Early life

Joseph McCarthy was born to a poor Irish Catholic farm family in Appleton, Wisconsin.

A hyperactive, extroverted youth, he dropped out of school after eighth grade to start

his own poultry business. After the chickens all died, he enrolled in the local public high

school. Thanks to enormous energy and a retentive mind, he finished his coursework

in less than a year at age 20. After two undergraduate years at Marquette University, a

leading Jesuit school in Milwaukee, McCarthy entered Marquette Law School, acquiring

the rudiments of the profession that he soon used to knit together a statewide network

among Irish and German Catholics. McCarthy was a practicing Catholic his entire life,

but rarely referred to religion or ethnicity in his speeches. He actively supported President

Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Young Democrats, but did not join Irish organizations.

Although defeated in his 1936 race for district attorney, McCarthy displayed remarkable

campaign abilities and an astonishing memory for faces. He had the energy and determination

to meet every voter in person, exuding charm and a concern for the voter as an individual.

The same tactics paid off in 1939, when he was successful in a nonpartisan contest

for a regional judgeship.

The youngest judge in state history, he worked long hours to clear up a large backlog.

He administered justice promptly and with a combination of legal knowledge and good

sense. He was still a Democrat, but that party was very weak statewide at the time.

       Military service

In 1942 McCarthy, volunteered for the Marines (as a judge he was draft exempt), becoming

an intelligence officer in an aviation unit heavily engaged in combat in the South Pacific.

Although assigned a desk job McCarthy flew numerous combat missions as a tail gunner

—he exaggerated the number to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross.

During his 30 months of military service, McCarthy's record was unanimously praised by

his commanding officers and Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific

Fleet. Admiral Nimitz issued the following citation regarding the service of Captain McCarthy:

Elected to Senate, 1946

McCarthy had his name entered in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in 1944,

opposing a well-entrenched incumbent Republican, Alexander Wiley. The absentee

war hero ran a strong second, making a name for himself statewide and making himself

available for the 1946 Senate contest.

Why McCarthy suddenly changed parties was never explained, but prospects for ambitious

Wisconsin politicians were dim inside the poorly organized Democratic party, for most

New Dealers supported the state’s Progressive party. During the war, however, that

party collapsed, torn apart between its New Deal domestic liberalism, and its intensely

isolationist opposition to Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Increasingly out of touch with

Wisconsin, its leader Robert LaFollette Jr. looked to his family’s past glories and

made the blunder of trying for reelection to the Senate in 1946 as a Republican.

"Tail Gunner Joe," as his posters called him, endlessly crisscrossed Wisconsin while

LaFollette remained in Washington, offered an alternative in the Republican primary

to old guard Republicans who had opposed the Lafollettes for a half century. McCarthy

brilliantly captured the frustrations citizens felt about massive strikes, unstable economy,

price controls, severe shortages of housing and meat, and the growing threat of from the

far left in the CIO. He nipped LaFollette in the primary. The slogan “Had Enough?—Vote

Republican” gave the Republicans a landslide all across the North, electing a new

junior senator from Wisconsin.

Communist Issue

In Washington, McCarthy was a mainstream conservative in domestic policy, and, like

many veterans, was an internationalist in foreign affairs, supporting the Marshall Plan

and NATO. His speeches rarely mentioned domestic Communism or flaming issues

like the Alger Hiss espionage case, but that suddenly changed in early 1950 when his

vivid anti-Communist rhetoric drew national attention. "The issue between the Republicans

and Democrats is clearly drawn. It has been deliberately drawn by those who have

been in charge of twenty years of treason.” Alleging there were many card-carrying

Communists in U. S. President Harry S. Truman’s State Department, McCarthy forced

a Senate investigation led by Millard Tydings, Democrat of Maryland. McCarthy named

numerous suspect diplomats but failed to convince the three Democrats on the panel;

they concluded his allegations were “a fraud and a hoax,” while the two Republicans

dissented. McCarthy retaliated by campaigning against Tydings, who was defeated for

reelection in November 1950. What the senator himself called McCarthyism was a factor

in key races across the country; all his candidates won and his stock soared. A few

weeks later American forces were crushed by the Chinese in Korea, and in spring

1951 Truman tried to shift the blame by firing General Douglas MacArthur.

Support from Catholics and Kennedys

The great majority of Catholics were anti-Communist, but they were also loyal Democrats,

so to enlarge his base McCarthy, a Republican, needed an alliance with anti-Communist

Catholics. The Catholic bishops and the Catholic press was "among McCarthy's most

fervid supporters."  A major connection was with the powerful Kennedy family, which had

very high visibility among all Catholics in the Northeast.^[7] Well before he became famous

McCarthy became closely associated with Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.. He was a frequent

guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port and at one point dated Joe's daughter

Patricia. After McCarthy became nationally prominent, Kennedy was a vocal supporter

and helped build McCarthy's popularity among Catholics. Kennedy contributed cash and

encouraged his friends to give money. Some historians have argued that in the Senate

race of 1952, Joe Kennedy and McCarthy made a deal that McCarthy would not

make campaign speeches for the Republican ticket in Massachusetts, and in return,

Congressman and future U.S. President John F. Kennedy would not give anti-McCarthy

speeches. In 1953 McCarthy hired Robert Kennedy as a senior staff member. When the

Senate voted to censure McCarthy in 1954, Senator Kennedy was in the hospital and never

indicated then or later how he would vote; he told associates he could not vote against

McCarthy because of the family ties.

Political dominance

In 1950, McCarthy discussed his upcoming 1952 campaign with three fellow Catholics

(Father Edmund A. Walsh and Charles H. Kraus of Georgetown University and Washington

attorney Wiliam A. Roberts). Kraus had recommended Father Walsh's recent books

dealing with Communism to McCarthy, and was hoping to interest McCarthy in the problems

of Communism in the world. McCarthy's reputation among the voters was not good at

that time, due to various ethical and tax violation problems, and he needed an issue that

would help improve his chances of re-election. He latched enthusiastically onto the idea

of attacking Communists in the government.

Subsequently, McCarthy called Willard Edwards of the Chicago Tribune asking for assistance

with a speech on Communism. Edwards sent some materials, including a copy of a letter

written on July 26, 1946, by James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State under Truman. This

letter was the central support for McCarthy's subsequent claims to have a list of

Communists in the government.

This document was repeatedly cited by McCarthy as the basis for

his accusations; unfortunately, there was no list at that time.

McCarthy now became one of the dominant leaders in American politics, with strong

support among both Republicans and Catholic Democrats, as he alleged that Truman’s

top people had betrayed America. He singled out Secretary of State Dean Acheson and

Secretary of Defense George Marshall. Liberals were aghast; Truman had picked General

Marshall to head the State and Defense departments precisely because he thought the

elderly statesman would always be above criticism, no matter that China turned from a

staunch ally to a bitter enemy on his watch. McCarthy’s blistering attacks on Marshall as

“part of a conspiracy so immense, an infamy so black, as to dwarf any in the history of

man” fueled the belief he was a wild-man, a pathological liar who overstepped the

bounds of political discourse.

With Dwight D. Eisenhower crusading against “Korea, Communism and Corruption” in

1952, Republican victory was assured. As a senior member of the majority party McCarthy

for the first time became a committee chairman, with control of staffing and agenda. He

used his Government Operations Committee to open highly publicized hearings in

1953-54 alleging disloyalty in the State Department, the United States Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA), the U.S. Information Agency, and finally the Army. His furious attacks on the Army

led to the televised “Army-McCarthy” hearings in spring 1954, which exposed his bullying

tactics to a national audience. As McCarthy’s poll rating plunged, his enemies finally

pulled together to introduce a censure resolution focused on charging McCarthy

with contempt for the federal government, and especially for his fellow senators.

Backlash

McCarthy’s charges that over-educated liberals tolerated Communism at home and abroad

had stung the liberals. He alleged that they had corruptly sold out the national interest

to protect their upper class privileges, and were so idealistic about world affairs that

they radically underestimated the threat posed by Soviet dictator Stalin, his spies, and

the worldwide Communist movement. Instead of refuting the allegations, Liberals tried

one of two approaches. Some became intensely anti-Communist and claimed they were

more effective than McCarthy and the Republicans in eliminating Communism in the

unions and Democratic party, and in containing the Stalinist menace in Europe. The other

approach was to counterattack, to charge that “McCarthyism” never found a single spy

but hurt innocent people in hunting for nonexistent witches; thus it represented an evil

betrayal of American values. In an appeal to upscale conservatives and liberal intellectuals,

critics ignored the Communist infiltration of labor unions and liberal causes and focused

on stereotyping anticommunists as ill-mannered ignorant troglodytes, oblivious to American

traditions of free speech and free association. McCarthy’s exaggerations and false charges

encouraged opponents to stress the second approach, but it escalated the controversy

to a pitch of hatreds and fears unprecedented since the days of Reconstruction.

Loss of influence

McCarthy’s superb sense of timing and his media instincts kept his partisan attacks

on the front page every day; his willingness to do battle in the hustings with Democratic

opponents across the country strengthened his base in the Republican party. His

religion and ethnicity, refreshed with highly visible friendships with leading Irish Catholics,

especially the Kennedy family, bolstered his standing among Democrats. According to

Gallup, McCarthy’s popularity crested in January 1954, when he was endorsed by all

voters 50-29 (with 21 having no opinion). His core support came from Republicans and

Catholics who had not attended college.

McCarthy, however, failed to create any sort of grass roots organization. He had no

organizational skills; he did not effectively use his talented staffers (such as Robert Kennedy).

He was a loner who lurched from issue to issue, misled by the enormous media publicity

into believing that a one-man crusade was possible in an increasingly well-educated

complex society honeycombed with local, regional and national organizations. By operating

within the Republican party apparatus he lost the opportunity to create an independent grass

roots political crusade in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, Huey Long, or Ross Perot. He

never launched his own magazine or radio show or formed alliances with publishers

who agreed with him.

McCarthy’s strained relations with Senate colleagues created a trapdoor. It was sprung

after many Republicans realized that he had shifted the attack away from the Democrats.

What use was his slogan “20 Years of Treason” once Eisenhower was in office? McCarthy’s

answer was “21 Years of Treason!” Eisenhower’s supporters could no longer tolerate such

a loose cannon, and as McCarthy unwisely shifted his attacks to Eisenhower’s beloved Army,

his cause was doomed. While many Americans distrusted Ivy League, striped pants diplomats,

soldiers were held in high regard; McCarthy’s charges of subversion were flimsy (one Communist

dentist had been automatically promoted); he sabotaged his own reputation by finagling favors

for an aide who had been drafted. The televised hearings proved fatal to an ill-prepared bully.

After the Democrats regained control of Congress in the 1954 elections, the censure motion

carried, 67-22. McCarthy’s appeal, so widespread yet superficial,

evaporated overnight and the Senator faded into the shadows.

The term "McCarthyism"

McCarthy is permanently associated with the use of the word "McCarthyism" (a word which

he did not coin, but of which he did make use according to a sense more aligned with his

actual philosophy) to mean an aggressive attack on Communists who had infiltrated America

and on the liberals who protected them—an attack, however, without regard for due

process. Although the left was unable to make heroes of the people who supported and

sometimes were controlled by Stalin, they did make heroes of opponents of McCarthy,

painting him as the internal menace to American values that was far worse than

Communist subversion. Schrecker (1998) sees McCarthyism as anti-Communist political

repression of the early Cold War, and explores its mechanisms through, and what she

considers the exaggerated public fears on which it depended. During the 1940s-1950s,

McCarthyism took on a variety of forms with an array of agendas, interested parties,

and modes of operating. Despite its widespread and popular character, it started with

the federal government and was driven by a network of dedicated anti-Communist

crusaders such as J. Edgar Hoover, director of the United States Federal Bureau of

Investigation (FBI). McCarthyism's repression both responded to and

helped create widespread fears of a significant threat to national security.

Margaret Chase Smith, Republican senator from Maine, gained a national reputation as

one of the earliest critics McCarthyism with a Senate speech on June 1, 1950, called

"the Declaration of Conscience." It was an attempt by Smith to address the excesses of

McCarthyism, and was widely hailed as a call to reason by McCarthy's opponents. Smith

gave a critique of the American political process and political institutions in the responses

to dissent on the left and the right. Smith, like other McCarthy critics, sought to bring a

level of civility to political protest and dissent. She and many others who objected to

the tactics of McCarthy actually believed in the underlying tenets of his anti-Communist

crusade. Their responses to his excesses reflected a desire to narrow the scope

of acceptable political dissent.

Impact on government

Rausch (2000) argues McCarthy's campaign

In California McCarthyism began before the Senator was famous. In 1946 in the Los Angeles

schools two teachers from Canoga Park High School were called before the Tenney

Senate Investigating Committee on charges of communistic teaching. The two teachers

were exonerated of all charges, but a campaign to rid the LA district of dissident teachers

was effectively launched. The target of the campaign was a group of teachers who belonged

to the Los Angeles Federation of Teachers (LAFT), formerly known as Union Local 430

and chartered under the American Federation of Teachers, until 1948, when the AFT revoked

the charter. By 1954, Los Angeles teachers were required to take five loyalty oaths, although

not one teacher was ever charged with or convicted of subversion. In 1953, the Los Angeles

City School Board announced that 304 teachers were to be investigated because of alleged

Communist affiliations. The Dilworth Oath, made law in 1953, required teachers to answer

questions posed to them by the Investigating Committees. Teachers who refused to answer

the Committee questions by claiming their Fifth Amendment rights could then be fired by

the Board for insubordination.

Media and popular culture

Historians have debated the degree to which McCarthyism permeated the American

mood and popular culture. Anti-Communist liberals at the time said it played to isolationism

(especially strong in McCarthy's Wisconsin) by diverting attention away from the real

threat, Stalin's Soviet Union as an external power. The Left said that they had a First

Amendment right to their beliefs and that McCarthyism had a chilling effect. Dussere

(2003) shows that comic strip artist Walt Kelly in "Pogo" parodied McCarthyism and promoted

leftist politics as old-fashioned American common sense, representing a time when

concerns about art and politics with respect to popular culture were in the forefront.

Hoover's FBI targeted retired film comedian Charlie Chaplin because of his status as a

cultural icon and as part of its broader investigation of Hollywood. Some of Chaplin's films

were considered "Communist propaganda," but because Chaplin was a British citizen and

was not a member of the Communist Party, he was not among those investigated by the

House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Nevertheless, he was vulnerable to

protests by the American Legion and other patriotic groups because of both his sexual and

political unorthodoxy. Although countersubversives succeeded in driving Chaplin out of the

U.S., they failed to build a consensus that Chaplin was a threat to the nation. Chaplin's story

testifies to both the power of the countersubversive campaign at mid-century and to some

of its limitations.

Strout (1999) looks at The Christian Science Monitor during the McCarthy era (1950-1954);

it was a highly influential newspaper at home and abroad. Strout asks: (1) Was the Monitor

a consistent critic of McCarthy? (2) How did the coverage compare to other elite and popular

press newspapers? (3) How did the pressures associated with McCarthyism effect individuals

at the Monitor and its news product? An extensive review of editorials and news articles

suggests that it was thorough and fair in reporting, yet outspoken and responsible in

editorial criticism. Mary Baker Eddy's original 1907 statement that, "The purpose of

the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind," was referred to repeatedly in

interoffice correspondence during the McCarthy era. The Monitor did not attack McCarthy

personally as other papers did; rather, its criticism centered on the actions of the senator

and the negative effects they were having at home and abroad. The Monitor served as

a voice of moderation, yet at the same time, remained a persistent critic of McCarthy's tactics.

Individuals were affected by the pressures of McCarthyism. For instance, veteran Washington

correspondent Richard L. Strout was suspended from covering McCarthy for eight to 12

months after being mentioned in McCarthy's book, McCarthyism: The Fight for America.

I have in my hand...

It was McCarthy's charges of Communist, security, and loyalty risk infiltration of the

State Department that shot him into prominence in 1950. At a Lincoln Day speech, on

February 9, 1950, before the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia,

at the Colonnade Room of Wheeling's McClure Hotel, he stated:

McCarthy compiled a list of 57 security risks and publicly named John S. Service, Gustavo

Duran, Mary Jane Keeney, Harlow Shapley, and H. Julian Wadleigh  as being on the list.

These names came from the "Lee List" of unresolved State Department security cases

compiled by the earlier investigators for the House Appropriation Committee in 1947.

Robert E. Lee was the committee’s lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list.

In a six-hour speech on the Senate floor on February 20, 1950 in which McCarthy was

constantly interrupted by hostile senators; four of whom — Scott Lucas (61 times),

Brien McMahon (27 times), Garrett Withers (22 times), and Herbert Lehman (13 times)

— interrupted him a total of 123 times, McCarthy raised the issue of some eighty individuals

who had worked in the State Department, or wartime agencies such as the

Office of War Information (OWI) and the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW).

McCarthy sought to avoid naming names publicly when possible, using numbered cases

instead of names in public session. He preferred to name his suspects only in executive

session, in order to protect those who might have been erroneously identified by the

FBI, State Department Security, Army counterintelligence, etc. "[I]t would be improper

to make the names public until the appropriate Senate committee can meet in executive

session and get them," explained McCarthy. "If we should label one man a Communist

when he is not a Communist I think it would be too bad."

But when McCarthy began reading his numbered cases to the Senate, the Democrat

Majority Leader, Illinois Senator Scott Lucas, interrupted, "I want him to name those

Communists." In response to McCarthy's desire not to name names publicly in order to

protect the innocent, Lucas bizarrely referred to the fact that statements in Congress are

privileged against defamation suits, saying, "if those people are not Communists the senator

will be protected." (This was hardly germane: McCarthy's expressed concern was not

about protecting himself, but protecting suspects who might be innocent.) McCarthy responded:

Democratic Senator William Benton of Connecticut introduced a bill to eject McCarthy

from the Senate. His first charge was that at Wheeling, McCarthy had said that he had

a list of 205 names, rather than 57 names. The Senate (then under Democrat control)

sent staff investigators to Wheeling to try to substantiate Benton's charges. The

investigation found no evidence to support Benton's charge. According to one investigator:

Senate Democrats quietly buried the 44-page staff memo summarizing these findings, but

the charge that McCarthy had said “205” was likewise dropped. Thus the Congressional

Record to this day records that McCarthy said "57," not "205." Nevertheless, many on

the left continue to promote Benton's discredited claim as gospel. Benton made this allegation

only about McCarthy's speech in Wheeling, West Virginia and not in the other cities where

he made the speech. The 205 number actually came in another part of his speech; on

February 20, 1950, in a speech made on the floor of the Senate, McCarthy officially

clarified the issue:

McCarthy was able to characterize President Truman and the Democratic Party as soft

on or even in league with the Communists. McCarthy's allegations were rejected by Truman

who was unaware of Venona project decrypts which corroborated

Elizabeth Bentley's debriefing after her defection from the Communists.

According to Gallup, McCarthy’s popularity crested in January 1954, when he was

endorsed by all voters 50-29 (with 21 having no opinion). His core support came from

Republicans and Catholics who had not attended college. On March 9, 1954, CBS

broadcasted Edward R. Murrow's See It Now TV documentary attacking McCarthy.

Venona files

In 1995, when the Venona transcripts were declassified, further detailed information was

revealed about Soviet espionage in the United States. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover

was among only a handful of people in the U.S. Government who was aware of the

Venona project, and there is no indication whatsoever Hoover shared Venona information

with McCarthy. In fact, Hoover may have actually fed McCarthy disinformation, or dead

end files, in an effort to put pressure on relatives, friends, or close associates of real

Venona suspects by threatening to reveal embarrassing information about them in

a public forum if they failed to cooperate and reveal what they might have known about

someone's else’s activities and associations. And there is no indication

McCarthy might have known he was being used by Hoover in this way.

On February 7, 1950, three days before McCarthy's acclaimed Wheeling, West Virginia

speech, Hoover testified before House Appropriations Committee that counterespionage

requires "an objective different from the handling of criminal cases. It is more important

to ascertain his contacts, his objectives, his sources of information and his methods of

communication" as "arrest and public disclosure are steps to be taken only as a matter

of last resort." He concluded that "we can be secure only when we have a full knowledge

of the operations of an espionage network, because then we are in a position to

render their efforts ineffective."

McCarthy is said to have made the claim, "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." The famous "List", as it has come to be known, has always engendered

much controversy. The figure of 205 appears to have come from an oral briefing McCarthy

had with Hoover regarding espionage suspects the FBI was then investigating. The FBI

had discovered on its own five Soviet agents operating in the United States during World

War II; defector Elizabeth Bentley further added another 81 known identities of espionage

agents; Venona materials had provided the balance, and by the time a full accounting of

true name identities was compiled in an FBI memo in 1957, one more subject had

been added to the number, now totaling 206.

Much confusion has always surrounded the subject. While the closely guarded FBI/Venona

information of identified espionage agents uses the number of 206, McCarthy in his Wheeling

speech only referred to Communist Party membership and other security risks, and not

espionage activity. Being a security risk as a Communist Party of the United States of America

(CPUSA) member does not necessarily entail or imply that a person was or is actively involved

in espionage activity. Venona materials indicated a very large number of espionage agents

remained unidentified by the FBI. When McCarthy was questioned on the number, he

referred to the Lee List of security risks, by which it appears Hoover was attempting to

match unidentified code names to known security risks. Hoover kept the identities of persons

known to be involved in espionage activity from Venona evidence secret. Hoover in the very

early days of the FBI's joint investigation with the Army Signals Intelligence Service in May

1946 did precisely the same deception with a confidant of President Truman using Venona

decryptions. Hoover reported that a reliable source revealed “an enormous Soviet espionage

ring in Washington.” Of some fourteen names, Soviet agents Alger Hiss and Nathan Gregory

Silvermaster were listed well down the list. The name at the top was “Undersecretary of State

Dean Acheson” and included others beyond reproach, thus discrediting the Hiss and

Silvermaster accusations, which actually were on target. Hence the Truman White

House always suspected Hoover and the FBI of playing partisan political games with

accusations of various administration members’ complicity in Soviet espionage.

The Venona project specifically references at least 349 pseudonyms in the United States

—including citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents—who cooperated in various

ways with Soviet intelligence agencies, however not all were ever identified. In public

hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) conducted by

McCarthy, 83 persons pled the Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. An

additional 9 persons refused to testify on constitutional grounds in private hearings,

and their names were not made public. Of the 83 persons pleading the Fifth Amendment,

several have been identified by NSA and FBI as agents of the Soviet Union

in the Venona project involved in espionage. Several prominent examples are:

Venona transcripts confirm the Senate Civil Liberties Subcommittee, chaired by former

Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr., whom McCarthy defeated for election in 1946, had at least

four staff members working on behalf of the KGB. Chief Counsel of the Committee

John Abt; Charles Kramer, who served on three other Congressional Committees; Allen

Rosenberg, who also served on the National Labor Relations Board, Board of Economic Warfare

(BEW), the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) and later argued cases before the

United States Supreme Court; and Charles Flato, who served on the BEW

and FEA, all were CPUSA members and associated with the Comintern.

While the underlying premise of Communists in the government was true, many of McCarthy's

targets were not complicit in espionage. Recent scholarship has established of 159 persons

investigated between 1950 and 1952, there is substantial evidence nine had assisted Soviet

espionage using evidence from Venona or other sources. Of the remainder, while

not being directly complicit in espionage, many were considered security risks.

Known security/loyalty risks

In June 1947, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee addressed a secret memorandum

to Secretary of State George Marshall, calling to his attention a condition that

developed and was continuing in the State Department. The memo stated that

Robert E. Lee was the committee’s lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list.

The Lee list, also using numbers rather than names, was published in the proceeding

of the subcommittee.

The memorandum listed the names of nine State Department officials and said that they

were "only a few of the hundreds now employed in varying capacities who are protected

and allowed to remain despite the fact that their presence is an obvious hazard to national

security." Ten persons were removed from the list by June 24. But from 1947 until McCarthy's

Wheeling speech in February 1950, the State Department did not fire one person as a

loyalty or security risk. In other branches of the government, however, more than 300

persons were discharged for loyalty reasons alone during the period from 1947 to 1951.

Most but not all of Senator McCarthy’s numbered cases were drawn from the “Lee List”

or “108 list” of unresolved Department of State security cases compiled by Lee for the

House Appropriations Committee in 1947. The Tydings subcommittee also obtained

this list. In addition to some of the person involved in espionage identified in the

Venona project listed above, there are other security and loyalty risks

identified correctly by Senator McCarthy included in the following list:

• Robert Warren Barnett & Mrs. Robert Warren Barnett, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's
•  Case #48 and #49 respectively and both are on Lee list as #59;
• Esther Brunauer, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #47 and Lee list #55;
• Stephen Brunauer, U.S. Navy, chemist in the explosive research division;
• Gertrude Cameron, Information and Editorial Specialist in the U.S. State Department;
  
• McCarthy's Case #55 and Lee list #65;
• Nelson Chipchin, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's list #23;
• Oliver Edmund Clubb, U.S. State Department;
• John Paton Davies, U.S. State Department, Policy Planning Committee;
• Gustavo Duran, U.S. State Department, assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State in
  
• charge of Latin American Affairs, and Chief of the Cultural Activities Section of the
•  Department of Social Affairs of the United Nations;

• Arpad Erdos, U.S. State Department;
• Herbert Fierst, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's case #1 and Lee list #51;
• John Tipton Fishburn, U.S. State Department; Lee list #106;
• Theodore Geiger, U.S. State Department;
• Stella Gordon, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #40 and Lee list #45
• Stanley Graze, U.S. State Department intelligence; McCarthy's Case #8 and Lee list #8,
•  brother of Gerald Graze, confirmed in KGB Archives;
• Ruth Marcia Harrison, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #7 and Lee list #4;
• Myron Victor Hunt, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #65 and Lee list #79;
• Philip Jessup, U.S. State Department, Assistant Director for the Naval School of Military
  
• Government and Administration at Columbia University in New York, Delegate to the U.N.
  
• in a number of different capacities, Ambassador-at-large, and Chairman of the Institute
•  of Pacific Relations Research Advisory Committee; McCarthy's Case #15;
• Dorothy Kenyon, New York City Municipal Court Judge, U.S. State Department appointee
  
• as American Delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women;
• Leon Hirsch Keyserling, President Harry Truman's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers;
• Mary Dublin Keyserling, U.S. Department of Commerce;
• Esther Less Kopelewich, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #24;
• Owen Lattimore, Board member of the communist-dominated Institute of Pacific Relations
•  (I.P.R) and editor the I.P.R.’s journal Pacific Affairs;
• Paul A. Lifantieff-Lee, U.S. Naval Department; McCarthy's Case #56 and Lee list #66;
• Val R. Lorwin, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #54 and Lee list #64;
• Daniel F. Margolies, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #41 and Lee list #46;
• Peveril Meigs, U.S. State Department; Department of the Army; McCarthy's
•  Case #3 and Lee list #2;
• Ella M. Montague, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #34 and Lee list #32;
• Philleo Nash, Presidential Advisor, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman administrations;
• Olga V. Osnatch, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #81 and Lee list #78;
• Edward Posniak, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case Number 77;
• Philip Raine, U.S. State Department, Regional Specialist; McCarthy's Case #52 and Lee list #62;
• Robert Ross, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #32 and Lee list #30;
• Sylvia Schimmel, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #50 and Lee list #60;
• Frederick Schumann, contracted by U.S. State Department as lecturer; Professor
•  at Williams College; not on Lee list;
• John S. Service, U.S. State Department;
• Harlow Shapley, U.S. State Department appointee to UNESCO, Chairman of the
  
• National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions;
• William T. Stone, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #46 and Lee list #54;
• Frances M. Tuchser, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #6 and Lee list #6;
• John Carter Vincent, U.S. State Department; McCarthy's Case #2 and Lee list #52;
• David Zablodowsky, U.S. State Department & Director of the United Nations
  
• Publishing Division. McCarthy's Case #103;
• 
  

Attacks on McCarthy

One of the most prominent attacks on Senator McCarthy was an episode of the TV

documentary series See It Now, hosted by Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast

on March 9, 1954. By the time Murrow produced his "See It Now" assault on Senator

McCarthy in 1954, the senator had been under almost constant vicious attack for four

years. According to McCarthy biographer Arthur Herman, Murrow and his staff had

spent two months carefully editing film clips to portray McCarthy in the worst possible

light. There were no clips showing McCarthy in a professional manner. Despite Murrow's

claims, this "was not a report at all but instead a full-scale assault, employing exactly the

same techniques of 'partial truth and innuendo' that critics accused McCarthy of using."

The episode consisted largely of clips of McCarthy in the most unflattering context, including

"belching and picking his nose".

In these clips, McCarthy accuses the Democratic Party of "twenty years of treason" because

of the Democratic Party's concessions to the Soviet Union at the Yalta conference and

Potsdam conference, describes the American Civil Liberties Union as "listed as 'a front

for, and doing the work of,' the Communist Party," and berates General Zwicker for Zwicker's

claim that he would protect any other general who promotes Communists within the military.

Murrow also portrays a Pentagon coding room employee, Annie Lee Moss as an innocent

victim of McCarthy even though it was later established that the FBI had warned the

Army and the Civil Service Commission about her Communist Party connection.

However, even some McCarthy critics were outraged by this one-sided presentation.

Consistent McCarthy critic, John Cogley of Commonweal, "sharply attacked Murrow

and his producers for their distorted summary and selected use of video clips." Cogley

commented that a different selection of footage could have easily portrayed McCarthy in

an extremely positive light and then further warned against the misuse of television in

this fashion. He and another McCarthy critic from the Saturday Review

agreed that it "was not a proud moment for television journalism".

To counter the negative publicity, McCarthy appeared on See It Now on April 6, 1954,

and presented his case in order to clarify the misconceptions that Murrow had televised.

McCarthy countered that his committee, "has forced out of government, and out of important

defense plants, Communists engaged in the Soviet conspiracy." McCarthy went on to say,

"For example, 238 witnesses were examined [in] public session; 367 witnesses examined

[in] executive session; 84 witnesses refused to testify as to Communist activities on

the ground that, if they told the truth, they might go to jail; twenty-four witnesses with

Communist backgrounds have been discharged from jobs [in] which they were handling

secret, top-secret, confidential material, individuals who were exposed before our committee."

McCarthy also exposed Murrow's left-wing background and previous associations with

Communist organizations.

The Murrow report, together with the televised Army-McCarthy hearings of the same year,

and four years of consistent anti-McCarthy media reporting were the major causes of a

nationwide popular opinion backlash against McCarthy. However, well-known broadcaster

Eric Sevareid said the Murrow assault "came very late in the day.... The youngsters

read back, and they think only one person in broadcasting and the press stood up to

McCarthy, and this has made a lot of people feel very upset, including me, because that

program came awfully late."

Even Murrow discounted his role in the decline of Senator McCarthy's popularity. Murrow

stated, "My God, I didn't do anything. (Times columnist) Scotty Reston and lot of guys have

been writing like this, saying the same things, for months, for years. We're bringing up the rear."

Nevertheless, despite the deceptive nature of the See It Now program and the late date

in which it appears, anti-McCarthy historians have credited and celebrated Murrow as

playing a major role in damaging Senator McCarthy's campaign to remove security risks

from the U.S. government.

Senate opposition to McCarthy

While over the previous few years, Senator McCarthy had withstood countless biased and

unsubstantiated attacks by Liberals, Communists, etc., who sought to prevent him from

damaging their causes any further; the organized and co-ordinated effort between the two

groups to remove McCarthy from his Chairmanship and officially condemn him began in

March 1954.

Senate opposition

On March 9, 1954 a fellow conservative and anti-communist Republican Senator,

Ralph E. Flanders of Vermont, gave a speech criticizing what he felt was Senator

McCarthy’s "misdirection of our efforts at fighting communism” and his role in “the loss

of respect for us in the world at large.” Flanders felt the nation should pay more attention

looking outwards at the “alarming world-wide advance of Communist power” that would

leave the United States and Canada as “the last remnants of the free world.”  Eisenhower

Administration cabinet officials told Flanders to “lay off,” while President Eisenhower sent

Flanders a brief note of appreciation for his speech, but did not otherwise confer with him

or explicitly support him. In a June 1, 1954 speech, Flanders emphasized how the Soviet

Union was winning military successes in Asia without risking its own resources or men,

and said this nation was witnessing "another example of economy of effort...in the conquest

of this country for communism." He added, "One of the characteristic elements of communist

and fascist tyranny is at hand as citizens are set to spy upon each other." Flanders told the

Senate that McCarthy's "anti-Communism so completely parallels that of Adolf Hitler as

to strike fear into the hearts of any defenseless minority"; he accused McCarthy 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, 1954 Flanders introduced a resolution charging McCarthy “with unbecoming

conduct" and calling for his removal from his committee chairmanship. Upon the advice

of Senators John Sherman Cooper and J. William Fulbright and legal assistance from

the National Committee for an Effective Congress, a liberal organization, he modified

his resolution to “bring it in line with previous actions of censure.” After introducing his

censure motion, Flanders had no active role in the ensuing Watkins Committee hearings.

Flanders bore McCarthy no personal animosity and reported that McCarthy

accepted his invitation to join him at lunch after the hearings had taken place.

Watkins Committee

Ultimately, McCarthy was accused of 46 different counts of allegedly improper conduct

and another special committee was set up, under the chairmanship of Senator Arthur Watkins,

to study and evaluate the charges. This was to be the fifth investigation of Senator McCarthy

in five years. This committee opened hearings on August 31, 1954. After two months of

hearings and deliberations, the Watkins Committee recommended that McCarthy be censured

on only two of the original 46 counts. The committee exonerated McCarthy on all

substantive charges.

On November 8, 1954, a special session of the Senate convened to debate the two charges.

The charges to be debated and voted on were: 1) That Senator McCarthy had "failed to

cooperate" in 1952 with the Senate Subcommitee on Privileges and Elections that was

looking into certain aspects of his private and political life in connection with a resolution

for his expulsion from the Senate; and 2) That in conducting a senatorial

inquiry, Senator McCarthy had "intemperately abused" General Ralph Zwicker.

The Zwicker count was dropped by the full Senate on the grounds that McCarthy's conduct

was arguably "induced" by Zwicker's own behavior. Many senators felt that the Army had

shown contempt for committee chairman McCarthy by disregarding his letter of February 1,

1954 and honorably discharging Irving Peress the next day. So, for this reason, the

Senate concluded that McCarthy's conduct toward Zwicker on February 18 was justified.

Therefore, the Zwicker count was dropped at the last minute and was replaced with this

substitute charge: 2) That Senator McCarthy, by characterizing the Watkins Committee

as the "unwitting handmaiden" of the Communist Party and by describing the special Senate

session as a "lynch party" and a "lynch bee," 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, even though more than a dozen senators told McCarthy that they

did not want to vote against him but had to do so because of the enormous pressure being

put on them by the Eisenhower Administration and by leaders of both political parties, the

Senate voted to "condemn" Senator Joseph McCarthy on both counts by a vote of 67 to

22. The Democrats voted unanimously in favor of condemnation and the Republicans split evenly.

Resolution condemns McCarthy

The resolution condemning Senator McCarthy has been criticized as a ridiculous attempt

to silence the strongest voice in the Senate investigating security and loyalty risks in the

U.S. government. When examined closely, the two counts used in condemning McCarthy

were hopelessly flawed.

In analyzing the first count, "failure to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges

and Elections", the fact is that the subcommittee never subpoenaed McCarthy, but

only "invited" him to testify. One senator and two staff members resigned from the

subcommittee because of its dishonesty towards McCarthy. In its final report dated

January 2, 1953, the subcommittee, stated that the matters under consideration

"have become moot by reason of the 1952 election." Up until this moment in U.S.

history, no senator had ever been punished for something that had happened in a

previous Congress or for declining an "invitation" to testify. Therefore, the first count

was a complete fraud and nothing more than a trumped up charge in order to damage

Senator McCarthy.

The second count was even more flawed than the first. McCarthy was condemned for

opinions he had expressed outside the Senate when he criticized the Watkins Committee

and the special Senate session. In an editorial by David Lawrence in the June 7, 1957

issue of U.S. News & World Report, other senators had accused McCarthy of lying under

oath, accepting influence money, engaging in election fraud, making libelous and false

statements, practicing blackmail, doing the work of the communists for them, and engaging

in a questionable "personal relationship" with Roy Cohn and David Schine. However,

these other Senators were not censured for acting "contrary to senatorial ethics" or for

impairing the "dignity" of the Senate. Only Senator McCarthy would be held responsible

for his words.

Final years

Senator McCarthy's power and clout to continue the search for Communists in positions

of power in America was severely curtailed. After the Republicans lost control of the Senate

in 1954, McCarthy, now a member of the minority Party, had to depend on public

speeches to continue his campaign of warning the American people to the danger of

Communism. He did this in a number of important addresses during those two and a half years.

In January 1957, McCarthy and his wife, Jean, adopted a baby girl and named her, Tierney.

Unfortunately, several months later, McCarthy died of acute hepatitis, likely brought on by

his lifelong struggle with alcoholism, in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48.

McCarthy was given a state funeral attended by 70 senators. McCarthy was the first senator

in 17 years to have funeral services in the Senate chamber. Thousands of people

viewed the body in Washington D.C. and it is estimated more than 30,000 people

from Wisconsin filed through St. Mary's Church in the senator's hometown of Appleton,

Wisconsin, where the clergy performed a Solemn Pontifical Requiem before more than

100 priests and 2,000 others. Three senators, George Malone, William E. Jenner, and

Herman Welker, had flown from Washington D.C. to Appleton on the plane carrying

McCarthy's casket. Robert Kennedy attended the funeral in Wisconsin. McCarthy was

buried in St. Mary's Parish Cemetery in Appleton and was survived by his wife, Jean, and

their adopted daughter, Tierney.

Retrospective views on McCarthy

When Ann Coulter asked Fox News’ Bill O'Reilly to identify a McCarthy-tormented

innocent, O'Reilly responded with Dalton Trumbo, one of House Un-American Activities Committee's

(HUAC) “Hollywood Ten”, not realizing HUAC investigated CPUSA infiltration in Hollywood

and called “the Hollywood Ten” of writers, directors and producers to testify in

1947. McCarthy did not start his crusade against Communism until 1950.

Even though McCarthy's investigations proved that his suspicions were right, for many

years afterward and continuing to this day, liberals have spread the falsehood that McCarthy

had found nothing at Fort Monmouth.

Both Albert Bernstein and Sylvia Bernstein, Carl's mother, had both been Communists

since the 1940s. Albert Bernstein was a Union activist, while Sylvia Bernstein was a

secretary for the War Department in the 1930s and, during the Clinton Administration,

volunteered in the White House, answering letters that were addressed to Hillary Clinton.

During the 1950s, Sylvia Bernstein invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid revealing her

party ties to Congress but worked openly in assisting convicted spies Julius Rosenberg

and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for espionage.

It should be pointed out how many people followed McCarthy on his crusade, and that

many pro-Americans still do. The majority of the sources that discredited Senator McCarthy

originated from a large assault by the liberal media that managed to sway the majority of

Americans against him at that time. While many Americans – liberals and conservatives–

use McCarthy's name in a negative connotation, such references are unfair to McCarthy.

Quote

Bibliography

• Buckley, William F. McCarthy and His Enemies (1954),
•  a major statement by a young conservative
• 
  
• Crosby, S.J., Donald F. God, Church and Flag:
  
• Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church,
•  1950-1957 (1978). online edition
• 
  
• Fried, Richard M. Nightmare in Red:
  
• The McCarthy Era in Perspective 1990 online edition
• 
  
• 

• 
  
• Griffith, Robert. The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate 1987 online edition
• 
  
• Herman, Arthur Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s
•  Most Hated Senator (2000). excerpt and text search, very favorable to McCarthy
• 
  
• Latham, Earl Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy. (1969).
• 
  
• O'Brien, Michael. McCarthy and McCarthyism in Wisconsin. (1981)
• 
  
• Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (1983), standard biography excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Reeves, Thomas C. The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography (1982),
  
• standard biography by a leading conservative scholar
• 
  

McCarthyism

• Klehr, Harvey, John Earl Hayes and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov. The Secret World of
  
• American Communism (1995) excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Klehr, Harvey, and Ronald Radosh. The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism
•  (1996), suggests that Soviet spying in the postwar United States was extensive and
  
• that in the case of the arrest of the editors of the Amerasia magazine, and others, in
•  1945, naive liberals in the Justice and State departments blocked efforts to bring the
•  spy ring to justice. excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Earl Raab. The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing
•  Extremism in America, 1790-1970 (1970) (Chap. 6 "The 1950's: McCarthyism")
•  online edition
• 
  
• Morgan, Ted. Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America. 2003. 685 pp.
•  excerpt and text search
• 
  
• O'Reilly, Kenneth. Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the
  
• Red Menace 1983
• 
  
• Ottanelli, Fraser M. The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression
•  to World War II 1991 excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Rausch, Scott Alan. "McCarthyism and Eisenhower's State Department, 1953-1961."
•  PhD dissertation U. of Washington 2000. 231 pp. DAI 2000 61(6A): 2438-A. DA9976046
• 
  
• Schrecker, Ellen. "McCarthyism: Political Repression and the Fear of Communism." 
• Social Research 2004 71(4): 1041-1086. Issn: 0037-783x Fulltext: in Ebsco;
  
• summarizes her books on the subject
• 
  
• Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998)
  
• excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents.
•  (2d ed. 2002). 308 pp. excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1998) excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Theoharis, Athan. Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but
  
• Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years. (2002). 307 pp. 
• excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Weinstein, Allen, and Vassiliev, Alexander. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage
•  in America: The Stalin Era (1999) excerpt and text search
• 
  

Media issues

• Doherty, Thomas. Cold War, Cool Media: Television, McCarthyism, and American
•  Culture (2003) excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Dussere, Erik. "Subversion in the Swamp: Pogo and the Folk in the McCarthy Era."
  
• Journal of American Culture2003 26(1): 134-141. Issn: 1542-7331 Fulltext: in Ebsco
• 
  
• Murphy, Brenda. Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film,
  
• and Television. (1999). 310 pp. excerpt and text search
• 
  
• Sbardellati, John and Shaw, Tony. "Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and
  
• the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America." Pacific Historical Review 2003 72(4): 495-530. Issn: 0030-8684 in JSTOR
• 
  
• Strout, Lawrence N. Covering McCarthyism: How the Christian Science Monitor
  
• Handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950-1954. 1999. 171 pp. online edition
• 
  

Primary sources

• Joe McCarthy. Major Speeches and Debates of Senator Joe McCarthy Delivered in
•  the United States Senate, 1950-1951 U. S. Government Printing Office, 1953 online edition
• 
  
• Joe McCarthy. McCarthyism: The Fight for America 1952 online edition
• 
  
• Fried, ed. Albert. McCarthyism: The Great American Red Scare: a Documentary
  
• History 1997 online edition
• 
  
• Schrecker, Ellen W. "Archival Sources for the Study of McCarthyism," The Journal
•  of American History, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jun., 1988), pp. 197–208 at JSTOR

See also

• Anti-Communist
• 
  
• David Greenglass
• 
  
• Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
• 
  
• Amerasia
• 
  
• William Henry Taylor
• 
  
• Anatoli Gorsky
• 
  
• Annie Lee Moss
• 
  
• Morton Sobell
• 
  
• Soviet spies in America (1921-1948)
• 
  
• Larry McDonald Congressional anti-communist successor