Army-McCarthy Hearings

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Early in 1954, the U.S. Army accused Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (Republican, Wisconsin), and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to former McCarthy aide and friend of Cohn's, G. David Schine. McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith, in retaliation for his questioning of Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker the previous year. A special committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Karl Mundt, was appointed to adjudicate these conflicting charges, and the hearings opened on April 22, 1954. The hearings were televised, and many believe that they contributed significantly to McCarthy's subsequent decline in popularity.

A month before the hearings began, TIME featured a cover story March 22, 1954 [link], with Cohn & Schine pictured and subtitled, "The Army got its orders." Ten years after the hearings, in 1964, the documentary film Point of Order! was released, which consists of 93 minutes of footage selected from the 187 hours of kinescope that covered the hearings.

Contents

1 Background
2 The inquiry and its conclusions
3 The famous exchange
4 Following the hearings
5 See also
6 External links

Background

At the time, McCarthy was chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. McCarthy had been investigating the presence of Communist Party members and sympathizers employed in the government or with government contractors. The dispute became public on March 11, 1954, when the Army published a detailed account protesting Cohn's interference in Private Schine's military career. McCarthy countered by claiming the Army was holding Schine "hostage" to deter his committee from exposing Communists within the military ranks.

During this period and for years afterward, people speculated that Schine and Cohn might have had a homosexual relationship, and that this played a part in Cohn's motivation to seek preferential treatment for his former colleague. More recently, historians have come to conclude that this was unlikely, and that if anything, Cohn (whose homosexuality later became well-known) may have had a one-sided infatuation with Schine. It is also entirely possible that Cohn acted simply because Schine asked him to make his tour of duty with the U.S. Army more comfortable. Schine came from a prominent and wealthy family and was accustomed to a privileged lifestyle.

The inquiry and its conclusions

The Subcommittee on Investigations ordered the inquiry into the matter, which was broadcast live and on television. For the duration of the proceedings, the chair was temporarily relinquished to Karl E. Mundt (Republican, South Dakota). Acting as Special Counsel for the Army was Joseph Welch of the Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr. This was the first nationally televised congressional inquiry, and was broadcast on the new ABC and DuMont networks. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and were viewed by an estimated 20 million people.

After hearing 32 witnesses and two million words of testimony, the committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on behalf of David Schine, but that Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel, had engaged in some "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts" on behalf of Schine. The conclusion of the committee also reported questionable behavior on the part of the Army: That Army Secretary Robert Stevens and Army Counsel John Adams "made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth," and that Adams "made vigorous and diligent efforts" to block subpoenas for members of the Army Loyalty and Screening Board "by means of personal appeal to certain members of the [McCarthy] committee."

In a separate statement that concurred with the special committee report, Senator Everett Dirksen questioned the Army's motivation in calling for the inquiry. He noted that the Army did not make its charges public until eight months after the first allegedly improper effort was made on behalf of Schine (July 1953), and then not until after Senator McCarthy had made it known (January 1954) that he would subpoena members of the Army Loyalty and Screening Board. Dirksen also called attention to a telephone conversation between Secretary Stevens and Senator Stuart Symington on March 8, 1954, three days before the Army allegations were made public. In that conversation, Stevens admitted that any charges of improper influence by McCarthy's staff "would prove to be very much exaggerated.... I am the Secretary and I have had some talks with the [McCarthy] committee and the chairman, and so on, and by and large as far as the treatment of me is concerned, I have no personal complaint."

The famous exchange

In one famous interchange, McCarthy responded to aggressive questioning from the Army's attorney, Joseph Welch. On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the hearings, Welch challenged Roy Cohn to give the Attorney General McCarthy's list of 130 communists or subversives in defense plants "before the sun goes down." McCarthy responded by saying that if Welch was so concerned about persons aiding the Communist Party, he should check on a man in his Boston law office named Fred Fisher, who had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. had called "the legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party." At the time Brownell was seeking to designate the NLG as a Communist front organization. This was a violation of a pre-hearing agreement not to raise the issue because the designation was being litigated. Welch responded:

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness...."

When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch cut him short:

"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?"

Following the hearings

McCarthy, who was understandably not happy with the unfavorable press he received from the hearings, reportedly wanted G. David Schine sent as far away as possible to not cause any further trouble, since the whole uproar began with Schine. A number of sources quote McCarthy as saying, "Send him wherever you can, as far away as possible. Korea is too close." It will probably never be known if McCarthy's wish came true, or if it was just a coincidence that Schine was promptly assigned to a base in Alaska. Schine duly fulfilled his term of service, some of which was in the military police and was later honorably discharged from the Army and returned to the private sector.

External links