The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

by James Cross Giblin

  The response was swift and firm. A high State Department official said that only one of the four men named by McCarthy, John Stewart Service, was currently employed there. And Service's loyalty to his country had been established beyond any doubt by the department's in-house loyalty board. The official concluded by affirming his own anti-Communist credentials, declaring to the gathered reporters that if he [the official] "learned of a single Red who was presently employed by the department, the man would be fired before sundown."

  But, as often happened, Joe's charges carried more weight in the press than the State Department denials. While a few papers, like the Baltimore Sun, adopted a cautious approach in their coverage—the Sun's front-page headline read "McCarthy Names Names in Four 'Cases'; Senator, However, Calls None 'Communist' or 'Traitor'"—many others blared Joe's charges as if they were accepted facts. The Boston Herald said, in a banner headline, "Senator Lists Shapley as Among Four Pro-Reds Tied to State Dept." and the San Francisco Chronicle headline read "4 in State Department Named as Reds."

  Joe attracted a large, enthusiastic crowd for his speech in Las Vegas, and more than 300 people jammed into the First Presbyterian Church in Huron, South Dakota, to hear him speak. A local newspaper gave Joe's talk glowing coverage, and one of those who heard it wrote, in a letter to the editor, "He [Joe] left us feeling proud we were Republicans.... McCarthy is a thinking, acting leader, not just a politician."

  His speaking tour finished, Joe flew to Milwaukee on his way to Appleton for a short visit with friends and family before returning to Washington. At the Milwaukee airport, he learned that President Truman had told reporters at a news conference that there was "not a word of truth in any of McCarthy's charges."

  Milwaukee newsmen gathered around Joe, asking for his reactions to the president's comment. Once again Joe assumed a cocky attitude, saying, "President Truman should refresh his memory about certain things." He went on to repeat his claim that he had in his possession the names of 57 Communists in the State Department, and said again that he would hand the list over to the president as soon as the State Department's loyalty files were opened. Joe ended on a serious note. "I want to be sure they aren't hiding these Communists anymore."

  Joe must have been delighted that his bluffs and exaggerations were paying off so handsomely. In little more than a week, he had gone from being a freshman senator from Wisconsin, little known beyond his home state, to a political celebrity whose words made headlines all across the country.

  11. Where's the Evidence?

  BACK IN WASHINGTON, Joe was eager to sustain the momentum his Lincoln Day tour had generated. He requested four or five hours of speaking time on the floor of the Senate to present fresh charges of subversion in the State Department. This so-called new information came from the 1947 Lee report on the House's investigation into the Department that Joe had already used in his Lincoln Day speeches. McCarthy planned to talk about many of the cases in the report, changing their order so that any senators present who knew the Lee report would not immediately recognize Joe's source.

  The Senate granted Joe's request and scheduled his presentation for the evening of February 20, 1950. Joe arrived early, carrying a briefcase bulging with papers, some of which poked out at the top. Only a few Democrats and a dozen or so Republicans were present for the evening session, but Joe noted a sizable number of reporters in the gallery.

  McCarthy began on a serious note. "I wish to discuss tonight a subject which concerns me more than does any other subject I have ever discussed before this body," he said, "and perhaps more than any other subject I shall ever have the good fortune to discuss in the future." Then he went on the attack. His target was Scott Lucas, a Democrat from Illinois who was serving as Senate majority leader.

  A few days earlier, Lucas had given a speech in Chicago in which he had commented negatively on Joe's Lincoln Day speeches. "If I had said the nasty things that McCarthy has about the State Department, I would be ashamed all my life," Lucas was quoted as saying. Now Joe had his chance to get back at the Illinois senator, mocking him as "the Democratic leader of the Senate—at least, the alleged leader. Actually, I do not feel the Democratic Party has control of the executive branch of the government any more."

  Sen. McCarthy reads some of the thousands of letters he received from supporters of his crusade against security risks in the State Department. The Library of Congress

  Lucas, who was present, bristled at Joe's remarks. He frequently interrupted Joe to ask loaded questions and make sarcastic comments. Lucas believed it would be easy to expose McCarthy's bluffs and contradictions, but he underestimated the wily senator from Wisconsin. When he asked Joe about the 205 supposed Communists in the State Department he had cited in Wheeling, Joe replied, "I do not believe I mentioned the figure 205. I believe I said 'over 200.'" Unfortunately, the tape recording of the Wheeling speech had been erased after it was broadcast, so there was no way of checking what McCarthy had said.

  Irritated by Joe's vagueness, Lucas pressed on, asking if he had said 205, as reported in the press, or 57, as he had said later in Salt Lake City. Joe responded angrily, dismissing the question as "silly." Then he went on to claim that he had used both figures in Wheeling, saying 57 were Communists and 205 "unsafe risks." To complicate matters, he added that some of the 57 were from "this group of 205."

  While Lucas pondered this confusing batch of figures, Joe held up his briefcase and said it contained photostats of information about "the Communist character of 81 State Department employees." He had obtained it, he said, "from some good loyal Americans whose identities will forever remain confidential." Joe said he had the names of all 81 suspects but felt it was "improper to make them public" until an appropriate Senate committee had a chance to study them. "If we should label one man a Communist when he is not a Communist, I think it would be too bad," he said with apparent sincerity.

  Joe then reached into the briefcase, pulled out a batch of papers, and began to present his "evidence." For the next hour or more, he described case after case from the Lee report, often changing the wording as he went. He freely omitted sentences, added phrases, and exaggerated points, all in an attempt to make the cases seem more sinister and threatening. Where the Lee report described someone as being "inclined toward Communism," Joe described him as being an "active Communist." An applicant who in the end was rejected for a job was said by McCarthy to have received "top secret clearance."

  At seven-thirty P.M., after Joe had gone through fourteen cases, Senator Lucas moved to adjourn the hearing because a quorum of senators—the minimum number required to conduct business—was not present. Joe's Republican supporters argued instead that the sergeant-at-arms should "compel" the missing senators to come to the Senate at once for what they described as an "urgent session." Lucas's motion was defeated on a party-line vote, with all the Democrats present voting yes and all the Republicans voting no, and the sergeant-at-arms set about calling the 72 absent senators. One by one they entered the Senate chamber; Senator Brien McMahon, reached at a party, arrived in white tie and tails. Forty minutes later a quorum had been rounded up, and Joe continued his presentation. He rambled on until eleven-forty-five when the senators—some nodding from fatigue—finally voted to adjourn the session.

  The next day, the New York Times, in an editorial, criticized "the campaign of indiscriminate character assassination on which the senator [McCarthy] has embarked." But other newspapers were less critical in their coverage, and many Americans—still unsettled by the fall of China to the Communists and the Soviet Union's acquisition of an atomic bomb—were convinced that Joe had uncovered a nest of spies and traitors in the State Department.

  The Senate, too, took McCarthy seriously. The next day, February 21, the Democratic leaders voted for an immediate investigation into Joe's charges. They also agreed to Republican demands to hold open hearings and to subpoena the State Department's loyalty and employment files. Joe was especially eager to gain access to the file
s. Without them, he said, "the investigation will be completely useless, it will be a complete farce, and nothing but a whitewash."

  President Truman, in a news conference, said that McCarthy's charges were entirely false and refused again to hand over the State Department's files. An angry Joe told reporters, "I don't think the Senate will allow the president to get away with his boyish thumbing of his nose at all the senators who represent the forty-eight states."

  A few days later, State Department security officers made public the connection they had discovered between Joe's charges and Lee's 1947 report. Secretary of State Acheson, commenting on the link, told a news conference that "similar—perhaps identical—charges have been aired and thoroughly investigated before." Political columnist Drew Pearson, never an admirer of Joe's, recounted the story in greater detail, revealing to the public how the Wisconsin senator had twisted and distorted the Lee report in his Senate speech.

  In light of these revelations, Senate Democrats thought they could quickly dismiss Joe's allegations. Majority Leader Thomas T. Connally of Texas downgraded the investigation by turning it over to a subcommittee to be chaired by Senator Millard E. Tydings of Maryland. As Connally told reporters, "I have more important things to do than to go on a skunk hunt."

  Sen. Tydings disliked Joe personally, and had clashed with him earlier over the Malmédy investigation. But Tydings promised "a full, fair, and complete investigation." He went on to tell reporters, "We will let the chips fall where they may. This is neither a witchhunt on the one hand nor a whitewash on the other."

  Senate Republican leaders knew how weak Joe's claims were, and how little evidence he had to back them. Worried that he would perform poorly under questioning by the Tydings subcommittee, they organized a group of prominent anti-Communists to help him prepare for the investigation. Their main goal wasn't to aid a fellow Republican in trouble but to prevent the Democrats on the subcommittee from exposing the trumped-up nature of McCarthy's charges. If that happened, the American people might begin to think the Communist menace had been exaggerated, and the Republicans might lose an issue they were counting on to win future elections.

  Joe, too, realized he needed help, and welcomed the advice he got from conservative fellow senators like William F. Knowland of California, Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, and Kenneth'S. Wherry of Nebraska. Representative Richard Nixon was especially helpful. When Joe requested materials from the House Un-American Activities Committee, on which Nixon served, Nixon was glad to lend Joe some of his files. He also met privately with Joe on several occasions to educate him in the politics of anti-Communism, an area in which Nixon was considered something of an expert.

  J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, was probably Joe's most valuable advisor at this time. The two men had become friendly soon after McCarthy arrived in Washington, a friendship that was furthered by their mutual love of gambling. When Hoover was out of town, he offered Joe the use of his private box at the racetrack. But the FBI director didn't take Joe all that seriously as a senator until after the Wheeling speech. That was when he realized Joe might play an important role in the struggle against Communist influence in government, a cause that was dear to Hoover's heart.

  Soon after Joe's return from the Lincoln Day speaking tour, he phoned Hoover to say he needed some evidence to back up the charges he had made in the Wheeling speech. Hoover responded sympathetically, and he ordered his staff to go through the relevant FBI files and pass along any information they thought might be useful to Joe. This was nothing new; Hoover and his top aides often leaked classified FBI data to "friendly" members of Congress, right-wing journalists and political commentators, and conservative patriotic organizations.

  J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, (left), and his associate and close friend Clyde Tolson testify before a congressional committee in 1950. The National Archives

  Hoover also urged Joe to hire a former FBI agent, Donald Surine, as an investigator. Joe followed up on Hoover's recommendation and assigned Surine to gather incriminating material on suspected left-wingers in the State Department. Surine quickly became a key member of McCarthy's staff. Almost once a week he and Joe had lunch with Hoover and Clyde Tolson, the FBI's second in command and Hoover's close friend. Over drinks and steaks, the men exchanged information and gossip about key players on the Washington political stage.

  The Tydings subcommittee opened its hearings into McCarthy's charges on March 8, 1950. The Senate caucus room, where the hearings were held, was crowded to capacity with newspaper, newsreel, and television journalists and photographers, as well as interested spectators. Smiling broadly and seeming completely self-confident, Joe swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Chairman Tydings was well aware of where McCarthy had gotten the 81 names he had cited in his marathon Senate speech. But he wanted to pin Joe down and make him reveal the evidence—or lack of it—concerning their connections to Communism. At the first hearing, Tydings promised, "You are going to get one of the most complete investigations ever given in the history of this republic, so far as my abilities will permit."

  In response, Joe claimed that his evidence on the 81 suspects had been "gathered over painstaking months of work," although Donald Surine was still trying to assemble it. To stall for time, Joe went on to say, "Let me make my position clear. I personally do not favor presenting names, no matter how conclusive the evidence is." McCarthy knew, though, that he would have to come up with some specifics in order to feed the media's appetite for news, and to keep Tydings and the other Democrats on the subcommittee from embarrassing him. And so he announced that he was prepared to discuss a sampling of cases as examples of what he and his researchers had unearthed.

  In the next few days of hearings, Joe introduced the names of nine men and women who, he claimed, were known Communist sympathizers. Among them was Dorothy Kenyon, a sixty-two-year-old New York lawyer. Standing before the subcommittee, Joe pulled a bunch of copies of documents and newspaper clippings from his briefcase and charged that Miss Kenyon was in a "high State Department position" and "belongs to twenty-eight organizations cited by the Attorney General and House and Senate committees as subversive or disloyal."

  He held up a copy of a full-page 1940 advertisement in the Daily Worker. It showed a petition to President Roosevelt and the attorney general protesting attacks on the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who had fought on the side of the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Dorothy Kenyon had signed the petition, along with dozens of other prominent Americans whose loyalty to their country was undeniable. However, in the late 1940s, the House Un-American Activities Committee had labeled the Lincoln Brigade "subversive," and that was enough for Joe.

  As he proceeded, McCarthy's case against Miss Kenyon grew weaker and weaker. He treated all of HUAC's judgments as proven facts, even when some of them were obviously questionable. He also revealed his ignorance of certain historical situations, such as the fact that the Spanish Civil War had brought liberals and Communists together in the 1930s. He concluded by saying that, in his opinion, Miss Kenyon was "an extremely bad security risk" who should be removed immediately from any connection with the State Department.

  That afternoon, Dorothy Kenyon spoke to reporters in New York. She told them, "Senator McCarthy is a liar," and requested an opportunity to state her case before the Tydings subcommittee. At the same time, the State Department issued a statement defending her. It began by saying Miss Kenyon was not, and had never been, an employee of the State Department. Her only connection with it was a three-year term she had served as an American representative on a United Nations commission, a term that had ended the previous December.

  Much of the press—especially the newspapers owned by longtime right-winger William Randolph Hearst—followed the usual pattern in covering the hearings. They played up Joe's charges against Miss Kenyon in bold headlines—"New York Lawyer Linked to Reds"—and played down her subsequent denial and that of the Sta
te Department spokesman. But the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, observed that Joe was off to a thin start if he intended to prove there were Communists in the State Department.

  New York lawyer Dorothy Kenyon answers McCarthy's charges that she lent her name to many left-wing organizations that supported Communism.

  The Library of Congress

  Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a friend of Miss Kenyon's, adopted a gently mocking tone in her column, "My Day," which appeared in many newspapers. Mrs. Roosevelt wrote that Joe's charges were "very ill-informed" and even humorous. "If all of the honorable senator's 'subversives' are as subversive as Miss Kenyon, I think the State Department is entirely safe and the nation will continue on an even keel."

  Despite Mrs. Roosevelt's criticism, New York Times editorials, and relentless questioning about his sources by Sen. Tydings and the other Democrats on the subcommittee, Joe proceeded with the other eight names on his preliminary list. He enumerated their supposed links to Communist-front organizations but refrained from calling any of them Communists. In his closing remarks, he said he had other important materials to present to the subcommittee, and Sen. Tydings invited him to return at any time to testify further. Then the subcommittee members voted to honor requests by the accused to respond in person to McCarthy's charges.

  Dorothy Kenyon appeared on March 14, 1950. Joe stayed away from the hearing that day but left his papers regarding the Kenyon case with his fellow conservative Senator Bourke Hickenlooper. Miss Kenyon made a convincing witness on her own behalf. "I am, and have always been, an independent, liberal Rooseveltian Democrat," she stated, "devoted to and actively working for such causes as the improvement of the living and working conditions of labor, and the preservation of civil liberties."