[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 89 (Tuesday, June 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3530-S3531]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   ARMY-McCARTHY HEARINGS ANNIVERSARY

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I had the pleasure of speaking 
yesterday while the Presiding Officer was in the chair on the 242nd 
anniversary of the burning and sinking of the Gaspee by Rhode Island 
patriots. I am here today to mark the 60th anniversary of a different 
event which also occurred on the same day--June 9--60 years ago. It was 
a pivotal moment in the history of the Senate and, indeed, of the 
country. It was the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings and the exchange

[[Page S3531]]

between Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy that changed this city and the 
world.
  Six decades ago, America's national mood was marked by anxiety over 
the looming threat of communism. The victory of World War II had given 
way to the gripping tension of the Cold War. Communist power was on the 
rise in Eastern Europe and in China. American forces were at war in 
Korea.
  Here in Congress the House Committee on Un-American Activities worked 
to sniff out Communist subversion within our borders, including the 
infamous Hollywood black list. One man in the Senate set out to exploit 
the fears of that time, and he came to symbolize the fearmongering of 
that fretful era.
  Joseph McCarthy was a relatively unknown junior Senator from 
Wisconsin when, in February of 1950, he delivered a speech accusing 
Secretary of State Dean Acheson of harboring 205 known members of the 
American Communist Party within the State Department.
  The charge was questionable and ill-supported. But the brazen 
accusation struck a nerve with an anxious American public, and Senator 
McCarthy rocketed to fame. Thus began a chilling crusade to flush out 
Communist subversion--real or contrived--from every corner of American 
society.
  McCarthy's anticommunist witch hunt seemingly knew no bounds, as he 
launched investigations or often just allegations of disloyalty on the 
part of private citizens, public employees, entire government agencies, 
as well as the broadcasting and defense industries, universities--even 
the United Nations.
  In 1953, the Republican Party gained a majority in the Senate, and 
McCarthy ascended to the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on 
Government Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations. From 
those chairmanships, he dragged hundreds of witnesses before scores of 
hearings, publicly shaming and berating his targets. His fiery rhetoric 
and his remorseless mendacity intimidated critics and challengers. His 
accusations carried the power to destroy reputations, careers, and 
lives.
  The effect of McCarthyism on 20th century American society was toxic. 
Prudent citizens shied from civic engagement. Meaningful political 
dissent withered. Criticism of American foreign policy evaporated. Even 
college campuses, our cradles of intellectual curiosity, were cowed by 
McCarthyism.
  Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called it ``the black 
silence of fear.'' Intimidated colleagues in this Chamber gave Joe 
McCarthy broad leeway to abuse Congress's constitutional powers of 
investigation and oversight. Harvard Law Dean Erwin Griswold described 
Chairman McCarthy's role as ``judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and 
press agent, all in one.''
  This was the regime 60 years ago, in 1954, when U.S. Army officials 
accused McCarthy of exerting improper pressure to win preferential 
treatment for a subcommittee aide serving as an Army private. McCarthy 
countered that the Army accusation was retaliation for his 
investigations of them. The stage was set. The countercharges would be 
adjudicated, of course, in McCarthy's Subcommittee on Investigations.
  The so-called Army-McCarthy hearings, held in a packed, smoke-filled 
Russell caucus room, would last 36 days and be aired on live broadcast 
television. Twenty million Americans tuned in during gavel-to-gavel 
coverage of our Nation's first great TV political spectacle--the 
precursor to the Watergate hearings, the Iran-Contra hearings, and the 
Thomas-Hill hearings.
  Special counsel to the Army in those hearings was an avuncular Boston 
lawyer named Joseph Welch of the law firm then called Hale & Dorr. 
Here, in Washington, Joseph Welch was a nobody. He had no office, he 
had no position, he had no clout. But he was a good lawyer with a dry 
wit and unflappable demeanor. He also had a sense of fairness--a sense 
of fairness that was soon to become famously provoked by McCarthy's 
bullying. And he had that greatest virtue--courage--the virtue that 
makes all other virtues possible.
  On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch challenged Senator McCarthy's aide, Roy 
Cohn, to actually produce McCarthy's supposed secret list of 
subversives working at defense facilities. Since there likely was no 
such list, McCarthy needed a distraction. So he lit into an accusatory 
attack in a traditional McCarthyite way on a lawyer in Welch's firm, a 
young lawyer--indeed, an associate within the firm, Fred Fisher, a 
young man who was not even in the hearing room to defend himself--
accusing him of various Communist associations and inclinations.
  Welch responded:

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

  Had Senator McCarthy been a smarter man, he would have sensed the 
warning in those words. But he didn't. He pressed his attack and 
refused to let up on young Fred Fisher. Welch angrily cut Senator 
McCarthy short.

       Let us not assassinate the lad any further, Senator. You 
     have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long 
     last? Have you left no sense of decency?

  Thirty words. If you count them, it is just 30 words. But with those 
30 words, suddenly something happened, something changed. The emperor 
suddenly had no clothes.
  There had been such an avalanche of words from McCarthy over the 
years--of lies, of accusations, of hyperbole. And these 30 words--these 
few short sentences--stopped all of that roughshod hypocrisy in its 
tracks.
  Welch declared an end to McCarthy's questioning, and the gallery of 
onlookers, on behalf of a nation, burst into applause. The black-and-
white footage shows McCarthy asking Roy Cohn, ``What happened?'' What 
happened was that a spell was broken. The web of fear woven by McCarthy 
over Washington, DC, began unraveling.
  Near the end of the hearing, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri 
faced McCarthy down. After an angry exchange, he rose and walked out to 
come here to vote. As Chairman Karl Mundt of South Dakota gaveled the 
hearing into recess, Joe McCarthy kept on railing about Communist 
conspiracies. As he railed on, Senators, reporters, and members of the 
gathered audience steadily filed out of the room, leaving him shouting. 
The spell was broken.
  Six months later the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure Senator Joseph 
McCarthy. Four years later, he was dead at the age of 48. Historians 
agree he drank himself to death. His fall from grace and demise were 
nearly as rapid as his rise was meteoric, consistent with the ancient 
principle: Climb ugly; fall hard.
  Very often--indeed, too often--political outcomes in Washington are 
determined by the political weight and the wealth of contesting forces 
vying for power. It is brute force against brute force. It makes us 
wonder, is that all there is to this? Is this just an arena of combat, 
where huge special interests lean against each other trying to shove 
each other around, each for their own greed and benefit?
  This incident 60 years ago is an eternal lesson of what a difference 
one person can make. A regular American, a nobody in Washington, good 
at his craft, good in his character, and in the right place at the 
right time, a man who knew what was right, broke the fever of virulent 
political frenzy that had captured Washington; one private lawyer's 
sincere, direct outrage at a cruel attack on his young associate, a few 
words from a Boston lawyer who had just had enough turned the tide of 
history. May we never forget in this world of vast and often corrupt 
political forces the power of one person to make a difference.

  I yield the floor.
  Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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