June 9, 1954: The Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

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:

Little did I dream you could be so reckless, and so cruel, as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar, needlessly inflicted by you. Were it within my power to forgive you, I would. But your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

McCarthy kept up the attack, but Welch shut him down: 

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?

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. 

January 20, 1953: A Nasty Transfer of Power

January 20, 1953: It is Inauguration Day. President Harry S Truman has completed what amounts to his 2nd term, and Dwight D. Eisenhower is to be sworn in as the 34th President of the United States.

At first, the two men admired each other. But not only had that stopped being the case, they now despised each other.

In 1948, Eisenhower, the leading American General of World War II, was courted by both major parties to run for President. Truman appeared to be terribly unpopular, and seemed to be willing to refuse to run for a term of his own, after serving what would have been Franklin Roosevelt's 4th term, if "Ike" would run as a Democrat. But he wouldn't run under either Party.

In 1952, having lost 5 straight elections, and finally free of the shadow of FDR, the Republicans practically begged Ike to run as their nominee. This time, he decided that he was a Republican, and won their nomination easily. Truman didn't like this, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

Ike accepted the Party's nomination of Senator Richard Nixon of California as his Vice President. Truman's opinion of Ike dropped significantly, as he knew that Nixon was already one of the most unprincipled men in the history of American politics, despite being only 39 years old, and having served less than 6 full years in public office.

Truman said, "The the General doesn’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday." While such turns of phrase were common in politics, Ike, being a rookie politician, wasn't used to it, and his opinion of Truman dropped precipitously.

The last straw, for Truman, was a speech that Ike gave on October 3, nationally broadcast from the Milwaukee Arena (later known as the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena, or "The MECCA"), in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That State's Senator, Joseph R. McCarthy, he of the lies about "Communists" and "subversives" serving in Truman's Administration, was running for re-election. Among the Administration officials he had attacked was George C. Marshall, who had been a 5-star General, and Secretary of State in Truman's 1st term, and Secretary of Defense in Truman's 2nd term. He was also a Republican. And a close friend of Ike's.

Ike had a speech ready to go, in which he would defend Marshall, who had been an early backer of his:

I know that charges of disloyalty have in the past been levelled at George C. Marshall. Any of his alleged errors in judgment while serving in capacities other than military, I am not here discussing. But I was privileged throughout the years of World War II to know General Marshall personally, as Chief of Staff of the Army. I know him, as a man and a soldier, to be dedicated with singular selflessness and the profoundest patriotism to the service of America. Here we have a sobering lesson of the way freedom must not defend itself.

Eisenhower was taken aside by Party officials, and told that if he said that, it would damage McCarthy's chances of re-election, thus damaging the Party's bid to take control of the Senate; and would also damage the Party's chance of winning Wisconsin in the Electoral Vote, thus possibly hurting his own chance of being elected President.

Eisenhower could have said, "Marshall is my friend, and I'm going to make that statement, and you and McCarthy can both go to Hell." Instead, he dropped the paragraph from the speech. Truman found out about it, and hit the roof. He accused Eisenhower of "moral blindness."

On October 25, in Detroit, Eisenhower gave a speech about the Korean War:

Where will a new Administration begin? It will begin with its President taking a simple, firm resolution. The resolution will be: To forego the diversions of politics, and to concentrate on the job of ending the Korean War, until that job is honorably done. That job requires a personal trip to Korea. (Break for applause.)

I shall make that trip. Only in that way could I learn how best to serve the American people in the cause of peace. I shall go to Korea.

Truman considered this statement to be grandstanding. But anybody who was still undecided in the election now had the final piece to their puzzle. Eisenhower won in a landslide. His victory in Wisconsin, as in the nation at large, was never truly in doubt: He won the State's 12 Electoral Votes with just under 61 percent of the popular vote. McCarthy was re-elected, with 54 percent: Not a landslide, but a solid win.

Truman and Ike met just once between the election on November 4 and the Inauguration on January 20, at the White House on November 18. Truman considered the briefing his duty, but did nothing more than his duty. Ike claimed he'd learned nothing of value from the meeting. On December 2, Ike kept his promise, and made a 3-day visit to Korea, to see for himself what was really going on. Although he'd promised to take this trip, the fact that it had happened was not made public until he returned.

The tradition is that, on the morning of the Inauguration, when there is a new President rather than a re-elected one, the President-elect and his wife are driven by the Secret Service to the White House, where they are greeted by the outgoing President and First Lady. They pose for pictures, then go inside and have coffee, and then the outgoing and incoming Presidents ride to the Capitol Building together.

This time, Ike refused to get out of the car, and kept Truman waiting. Apparently, Ike still thought of himself as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, and of Truman as a Captain in World War I. Never mind that Ike never actually saw a day in combat, in any war, and Truman had.

Their patience finally exhausted, Harry and Bess Truman came out, and Harry told  the Secret Service to let Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower out of the car, to carry out the tradition. Ike did not appreciate this. Mamie's reaction is unrecorded.

There was a big surprise inside the White House: Captain John Eisenhower, U.S. Army, the President-elect's only surviving child, had been recalled from serving in the Korean War, to attend the festivities. Having seen combat, he had been reassigned to the headquarters of the 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, outside Savannah, Georgia. When the two Presidents were alone, Ike could barely maintain his composure, complaining that John should have stayed with his mates and done his duty.

Truman laid down the law. Literally. He told the President-elect, "Until Noon today, I am the Commander-in-Chief, and he goes where I tell him to go, and I told him to come and watch his father get sworn in as the President of the United States. Once you're the President, you can tell him to go wherever you want."

The ride to the Capitol would have been cold even if the ceremony had been held at the height of Summer. Eisenhower broke the silence by saying, of Truman's 1949 Inauguration, "I did not attend your Inauguration out of consideration for you, because if I had been present, I would have drawn attention away from you." Not willing to let this ego trip slide, Truman reminded Ike that he was still in the Army at the time, and, again, that he, Truman, was his Commander-in-Chief, saying, "Ike, I didn't ask you to come, or you would have been here."

Attending the Inauguration were Truman, Eisenhower, Vice President-elect Nixon, former President Herbert Hoover, Senator John F. Kennedy, Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson, Representative Gerald R. Ford, and, as a guest of his father, Senator Prescott Bush, George H.W. Bush -- 8 men who would eventually serve as President of the United States: The 31st, 33rd, 34th, 35th, 36th, 37th, 38th and 41st Presidents.

Fred Vinson, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who had sworn Truman in at his 1949 Inauguration, did so for Eisenhower as well.

Ike had never been considered a great public speaker, and never would be. His Inaugural Address was not considered, then or now, especially memorable.

Captain Eisenhower attended various Inaugural festivities. The next day, President Eisenhower ordered him to return to duty. The new President, having had time to think about it, sent the former President a letter, telling him he appreciated the gesture of calling his son home for the festivities -- but not apologizing for having objected in the first place.

On July 27, 1953, an armistice was signed, ending the Korean War. John Eisenhower then served on the Army's general staff, and later in the White House, as assistant to the Staff Secretary, General Andrew Goodpaster.

Harry Truman and Ike Eisenhower met only twice more, at funerals: At Marshall's in 1959, and at Kennedy's in 1963. Both meetings progressed as if there had never been any animosity between them.

John Eisenhower retired from the Army in 1963, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He remained in the Army Reserve until 1975, having reached the rank of Brigadier General -- having gotten there in his own right. In 1969, shortly after Ike's death, remembering John's service to his father at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Nixon appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. By that point, John's son David, for whom Camp David was named, had married Nixon's daughter, Julie.

John Eisenhower became a military historian, writing biographies of General Winfield Scott and General/President Zachary Taylor; and books about the Mexican-American War, the U.S. involvement in the Mexican Revolution, World War I, the U.S.-British alliance, and the Battle of the Bulge. He died in 2013.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy got along fine during the transition of 1960-61. Johnson and Nixon had no love lost between them, but there was no problem between them in the transition of 1968-69. Ford and Jimmy Carter were fine in 1976-77; Carter and Reagan had no problems in 1980-81; being of the same party, Reagan and the elder Bush had no problems in 1988-89; Bush and Bill Clinton were fine with each other in 1992-93; Clinton and George W. Bush were fine with each other in 2000-01; and Bush and Barack Obama were fine with each other in 2008-09.

Obama treated Donald Trump properly during the transition of 2016-17, and on January 20, 2017, Trump, always concerned with "optics" above all, played the part, before launching into the most disgusting Inaugural Address of all time. Trump left Washington before his time was up on January 20, 2021, and Joe and Jill Biden did not make the visit to the White House for coffee, because there was no one to visit. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen were not asked to stand in for the Trumps, though they did attend the ceremony.

*

January 20, 1953 was a Tuesday. Jeffrey Epstein, financier, sex criminal, and perhaps the closest thing Donald Trump had to a true friend, was born on this day.

Baseball and football were out of season. No games were scheduled in the NHL. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The Indianapolis Olympians beat the Rochester Royals, 70-59 at the Butler Fieldhouse (now the Hinkle Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis.