History This Week, June 9, 1954.
I'm Sally Helm. 20 million Americans are watching a Senate hearing on TV.
It's a battle between the United States Army and a man named Joseph McCarthy.
They're arguing about communists.
At this point McCarthy is known as the nation's top communist hunter.
And on one of the last days of these hearings, the people watching on TV see him do the thing he's famous for.
He accuses someone of having ties to communism.
When he makes this accusation, McCarthy looks calm.
He's done this a million times.
He's holding his glasses in one hand, sort of toying with them.
Meanwhile, the guy on the other side of these hearings is getting angrier and angrier.
His name is Joseph Welch, he's the lawyer for the Army.
A pillar of the establishment.
He's wearing a bow tie.
And as he listens to McCarthy talk, Welch takes his glasses off, puts them back on, puts his hand on his forehead.
He's agitated. McCarthy keeps talking, until finally Welch cuts him off.
Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that last. McCarthy starts to respond and Welch kind of...
loses it. His glasses are now entirely off.
And he utters these words.
No sense of decency sir, at long last. Have you left?
No sense of decency.
Have you no decency.
Senator McCarthy has risen to power during a time of great fear in America.
His name has become synonymous with anti -communism, and with baseless, life -ruining accusations.
This hearing will be the end of him.
Today, what made McCarthy so powerful in the first place?
And how did that very same thing eventually bring him down?
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Did I tell you that I actually saw it live?
Ellen Schrecker was in ninth grade during the Army McCarthy hearings, and she happened to turn on the TV when Joseph Welch delivered those famous words.
It was totally serendipitous.
We turn on the hearings and there it was.
Have you no decency, sir?
Shreker is now one of the historical experts on McCarthyism.
She's written three books about it.
I sort of view myself as Miss McCarthyism.
You know, when you Google McCarthyism, you usually get me on the first page.
In the 1950s, McCarthyism meant accusing a person or group of being a communist or a communist sympathizer — and therefore a supposed threat to America.
Shreker says the term is a bit of a misnomer, because the whole thing actually started before Senator McCarthy came on the scene.
It started in the 1940s.
You could talk about it as the home front of the Cold War.
After World War II, the superpowers that come out on top, the US and the Soviet Union, become each other's number one enemy.
There is a kind of anti -communist consensus in the country driven by the Cold War, and a belief that maybe communists are in some way endangering American security.
Communists stealing secrets.
A lot of this was unfounded, but to be fair ...
There were spies. So there's this rising fear in the country.
In response, in 1947, President Harry Truman enacts something known as the loyalty order.
It says that federal employees will be investigated to make sure they're loyal to the U .S. And they can be punished if they're not.
In a series of dawn raids, FBI agents swooped down on communists, indicted on judges of advocating the violent overthrow of the government.
This gets a little out of control, arguably stepping on people's constitutional rights.
And then in 1949, American fears of communism hit new heights.
People assume we had a monopoly over nuclear power.
Then in 1949, the Russians detonated an atomic bomb.
How did the Russians get the atomic bomb?
Spies. So anti -communist fervor is getting stronger.
And it's been leading to overreach and hysteria.
People accused of communism were blacklisted, – which meant careers, lives stopped in their tracks.
There were accusations flying against all kinds of people – actors in Hollywood, musicians, elementary school teachers, and government officials.
The Democrats control the White House, and the Republican Party seize an opportunity to win it back – so they pick up an anti -communism crusade as a part of their campaign, as early as 1948.
In the midst of all that, in 1950, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy enters the fray.
He's a junior senator from Wisconsin and he's not an obvious power player.
He's a sort of shoddy Irishman.
Very folksy, very hard -working or at least initially.
He wants to be liked, he wants a lot of attention, he He knows how to get it.
In February of 1950, McCarthy stands up before the Ohio County Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, and claims that he knows the names of more than 200 government officials who are part of the Communist Party.
And that propelled him into the headlines right away.
He's sort of validating and explaining to people who are kind of upset about what's going on in the world.
And he creates this conspiracy theory.
It's communists in the State Department selling out the United States, simple as that.
McCarthy's charges surpass any other accusations to date.
And he's pointing a finger at the Democratic Truman administration.
And the Republican Party, which finds it a very politically powerful narrative, supports it.
McCarthy becomes the face of anti -communism.
Now, Truman is able to fight back.
He's well liked, popular, but in June of 1950.
With the outbreak of the Korean War, McCarthy's charges all of a sudden have much more power because the United States is in a fighting war, a shooting war, with communists.
And McCarthy's crusade ignites.
He gains notoriety because his charges are so wild, he doesn't seem to care whether he's telling the truth or not and people become afraid of him.
Even fellow senators.
In the 1950 senatorial elections, several senators who had stood up against him lost their elections and McCarthy is seen as somehow uniquely powerful.
He's still targeting officials in the Truman administration, and the Republicans hope that they might be able to beat the Democrats in the upcoming presidential election in 1952.
The Republican Party presents a united front.
General Eisenhower will win over Senator Taft on the first ballot.
845... They've nominated Dwight D.
Eisenhower, a highly respected Army veteran.
After 40 years of distinguished Army service, his nomination is a popular one detested to by the acclaimed From the Floor.
McCarthy is in many ways helping Eisenhower's campaign by painting the Democrats as soft on communism.
But Eisenhower hates McCarthy.
One of McCarthy's main targets is General George Marshall, who was Truman's Secretary of State and was Eisenhower's mentor.
Eisenhower is an army man, and McCarthy's attacks on General Marshall feel personal.
While campaigning in 1952, Eisenhower wants to come to Marshall's defense in speeches.
But — He is dissuaded from doing that.
Powerful figures say, no, don't do that.
And he pulls back. McCarthy was too valuable.
The political miracle of the century begins to take form as millions of Americans go to the polls to elect a president.
In the 1952 election, Eisenhower beats the Democrat Adlai Stevenson, meaning that, after 20 years, the GOP is back in the White House.
And despite their beef, Eisenhower appoints McCarthy chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations.
He has his own committee to go looking for spies inside the government, and he goes wild.
But, under this popular Republican war hero president, the political narrative is different.
It becomes harder in some ways for McCarthy to say the Eisenhower administration is stocked with communists.
There's a growing feeling that maybe the witch hunters have run out of witches.
People are beginning to realize that McCarthyism is going too far, that they're attacking people who are unjustly attacked.
There are people — journalists, opposing politicians — who are trying to bring McCarthy down a peg.
But ... It's not their moment.
People were afraid of his power.
But when he begins to attack the army, that is the moment at which his career is going to flounder.
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In 1954, a young lawyer from New York starts to work with McCarthy's Senate committee, Roy Cohn.
He'd become a notorious communist hunter himself.
He had tried Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two famous communist spies.
But Cohn was keeping a secret of his own.
Cohn is very gay and of course concealing it.
Being gay in 1954 was not socially accepted.
In fact, it was illegal.
And it had been painted as a threat to national security.
There is a sort of lavender scare against gay people on security grounds.
The idea was that if people were gay, they could easily be blackmailed.
Cone himself is notorious for investigating State Department officials for being gay.
And at the same time, rumors were circulating about his own sexuality.
And about his relationship with a young man named G.
David Shine. David Shine was hired by McCarthy's committee, and he and Roy Cohn go overseas to Europe up, and they engage in things like pillow fights, in lobbies of hotels, and behave very sophomorically, shall we say.
In 1954, Schein gets drafted into the Army.
And Kohn gets involved.
He didn't want Schein to get shipped overseas.
Kohn has friends in high places, and he has the powerful, feared Joseph McCarthy on his So he calls up the secretary of the Army.
The two of them have several charged phone calls, with Cohn essentially demanding that Schein get special treatment.
To ensure that he can get a cushy job that requires him to spend most of his time in New York City, that he can take off whenever he wants to, that he doesn't have to do kitchen work.
And it works. Schein gets a cushy job.
But, the army has also secretly recorded these telephone calls.
That will become a big problem when McCarthy later turns his witch hunt to the army.
All the low -hanging fruit has been picked.
He was really floundering, looking for anything he could find.
The junior senator from Wisconsin had, as the head of the Permanent Senatorial Investigating Subcommittee, leveled an accusing finger at the United States Army.
He claimed coddling of communists within its midst, basing his case on the giving of an honorable discharge to a captain who had refused to sign a loyalty oath.
Recklessly, McCarthy ripped into the reputations of both friend and foe alike in his attack on the army and its chiefs.
And this is the moment when Eisenhower says, OK, what can we do with this guy?
And so Eisenhower turns against him.
Eisenhower wants to undermine McCarthy.
Remember, he's an army guy himself.
And in general, the senator's baseless claims are becoming a political liability.
Plus, McCarthy is an increasingly belligerent alcoholic.
And on March 11th, 1954, the army releases their recordings, accusing McCarthy and Kohn of pressuring them to give preferential treatment to G.
David Schein. And Eisenhower establishes this special investigation to investigate what happened to David Chyn in the army.
Was he using undue influence to get special treatment?
And uses these investigations of David Chyn and Roy Cohn as a way to undermine McCarthy's power.
McCarthy doesn't back down.
He countercharges. He's like, we didn't pressure you to give Shine this cushy gig.
You did that to try and convince me not to expose people in the Army who are communist traitors.
On April 22, 1954, the Wisconsin senator stepped down from his committee chairmanship so that he might defend his case against the Army in a full public hearing before the committee.
In these hearings, Roy Cohn and McCarthy will represent themselves.
And a lawyer named Joseph Welch will represent the army.
Joseph Welch was just the quintessential establishment lawyer out of what we would call a white shoe law firm in Boston.
Welch has been preparing carefully for these hearings.
He knows McCarthy's tactics.
He has to be ready for the senator to cry communism.
them. So before the hearings begin, Welch goes out to dinner with two young lawyers on the case.
And he asks, Is there anything in your past or in your present that you should tell me that would disqualify you?
And this young attorney named Fred Fischer says yes.
When I was at Harvard Law School I belonged to an organization called the National Lawyers guild, which has been attacked as a communist -front organization, and Welch says thank you very much why don't you stay in Boston.
Fisher is off the case.
Welch knows this would be too big a liability in the hearings.
And if McCarthy does go after him, that could ruin Fisher's career.
In fact, before the hearings, Welch makes a backroom deal with Cohen and McCarthy.
They agree not to bring up this young lawyer, Fred Fisher, if Welch won't bring up the fact that Roy Cohn, who had been accepted to West Point, failed his physical.
In 1954 America, that would have been a huge embarrassment.
And so, on April 22, the Army -McCarthy hearings come to order.
Press and television faithfully recorded the day by day clash of the two adversaries in what soon turned into a monumental mudslinging contest. 20 million Americans are watching on TV.
These hearings in a sense made television as much as television made the hearings.
The hearings last weeks.
And as they go on, the public is seeing McCarthy's nasty tactics up close.
And they don't like what they see.
McCarthy's stock sunk to a new low the day he attacked the Army's council, Boston Attorney Joseph Welsh.
The ism of McCarthyism was beginning to fade.
And then on June 9, 1954, McCarthy's image shatters.
I remember seeing this moment that was just jaw -dropping.
Here's the backstory.
McCarthy had a Martini lunch. And after lunch, when the hearings start up again, he's a little out of it.
Welch and Cohn start going at it lawyer -to - lawyer.
Cohn is saying he knows the names of 130 communist spies in American defense plants.
And Welch is taunting him, kind of mock pleading with Cone to find those communists before sundown.
No, the uh… Just answer me.
That must be right.
It has to be right.
No, what I might like to do and what should be done is two different things.
Well, if you could be God and do anything you wish, you'd cure it by sundown, wouldn't you?
And McCarthy, with maybe a few too many martinis in him, takes this whole exchange a little personally.
When he has the chance to speak, McCarthy says, I have something to tell you.
Do you know you have a young man in your law firm who belongs to a communist organization?
Which is incredibly damaging, that automatically would blacklist anybody.
And McCarthy is making this charge at a nationally televised hearing that everybody's been watching for weeks.
And it's just extraordinary.
Welch is incredulous.
Cohen looks horrified.
He even tries to lean over and get McCarthy to stop talking.
Now, Welch was prepared.
He didn't trust McCarthy.
Welch tries to reason with him.
How could you do this?
How could you ruin this young man's life?
McCarthy doesn't get it.
He just plain doesn't get it.
He continues. Which is when Welch delivers the final blow.
No sense of decency, sir, at one last. Have you left?
No sense of decency.
And everybody gets it, all of us who are watching get it.
Everybody had heard about McCarthy making unfounded accusations against people and ruining their lives, and they're seeing it live.
All of a sudden, the emperor has no quotes.
The only person who doesn't get it is McCarthy himself.
All of a sudden, there is McCarthy, left alone in this hearing room, everybody else is sort of leaving, and he doesn't realize what he's done.
As Schrecker told us, public opinion was ready to turn on McCarthy.
That had been building for a while, but this moment is powerful political theater.
That moment of have you no decency, sort of encapsulates the fact that McCarthy, who symbolizes license McCarthyism, is now no longer legitimate.
From that point on, he comes under attack, not just from Democrats and liberals, but other members of the Republican Party.
In the fall, McCarthy is censured by the Senate — mainly for his attacks on the army.
Once he's censured, he pretty much falls apart — he's lost his power.
three years later, McCarthy dies from complications of alcoholism.
He was only 48. Now, McCarthyism was always bigger than McCarthy.
And even after he's discredited by Have You No Decency, even after he dies, McCarthyism sputters on into the early 60s.
But there's a reason people were so captivated by McCarthy himself.
Sometimes, aberrant characters gained political power.
What made him so powerful was that kind of lack of self -consciousness — pressing the envelope when he had no evidence whatsoever.
That kind of thing was something that he was willing to do.
He was taking risks.
At first, this helped him and his political allies.
But ultimately, it was the very thing that brought him down.
That character of his was useful until he went too far.
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