INVESTIGATIONS: Hung Jury

Fifteen times during the week, the Mundt Committee or various combinations of its seven members met in various offices and corners of the Capitol. Purpose: to seek agreement on what to report about the McCarthy-Army fracas. Early in the week, newsmen were “reliably informed” that the Mundt Committee had achieved what had seemed impossible: within a few days it would issue a nearly unanimous report knuckle-rapping all four principals, McCarthy, Cohn, Stevens and

Adams. The only dissent would come from Illinois’ Everett Dirksen, who would drop tut-tutting footnotes in defense of his friend McCarthy.

Then this prospect faded. Whatever meeting of minds the Senators may have had became a collision. Four reports by four different Senators began to circulate from office to office. At week’s end Michi gan’s Charles Potter enplaned for Europe and Chairman Mundt recognized the inevitable. He gave the factions of his hung jury nine days to submit separate verdicts. There would probably be at least five: one by each of the Republicans and one or more by the three Democrats. By the time these reports are in, the curtain will have gone up on Joe McCarthy’s new trial before the Watkins Committee.