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MCCARTHY, JOSEPH RAYMOND 1909-1957

U.S. SENATOR, 1947-1957

Hunting Communists

Beginning with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February 1950 in which he claimed to have a list containing the names of 205 known Communists in the U.S. State Department, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin became synonymous with investigations of Communists. He took the Senate floor later that month to elaborate on his accusations. During his series of speeches to the Senate, McCarthy's numbers varied, ranging from 205 to 57 Communists. When challenged by majority leader Democratic senator Scott Lucas to "name them all," McCarthy responded that "it would be improper to make the names public until the appropriate Senate committee can meet in executive session and get them.… If we should label one man a Communist when he is not a Communist, I think it would be too bad." Critics labeled those comments window dressing: McCarthy, they argued, never had any evidence. Nevertheless, in making his claims McCarthy soon emerged as one of the most powerful—and most feared—men on Capitol Hill. He had touched a nerve in an American people already fearful of Communist aggression, and few politicians were willing to denounce McCarthy.

The Tydings and McCarran

Committees. McCarthy's revelations, offered with the assistance of pugnacious Chief Counsel Roy Cohn, first resulted in a specially formed subcommittee headed by Democratic senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, wherein McCarthy accused Owen Lattimore, a consultant to the State Department and a Johns Hopkins University professor, of subversive ties and claimed that the Truman administration held evidence against Lattimore and others in its files. The Tydings committee report charged McCarthy with "fraud and hoax," claiming he had not produced the name of one Communist in the State Department. But the public apparently did not agree. Polls showed that more than 40 percent of the public believed McCarthy's allegations. A second committee, headed by Sen. Pat McCarran of Nevada, from 1951 to 1952 examined McCarthy's allegations. The committee claimed to find credibility in McCarthy's accusations and labeled Lattimore "a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy." A stunned nation paid close attention as others such as Annie Lee Moss, an elderly black woman who handled coded messages in the Pentagon, were hauled in front of the committee to answer charges that they were card-carrying Reds.

The Permanent Investigations Subcommittee

An obscure senator prior to 1950, his political future in doubt, McCarthy had found a potent political weapon in anticommunism and won reelection in 1952; he became chairman of the Committee on Government Operations, a body in charge of investigating petty violations within the federal government. McCarthy, however, soon appointed himself head of the committee's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, which held the power to subpoena, and opened inquiries into the Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, after allegations of spying and sabotage there. A full-scale investigation ensued in 1954 in which the U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch clashed with the senator on national television. The army maintained that McCarthy had sought preferential treatment for a staff member of his, G. David Schine, and McCarthy responded that the army used Schine to get him to call off his investigation. McCarthy's antics on national television turned the tide of public opinion against him, and a Senate committee condemned McCarthy for defiling the integrity of the Senate. McCarthy lost influence after 1954 and lost his committee chairmanship in 1956. He even charged that Dwight D. Eisenhower was guilty of continuing the "20 years of treason" started by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations—a charge that the popular Eisenhower quickly shook, but one that tainted McCarthy himself as lacking patriotism.

The End of the McCarthy Era

On 2 May 1957 McCarthy died of complications associated with alcoholism. Prior to his death McCarthy attempted to regain the national spotlight by proclaiming himself a champion of civil liberties. Few listened, however. He had gained a reputation for anticommunist excesses and witch-hunting, and for besmirching the character of hundreds of individuals. Subsequent committees did find that some individuals he had named as Communist indeed were, and that when examined, McCarthy's evidence stood up more than critics cared to admit. One historian of the Eisenhower era noted that McCarthy's "appeal was very much in the American mainstream" and "not a phenomenon at all." Above all, he left a legacy of controversy, and the term McCarthyism became synonymous with inquisitorial tactics.