention, and lived until 1976; and Taft died of cancer in 1953. Styles remained in the Senate until his death in 1961.)
But that was in The Washington Post, a liberal newspaper in those days. Most of the media of the time, dominated by newspapers, was overwhelmingly conservative, pro-business and anti-Communist. McCarthy was exactly what they were looking for, and they promoted him and his efforts. The new "Red Scare," following the earlier one of 1919 and 1920, was on.
The Republicans made big gains in both houses of Congress in 1950, and won control of both houses in 1952, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President in a landslide. But even Eisenhower had to take a back seat during the '52 campaign: He had heard McCarthy make a false charge against General George C. Marshall, and ripped McCarthy for it face-to-face.
But a Republican official told "Ike" not to defend Marshall in his speech in Milwaukee, because it would make McCarthy look bad in his bid for a 2nd term. Ike dropped the mention of Marshall, McCarthy was re-elected, and Wisconsin, not really in doubt for the Republicans that year, was won by Ike.
After his Inauguration, though, Ike was determined to keep an eye on McCarthy. And when McCarthy convinced Karl Mundt of South Dakota, another "Red-baiter" and the Chairman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations, to hold hearings on Communist influence in the U.S. Army, the Army's greatest living ex-officer, Eisenhower, was furious, and invoked executive privilege when McCarthy demanded documents from the U.S. Department of Defense. But, as it turned out, Ike would not be directly involved in McCarthy's downfall.
On March 9, 1954, CBS News broadcast See It Now, hosted by Edward R. Murrow, who decided to expose McCarthy by broadcasting film footage of him telling bald-faced lies, and then exposing said lies. It was devastating, and it began McCarthy's fall.
Edward R. Murrow
In 2005, the film Good Night, and Good Luck (titled after Murrow's signoff) dramatized the broadcast and the events leading up to it. After an early screening, some people said the actor playing Senator McCarthy seemed too mean, like too much of a bully. There was no actor: They used actual footage of McCarthy, to better make the point of how bad McCarthy was -- just as Murrow did.
One week later, on March 16, 1954, what became known as "the Army-McCarthy Hearings" convened. Starting on April 22, 2 American TV networks began broadcasting gavel-to-gavel coverage. One, the DuMont Network, was already in financial trouble. The other, ABC, the American Broadcasting Company, had begun as a radio subsidiary of NBC, and broadcasting these hearings made them a major network for the first time. DuMont was probably doomed anyway, and ABC took their place in the "Big Three" alongside NBC and CBS.
Throughout the hearings, McCarthy issued charge after charge, and so did the man hired as legal counsel for the Committee, Roy Cohn. A whiz kid with a keen mind and a nasty disposition, he had graduated from law school at Columbia University when he was only 20 years old, and had to wait until his 21st birthday to be admitted to the New York State bar. He was appointed to the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, and served as the main prosecutor for atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
That got the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who recommended him to McCarthy. Now, only 27 years old, Cohn was the most famous lawyer in the country, and could have had a big career ahead of him had he not been Jewish. (Jacob Javits was in the House of Representatives for New York at the time, and was elected a U.S. Senator in 1956, but was never seriously considered for the Presidency.) But, unknown to the general public, Cohn was gay, and had this been exposed at the time, it would have destroyed him.
Despite working for McCarthy, and his views on most issues were considered staunchly conservative, then and now, Cohn was registered as a member of the Democratic Party. Unlike McCarthy, who attacked Harry S Truman during his Presidency (and Truman returned some fire), Cohn praised Truman, saying he "led the war against domestic and international Communism.” Cohn considered McCarthy’s investigations to be a continuation of that logic, rather than a break from it.
Things came to a head on June 9. Joseph N. Welch, a prominent attorney from Boston (and, it should be noted, a Republican), was senior counsel for the Army. McCarthy claimed to have a list of 130 "subversives" working in defense plants. Welch challenged McCarthy to give that list to the Defense Department and the FBI "before the Sun goes down."
McCarthy knew that his list was bullshit. And Welch knew it. And McCarthy knew that Welch knew it. So McCarthy went on the attack, saying that Welch should check on Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in Welch's firm. Fisher had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild, a group that Attorney General Herbert Brownell had called "the legal bulwark of the Communist Party" in America.
Welch had wanted Fisher on his team for these hearings, but asked him if there was anything in his background that McCarthy could exploit. Fisher came clean, and admitted that he had once belonged to the NLG. Welch knew this would be bad, and kept Fisher in Boston.
Welch responded to McCarthy's invocation of Fisher:
McCarthy kept up the attack, but Welch shut him down:
Joseph N. Welch
Welch decided that he had had enough, and told Mundt, "Mr. Chairman, you may, if you wish, call the next witness," got up, and left the Senate Caucus Room, which burst into applause.
McCarthy was damaged, perhaps beyond repair. But it wasn't over. Another member of the Committee was Stuart Symington, Democrat of Missouri. He knew the Pentagon, because he had been Assistant Secretary of the Army during World War II, and was named the 1st Secretary of the Air Force when it was split off from the Army in 1947.
Elected to the Senate in 1952, he already had ambitions. His name was placed in nomination for President at the Democratic Conventions in 1956 and 1960, but he didn't get very far either time. As a sports note, despite being from St. Louis, he was a vocal proponent for getting a new baseball team for Kansas City, the Royals, after the Athletics moved in 1967.
But all that was yet to come. At the June 9, 1954 hearing, after Welch so deftly damaged McCarthy, Symington suggested that maybe some members of McCarthy's staff might be subversive. McCarthy called him "Sanctimonious Stu," and said, "You're not fooling anyone!"
Symington came back, and said, "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks. You're not fooling anyone, either."
Symington was right: In January 1954, the Gallup polling organization had McCarthy with a 50 percent approval rating, with 29 percent disapproving; but when the hearings concluded on June 17, it was 45 to 34 disapproving -- a 16-point shift. And the hearings didn't expose one single Communist or other subversive. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67-22 to censure McCarthy.
For those of you who are Yankee Fans: A man named Joe McCarthy managed the Yankees from 1931 to 1946, winning 8 American League Pennants and 7 World Series. However, he and the Senator appear not to have been related.
Aside from the name, the only thing that manager Joseph Vincent McCarthy and Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy seem to have had in common is heavy drinking. And even that didn't affect them the same way: The Senator died from cirrhosis on May 2, 1957, less than 3 years after this confrontation, at the age of 48; while the manager lived to be 90, long enough to see the Reggie Jackson Game.
Joseph Welch was cast in the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder, saying, "it looked like that was the only way I'd ever get to be a judge." He took the role on the condition that his wife Agnes also appear, and she was cast as a juror. Welch died the next year.
Stuart Symington retired from the Senate for the 1976 election, saw his son James elected to Congress, and lived until 1988.
Fred Fisher eventually became a partner at Hale and Dorr, served a year as President of the Massachusetts Bar Association, and lived until 1989.
Roy Cohn survived the hearings with his legal reputation mostly intact, and went on to become perhaps the biggest lawyer in New York City, representing such disparate clients as the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York; shipping tycoons Aristotle Onassis and George Steinbrenner, who also owned the New York Yankees; Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager; and organized crime figures Tony Salerno (boss of the Genovese crime family), Carmine Galante (boss of the Bonanno family), Paul Castellano (boss of the Gambino crime family) and John Gotti (Castellano's successor and kill-orderer).
He remained a registered Democrat, and was close to New York Mayor Ed Koch; but also continued to support conservative causes, and advised Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In 1986, despite support from liberals like former Mayor Abe Beame, conservatives like publisher William F. Buckley Jr., and even ABC News journalist Barbara Walters, who had dated him in the 1950s, not knowing he was gay, he was disbarred for misconduct.
He died only 39 days later, having told people he had liver cancer. The truth was that he had AIDS, contracting the virus through a gay relationship, possibly from his assistant, Russell Eldridge, who had died from AIDS in 1984. But he had never come out of the closet, and had always publicly opposed gay activism. He was given a panel on the AIDS Quilt, but, along with his name, it contains the words, "Bully," "Coward" and "Victim."
His lasting legacy is his representation, and mentorship, of Donald Trump, who not only engaged in what could be called "McCarthyism," but, with the growth of media in the 21st Century, especially social media, took it to levels that were unimaginable in the 1950s -- and were no more honest than when McCarthy and his cohorts used it.
It was Cohn, as much as Trump's father, real estate tycoon Fred Trump, who taught him to never show signs of weakness, never surrender, publicly define every result you get as a victory, no matter how ridiculous the facts might show that to be, and always attack, attack, attack.
Cohn called Trump his best friend, and according to Christine Seymour, Cohn's longtime switchboard operation, Trump was the last person Cohn spoke to on the phone before he died. Journalist, and film and TV director, Ivy Meeropol directed a documentary about the man who put her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, in prison and in the electric chair. She said, "Cohn really paved the way for Trump, and set him up with the right people, introduced him to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the people who helped him get to the White House."
Cohn died 30 years before Trump got in, and even before Trump became a national figure with his publication of The Art of the Deal. But Cohn does bear some responsibility for Trump getting in. For this, alone, to paraphrase Joseph Welch, Cohn's forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
*
June 9, 1954 was a Wednesday. It was the off-season for the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. But a full slate of Major League Baseball games was played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. Whitey Ford got hurt, and had to leave the game after 2 innings. Tom Morgan pitched the rest of the way, and got the win. Eddie Robinson hit a home run. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-3.
* The New York Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 4-0 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Johnny Antonelli allowed 7 hits, including 2 by rookie Hank Aaron, but kept the shutout. The Giants hit no home runs, but Alvin Dark went 4-for-4. Willie Mays went 0-for-2, but had a sacrifice fly for an RBI.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-0 at the original Busch Stadium in St. Louis. (It had been Sportsman's Park until the previous year.) Harvey Haddix pitched a 3-hit shutout. Oddly, 1 of the hits came from the Dodgers' starting pitcher, Johnny Podres. Unusually, Jackie Robinson played left field, and went 0-for-4.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-6 at Fenway Park. Ted Williams did not play.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 9-4 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 1-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Mike Garcia pitched a 5-hit shutout.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I should say, "the Cincinnati Redlegs," because, from 1953 to 1958, the team bowed to the pressure of this stupid Red Scare, and changed their name. It did bring a few laughs the next time the Reds won the Pennant, in 1961, because the World Series turned out to be "Yanks vs. Reds."
* And the Philadelphia Phillies swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field in Chicago. In the opener, Murry Dickson allowed 10 hits, but still kept the Cubs off the board, and the Phils won, 4-0. The Phils won the nightcap, 14-6.
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