Investigating the President: The McCarthy Hearings
The term McCarthyism has become synonymous with witch-hunts and persecution and villification of those with different ideas. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a Republican Senator from Wisconsin who made a name for himself attempting to root out communists within the US government in the 1950s. On February 9, 1950, McCarthy rose to national prominence when he gave a Lincoln Day speech to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. In the speech McCarthy waived a piece of paper that he claimed contained a list of known Communists working for the State Department. McCarthy said to his audience: "The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205 names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."
In a later telegram to President Truman, McCarthy claimed that he used the number 57, not 205. But in a later debates on the Senate floor, McCarthy referred to a 1946 letter that Secretary of State James Byrnes sent to Congressman Adolph J. Sabath in which Byrnes said State Department security investigations had resulted in "recommendation against permanent employment" for 284 persons, and that 79 of these had been removed from their jobs. McCarthy said that this left 205 still on the State Department's payroll.
At the time of McCarthy's speech, communism was a significant political issue in the United States. This concern was heightened by the actions of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the victory of the communists in the Chinese Civil War, the Soviets' development of a nuclear weapon, and by the controversy surrounding Alger Hiss and the confession of Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs. McCarthy's charge against the State Department attracted significant media attention.
In response to McCarthy's charges, the Senate voted unanimously to investigate the State Department, and the Tydings Committee hearings were called as a subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, set up in February 1950. The committee was mandated to conduct "a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State". Democrats took great offence to McCarthy's attack on the State Department of a Democratic administration.
McCarthy used the hearings to make charges against nine specific people: Dorothy Kenyon, Esther Brunauer, Haldore Hanson, Gustavo Durán, Owen Lattimore, Harlow Shapley, Frederick Schuman, John S. Service, and Philip Jessup. Some of them no longer worked for the State Department, or never had. During the hearings, McCarthy used inflammatory rhetoric, but produced no substantial evidence to support his accusations. The Tydings Committee was full of partisan infighting. Its final report, written by the Democratic majority, concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program. Some Republicans defended McCarthy and attacked Tydings, accusing the Democrats of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history". The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.
It was cartoonist Herbert Block, who signed his work "Herblock," who coined the term "McCarthyism" in a cartoon in the March 29, 1950, Washington Post. McCarthy continued to exploit the fear of Communism and to accuse the Truman administration of failing to deal with Communism within its ranks. McCarthy also began investigations into alleged homosexuals working in the foreign policy bureaucracy, who he considered prime candidates for blackmail by the Soviets. These accusations increased his approval rating, and he gained a large national following.
McCarthy was criticized by many for his baseless attacks on many individuals unable to defend themselves. McCarthy responded to his critics and political opponents by accusing them of being Communists or communist sympathizers. In the 1950 Maryland Senate election, McCarthy campaigned for John Marshall Butler in his race against four-term incumbent Millard Tydings, with whom McCarthy had been in conflict during the Tydings Committee hearings. McCarthy accused Tydings of "protecting Communists" and "shielding traitors." McCarthy's staff circulated a doctored photograph that made it appear that Tydings was in intimate conversation with Communist leader Earl Russell Browder. A Senate subcommittee later investigated this election and referred to it as "a despicable, back-street type of campaign". McCarthy later said it was "wrong" to distribute it, but was pleased when Tydings lost the election by almost 40,000 votes.
In addition to the Tydings–Butler race, McCarthy campaigned for several other Republicans in the 1950 elections, including Everett Dirksen. All the candidates McCarthy supported won their elections, and those he opposed lost. McCarthy was credited as a key Republican campaigner. He became one of the most powerful men in the Senate. In the 1952 Senate elections McCarthy was returned to his Senate seat with 54.2% of the vote.
McCarthy and President Truman clashed over the fact that McCarthy characterized Truman and the Democratic Party as soft on communism and in league with Communists. Truman referred to McCarthy as "the best asset the Kremlin has", calling McCarthy's actions an attempt to "sabotage the foreign policy of the United States" in a cold war and comparing it to shooting American soldiers in the back in a hot war. Truman's Secretary of Defense, George Marshall, was the target of some of McCarthy's most offensive rhetoric. Marshall had been Army Chief of Staff during World War II and was also Truman's former Secretary of State. Marshall was a highly respected general and statesman. McCarthy gave a lengthy speech criticizing Marshall, that was later published in 1951 as a book entitled "America's Retreat From Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall". Since Marshall had been involved in American foreign policy with China, McCarthy charged that Marshall was directly responsible for the loss of China to Communism. He said in the speech, "if Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest." He accused Marshall of being part of "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man".
During the Korean War, when President Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur, McCarthy charged that Truman and his advisors must have made the decision when "they've had time to get the President cheerful" on bourbon and Bénédictine. McCarthy added, "the son of a bitch should be impeached" referring to Truman.
One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States was the Catholic community, which constituted over 20% of the national vote. McCarthy identified himself as Catholic. As his fame as a leading anti-Communist grew, he became popular in Catholic communities across the country. McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, and he became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a fervent anti-Communist. He was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port and dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice. Robert Kennedy was chosen by McCarthy as a counsel for his investigatory committee, but resigned after six months due to disagreements with McCarthy and Committee Counsel Roy Marcus Cohn. Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy never attacked McCarthy, and McCarthy had refused to campaign for Kennedy's 1952 opponent, Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
During the 1952 presidential election, the Eisenhower campaign toured Wisconsin with McCarthy. In a speech delivered in Green Bay, Eisenhower declared that while he agreed with McCarthy's goals, he disagreed with his methods. In draft versions of his speech, Eisenhower had also included a strong defense of his mentor, George Marshall. But on the advice of conservative colleagues who were fearful that Eisenhower could lose Wisconsin if he alienated McCarthy supporters, Eisenhower deleted this defense his speech. The deletion was discovered by William H. Laurence, a reporter for The New York Times, and featured on its front page the next day. Eisenhower was widely criticized for giving up his personal convictions and for failing to publicly defend Marshall.
After the 1952 election the Republican party also held a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. After being elected president, Eisenhower made it clear to those close to him that he did not approve of McCarthy, though he never directly confronted McCarthy or criticized him by name in any speech.
In a November 1953 speech that was carried on national television, McCarthy began by praising the Eisenhower Administration for removing "1,456 Truman holdovers who were gotten rid of because of Communist connections and activities or perversion." He then went on to complain that there were still communists "on the payroll after eleven months of the Eisenhower Administration". He criticized Eisenhower for not doing enough to secure the release of missing American pilots shot down over China during the Korean War. By the end of 1953, McCarthy had altered his "twenty years of treason" phrase he had coined for the preceding Democratic administrations and began referring to "twenty-one years of treason" to include Eisenhower's first year in office.
In January 1953, 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 carry out his investigations of Communists in the government. McCarthy appointed 26-year-old Roy Cohn as chief counsel to the subcommittee. 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 did not uncover anything significant, but tensions rose when the Army accused McCarthy and his staff of seeking special treatment 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.
Since McCarthy was the subject of accused wrongdoing, Senator Karl Mundt, a Republican from South Dakota, was appointed to replace McCarthy as chairman of the subcommittee. The hearings were broadcast nationally. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated viewership of 80 million people. During the hearings, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and counsel Joseph 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 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 others in the photo who had been edited out of the picture.
Next 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 that Stevens willfully ignored it. Welch questioned the letter's validity. 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 FBI files.
A portion of the hearings assessed the security risk of homosexuals in government. In an exchange between Senator McCarthy and Joseph 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?" McCarthy asked Welch to define what a pixie is. Welch replied: "I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy. Shall I proceed, sir? Have I enlightened you?"
The hearings showed that Roy 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. McCarthy commented that Cohn was unreasonable in matters dealing with Schine, but it is unclear if Schine ever had a romantic or sexual relationship with Cohn, who was a closeted homosexual.
In the most dramatic exchange of the hearings,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 challenge, McCarthy suggested that Welch should check on Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in Welch's own Boston law firm whom Welch planned to have on his staff for the hearings. McCarthy then mentioned that 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". Welch said that he had confirmed Fisher's former membership in the National Lawyers' Guild approximately six weeks before the hearings started and had decided to send Fisher back to Boston. Welch then reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher, saying that "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy resumed his attack on Fisher, at Welch angrily interrupted him and said, "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?"
Near the end of the hearings, McCarthy and Democratic Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri argued over the handling of secret files by McCarthy's staff. Symington suggested that some members of McCarthy's own staff might themselves be subversive and sought McCarthy's agreement to an investigation of his staff. McCarthy refused to sign the agreement. He then rebuked Symington by saying "You're not fooling anyone!" Symington replied, "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks; you're not fooling anyone, either."
In Gallup polls from January 1954, McCarthy's approval rating was at 50%, with only 29% disapproving. By June, both percentages had shifted by 16% (34% approving, 45% disapproving). The committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on Schine's behalf, but that Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel, had engaged in some "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts" for Schine. The report also concluded that Secretary Stevens and Army Counsel John Adams "made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth". Before the official reports were released Cohn had resigned as McCarthy's chief counsel, and Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont had introduced a resolution of censure against McCarthy in the Senate.
Ine of the most prominent attacks on McCarthy's methods was an episode of the television show "See It Now", hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast on March 9, 1954. Titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy", the episode consisted largely of clips of McCarthy speaking. In these clips, McCarthy accuses the Democratic party of "twenty years of treason", describes the American Civil Liberties Union as "listed as 'a front for, and doing the work of', the Communist Party", and berates and harangues various witnesses, including General Zwicker. In his conclusion, Murrow said of McCarthy:
"No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
"This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Daily news reports were increasingly unfavorable toward McCarthy. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67–22 to censure McCarthy. He continued to chair the Subcommittee on Investigations until January 3, 1955, the day the 84th United States Congress was sworn in. McCarthy continued his anti-Communist rhetoric. He drank heavily and on May 2, 1957, McCarthy died of hepatitis at age of 48.
In a later telegram to President Truman, McCarthy claimed that he used the number 57, not 205. But in a later debates on the Senate floor, McCarthy referred to a 1946 letter that Secretary of State James Byrnes sent to Congressman Adolph J. Sabath in which Byrnes said State Department security investigations had resulted in "recommendation against permanent employment" for 284 persons, and that 79 of these had been removed from their jobs. McCarthy said that this left 205 still on the State Department's payroll.
At the time of McCarthy's speech, communism was a significant political issue in the United States. This concern was heightened by the actions of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the victory of the communists in the Chinese Civil War, the Soviets' development of a nuclear weapon, and by the controversy surrounding Alger Hiss and the confession of Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs. McCarthy's charge against the State Department attracted significant media attention.
In response to McCarthy's charges, the Senate voted unanimously to investigate the State Department, and the Tydings Committee hearings were called as a subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, set up in February 1950. The committee was mandated to conduct "a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State". Democrats took great offence to McCarthy's attack on the State Department of a Democratic administration.
McCarthy used the hearings to make charges against nine specific people: Dorothy Kenyon, Esther Brunauer, Haldore Hanson, Gustavo Durán, Owen Lattimore, Harlow Shapley, Frederick Schuman, John S. Service, and Philip Jessup. Some of them no longer worked for the State Department, or never had. During the hearings, McCarthy used inflammatory rhetoric, but produced no substantial evidence to support his accusations. The Tydings Committee was full of partisan infighting. Its final report, written by the Democratic majority, concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program. Some Republicans defended McCarthy and attacked Tydings, accusing the Democrats of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history". The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.
It was cartoonist Herbert Block, who signed his work "Herblock," who coined the term "McCarthyism" in a cartoon in the March 29, 1950, Washington Post. McCarthy continued to exploit the fear of Communism and to accuse the Truman administration of failing to deal with Communism within its ranks. McCarthy also began investigations into alleged homosexuals working in the foreign policy bureaucracy, who he considered prime candidates for blackmail by the Soviets. These accusations increased his approval rating, and he gained a large national following.
McCarthy was criticized by many for his baseless attacks on many individuals unable to defend themselves. McCarthy responded to his critics and political opponents by accusing them of being Communists or communist sympathizers. In the 1950 Maryland Senate election, McCarthy campaigned for John Marshall Butler in his race against four-term incumbent Millard Tydings, with whom McCarthy had been in conflict during the Tydings Committee hearings. McCarthy accused Tydings of "protecting Communists" and "shielding traitors." McCarthy's staff circulated a doctored photograph that made it appear that Tydings was in intimate conversation with Communist leader Earl Russell Browder. A Senate subcommittee later investigated this election and referred to it as "a despicable, back-street type of campaign". McCarthy later said it was "wrong" to distribute it, but was pleased when Tydings lost the election by almost 40,000 votes.
In addition to the Tydings–Butler race, McCarthy campaigned for several other Republicans in the 1950 elections, including Everett Dirksen. All the candidates McCarthy supported won their elections, and those he opposed lost. McCarthy was credited as a key Republican campaigner. He became one of the most powerful men in the Senate. In the 1952 Senate elections McCarthy was returned to his Senate seat with 54.2% of the vote.
McCarthy and President Truman clashed over the fact that McCarthy characterized Truman and the Democratic Party as soft on communism and in league with Communists. Truman referred to McCarthy as "the best asset the Kremlin has", calling McCarthy's actions an attempt to "sabotage the foreign policy of the United States" in a cold war and comparing it to shooting American soldiers in the back in a hot war. Truman's Secretary of Defense, George Marshall, was the target of some of McCarthy's most offensive rhetoric. Marshall had been Army Chief of Staff during World War II and was also Truman's former Secretary of State. Marshall was a highly respected general and statesman. McCarthy gave a lengthy speech criticizing Marshall, that was later published in 1951 as a book entitled "America's Retreat From Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall". Since Marshall had been involved in American foreign policy with China, McCarthy charged that Marshall was directly responsible for the loss of China to Communism. He said in the speech, "if Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest." He accused Marshall of being part of "a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man".
During the Korean War, when President Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur, McCarthy charged that Truman and his advisors must have made the decision when "they've had time to get the President cheerful" on bourbon and Bénédictine. McCarthy added, "the son of a bitch should be impeached" referring to Truman.
One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States was the Catholic community, which constituted over 20% of the national vote. McCarthy identified himself as Catholic. As his fame as a leading anti-Communist grew, he became popular in Catholic communities across the country. McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, and he became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a fervent anti-Communist. He was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port and dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice. Robert Kennedy was chosen by McCarthy as a counsel for his investigatory committee, but resigned after six months due to disagreements with McCarthy and Committee Counsel Roy Marcus Cohn. Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy never attacked McCarthy, and McCarthy had refused to campaign for Kennedy's 1952 opponent, Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
During the 1952 presidential election, the Eisenhower campaign toured Wisconsin with McCarthy. In a speech delivered in Green Bay, Eisenhower declared that while he agreed with McCarthy's goals, he disagreed with his methods. In draft versions of his speech, Eisenhower had also included a strong defense of his mentor, George Marshall. But on the advice of conservative colleagues who were fearful that Eisenhower could lose Wisconsin if he alienated McCarthy supporters, Eisenhower deleted this defense his speech. The deletion was discovered by William H. Laurence, a reporter for The New York Times, and featured on its front page the next day. Eisenhower was widely criticized for giving up his personal convictions and for failing to publicly defend Marshall.
After the 1952 election the Republican party also held a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. After being elected president, Eisenhower made it clear to those close to him that he did not approve of McCarthy, though he never directly confronted McCarthy or criticized him by name in any speech.
In a November 1953 speech that was carried on national television, McCarthy began by praising the Eisenhower Administration for removing "1,456 Truman holdovers who were gotten rid of because of Communist connections and activities or perversion." He then went on to complain that there were still communists "on the payroll after eleven months of the Eisenhower Administration". He criticized Eisenhower for not doing enough to secure the release of missing American pilots shot down over China during the Korean War. By the end of 1953, McCarthy had altered his "twenty years of treason" phrase he had coined for the preceding Democratic administrations and began referring to "twenty-one years of treason" to include Eisenhower's first year in office.
In January 1953, 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 carry out his investigations of Communists in the government. McCarthy appointed 26-year-old Roy Cohn as chief counsel to the subcommittee. 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 did not uncover anything significant, but tensions rose when the Army accused McCarthy and his staff of seeking special treatment 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.
Since McCarthy was the subject of accused wrongdoing, Senator Karl Mundt, a Republican from South Dakota, was appointed to replace McCarthy as chairman of the subcommittee. The hearings were broadcast nationally. The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated viewership of 80 million people. During the hearings, a photograph of Schine was introduced, and counsel Joseph 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 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 others in the photo who had been edited out of the picture.
Next 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 that Stevens willfully ignored it. Welch questioned the letter's validity. 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 FBI files.
A portion of the hearings assessed the security risk of homosexuals in government. In an exchange between Senator McCarthy and Joseph 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?" McCarthy asked Welch to define what a pixie is. Welch replied: "I should say, Mr. Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy. Shall I proceed, sir? Have I enlightened you?"
The hearings showed that Roy 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. McCarthy commented that Cohn was unreasonable in matters dealing with Schine, but it is unclear if Schine ever had a romantic or sexual relationship with Cohn, who was a closeted homosexual.
In the most dramatic exchange of the hearings,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 challenge, McCarthy suggested that Welch should check on Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in Welch's own Boston law firm whom Welch planned to have on his staff for the hearings. McCarthy then mentioned that 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". Welch said that he had confirmed Fisher's former membership in the National Lawyers' Guild approximately six weeks before the hearings started and had decided to send Fisher back to Boston. Welch then reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher, saying that "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy resumed his attack on Fisher, at Welch angrily interrupted him and said, "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?"
Near the end of the hearings, McCarthy and Democratic Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri argued over the handling of secret files by McCarthy's staff. Symington suggested that some members of McCarthy's own staff might themselves be subversive and sought McCarthy's agreement to an investigation of his staff. McCarthy refused to sign the agreement. He then rebuked Symington by saying "You're not fooling anyone!" Symington replied, "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks; you're not fooling anyone, either."
In Gallup polls from January 1954, McCarthy's approval rating was at 50%, with only 29% disapproving. By June, both percentages had shifted by 16% (34% approving, 45% disapproving). The committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on Schine's behalf, but that Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel, had engaged in some "unduly persistent or aggressive efforts" for Schine. The report also concluded that Secretary Stevens and Army Counsel John Adams "made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth". Before the official reports were released Cohn had resigned as McCarthy's chief counsel, and Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont had introduced a resolution of censure against McCarthy in the Senate.
Ine of the most prominent attacks on McCarthy's methods was an episode of the television show "See It Now", hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow, which was broadcast on March 9, 1954. Titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy", the episode consisted largely of clips of McCarthy speaking. In these clips, McCarthy accuses the Democratic party of "twenty years of treason", describes the American Civil Liberties Union as "listed as 'a front for, and doing the work of', the Communist Party", and berates and harangues various witnesses, including General Zwicker. In his conclusion, Murrow said of McCarthy:
"No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
"This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Daily news reports were increasingly unfavorable toward McCarthy. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67–22 to censure McCarthy. He continued to chair the Subcommittee on Investigations until January 3, 1955, the day the 84th United States Congress was sworn in. McCarthy continued his anti-Communist rhetoric. He drank heavily and on May 2, 1957, McCarthy died of hepatitis at age of 48.