THE CONGRESS: The Disbcmder

When the Senate’s censure proceedings ended, Senator McCarthy could no longer complain that his exposure of Communists was being “hamstrung.” With a public show of energy tempered by bluster, he ordered his Permanent Investigations Subcommittee into action, ostensibly to find Communists in defense plants.

At the committee’s first open session, a scowling, puffy-eyed McCarthy, his lame right arm still in a sling, lumbered into the hearing room, followed by his wife Jean. South Dakota’s Karl Mundt had just sworn in the day’s first witness, a onetime FBI undercover source named Herman Thomas. For twelve minutes, Chairman McCarthy sat mute. Then he ambled out.

McCarthy had a statement to make answering President Eisenhower, who had congratulated Utah’s Senator Watkins on a “splendid job” of preparing censure recommendations against McCarthy. Joe had first planned, he later confided to a few friends, to shoot his statement from the hip, but since he felt bad, had decided to write it out. In his office he dictated the statement to Jean. Then Mary Driscoll, McCarthy’s secretary, delivered it to Mundt, whispering in his ear that her boss would like him to read it into the record and the TV cameras. After glancing over the two sheets of yellow paper, Mundt refused, muttering, “It’s unfortunate, and it is not warranted.” Secretary Driscoll retreated with the yellow sheets.

Soon Joe McCarthy was back in the hearing room. “As soon as I catch my breath,” Joe whispered in Mundt’s ear, : want to make a statement.” Said Mundt: “It’s not warranted. It will be unfortunate, Joe.” Joe snapped back: “They have been shooting at me, and I’ve got to get back at them.”

“The next thing I knew,” recalls Mundt, “he was saying, ‘Mr. Chairman.’ ”

War by Apology. Clutching the yellow paper in his good left hand, McCarthy read what “may be my temporary swan song as chairman.” It sounded more like the honk of a winged goose. Said Joe: “Our committee has been held up now for approximately ten months. The President of the U.S. has taken it upon himself to congratulate Senators Flanders*and W’atkins, who have been instrumental in holding up our work … I should apologize to the American people for what was an unintentional deception upon them. During the Eisenhower campaign I spoke from coast to coast, promising the American people that if they would elect the Eisenhower Administration that they could be assured of a vigorous, forceful fight against Communists in Government.

Unfortunately, in this I was mistaken.

“The President . . . urges that we be patient with the Communist hoodlums who, as of this very moment, are torturing and brainwashing American uniformed men in Communist dungeons … If any Senator in the future can justify a vote to draft the sons of American mothers, then he must repudiate this shrinking show of weakness . . .”

McCarthy elbowed his way through the crowd, grasping the hand of Informant Thomas as he went.

The Allies Depart. So unrestrained was McCarthy’s declaration of war on Eisenhower that speculation immediately began to bubble about the prospect that Joe intended to lead a third party in the 1956 presidential race. To reporters who asked about this, Joe said: “I have no interest whatsoever—at the present time —in a third party. I intend to work in the Republican Party.” With this parting statement, Joe and Jean left Washington for a vacation at an undisclosed place.

In Nassau, B.W.I., California’s vacationing Bill Knowland threw McCarthy down hard. “This Administration has not been and in my judgment will not be in the future soft on the issue of Communism,” he said. Arizona’s Barry Goldwater said that McCarthy’s charges against Ike were “not true.” Even Maryland’s John Marshall Butler, whose 1950 election victory is widely credited to McCarthy, deserted his idol, calling the attack “most unfortunate and uncalled for.” Of the 22 Senators who had voted for McCarthy a few days before, only Idaho’s Herman Welker publicly took a place at Joe’s side. Said Welker: “I hardly think it is necessary for the Chief Executive to be warmly congratulating anyone.”

Even the McCarthy-backing “Committee for Ten Million” developed a major chink in its armor. General (ret.) James A. Van Fleet, the committee’s biggest name, fired off a telegram to McCarthy saying that he was “shocked by your personal bitter attack,” which “causes me to withdraw all support.”

Thought of Revenge. At long last, Joe stood politically alone. A man who will let his temper trap him into such a political debacle can hardly be expected to lead a serious third-party movement. Between now and 1956, McCarthy may get angry enough to run for President—not because he wants the job, but because he might see such a move as revenge. But even his third-party nuisance value is doubtful. The hard core of McCarthy’s following—the group that not even Joe can drive away—probably contains as many Democrats as Republicans; a McCarthy candidacy would not result in much net loss to either party.

* This typically misleading McCarthy reach into the past may have given some the impression that Eisenhower had congratulated Flanders on initiating the censure resolution against McCarthy. Actually, Ike last March congratulated the Vermont Senator for a party unity passage in a Flanders speech.