Coming up next on booktv encore booknotes from january 2000. Arthur herman discusses his book Joseph Mccarthy. Professor herman reassesses cart these legacy and argues the senator from wisconsin was justified in arguing there was a real communist threat inside the u. S. Government. This is about an hour. Cspan arthur herman, author of Joseph Mccarthy, why do you think we needed to reexamine the life and legacy of americas mosthated senator . Guest well, there are a couple of reasons. One is that we now know a lot more about the times and the context in which mccarthy had his political career and built his career of notoriety. We also know a lot more about joe mccarthy, the man, and about his own life. And what i wanted to do was to really put it together in a book that would give people a broad introduction, both to the period, but also to joe mccarthy, the man; to understand who he was, why he has the kind of tremendous rereputation and notoriety that he does and to understand where that came from, what the origins of it were and maybe to sort of rethink just what we really dohhow we really assess joe mccarthy now, with almost 50 years of distance between ourselves and him. Cspan if you were there at his most visible time, where would you find him . Guest there at his most visible time . Cspan in history. Guest that would be 1950 to 1954. Its a very sharply defined career, meteoric. It starts in february of 1950, when he makes his famous speech at wheeling, west virginia, accusing the state department of harvingharboring communists and communist superfized sympathizers. And then it really comes to a crashing conclusion in december of 1954 when the senate censures him, and that really is the end of joe mccarthy as aas a public figure, although not as a senator. But as a public figure its over. Cspan a couple of basic facts. Where was he from . Guest hes from wisconsin. He grew up in the farming communities that surrounded appleton, wisconsin, called the township of grand chute. Its now mostly strip malls there now. The farms have receded as the suburbs have expanded outward. But at the time, it was aaafarming communities heavily populated by the children of particularly dutch immigrants. The irish mccarthy clan were rare. There werent a lot of Irish Catholics in wisconsin at the time, but there were a lot of catholics. Andand in that sense, the mccarthys were a part of aformed part of this homogeneous rural community. Cspan whats the story about his marine time . Guest the story about his marine time is a checkered one. He ishesin the book, i describe it as aa series of episodes from the Sergeant Bilko show in many ways. He was a wheelerdealer. He was somebody who was very popular with his fellow officers and with thethe other ranks. He was a marine observation officer. Basically, he debriefed pilots who came back from bombing runs. And later he would inflate his war experiences, grow it into a major career as aas a combat veteran, and it would spawn the myth of Tailgunner Joe of theof the brave marine fightergunner who has, you know, served his country in the pacific. He did serve his country in the pacific. He did have experience flying in missions, including combat missions, but that wasnt his principal role. And he way exaggerated the number of missions he flew for political purposes. You have to remember that in the postwar period, right after world war ii, that to have been a combat hero was a ticket into politics; john kennedy, for example, and pt109. Many of mccarthys fellow members of the class of 46, who came to washington with the 1946 electionrepublican takeover of both the house and the senatewere war veterans, and mccarthy was part of thempart of that group. And so mccarthy saw the political opportunities that came with that war experience, and he cashed in on them. Cspan what was his first public job . Guest his first public job was working as a judge. He worked as aa district judge in shawano county, wisconsin. And it was an elected post. Its there that he really sort of learned about how successful he could really be as a elected official and in running in popularity contests against other candidates. He really didnt know that much about the law. He had a law degree from marquette, but he didnt have the kind of lengthy experience that we normally associate with people who sitwho sit on the bench ininin county circuit courts. Its interesting, though, and its significant because his first public job was really his last one, until he became senator. In other words, he moved directly from his experience as beingyou know, serving as county judge to the us senate. There was no inbetween as a state senator, as a legislator or a member of the house of representatives and the congress. He never learnedand this is important for understanding why mccarthy created so much friction as aawith his colleagues in the senate and with the political establishment. He never learned the kinds of skills that are required to be a legislator. He wenthe was, in a sense, propelled by the election of 46 into the us senate and into an environment which he was very familiar and about which he developed a kind of greata great contempt. Cspan you say he was a democrat. Guest he originally was a democrat. He voted for franklin roosevelt, as his father had and had most wisconsinites ofof sort of aa workingclass background, rural background did. He washe first ran for offices, in fact, as a democrat. And he probably madeits quite possible that he would have continued as a democrat, but the opportunity came upthe opportunity came up to challenge aa republican senatora popular republican senator from wisconsin in the primary, and mccarthy realized that this was his opportunity. By switching parties he could really give his political career a boost, and thats. unintelligible him do it. Cspan whod he challenge . Guest thisthe senator was thewas alex wiley, who would later go on to become a majorone of colmccarthys colleagues here. The senatethe senator that mccarthy replaced, the one that got him into the senate, was his underdog campaign against robert la follette jr. Cspan how old was he when he was elected . Guest well, theres two versions to that. Again, mccarthys skill in playing with thein playing with the truthhe was, actually, in fact, the youngest senator when he took offwhen he took office inin 1947. He wouldve beenwell, lets see, he was born in 1909. He wouldve been makes noise 38. But just to make sure that people understood that he was, in fact, the youngest senatsenator, in his official biography, he knocked off a yearlopped off a year from his birth date to make himself even younger, to appear as sort of fresh, young blood the young maverick arriving in the us senate. Cspan elected first in 1946. Guest yes. Cspan . Took his seat in 1947. Who controlled the senate . Which party . Guest then, it was the republicans. It was a stunning coup that had really taken place in the sense of a change from democratic dominance of all the branches of government since rosince roosevelts new deal. The republicans got control of both the house and the senate in a landslide victory. And mccarthy, when he comes in, although he is a junior senator, he comes in as a member of the party in power. Cspan whos running the white house apparatus . Who are some of the players, besides the president . Guest well, Harry Trumans entourage of advisers and aides were a group ofprobably the most distinguished group, i have to saythe most distinguished group of americans to enter into Public Service in this century. These were the ones that historians like to call the wise men, men like dean acheson, who served as trumans secretary of state. Cspan in here on the left . Guest yeah. Thats acheson that you see on the left. That, in the middle, is achesons special ambassador at large, philip jessup. And there in the background on the right is dean rusk, who would, in a sense, inherit the mantle of the legacy of the wise men of this american liberal political establishment and the responsibilities for running the cold war and for america as a superpower. Cspan so in 1947, hes a freshman senator. What committee does he go on . Guest he goes on a couple of small committees. He goes on, for example, the committee forhe goes on the post office committee, as i recall, the committee for the district of columbia. These are very small posts. But the other position that he gets is on a committee which had been very active during the war period, the committee for the investigation of government expenditures. And it was this committee that, ironically, harry truman had used to build his political career in investigating corruption and overspending and cooking of the books by various Government Departments, including the us army, and it was anow in the hands of republicans. It was going to become an instrument for examining what republicans were convinced had been, really, 12 years of democratic corruption and of wheeling and dealing and of allowing americas large Government Agencies to become centers of political patronage here. The committee, in the hands of the republicans, very quickly, and particularly its subcommittee, the subcommittee on investigations, very quickly becomes a key instrument in conducting investigative probes what have the democrats been doing in those 12 years of power . What kinds of abuses are we looking for . What kinds of problems have been lurking there in the corners that we now are able, as republicans, to bring to light . and its in that background, you see, that mccarthy gets thegets thethe impetus for this idea of using investigations, using probes as a wainto democratic malfeasance and misfeasance in Government Departments as a way of, first of all, straightening out the problems, but then also, of course, to building your political career. Cspan youve been to his grave in appleton, wisconsin . Guest yes. Cspan why . Guest i went there because i wanted to do two things. One was i was visiting my parents, who live in wisconsin, and i wanted, first of all, to see mccarthys grave. Why not . Its a short drive away from home. But i also went for another reason, and that was because i wanted to get a sense, which was important for the book and for the writing of the bookthe sense of the kind of place that mccarthy came from and the kinds of people and the sort of community that rallied around joe mccarthy all the way down to his death, all the way after his disgrace and censure and so on. Appletonians never lost theirthe majority of appletonians never lost their sense of loyalty andand admiration for joe mccarthy. And i wanted to get, at least in a kind of firsthand way, a taste of what thatof what that was about by going to the grave andandand seeing theand seeing whatwhat appletonthat part of that appleton was like. Cspan born in 1908. What year did he die . Guest he dies in 1957. Cspan of what . Guest he diedwell, the death certificate says hepatic liveralliver failure, and it does seem to be had that hepatitis was the immediate cause of death. But theres no doubt that the liver damage that he suffered was the result of hisof his chronic drinking. Cspan how much did he. Guest . Which had been going on for yearshad been going on for years. You know, theres atheres athe legend is is that mccarthys disgrace and his censure drove him to the bottle and that he killed himself in the process. Actually, in fact, what i discovered wasis that his drinking had really begun long before that. It had really begun during the period of time in which he was at the height of his popularity and the height of hisof his notoriety here. And the tremendous quantities of alcohol that he did consume as he responded to the tensions and the pressures of his, you know, National Celebrity that had been thrust on him simply did physical damage thatthat was irrirrirreparable. And after the censure, he doesnt seem to have drunk quite as much as he did before. A lot of people who met him andduring that period of time describe him as being a moderate drinker, and perhaps so. But the truth is is that the physical damage had already been done by the timeby the time of hisby that time of his censure, and he goes into agoes into a physical and mental tailspin after that. Cspan so hes, like, 48 years old when he dies. Guest yeah, hes only 48 years old when he dies. Thats right. Cspan are there any mccarthy descendants . Guest there is. There is a sthere is aa daughter, a stepdaughter. He and jean adopted a child only months before his death, as a matter of fact. It was an adoption that was arranged with the help of Cardinal Francis spellman. Cspan shes in thehis wifes in this picture right here. Guest thats right. Thats right. And that daughter is still alive. I didnt contact her at all because, for one thing, the mccarthy personal papers, such as they are, are basically sealed. The family doesnt want anybody toto see it, and i respected her privacy. But also because, again, she would nohave had almost no memory of her father since he died when she was still really an infant. Cspan when did you get interested in this . What were you doing and why . Guest well, ill tell you itmccarthysince i grew up in wisconsin, mccarthy was always a kind of shadowy figure in the history of wisconsin politics. Wisconsin is a very progressive state. Its the place where bill proxmire and Gaylord Nelson were senators, and has ayou know, has a long history and proud history of progressivism in its politics. And joe mccarthy was always kind of bankwells ghost at the feasts. No one really wanted to talk about how he became a senator and reelected as a senator from the state. And it was a very murky part of this whole sort of political heritage ofofofof being in wisconsin. And that had always intrigued me about it, about him and about his links to wisconsin. But the other issue, too, that got me interested in this was the whole question about american communism and the socalled red scare, and about the 1950s probes into anticommunism. And the first book that really got me interested in it, oddly enough, was victor navaskys naming names. I read that in graduate school. It made enormous impact on me. Cspan the man who used to run the nation magazine. Guest thats right. Exactly. He was publisher of the nation. And it waswhat itmost impressed me about it was the human side of the story that he was capturing, the human tragedies of these figures who had become caught up inin the communist party and inin the accusations about their membership and their links to the party in the 1950s. And it was a veryand is a very powerful book. Although my own view about the role of domestic communism is radically different now from navaskys, its still a very powerful book because it captures that human tragedy element. And although my own professional interests as a historian moved in a different direction, i always kept an interest in the period and in the subject. And it struck me a number of years ago that if i wanted to write something on thisyou know, people write books very often because itsthey want to read the book that theyre going to write, and this was my case, too. I wanted to read a book about joe mccarthy, that mccarthy was a way in which all of these kinds of issues about the 1950s, about what america was about, what domestic communism and its role and place in American Life in this period and the cold war, that mccarthy was a way to reexamine all of those issues in thein ain ain a single way and in a singlein a single form. And thatfrom the point of view ofof human tragedy, that the story of joe mccarthy is a tragedy. It really is. I mean, it is a tragedy which in many ways he brought upon himself, but its aits a tragedy all the same. Cspan what do you do fulltime . Guest what i do fulltime is i teach at george mason university. Im visiting associate professor there. And at the same time, i also lecture at the Smithsonian Institution at their campus on the mall. And i amorganized their western Heritage Program there, bringing on teachers and setting up courses and so on forfor the large audiences that we getthat we get over at the smithsonians ripley center. Cspan how would you describe your own political views . Guest i guess i would describe my own political views as conservative of aof a sort that is someone who grew up as a progressive, who in graduate school had been of the left, but then became disillusioned with it as a result of what had happened in vietnam and in cambodia after the american withdrawal there. Andand of really kind of reassessing your own deeply held beliefs and beginning to think that perhaps theres a different way to sort of see, a different perspective on all these other kinds of things. Its been a slow, long march for me to the kinds of views and issues thatthatthat ive come to realize here. But insofar asinsofar as thethe view that i used to have about joe mccarthy and about the kinds of people who supported him and about the red scare and all of these other issues of domestic subversion, that is a view which is, i think, the mthethe main weight of historical evidence simply runs against it. And youits just not aits just not a feasible position anymore to hold about these kinds ofthese kinds of issues. That the weight of historical evidence has to compel us to reexamine andandand to really reappraise how we understand all these things. Cspan where did you get your undergraduate degree and. Guest i got it at the university of minnesota. Cspan in what year . Guest in 1978 within history. A ba in history and then a masters degree at Johns Hopkins in 1980. And then i did my phd at Johns Hopkins inin 85. Cspan and how longexcuse mehow long have you been associated with the smithsonian . Guest i started teaching there about 19901990 or 1991. The number escapes me right now. And ive been teaching for them on a more or less regular basis ever since. Cspan go back to the wheeling, west virginia, speech. What day, what year was it given . Guest this was february 9th, 1950. It was a speech for the lincoln Day Celebrations that were being organized by the Ladies Republican Club of wheeling, west virginia. Lincolns birthday was traditionally a opportunity for republican officeholders to give a speech about republican principles, about thethe great traditions and the heritage of the Republican Party and itsthen, alof course, also to associate themselves with the figure of Abraham Lincoln and about howandand about sort of current political views. Mccarthy was invited to give the speech. He was, at that time, still a very obscure senator. And it is true, he was somebody who was struggling for a way to whichmake a name for himself. Cspan two years into his senate term . Guest thats right. Thats right. He hadhe had great difficulty convincing his colleagues that he was really up to the job of being a competentwhat shall we say . Aa competent supporter, a competent comcolleague in pushing republican policies here. Hed been relegated to these minor committees and didnt seem to be aa way to get out of it in any sort of way. So he was looking around for some kind of issue in which to make a name for himself. Cspan february. Guest . Since he didnt seem to be able to get along with his colleagues very well. Cspan february, 1950, where was alger hiss . Guest alger hiss had just been convicted of perjury and was in prison, just two weeks earlier. Cspan where was Richard Nixon . Guest Richard Nixon was, at that time, of coursehe hadhe was about to launch his run for the us senate. He was going to use his the name that he had made for himself, the fame that he had gained by prosecuting the hiss case and carrying it forward and proving his guilty, to translate that into, you know, political success to the next level, moving from the house to the senate here. Cspan what was Joseph Mccarthys relationship with joseph kennedy, the father of jack kennedy, in 1950 . Guest well, before i answer that, let me just come back briefly to the nixon issue and the hiss issue. Theyre important to understand mccarthy and to understand the wheeling speech for this reason, and that is is that Richard Nixon was always the exexample, the role model for mccarthy, of how taking on the issue of domestic communism and pointing fingers at the members of the Truman Administration or past members of the truman andand roosevelt administrations, pointing fingers at them as being communists or communist sympathizers, how you could make a political career out of that. And nixons success in doing so and becoming a National Figure through the hiss case, and then winning in a landslide victory in november and being elected to the us senate were powerful incentives for mccarthy to try the same thing. He thought to himself, heres the way. Heres the way in which you raise yourself fromfrom relative obscurity into National Fame and become a pillar of your party. and so it wasisin the end, it was a misleading example because the people that mccarthy pointed his fingers at were not alger hisses. He got himself outout of his depth in the accusations he made. But it was pointing the direction to hisit was the direction he saw himself moving indirectly. As for joe kennedy, the relationship between the kennedys and the mccarthys is a very interesting one. And it really is rooted in a kind of shared Irish Catholic heritage and a similar outlook on issues such as communism, such as the cold war and in a mutual liking. Mccarthy, as i saypoint out in the book, mccarthy for a period of time became a part of that hyannis port entourage, playing softball with the kennedys here. Joe kennedy, in particular, seems to have had a strong liking forfor joe mccarthy and always sort of hoped that mccarthy would marry one of his daughters. They had other ideas about the subject. Cspan how old was Bobby Kennedy back in those years . Guest im not sure how old he wahe was, but hell only be in his mid20s when he comes on asas Legal Counsel for mccarthys committee on investigations when he becomeswhen mccarthy becomes chairman in 1953. Hell put Bobby Kennedy ininto that slvery important slot. Cspan wheeling, west virginia, the speech february, 1950, the numbers 205 vs. 57. Guest a very confusing story, very murky, and made murkier by mccarthy himself. Heres what happened. There was a list which had been prepared by a House Committee back in 1946 of people whose personnel filespeople working in the state departmentwhose personnel files that Committee Members had gone through and had found various things that they found disturbing about many of these people who were on the state department payroll. That some of them were members of the communist party, that others were asassociated with communist party members. And you have to remember, this is a period of time in which the conflict with the soviet union is just starting to heat up, and the question of where are these peoples loyalties, with us, the United States, or with our airerstwhile ally during the war, the soviet union . the list was put together and presented to the state department forwith a nasty note, in effect, saying, why are these people still on the payroll here if were, in fact, gonna be inyou know, inif we find ourselves in the midst of a conflict with the soviet union . the state department wrote back a reassuring letter saying, well, in fact, a lot of these people have, in fact, been removed from the state department. Andbut there are still some who are left, whose cases are still pending for investigation. Well get to them as soon as we can. the number that were left was 57. This was in 1948, the number 57. And this was how the number 57 gets to mccarthy, is that mccarthysin the wheeling speechsstated that number, the number 57, as the number of people that he claimed were either communists or communist sympathizers still on the state department payroll. Now mind you, theres a gap here. Hes speaking in 1950. The state Department Spokesman in 1948s giving a number 19given the number 57. Mccarthy has no way of knowing which is accuratewhether that number is still accurate. But the point wasas i make in the bookis that no one did because thebecause the personnel files had been sealed. All of this stuff, byby trumans order, had been shut out. The sthe congress had no way of knowing whether these people were still on the payroll or not unless the state department decided to tell them so. Now in the preparation for the speech that he makesand he got a speech writer, a journalist by the name of ed neller to do the speech for him. In fact, it seems to have been neller who suggested the idea of doing a spa speech on communists in government, in the state department. In drafting the speech, atat various points where the speech would mention specific numbers as, for example, listing the number of People Living under communism in 1945, the number of People Living under communism in 1950, that thethat mccarthys speech writer, whether it was neller or a typist, would insert a number forand then later on whenthe course of composing the speech, and then later on would plug in the exact numbers in preparation for the speech. And what seems to have happened is is that the number 205 was simply inserted into the slot for the number where 57 would eventually go. And in fact, when the speech was handed out to reporters, the number 205 was, in fact, crossed out and the number 57 substituted for it. Now what seems to have happenedand we dont really know because theres no recording. This is one of the most famous speechesnotorious speeches in the 20th century and we have no recording of it, only the memory of those who heard it. That what seems to have happened is that mccarthy, in the course of reading the speechand he was never somebody who followed the script very closely. He was always adlibbingis that what seems to have happened is that he read the number 205 the first time around instead of the number 57. Cspan why does that matter . Guest well, it matters for a couple of reasons, and that is, is that later on, mccarthy would always insistin fact, at the time he would always insist that the number 57 was the number which he had cited, because there was somealthough flimsydocumentary evidence to support that number, and under oath he would deny to Senate Committees the fact that he had ever said 205. so later on, when democrats in the senate are looking for ways to get mccarthy out of the senate, either expel him or censure him, the possibility that joe mccarthy had committed perjury, perjury by telling a Senate Committee that, i never said 205, but rather 57, would become, you see, a leverage as a way ofa way of proving that mccarthy was, in factwas, in fact, a liar, and democrats scrambled for years to try and find a copy of it, in the hopes that perhaps someone, somewhere, had recorded this at the Radio Station or during the course of it, so that they can prove that mccarthy had, in fact, saidsaused the number 205. It seems like a minor point, but you have to understand that in that explosive environment, the bitter partisanship that surrounded these kinds of issueswas the democratic administration, the Truman Administration, and the roosevelt administration, had they been harboring communists, had they been harboring communist sympathizers here . Those accusations that had been hurled at their heads, their counteraccusations that their opponents were really just out to destroy the new deal, and toand toand to revoke social security, and to destroy all that americans had gained, and to plunge back into the darkest years of the depression. And in that kind of partisan debate, these numbers mattered, you know. Its rather as if the questions aboutagain, aboutabout monica and linda tripp, about, you know, where she bought the dressthese kinds of details mattered, because these were hot political issues, whereas today, of course, in retrospect, they seem kind of small. Cspan where are the joe mccarthy papers . Guest the family seems to have retained some of those papers. A previous historiana previousprevious biographer who tried to get access to themthey seem to be kept at marquette university. I guess thatsthats where they are, under seal, not in the familys possession, but at marquette universitytried to get access to them, failed to do so, but was told by a family friendhe mentions this in the prefacewas told by a family friend that there was really nothing of great interest there, that most of it was just simply junk mail from mccarthys senate office, which is not difficult to believe. Joe mccarthy never wrote down anything. He was an oral man. He was not a literhe was not someone who wrote down things. He never kept a diary. He was probably the mostleast introspective person that you could possibly find. Personal papers would not be very revealing at all, even if they did, in factno matter what kinds of materials you would find there. Joe mccarthy was what he was, what he appeared to be in public. And its in the public record, on the public man, that the book is reallyis really focused on. Cspan your photographs in here often come from Oliver Atkins collection at george mason university. If i remember right, Oliver Atkins was the nixon photographer. Guest thats right, and he also worked for the saturday evening post, and he donated large sections of his Photo Archives to george mason university, and theyre up there in the special collections, and a lot of the photographsi think the vast majority of them, in facthave never actually been seen before. A lot of these are outtakes from articles that hethat atkins was doing for saturday evening post, from the armymccarthy hearings, an article that was done about joe mccarthy shortly after hed made the wheeling speech, sort of, whats all this fuss about the state department and whos thiswhos this joe mccarthy, anyway . so theyre photographs that have not been seen before cspan i want to go through a bunch of names, because itwere going to run out of time before you know it, and this gets the sense of who was involved in all this. Just let meijust give me some brief descriptions of how they played in this whole thing. William f. Buckley. Guest william f. Buckley wasbecame attached to the mccarthy cause through a young lawyer by the name of brent bozell. The two of them penned a book called mccarthy and his enemies, which was basically a defense of mccarthys charges against the state department and against the Truman Administration here. There seems to have been some talk about him working as a sprspeechwriter for joe mccarthy. Later on, joes wife, jean kerr, wanted bill to come on board, itit seems, but mccarthys important later on, because it is buckley who will singlehandedly, in a sense, resurrect the conservative movement with his founding of the national review. Cspan brent bozell was married to. Guest brent bozell was married to patricia buckley. Cspan the sister of bill buckley . Guest bills sister, yeah. Cspan and is the father of the l. Brent bozell who runs this Media Research center here. Guest thats right. Cspan . In washington today . Guest thats right. Thats correct. Cspan drew pearson. Guest drew pearson was thethe matt drudge of theof theof theof the 40s, a radio commentator and newspaper columnist, a kind of glorified gossip columnist, really, and he and mccarthy crossed swords a number of times onon issues. Pearson was, like a lot of liberal anticommunists, outraged by mccarthys charges against the Truman Administration and against the democratic party, saw them as wildly recklesswhich a lot of them were, of courseand they became bitter, bitter personal enemies, and. Cspan drew pearson and Jack Anderson were. Guest thats right, were. Cspan . Were teammates. unintelligible . Guest . Were teammates, were teammates, and anderson worked for pearson, really sort of learned hislearned the trade. Cspan whats the slap story . Guest the slap story is that they went to a dinner hosted by a leading washington hostess, who decided that it would bei guessdecided it would be fun to put these two bitter personal enemies side by side at the same table, and after a series of bitter exchanges at theat the table in which, almost certainly, mccarthy, you know, was drinking more and more bourbon, they met again in the cloakroom on their way out, and mccarthys impulse was to grab at him and to slap him across the face, and then it seemsaccording to mccarthys later versionsbut again, you could never really trust mccarthy; he was always happy to embellish the truthalso kneed him in the groin, pushed him down into theinto the cloakroom, you know, the back where the coats are and so on. It was Richard Nixon, who was at the same dinner, who had to really pull mccarthy off of pearson and keep him from really pummeling the man. Cspan roy cohn. Guest roy cohn worked as mccarthys chief Legal Counsel when he became chairman of the subcommittee on investigations in 1953. He was a brash, precocious, streetsmart kid who actually did know his way around the anticommunism andand the investigation of domestic subversion, but he is, more than any other person, responsible, i think, for mccarthys fallthat is, every other person except joe mccarthyin that mccarthy became absolutely mesmerized by cohns brilliance, hishis audacity, his seeming grasp of what was essential and how to get things done, and cohn gave him consistently disastrous advice and really pushed mccarthy off into a series of investigations which would cost mccarthy bothfirst offirst of all, cost him his public support, but then also cost him his career. His investigations of the voice of america, for example; his investigations of the us army, which led todirectly to the confrontation withwith the Eisenhower White house. All of these things were done at theat the behest and at the urging ofof roy cohn. Cspan you say he was only 26 years old when he went. Guest yes. Cspan . To work for him . Guest thats right. Cspan and Bobby Kennedy was 27 at that time . Guest it was a young, brash, youthful, freshfaced team. This wasthis was the image that was being presented here about them. Kennedy and cohn hated each other. They came tothey camethey camealmost came to blows, in fact, later on, and kennedy resignedreluctantly resigned from the committee because he realized that there wasnt room for both of them on theonon mccarthys staff. Cspan and a young man named david schine who was 25. Guest thats right. Cspan and i want you to tell us who he wasbut why is there no picture of him in here that i could find . Guest theres only so many pictures you can get in. Thats one reason why. Cspan but is there a picture of david schine around . Guest oh, yeah. Hesyou canyou can find him ininin a number of books, roy cohns book, for example, but he was a kind ofhe was engagingly handsome, not very bright, came from a millionaire family from florida, and roy cohn seems to have been quite enthralled by him. Roy cohn was, as we now know, a homosexual, and although there is nothing that suggests that there was any kind of physical relationship between cohn and schine, therethere was a strong emotional intimacy an emotional dependency between cohn and schine, which is really quite striking. A lot of people who knewfamily members, cohns family members, who knew him as being this incredibly outgoing and forceful personality, a person withyou know, kind of the embodiment of chutzpah, and here he was sort of mooning after thisthisas i say, not terribly bright, not very cerebral youngeryounger man. That relationship between them and cohns desire to keep david schine from going into the army when hes drafted, to keep him on the staff, is what ultimately leads to mccarthys downfall, because it is cohns efforts, his desperate efforts to get special treatment for private david schine that gives. Cspan what year . Guest this would be in 195354. Cspan general eisenhower is the president. Guest yes. Eisenhower is president at this point. The army is iniisthe Defense Department is in republican hands, but it is that effort by cohn that gives the Defense Department, then, leverage to try and end mccarthys investigations andand probes intointo their security program, that leads to the final. Cspan i want to come. Guest . To the final confrontation. Cspan i want to come back to a couple of other namesLauchlin Currie. Guest Lauchlin Currie is one of the shadowiest figures of the whole maze of soviet espionage and soviet agents at work in the highest reaches of theof the federal government. He was an aide to president roosevelt. He was almost certainlyand we know this from the venona decrypts, which have recently been madebeen made public. Cspan whats that mean venona . Guest venona was the projectthethe project name for the decoding and decipherdeciphering of intercepted kgb cables that had passed between washington and new york and other kbbkgb stations to moscow. Cspan this just happened in the last couple of years . Guest well, thethe release of these documents. Cspan thats what i mean. Guest yeahcamecomes in 1995, is when these had been made public, and what was known to Security Office for a longofficers for a long time is now known to historians and toand to the general public, and that is is that currie was among the most active of these recruited soviet agents here. Cspan what about john service . Guest john service. Cspan john stewart service. Guest . Was one of the brightest of the socalled china hands. he was a principle target of mccarthys accusations about members of the Truman Administration in the state department being, if not actually communists, then being sympathetic and secretly sympathetic to the communist cause and giving, for that reason, bad advice that would guarantee the victory for maos communists as opposed toaand the defeat of the chiang kaisheks nationalistsand he became a principle target in a real hot spot of contention between republicans and democrats about theabout the fundamental integrity of the kind of policy advice america was getting during the chinese civil war, in fact, for the whole cold war in asia. Cspan Owen Lattimore. Guest Owen Lattimore was another figure, the kind of spiritual godfather for thefor the china hands. Cspan which one is he in this photograph . Guest hes the one on the left, with thewith the glasses. Cspan in the front or in the back . Guest im sorryin thethe one with the glasses in the front. Cspan ok. Guest and that picture shows him on hisleaving the Tydings Committee hearing room after he had testified againstagainst mccarthy, and you can see mccarthy, if you look at the four figures there, that quartet in the foreground, mccarthys the one on the upper right. Cspan you mentioned tydings. Who was he . Guest jomiller tydingsnot joe tydingsmiller tydings was a senator from maryland, and he headed the special Senate Committee that was set up to investigate mccarthys charges against the state department, and they came out with a report that basically exonerated all of the figures who mccarthy had named as being either communists or communist sympathizers, including Owen Lattimore, including john stewart service. Mccarthy accused tydings and the democrats who controlled the committee of conducting a whitewash, of using it for partisan purposes, and i think that any kind of objective look at theactually, any kind of objective look at the tydings report and the way in which they did systematically ignore the evidence that was presented, not just by mccarthy but by their own investigators, you have to say that in this case, at least, mccarthy had something of a point. Cspan whwhat would joe mccarthy, in your opinion, have been like to know . Guest i think he wasfrom the people that i have interviewed who did know him, he was someone who was a warm, engaging, intensely physical man. He was the kind of person who corners you and buttonholes you at a party, takes hold of your lapel, has his arm around you from the other side here, whowho is charming and engaging, has the ability toyou know, thisthis sort of gruff and rather vulgar sense of humor here. He is the kind of person whos, you know, very, very popular in male locker rooms and inand in barrooms here. And most people found himeven hiseven his political opponentsfound him to be a very likablelikable individual here. The one problem he had was this ferocious temper, which could flare up at unexpected and unpredictable points, and its one of the thingsthis intensely physical man suddenly losing his temper, blowing up at imagined slights and insults, and firing back at people with really harsh and nasty personalpersonal attacks, was one of the things that made him asas a senator very, very difficult to deal with, why people didnt want to touch him, didnt want deal with him. Cspan now the other names that are still around and familiarAnthony Lewis, tony lewis, the liberal columnist for the New York Times. Guest thats right. He. Cspan . You say was a friend of roy cohns . Guest he was a friend of roy cohn and he was the one who dropped off the newspaper to roy cohn, telling him that, you are now the target of an investigation and accusations by the us army,. unintelligible . Cspan wheres their friendship from . Guest that goes back to new york days, and in fact, Anthony Lewis was one of the people who was always surprised by roy cohns embrace of the communist issue, and turning toto mccarthy as a kind of mentor figure. You know roy cohns family were democrats. They were tammany hall democrats. His father was a political appointee judge. But again, we have to understand that cohn had this unerring eye for the main chance. What is it thats going to give meyou know, guarantee me political success and notoriety the fastest possible way . Whats the fast track to power . And for him, joe mccarthy was it. Cspan former publisher of the national review, bill rusher, was aa staff person on the committee . Guest no, he wasnt a staff person on that committee. He comes to washington after mccarthys fall to work for thethe successor chairman, forthe man who takes over the committee afterwards, asasas republican chairman, william jenner, for the committee of subthis permanent subcommittee on investigations, mccarthys own committee here. And he met mccarthy as a result of hisof his dealings with jenner and john mcclellan, and the other members of the committee. Cspan have you no sense of decency . who said that . Guest thats a famous phrase. That is an immortal phrase. Its one that appears in film clips, in documentaries about the period. Its joseph welch, the armys counsel, Legal Counsel. Cspan its hard to see in this photograph here, but he is which one in this picture . Guest hes the one on the right, with his hand to his chin. Cspan and he was the counsel for. Guest the army, in their. Cspan the United States army. Guest United States army. Cspan what year . Guest this is 1954, during the famous armymccarthy hearings. A lot of people have a misunderstandingmisconception about the armymccarthy hearings. They assume that it was mccarthy investigating the army that was being televised here for the nation to see. In fact, it was mccarthy who was in the hot seat. It was mccarthy who was the accused, of allowing his Staff Members, including roy cohn, to blackmail the army by threatening investigations in order to get david schine his special treatment asas a new draftee into the army. Cspan you say there was tears by joe welch, joseph welch, after the hearing was over, and youreyoure suspicious. Guest well, its an interesting story. Itsits told by an eyewitness to the events, who. Cspan somebody you talked to . Guest not someone i talked to, someone another historian talked to, andand gives the account in one of the footnotes to his book. He doesnt mention thehe doesnt mention who the person is. I think i have an idea as to who it is, but im not going to say, who worked for joe mcworked for welch, and that after this dramatic scene and theandand the stinging speech thatthat welch gave to mposted, he gave to mccarthy for bringing up fred fishers name in the midst of thisthesethese hearings. Cspan who is fred fisher . Guest fred fisher was a lawyer who worked on welchs staff who had, in student days, been a member of the National Lawyers guild, which was a communist front organization, and the information appeared in the New York Times a couple of weeks before. Welch had decided that it wasnot make sense to have fred a member of the staff, because he knew that mccarthy and cohn would probably make an issue out of it, and he and roy cohn struck a deal, secretly, before thebefore the hearings opened, that if mccarthy and cohn would not mention fred fisher and his communist affiliation as a way of discrediting joe welch and the armys case, that they would not bring up roy cohns rather suspicious draft deferment that had gotten him out of the korean war. It was a mutual agreement you dont bring up an embarrassing episode, and i wont mention this one in exchange for that, and cohn presented the terms to mccarthy; mccarthy said, fine. then later on, whenwhen welch was runningwas needling andcohn, and giving him a very hard time in the course of the give and take and asking him, give us some names of communists. You people are the experts on communists, bringgive us some names now. You know, i dont want to have a single communist. Namei want to know who it is on my staff, or anywhere, whoin the us government, whos, you know, a communist, and i want those names before sundown. in the midst of all of that, watching cohn being, in a sense, teased and needled in this way, mccarthy lost his temper, and blurted out the example of fred fisher. Joseph welch gave this long, as i say, andand quite dramatic and emotionally powerful reply to it, about having no sense of decency left, and then had a tearful press conference afterwards here, in whichagain heyou know, how could mccarthy have done this to this young man, and his lack of decency and all the rest of it. And then, after the reporters had gone, when he and his other Staff Members were leaving, he turned to one of them afterwards, the tears still streaming down his face, and, according to this staffer, then welch said, well, how did it go . that in other words, he had prepared himself in case mccarthy or cohn hadhad broken their word. He had prepared this littlethis little soliloquy as a way of getting the mostthe motionthe most emotional impact out of theout of the incident. He didnt trust them, and as it turned out, he was correct. Cspan in the end you say that Joseph Mccarthy was censured 67 to 22, but thatup till that point, thered only been three in historysenators censured . Guest thats right. Cspan but in the end he also had a stateor senate funeral. Guest yeah, which was an extraordinary thing, and it was, in many ways, a kind ofwell, it was a couple of things. One was, i think, there were a lot of senators who voted for censure who had their doubts about the grounds for doing so. There had to be a way to stop joe mccarthy. He had simply gotten out of control, had really sort of stretched the envelope of the institution by his excesses and by his reckless accusations. There had to be a way to stop him; censure seemed to be the way to do it. But the effect that it had on mccarthy, thethe tremendous physical and mental decline that mccarthy suffered as a result of it, i think came as a shock to everybody, and his death coming so quickly after the censure, there was a feeling thaton the part of the senate tothatin ain a part of the senate to kind of make amends for this by giving him this kind ofthis kind of funeral, which would ordinarily only be reserved for Supreme Court justices or foror for president s. Cspan how often, from your point of view, was the press or the democratswere they hypocritical back in those times . Guest well, what i point out in the book is, is that one of the accusations that they had constantly made about joe mccarthy was that he played fast and loose with the facts, that his accusations really lacked substance and were, in a sense, exaggerated by a kind of hysterical rhetoric about the threat, about reds under the bed and soviet spies in the white house and control from the kremlin, etc. , etc. And what i do point outand im not the first one to point this outis, is that much of that playing fast and loose with the facts and much of that hysterical rhetoric was employed by his political opponents as well. And one of the things that i want to point out here in the book, and to make clear to people whowho dont remember the time, is the degree to which we have to realize that this was a bitterly partisan era. There wereemotions ran very, very high about how to conduct the cold war, about how to deal with the threat of stalinism, both abroad but also at home. You had american soldiers dying in korea. The korean war formsis theis really thethethe vivid backdrop for all of mccarthys career here. There was a bitter, bitter partisan battle here, in which people were prepared to say almost anything to blacken the reputations and to smear their political opponent. Mccarthy did it, republicans, his republican allies did it. You also have to remember that the democrats were quite prepared to do the same thing, and often did against mccarthy, calling him a nazi sympathizer, talking about hishis investigations as posing a threat to american democracy and so on, charges which really dontinin the light oflight of historical evidence and Historical Perspective dont hold any kind of water. Cspan not much time. David greenberg, one of the many people who have regurgireviewed your bookhes a Richard Hofstadter fellow in American History at columbia universityhe says, arthur hermans tentendentious Joseph Mccarthy represents what one can only hope will be the nadir of this trendhes talking about a trend ofof describing that perioda model of muddy thinking, the book contends that just because some us officials spied for the soviet union, as we now know definitively, mccarthys campaign against communists in government was, ipso facto, a force for good. later he says, herman forges beyond balance to exonerate the senator whenever possible. He even employs the contradictory arguments in the senators defense. is this a normal kind of a review that youve gotten . Guest yeah. Well, you know, its very interesting. Thethe professional reviewers who have read the book including the professional historiansreally dont know what to make of it. They have never really read a book quite like this, because it doesnt take the sort of obvious sides in the case. It doesnt repeat the kinds of conventional pieties about either joe mccarthy or about the 1950s and the red scare. And because they havent really read a book thats like this, that approaches it in this way, itits necessary for reviewers, i think, in many ways to try and find a way to sort of bring it down to the sort of recognizable category. So its assumed that because im not overtly antimccarthyand i actually sort of try to correct some of the myths and legends that have grown up about mccarthy as being thisyou know, thisthis icon of evil, this tremendous antidemocratic demagogue, etc. , etc. That because i dontbecause im not antimccarthy, therefore i must be promccarthy, which im not, and therefore, its also assumed that because i say mccarthy is not the sort of villain that hes been cast to be that i, therefore, must be making the democrats and liberals as the villains, which is false. Its a book thatstries to examine this in as cool and detached and dispassionate a way as you canthe man, the times, thethethe issue, the perplexing issue ofof domestic communism, and thehow to conduct the cold war, and for a lot of reviewers, this isthis is an approach that they just cant quitecant quite grasp. Cspan do you know where this picture was taken . Guest that picture was taken during the armymccarthy hearings. Its mccarthy giving a lecture at theat the front of the Committee Table about communist cells around the United States and their links to soviettoto American Army and air force bases. On the other side of it, it hasin that sense its a cropped photograph, because also in the larger picture is a picture of joseph welch on the left, sitting and listening to all of this with awith a expression ofofof disgusted skepticism on his face. Cspan our guest has been arthur herman, and again, this is what the book looks like Joseph Mccarthy reexamining his life and legend of americas most hated senator. Thank you very much for joining us. Guest thank you very much