When news was NEWS -- June 9, 1954

Joseph Welch confronts McCarthy

In this famous exchange, 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?"

Fallout

The Army�McCarthy hearings are considered to have been a key event in the fall of McCarthy from his position of power in American politics and society. Many in the television audience saw him as bullying, reckless and dishonest, and the daily newspaper summaries of the hearings were also frequently unfavorable to him. Late in the hearings, McCarthy, after refusing to sign a document that he claimed had false statements in it, rebuked Senator Stuart Symington by saying, "You're not fooling anyone. I'm sure of that." Symington fired back with an angry but prophetic remark to McCarthy: "Senator, the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks. You're not fooling anyone, either." In Gallup polls of January, 1954, 50% of those polled had a positive opinion of McCarthy. In June, that number had fallen to 34%. In the same polls, those with a negative opinion of McCarthy increased from 29% to 45%.
On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted by a 2/3 margin to censure McCarthy. Though he was not expelled from his office, his role as major figure in national politics was effectively ended. McCarthy continued to chair the Subcommittee on Investigations, investigating Communist infiltration up until January 3, 1955, the day the 84th Congress was inaugurated. McCarthy would die just two years later of hepatitis...