"Following the lead of Sen. Robert Taft, McCarthy lobbied for the commutation of death sentences handed to a group of Waffen-SS soldiers convicted of war crimes for their involvement in the 1944 Malmedy massacre of American prisoners of war. Taft had been critical of the proceedings because of serious allegations of misconduct during the interrogations that led to the confessions, as well as his objections of Soviet involvement in the trial.[11]"
Nevertheless, he campaigned to let those responsible for wiring the hands together and shooting in the back of the head 72 American Prisoners of War. Certainly a boon to the American people, and perhaps an indication of where his sympathies really lay.
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"McCarthy's national profile rose meteorically after his Lincoln Day speech on February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. McCarthy's words in the speech are a matter of some dispute, as they were not reliably recorded at the time, the media presence being minimal. It is generally agreed, however, that he produced a piece of paper which he claimed contained a list of known communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is quoted to have said: "I have here in my hand a list of 57 people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department."[10]"
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Sec. State James "Byrnes said State Department security investigators had declared 284 persons unfit to hold jobs in the department because of communist connections and other reasons, but that only 79 had been discharged, leaving 205 still on the State Department's payroll. McCarthy told his Wheeling audience that while he did not have the names of the 205 mentioned in the Byrnes letter, he did have the names of 57 who were either members of or loyal to the Communist Party. McCarthy stated he referred to 57 "known Communists;" the number 205 was referring to the number of people employed by the State Department who, for various security reasons related not merely to loyalty but also to issues such as drunkenness and incompetence, should not have been.
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Democratic Senator Millard Tydings "told McCarthy: "You are in the position of being the man who occasioned this hearing, and so far as I am concerned in this committee 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.""
"After 31 days of hearings...the Tydings Committee officially labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud" and a "hoax", said the individuals on his list were neither communists nor pro-communist, and concluded the State Department had run an effective security program."
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Despite the falseness of the claims "Of the 110 names McCarthy gave to the Tydings subcommittee," [no more than] "62 were at the time employed by the State Department. The Tydings Committee cleared all the personnel, but within one year the State Department's Loyalty Security Board instigated proceedings against 49 of the 62. By the end of 1954, 81 of those on McCarthy's list had left the government either by dismissal or resignation." That is they were hounded from their positions without sufficient reason at least according to the preceding Senate Commission.
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"One of McCarthy's higher-profile targets was Gen. George C. Marshall. McCarthy and Sen. William E. Jenner of Indiana accused Marshall of treason. Eisenhower wrote a speech in which he included a spirited defense of Marshall, but he was later convinced to remove this passage." This destroyed the friendship between Eisenhower and Marshall. Eisenhower knew as well as anyone and better than most the loyalty and service Marshall had done for the United States.
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"Several members of the U.S. Senate opposed McCarthy well before 1953. One example is U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican (and the only woman in the Senate at the time) who delivered her "Declaration of Conscience" on June 1, 1950, criticizing both the Executive and Legislative branches' use of smear tactics without mentioning McCarthy or anyone else by name.... Six other Republican Senators, Wayne Morse, Irving M. Ives, Charles W. Tobey, Edward John Thye, George Aiken and Robert C. Hendrickson joined her in condemning McCarthy's tactics. Vermont Senator Ralph E. Flanders also condemned McCarthy on the floor of the Senate and he introduced the resolution to censure him."
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"On July 30, 1954, Senator Ralph Flanders introduced a resolution accusing McCarthy of conduct "unbecoming a member of the United States Senate." Flanders was no fan of McCarthy, as exemplified by a statement to the Senate two months earlier that said McCarthy's "anti-Communism so completely parallels that of Adolf Hitler as to strike fear into the hearts of any defenseless minority.""
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"As David Lawrence pointed out in an editorial 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, but they were not censured for acting "contrary to senatorial ethics" or for impairing the "dignity" of the Senate."
After his censure, McCarthy continued to work in his senatorial duties for another two and a half years. Some contend that he was a changed man during this time, but "to insist, as some have, that McCarthy was a shattered man after the censure is sheer nonsense," said Brent Bozell, one of his aides at the time. "His intellect was as sharp as ever. When he addressed himself to a problem, he was perfectly capable of dealing with it." Just in case you ever wondered where Brent Bozell came from before he became a Right Wingnut.
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Journalist Richard Rovere (1959) wrote:
"There have been descriptions of him as having spent his last years in an unbroken alcoholic stupor. These descriptions are inaccurate. He had always been a heavy drinker, and there were times in those seasons of discontent when he drank more than ever. But he was not always drunk. He went on the wagon (for him this meant beer instead of whiskey) for days and weeks at a time. The difficulty toward the end was that he couldn't hold the stuff. He went to pieces on his second or third drink. And he did not snap back quickly."
It was reported that McCarthy suffered from cirrhosis and was frequently hospitalized for alcoholism. Numerous eyewitnesses, including Senate aide George Reedy and journalist Tom Wicker, have reported finding him alarmingly drunk in the Senate.... He died of acute hepatitis in Bethesda Naval Hospital".
Yes this is a deliberately selective post. There are countervailing opinions, which are well known, and come from people like William Rusher who was a friend and an associate of McCarthy's. They are in my opinion a smokescreen for a man who did more damage to the United States than putative Communist influence (if it existed which I doubt) ever did.
Any biography will tell you the same thing, and any history holds McCarthyism up as a black chapter in American life, with substantial evidence.
Rob
and Good Luck here. Watched it on DVD last night, and really enjoyed it, though it portrays a dark episode in US post war history.
It covers a few months in early 1953 (we didn't get our television til Christmas that year) and is wonderfully evocative in black and white, since that's how we used to see everything on the tube anyway.
Unfortunately it comes in on Welch's speech, the attorney for the US Army, just after he makes one of the great assaults in Senate history. When one of Welch's firms younger attorneys is attacked by McCarthy as a member of a Communist organization (allegation like so many made by McCarthy untrue, and unfounded) Welch asks "Where did you get this information?" McCarthy waffles and says its not important where he got the informantion but Welch continues "Well did you get it from an informant and if so who is that informant? McCarthy continues to waffle, and says no it didn't come from an informant. Welch then asks "Well, did it come from a Pixie?" McCarthy looks both baffled and amused and asks what a Pixie is, while Roy Cohn tries to stop him from pursuing the issue, Welch replies "Well Senator, I think I would describe a Pixie as a second cousin to a fairy!" at which the smile falls from McCarthy's face, and Roy Cohn, the object of the comment, looks completely stunned. From that point on we move into the better known territory of Welch explaining that the young man had come to him and had said he belonged to a Lawyers League which McCarthy and nobody else had named as a Communist Front Organization. After that we get to the "Have you no shame, Senator, Have you at long last lost all traces of decency" speech which many of us know nearly by heart.
And yes Bobby Kennedy is visible in a couple of shots sitting at the end of the hearing table.
Murrow himself lost his program almost immediately after the interview, and the relationship, once very close, between Murrow and Wm Paley the head of CBS never recovered though Murrow remanined VP as head of the News Division.
I think its a terrific movie, and deserves a viewing for its content, and another for the commentary track which explains why George Clooney made (and co-wrote) the movie (his dad was a newsman during this period).
Rob
As entertainment goes, Good Night is probably at the bottom of my list.
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