yr13_ia_2007_kirby_f

=List of Sources (not included in word count)= __Source A:__
 * FEBRUARY 20, 1950**

First Speech Delivered in Senate by Senator Joe McCarthy on Communists in Government; Wheeling Speech Mr. McCARTHY. Mr. President, I wish to discuss a subject tonight which concerns me more than does any other subject I have ever discussed before thisbody, and perhaps more than any other subject I shall ever have the good for­tune to discuss in the future. It not only concerns me, but it disturbs and frightens me. About 10 days ago, at Wheeling, W.Va., in making a Lincoln Day speech, I made the statement that there are pres­ently in the State Department a very sizable group of active Communists. I made the further statement, Mr. Presi­dent, that of one small group which had been screened by the President's own security agency, the State Department refused to discharge approximately 200 of those individuals. The Secretary of State promptly de­nied my statement and said there was not a single Communist in the State De­partment. I thereafter sent a telegram to the President, which I should like to read at this time: President HARRY S. TRUMAN, //White House, Washington, D. C.//:In the Lincoln Day speech at Wheeling Thursday night I stated that the State De­partment harbors a nest of Communists and Communist sympathizers who are helping to shape our foreign policy. I further stated that I have in my possession the names of 57 Communists who are in the State Depart­ment at present. A State Department spokes­ man promptly denied this, claiming that there is not a single Communist in the De­partment. You can convince yourself of the falsity of the State Department claim very easily. You will recall that you person­ ally appointed a board to screen State De­partment employees for the purpose of weed­ing out follow travelers--men whom the board considered dangerous to the security of this Nation. Your board did a paintak­ing job, and named hundreds which had been listed as dangerous to the security of the Nation, because of communistic con­nections.While the records are not available to me, I know absolutely of one group of approxi­mately 300 certified to the Secretary for dis­charge because of communism. He actually only discharged approximately 80. I under­stand that this was done after lengthy con­sultation with the now-convicted traitor, Alger Hiss. I would suggest, therefore, Mr. President, that you simply pick up your phone and ask Mr. Acheson how many of those whom your board had labeled as dan­gerous Communists he failed to discharge. The day the House Un-American Activities Committee exposed Alger Hiss as an impor­tant link in an international Communist spyring you signed an order forbidding the State Department's giving any information in re­gard to the disloyalty or the communistic connections of anyone in that Department tothe Congress.Despite this State Department blackout. we have been able to compile a list of 57 Communists in the State Department. This list is available to you but you can get a much longer list by ordering Secretary Ache­son to give you a list of those whom your own board listed as being disloyal and who are still working is the State Department. I believe the following is the minimum whichcan be expected of you in this case.

1That you demand that Acheson give you and the proper congressional committee the names and a complete report on all of those who were placed in the Department by Alger Hiss, and all of those still working In the State Department who were listed by your board as bad security risks because of their communistic connections.

2That you promptly revoke the order in which you provided under no circumstances could a congressional committee obtain any information or help in exposing Communists. Failure on your part will label the Demo­cratic Party of being the bedfellow of international communism. Certainly this label is not deserved by the hundreds of thousands of loyal American Democrats throughout the Nation, and by the sizable number of able loyal Democrats in both the Senate and the House. Mr. President, the only answer I have received to this telegram was the state­ment by the President at his press con­ference to the effect that there was not a word of truth in the telegram. Subsequently, the Democratic leader of the Senate--at least, the alleged lead­er--made a speech in Chicago in which he repeated substantially what the Pres­ident said, except that he went one stepfurther and stated: If I had said the nasty things that Mc­CARTHY has about the State Department, I would be ashamed all my life.

__Source B:__

__CENSURE OF SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY (1954)__
Periodically American society has been gripped by fear, and its responses have not done credit to its democratic nature. In this century the Red Scare following World War I (see Document 43) saw hundreds of innocent aliens rounded up, imprisoned and deported, for no reason other than fear of their allegedly radical ideas. The Cold War unleashed another Red Scare in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But where there had been no great alien menace in 1919, communism did exist and did pose a danger to western democracy in the post-World War II era. The hunt for subversives started during the war itself, and was furthered by congressional committees that often abused their powers of investigation to harass people with whom they differed politically. Then in February 1950, an undistinguished, first-term Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, burst into national prominence when, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he held up a piece of paper that he claimed was a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced documentation for a single one of his charges, but for the next four years he exploited an issue that he realized had touched a nerve in the American public. He and his aides, Roy Cohn and David Schine, made wild accusations, browbeat witnesses, destroyed reputations and threw mud at men like George Marshall, Adlai Stevenson, and others whom McCarthy charged were part of an effete "eastern establishment." For several years, McCarthy terrorized American public life, and even Dwight Eisenhower, who detested McCarthy, was afraid to stand up to him. Finally, however, the senator from Wisconsin over-reached himself. In January 1954, in what were to be the first televised hearings in American history, McCarthy obliquely attacked President Eisenhower and directly assaulted Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens. Day after day the public watched McCarthy in action -- bullying, harassing, never producing any hard evidence, and his support among people who thought he was "right" on communism began to evaporate. Americans regained their senses, and the Red Scare finally began to wane. By the end of the year, the Senate decided that its own honor could no longer put up with McCarthy's abuse of his legislative powers, and it censured him in December by a vote of 65 to 22. For further reading: Richard Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (1959); Stanley Kutler, The American Inquisition (1982); Thomas C. Reeves, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy (1982).

__CENSURE OF SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY__
Resolved, That the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, failed to cooperate with the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in clearing up matters referred to that subcommittee which concerned his conduct as a Senator and affected the honor of the Senate and, instead, repeatedly abused the subcommittee and its members who were trying to carry out assigned duties, thereby obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned. Sec 2. The Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, in writing to the chairman of the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges (Mr. Watkins) after the Select Committee had issued its report and before the report was presented to the Senate charging three members of the Select Committee with "deliberate deception" and "fraud" for failure to disqualify themselves; in stating to the press on November 4, 1954, that the special Senate session that was to begin November 8, 1954, was a "lynch-party"; in repeatedly describing this special Senate session as a "lynch bee" in a nationwide television and radio show on November 7, 1954; in stating to the public press on November 13, 1954, that the chairman of the Select Committee (Mr. Watkins) was guilty of "the most unusual, most cowardly things I've ever heard of" and stating further: "I expected he would be afraid to answer the questions, but didn't think he'd be stupid enough to make a public statement"; and in characterizing the said committee as the "unwitting handmaiden," "involuntary agent" and "attorneys-in-fact" of the Communist Party and in charging that the said committee in writing its report "imitated Communist methods -- that it distorted, misrepresented, and omitted in its effort to manufacture a plausible rationalization" in support of its recommendations to the Senate, which characterizations and charges were contained in a statement released to the press and inserted in the Congressional Record of November 10, 1954, acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity; and such conduct is hereby condemned. Source: //83rd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 301 (2 December 1954).//