The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

by James Cross Giblin

One of those affected was a junior who signed up in the spring of 1953 for a survey course on the major world philosophies. The course sounded dull, but the student had heard that the young professor who taught it made the content exciting and meaningful. He had also heard gossip that the professor was only teaching in Cleveland because he'd lost a similar job at one of the major New York City universities. People couldn't help but wonder why, since the man had a reputation for being a brilliant teacher.

  And he was, as the student discovered from the day the class first met. The professor, a wiry, energetic man with thinning black hair, led him and his classmates on a brisk, scintillating journey from the ancient Greeks to the Romans to the scholars of the Middle Ages, and on down to modern times. But he came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the nineteenth century.

  "At this point, I usually introduce Karl Marx and assign readings from Das Kapital and his other works. But this year"—he paused and looked at the floor—"there will be no class discussion of Marx or Marxism or Communism, the ideology that grew out of Marx's ideas."

  A student raised her hand to ask a question, but the professor ignored her and continued. "If you're interested in pursuing Marx on your own, I can give you a reading list of significant books by and about him. But, as I said, there won't be any discussion of his philosophy in class, and there won't be any questions about Marxism on the final exam." With that, he picked up a book from the stack on his desk. "Now let's move on to John Dewey and begin thinking about his philosophical ideas."

  After class, a number of students talked together as they walked down the hall. One asked why the professor was skipping Marx. Another replied it was probably because he didn't want to get in trouble for teaching a controversial subject. A third said she knew the real reason. The professor had been fired the year before from his job in New York after he was accused of being a Communist and spreading Communist ideas.

  That seemed to settle the matter. The students said their goodbyes and went their separate ways. On further reflection, they might have called the professor a coward for taking the easy way out. Or they might have decided he was merely being realistic, given what had happened to him earlier. The mood of the time did not favor those who tried to look at Communism in a calm, thoughtful manner.

  At least one student felt shortchanged, then and later. It would have been helpful to have some background knowledge of Marx's basic philosophy as the cold war progressed and Communism remained in the forefront of the news. The student kept the professor's reading list and referred to it from time to time. But lively classroom discussions would probably have made more of an impression, and given the student a stronger intellectual base from which to judge future events. The stifling atmosphere that McCarthy and others generated had put a lid on the free exchange of ideas in the United States.

  The effects would have been even more damaging if Joe's investigations of the Voice of America and its parent agency, the International Information Administration (IIA), had gone further than they did. As it was, the probes caused considerable damage.

  McCarthy found support for his work in a directive the State Department had issued in February 1953. It banned books and musical compositions by "Communists, fellow travelers, et cetera" from broadcast over the Voice of America, and ordered librarians working in IIA libraries overseas to remove from their shelves all books by "known Communists and other controversial authors."

  McCarthy and members of his staff pored over the catalogues of all the libraries maintained by the IIA, and Joe angrily proclaimed that they had found listed "more than 30,000 volumes by 418 Communist writers." Among the well-known names on the list were historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., poets W. H. Auden and Steven Vincent Benét, and novelists Howard Fast and Edna Ferber.

  Fearing the loss of their jobs, many overseas librarians quickly removed books by these and other "controversial authors," such as mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, playwright Lillian Hellman, poet Langston Hughes, and Walter White, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). White had written a book that explored relations between white and African American troops during World War II. Most of the books in question were simply discarded, but some were pulped or even burned.

  McCarthy's aides, Roy Cohn and David Schine, had been heavily involved in the Voice of America and IIA investigations since the beginning. They had

  David Schine and Roy Cohn look on as Sen. McCarthy discusses with reporters their ongoing investigation of the Voice of America. The Library of Congress

  moved into the Schine family's suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York and questioned dozens of Voice of America employees in the living room. No members of Joe's subcommittee sat in on these sessions, but it was understood that Cohn and Schine had McCarthy's full approval.

  Karl H. Baarslag, an American Legion official whom they interviewed, had visited a number of IIA libraries abroad. He told Cohn and Schine he had found many Communist and pro-Communist books and other publications on the shelves. "It seemed like a planned conspiracy," Baarslag said. At this point, Cohn and Schine decided to fly to Europe and personally inspect IIA libraries in major cities.

  Cohn and Schine landed in Paris, the first stop on their tour, on April 4, 1953. In the next eighteen days, they flew from Paris to Bonn, Berlin, and Munich in West Germany, then on to Vienna, Austria; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Athens, Greece; and Rome, Italy. From there, it was back to Paris, then on to London, the final stop. Their stays in the various countries were often extremely brief—they spent twenty-four hours in Rome, and only six in London—and it wasn't always clear to observers what they hoped to accomplish.

  In Belgrade, they toured the American embassy and interviewed the ambassador and members of his staff. In Munich, they talked with two German ex-Communists and hired one of them as a researcher. Sometimes in the various cities they made quick visits to IIA libraries, where they said they discovered "lots of books and magazines written by Reds."

  Everywhere they went, Cohn and Schine were accompanied by hordes of European reporters, who viewed their doings with a mixture of amusement and contempt. A London tabloid called them "scummy snoopers," and another labeled them "Mr. McCarthy's distempered jackals." After attending their press conference in Rome, a foreign correspondent for England's Manchester Guardian wrote: "Their limited vocabulary, their self-complacency, and their paucity of ideas, coupled with the immense power they wield, had the effect of drawing sympathy for all ranks of the United States diplomatic service who have to submit to this sort of thing."

  Some made jokes at their expense. At the end of the day, State Department employees were said to chant, "See you tomorrow, come Cohn or Schine!" Germans were amused by a report that an angry Schine had been seen chasing Cohn around a Berlin hotel lobby and hitting him on the head with a rolled-up newspaper. In private, some Europeans whispered about the nature of their relationship, and wondered if the two young men were homosexuals. But no hint of that possibility appeared in the press. In the 1950s, homosexuality was a taboo topic, and homosexuals—the word "gay" was not in use as a synonym by the general public then—did everything they could to conceal their identity.

  Word of their less-than-favorable reception reached American readers, and some questioned why the taxpayers' money was being spent on such a jaunt. Even Cohn had difficulty justifying the venture. "It turned out to be one of the most publicized trips of the decade," he wrote later. "We soon realized, although neither of us could admit to the distressing fact, that it was a colossal mistake."

  Joe forgave them, though. In his eyes, the investigations of the Voice of America and the IIA had brought positive results. In response to the public outcry they had stirred up, the Eisenhower administration fired hundreds of IIA employees in the spring of 1953. The government dropped a number of the Voice of America's broadcasts and closed several of the IIA's overseas libraries. The president also endorsed a plan that removed the VOA and other information units from the
State Department and placed them in a new organization, the United States Information Agency, where they could be more easily monitored.

  Privately, Eisenhower regretted the removal of controversial books from library shelves and the closing of some overseas libraries. In commencement remarks at Dartmouth College in June, he told an audience of 10,000, "Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book as long as they do not offend your own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship."

  At the same time, the president took care not to offend the powerful right wing of the Republican Party. In late May, he had signed an executive order concerning employee hiring policies in the executive branch that went far beyond the security procedures followed by the Truman administration. Instead of determining employee eligibility on the basis of loyalty alone, the new directive said employees could be rejected or fired for personal traits such as alcoholism, homosexuality, and other "infamous" (but undefined) conduct. Many interpreted the order as a sign that McCarthy and his fellow right-wingers remained extremely influential in Washington.

  Joe was delighted with this new executive order. He told reporters: "I think it is a tremendous improvement over the old method.... It shows that the new administration was sincere in its campaign promises to clean house."

  19. McCarthy Gets Married

  JOE MCCARTHY AND HIS fellow Republicans seemed to be all-powerful in the early summer of 1953. The party controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, and Joe headed a subcommittee that won constant headlines and popular support for its ongoing investigations of Communist subversion in government. Commenting on Joe's position, columnist William'S. White wrote, "To come down to simple reckonings of naked power, who in the Senate has more—not in terms of the legislative hierarchy but in the ability to reward and punish? No one."

  Many observers wondered what ambitions McCarthy might have beyond the Senate. Publications such as Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine speculated that he might be planning to make a run for the presidency in 1956.

  Joe squelched such rumors. He told reporters he was sure President Eisenhower would be renominated in 1956. "He is more popular than ever with the people ... and on the whole Eisenhower is doing a good job," Joe said. As for his own ambitions, McCarthy said that what he wanted most was to continue representing Wisconsin in the Senate. "Over the long haul, a senator can sometimes do more than most Presidents. Don't forget that a senator can serve as much as fifty years, but a president no more than eight." Meanwhile, he added, he thought he could best serve his Wisconsin constituents and the American people generally by "kicking the Communists and pro-Communists out of Washington."

  A growing number of Democrats and moderate Republicans disagreed with Joe's aims. The officers of Freedom House, a nonpartisan organization founded to honor the late Wendell Willkie, Republican candidate for president in 1940, called McCarthy "a man who is ever ready to stoop to false innuendo and commit as dangerous an assault on Democracy as any perpetrated in the propaganda of the Communists." At a news conference, Eleanor Roosevelt said that the tactics Joe employed in his hearings "look like Mr. Hitler's methods." The respected Methodist bishop G. Bromley Oxnam wrote, "The time to have stopped Hitler was when he went into the Rhineland. There is a time to stop McCarthy." Another clergyman, Dr. A. Powell Davies, minister of All Souls Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., charged that McCarthy was "to a great extent ruling the United States" and that Secretary of State Dulles "might well be called his administrative assistant."

  On July 10, 1953, Joe railroaded through a measure in his subcommittee that gave him sole authority to hire and fire staff. The vote was 4–3, with all the Republican members for the proposal, and all the Democratic members against it. Angered by McCarthy's highhanded attitude, the three Democrats resigned in protest and walked out of the room.

  Their departure was big news, and not the kind Joe sought. In interviews with reporters, he tried to minimize the Democrats' action, calling it just another example of "the old Democratic policy of either rule or ruin." To change the subject, he announced that he and his staff had uncovered "tons of" evidence that Soviet agents had infiltrated the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). McCarthy went on to say that he planned to launch a full-scale investigation of the agency. It would begin with testimony from a high CIA official, William P. Bundy. If Bundy refused to appear before the subcommittee, Joe said, he would be subpoenaed.

  McCarthy hadn't reckoned with President Eisenhower's response to such an announcement. The last thing the president wanted was to have Joe digging into the CIA files and exposing the agency's innermost secrets. He told Bundy not to submit to any subpoena from McCarthy, and at a hastily arranged meeting, the National Security Council (NSC) endorsed Eisenhower's position. Vice-President Nixon informed Joe of the NSC's action and told him point-blank that the president would not tolerate any investigation of the CIA. Later, at a private lunch with McCarthy and the Republican members of his subcommittee, Nixon spelled out Eisenhower's reasons for putting a stop to the planned inquiry. Chief among them was the president's fear that it might endanger national security.

  McCarthy finally accepted Nixon's argument and agreed to issue a joint statement with CIA Director Allen Dulles (brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles), saying they both agreed the investigation should be suspended. The media were not fooled, however. Political columnist Joseph Alsop bluntly expressed his interpretation of what had transpired: "Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy has just suffered his first total, unmitigated, unqualified defeat by the White House."

  In this cartoon by B. Green, President Eisenhower and Allen Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, look on nervously as a snorting bull labeled "McCarthy" forces open the door of the Agency, which is pictured as a china shop filled with fragile objects. The Library of Congress

  Senator Mike Monroney, Democrat of Oklahoma, chose this moment to issue a withering attack in the Senate on Joe's entire anti-Communist campaign. He charged that, unlike the FBI, Joe had wasted the taxpayers' money on one fruitless investigation after another. He mocked Cohn and Schine's European trip, labeling it a "Keystone-Kop chase," and warned of the dangers that could have resulted from Joe's aborted inquiry into the CIA.

  Joe, as one might expect, reacted angrily to Monroney's speech. During a television interview, he called the senator's criticism of Cohn and Schine, both of whom were Jewish, "the most flagrant, the most shameful example of anti-Semitism." Later, in a tense Senate discussion with Monroney, Joe asked, "Can the senator give me the name of a single Communist he has exposed during his long period in public life?"

  Monroney wasn't ready to give up the fight. Although he knew it wasn't likely to pass, he introduced a resolution in the Senate that would give it the right to cut off a line of investigation by any of its committees. When questioned by reporters, Monroney admitted that the resolution was aimed directly at Joe, and said it was designed to prevent him from becoming a "one-man Senate." He explained what he meant on a television talk show: "[So far] the 83rd Congress has produced a record of molehills of legislation and mountains of McCarthy."

  Monroney's resolution, as he had expected, got nowhere in the Senate, but he and his liberal colleagues weren't dejected. He had made the point that there were those in the Senate who strongly opposed McCarthy—and they would not remain silent if the senator from Wisconsin embarked on a course they disapproved of.

  Meanwhile, the Eisenhower administration was distressed by the continuing absence of the three Democratic members of Joe's subcommittee. Without them, the subcommittee lost its credibility as a bipartisan body. Eisenhower and his chief advisors also feared that Joe's insistence on investigating Communist subversion in agencies like the Voice of America and the CIA would reflect badly on the Republican appointees who were now running those agencies. Once again, Vice-President Nixon was deputized to meet with McCarthy and urge him to work out some sort of compromise that would bring the Democrats
back to his subcommittee. Nixon suggested also that it would be helpful to his fellow Republicans if Joe shifted the focus of his investigations from Communism to charges of corruption in the Truman administration.

  Joe seemed to be enthusiastic about this new approach. The Associated Press reported that he assured Nixon he would "try to make the Democrats wince as they prepare for next year's Congressional elections." But Nixon and other leading Republicans soon discovered that it was difficult if not impossible to get McCarthy to toe the party's official line. In a Milwaukee speech in early August, Joe denounced the armistice that had ended the Korean War, saying it failed to fulfill the Republicans' campaign promise to "call to account those responsible for our tremendous defeat in Korea."

  Then, in a press conference on August 10, he announced he had evidence that at least one Communist Party member had access to the military secrets of the Atomic Energy Commission. Two days later, an event occurred that stunned the American people and gave fresh impetus to Joe's latest anti-Communist campaigns. On August 12, the media were filled with alarming reports that the Soviet Union had exploded its first hydrogen bomb.

  The United States had successfully tested its own hydrogen bomb nine months earlier, on November 1, 1952, but President Truman had ordered a news blackout on the test, fearing it would become an issue in the presidential election that was just a few days away. Reports inevitably leaked, however, about a new bomb that was 450 times more powerful than the atomic bomb, and Truman finally issued an official announcement about the test shortly before he left office in January 1953. The fact that the hydrogen bomb could wreak even greater destruction than the atomic bomb dismayed some Americans. But the majority welcomed the news that the nation had regained the lead in the cold war arms race.

  Now, just nine months later, it was disheartening to learn that the Soviet Union had caught up—especially when four years had passed between the first American test of an atomic bomb and the first Soviet explosion of a similar weapon. How had the Russians managed to produce a hydrogen bomb so quickly? Did they have the help of American spies? In June, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been executed for supplying the Russians with atomic secrets. Had others aided the Soviets in making the hydrogen bomb?