The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of televised hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations (April–June 1954) to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. The Army accused McCarthy and his chief counsel Roy Cohn of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to G. David Schine, a former McCarthy aide and friend of Cohn's. McCarthy counter-charged that this accusation was made in bad faith and in retaliation for his recent aggressive investigations of suspected communists and security risks in the Army.
Chaired by Senator Karl Mundt, the hearings convened on March 16, 1954, and received considerable press attention, including gavel-to-gavel live television coverage on ABC and DuMont (April 22 – June 17). A confrontation between McCarthy and Army counsel Joseph N. Welch was one of the highlights of the hearing.
The committee report exonerated McCarthy from direct involvement in the pressure campaign, but criticized him and Cohn. It chided Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens but rejected McCarthy's counter-charges. Media coverage, particularly television, greatly contributed to McCarthy's decline in popularity and his censure by the Senate the following December.
Background McCarthy came to national prominence in February 1950 after giving a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in which he claimed to have a list of 205 State Department employees who were members of the Communist Party. McCarthy claimed the list was provided to but dismissed by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, saying that the "State Department harbors a nest of Communists and Communist sympathizers who are helping to shape our foreign policy". In January 1953, McCarthy began his second term and the Republican Party regained control of the Senate; with the Republicans in the majority, McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. This committee included the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the mandate of this subcommittee allowed McCarthy to use it to carry out his investigations of communists in the government. McCarthy appointed 26-year-old Roy Cohn as chief counsel to the subcommittee and future attorney general Robert F. Kennedy as assistant counsel, while reassigning Francis Flanagan to the ad hoc position of general counsel.
In 1953, McCarthy's committee began inquiries into the United States Army, starting by investigating supposed communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth. McCarthy's investigations were largely fruitless, but after the Army accused McCarthy and his staff of seeking a direct commission for Private G. David Schine, a chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a close friend of Cohn's who had been drafted into the Army as a private the previous year, McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith in retaliation for the Fort Monmouth probe.
Inquiry The Senate decided that these conflicting charges should be investigated and the appropriate committee to do this was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by McCarthy. Since McCarthy was one of the targets of the hearings, Senator Karl Mundt was appointed to assume his responsibilities as chairman of the subcommittee. John G. Adams served as the Army's counsel for the hearing. Acting as special counsel was Joseph Welch of the Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr (now called WilmerHale). The hearings were broadcast nationally on the new ABC and DuMont networks, and in part by NBC. Francis Newton Littlejohn, the news director at ABC, made the decision to cover the hearings live, gavel-to-gavel. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated 80 million people saw at least part of the hearings.
Photograph
While the hearings went on, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and Welch accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens. On the witness stand, Cohn and Schine both insisted that the picture entered into evidence (Schine and Stevens alone) was requested by Stevens and that no one was edited out of the photograph. Welch then produced a wider shot of Stevens and Schine with McGuire AFB wing commander Colonel Jack Bradley standing to Schine's right. A fourth person also edited out of the picture (his sleeve was visible to Bradley's right in the Welch photograph) was identified as McCarthy aide Frank Carr."National Affairs: Part of the Picture". Time. May 10, 1954.
Hoover memo After the photograph was discredited, McCarthy produced a copy of a confidential letter he claimed was a January 26, 1951, memo written and sent by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to Major General Alexander R. Bolling, warning Army intelligence of subversives in the Army Signal Corps. McCarthy claimed the letter was in the Army files when Stevens became secretary in 1953, and that Stevens willfully ignored it."National Affairs: The Bogus Letter". Time. May 17, 1954. Welch was the first to question the letter's validity, claiming that McCarthy's "purported copy" did not come from Army files; McCarthy stated he never received any document from the FBI, but when questioned on the stand by special Senate counsel Ray Jenkins and cross-examined by Welch, McCarthy, while admitting the document was given to him by an intelligence officer, refused to identify his source.
Robert Collier, assistant to Ray Jenkins, read a letter from Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., in which he stated that Hoover examined the document and that he neither wrote nor ordered the letter, and that no such copy existed in official FBI records, rendering McCarthy's claims meritless, and the letter spurious.
Homosexuality Though the hearings were sometimes about government subversion, they occasionally took on accusations of a more taboo nature: a portion of the hearings assessed the security risk of homosexuals in government. The issue remained an undercurrent throughout the hearings. One such example of this undercurrent was an exchange between Senator McCarthy and Welch. Welch was questioning McCarthy staff member James Juliana about the unedited picture of Schine with Stevens and Bradley, asking him "Did you think this came from a Pixie?" (an inexpensive amateur camera), at which point McCarthy asked to have the question re-read:
Welch's response compared the mythological pixie and fairy as well as using "fairy" as a derogatory term for a homosexual male.
Cohn, Schine and McCarthy At least a portion of the Army's allegations were correct. Cohn did take steps to request preferential treatment for Schine, going so far on at least one occasion to sign McCarthy's name without his knowledge on a request for Schine to have access to the Senators' baths, a pool and steam room reserved exclusively for senators.
The exact relationship between Cohn, McCarthy and Schine remains unknown. Cohn and Schine were certainly close, and rather than work out of the Senate offices, the two rented nearby office space and shared bills. McCarthy commented that Cohn was unreasonable in matters dealing with Schine. It is unclear if Schine ever had a romantic or sexual relationship with Cohn, who was a closeted homosexual (three years after the hearings, Schine married and eventually had six children). Some have also suggested that McCarthy may have been homosexual, and was even possibly involved with Schine or Cohn.
Confrontation with Symington Near the end of the hearings, McCarthy and Senator Stuart Symington sparred over the handling of secret files by McCarthy's staff. McCarthy staff director Frank Carr testified that everyone who worked on McCarthy's staff had access to classified files regardless of their level of security clearance. Symington hinted that some members of McCarthy's own staff might themselves be subversive and signed a document agreeing to take the stand in the hearings to reveal their names in return for McCarthy's signature on the same document agreeing to an investigation of his staff. But McCarthy, after calling Symington "Sanctimonious Stu", refused to sign the agreement, claiming it contained false statements, and called the accusations an "unfounded smear" on his men. He then rebuked Symington by saying "You're not fooling anyone!" Symington responded, "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks; you're not fooling anyone, either."
Joseph N. Welch confronts McCarthy
In what played out to be the most dramatic exchange of the hearings, McCarthy responded to aggressive questioning from Army counsel Joseph N. Welch. On June 9, 1954, day 30 of the hearings, Welch challenged Cohn to give McCarthy's list of 130 subversives in defense plants to the office of the FBI and the Department of Defense "before the sun goes down". In response to Welch's badgering of Cohn, McCarthy suggested that Welch should "check" on Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in Welch's own Boston law firm whom Welch had planned to have on his staff for the hearings. Fisher had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which Attorney General Brownell had called "the legal bulwark of the Communist Party". McCarthy had previously agreed to keep Fisher's involvement in both Welch's law firm and the NLG confidential. In exchange, Welch agreed to leave a controversy regarding Cohn's draft status out of the hearings.
Welch revealed he had confirmed Fisher's former membership in the National Lawyers Guild approximately six weeks before the hearings started."McCarthy will Boycott Inquiry Pending on Action on News Leak". The New York Times. April 16, 1954. pp. 1, 12. The Army charges were signed by its new special counsel, Joseph N. Welch. Mr. Welch today [April 15] confirmed news reports that he had relieved from duty his original second assistant, Frederick G. Fisher Jr., of his own Boston law office because of admitted previous membership in the National Lawyers Guild, which has been listed by Herbert Brownell Jr. the Attorney General, as a Communist front organization. Mr. Welch said he had brought in another lawyer, John Kimball Jr., from his Boston office to take Mr. Fisher's place. After Fisher admitted his membership in the National Lawyers Guild, Welch decided to send Fisher back to Boston. His replacement by another colleague on Welch's staff was also covered by The New York Times."McCarthy will Boycott Inquiry Pending on Action on News Leak". The New York Times. April 16, 1954. pp. 1, 12. Welch then reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher, saying "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." McCarthy, accusing Welch of filibustering the hearing and baiting Cohn, resumed his attack on Fisher, at which point Welch angrily cut him short: Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild ... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Welch excluded himself from the remainder of the hearings with a parting shot to McCarthy: "Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you ... You have seen fit to bring [the Fisher/NLG affair] out, and if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good! I will not discuss it further ... You, Mr. Chairman, may as you will, call the next witness!" After Welch deferred to Chairman Mundt to call the next witness, the gallery burst into applause.
Committee reports