EBBING TIDE FOR MCCARTHY
Lowry, W. McNeil
Ebbing Tide for McCarthy By W. McNeil Lowry Washington TF Sen Joseph McCarthy of Wis-consin merits a footnote in American political history, it may be recorded there that the disintegration of...
...Hennings if he proved to need help, although those who knew him best were convinced he would get along unaided...
...But this time, the technique did not work...
...train to New York, where he was to address the American Bar Association meeting, he was handed a letter from McCarthy which the Senator from Wisconsin had released to the press an hour before...
...He could not, Jessup triumphantly told the Sparkman committee, have been following the Communist line between 1939 and Pearl Harbor, because he was following, instead, the "America First" line...
...If you could be "guilty by association," you could be "innocent by association," even if your association was with such present day McCarthyites as Col...
...As for law-partner Green, it was true he had petitioned for a Supreme Court rehearing on the Smith Act's constitutionality in behalf of Communist Gates, "solely because of my [Green's] attachment to the First Amendment and my deep conviction that the opinion [of the court majority] marks a definite contraction of the limits of freedom of speech and of the press . . ." In taking Gates' appeal, Green 13 had waived any fee, had stipulated that he alone would fix the character of the appeal and had stated in writing to Gates that "it would be better for this country and for the world if you and your codefend-ants were no longer free to carry on your present activities...
...Joe McCarthy had been brought into Missouri against Hennings on one occasion...
...My opinion last paragraph letter gratuitous insult," he wired his son...
...Communism, McCarthy version," Life's editors had written, "will be a phony issue by '52...
...Walter Kohler took the occasion to deny that he had ruled out the possibility of running against McCarthy in the 1952 primary...
...But already the changed atmosphere concerning McCarthy was leading to speculation that the Senate might be confronted, for only the third time in the 20th Century, with a motion to censure one of its members...
...Smith and Hendrickson should have disbarred themselves from the Maryland inquiry because both had signed Mrs...
...The cumulative effect was too much for the hard core of McCarthy's Senate supporters...
...Smith of Maine and Hendrickson of New Jersey...
...Ebbing Tide for McCarthy By W. McNeil Lowry Washington TF Sen Joseph McCarthy of Wis-consin merits a footnote in American political history, it may be recorded there that the disintegration of his forces began a few-minutes before five in the afternoon of Sept...
...Between the two sessions before the Sparkman committee in the Jessup matter (interrupted by McCarthy's flying out to Nevada to receive the endorsement of eleven GOP state organizations), McCarthy himself was the subject of a hearing before the Rules subcommittee considering Benton's resolution for his expulsion...
...And what was more important, McCarthy might provoke "even dirtier tactics" from the Democrats...
...The distance which separated lawyer McCarthy from lawyer Green was abundantly symbolized in the language of the American Bar Association Journal read by Hennings...
...Hennings went on to New York and the Bar Association, and the McCarthy letter had three days in which to sink in...
...17-21, therefore, Hennings, in the concepts of a United States Senator, had never done anything to McCarthy and had merely carried out, in a very quiet way, the duties assigned a freshman...
...George C. Marshall had failed miserably and boomeranged badly, and Mr...
...Chief allegation in the letter was that the Missouri Senator might be running his office in part on money from the Communist Daily Worker, since John Raeburn Green of St...
...As a freshman Senator thereafter, Hennings had been assigned to the Rules subcommittee investigating the disputed Tydings-Butler Senatorial race in Maryland and McCarthy's part in it...
...The Senator from Wisconsin was also one of the defendants in a suit for libel, conspiracy, and damage brought by columnist Drew Pearson...
...It was all, they said, a part of the "smear tactics" used by the Administration "to silence any opposition...
...but McCarthy-ism is not and never will be a phony issue, because truth and decency are at stake...
...May I urge that you phone him and follow his advice on whether you should insist upon taking part" in the hearings on the Benton resolution...
...Robert A. Taft, had gone on record to the effect that "I do not agree with Sen...
...He was immune because he stood on the fundamental bulwark of American democracy, the Bill of Rights...
...McCarthy, he said, was the rudest and most arrogant witness to come before a Senate Committee in his [Fulbright's] entire Senatorial career...
...McCarthy's accusation of conspiracy or treason, but . . ." Taft had been vigorously prodded to this end on Aug...
...Wisconsin's Gov...
...Thomas C. Hennings, Jr., Democrat of Missouri, walked on the Senate floor to make a speech...
...III Hennings' treatment of the facts distorted by the McCarthy letter was brief and to the point...
...Smith's 1950 "Declaration of Conscience" against libelous attacks under Senatorial immunity...
...As Sen...
...Until he specified those colleagues, he had impugned all of them in public...
...Taft's] present silence becomes him," the editors of Collier's had written...
...1 publication, McCarthy and 24 Republicans denounced the Democrats for yelling when they were hurt...
...As Sept...
...If this thought did not trouble McCarthy, as the Rules committee got under way, he may yet have been troubled by the news coming almost simultaneously from the Governors' Conference at Gat-linberg, Tenn...
...With things in this state, even the slick magazines decided that Harry Truman's counterattack in the August American Legion speech had been "shrewdly timed...
...Louis, one of Hennings' law partners, was counsel for Daily Worker Editor John Gates, convicted in the government's trial of eleven Communists...
...McCarthy decided upon a flanking movement aimed at the Rules subcommittee...
...Harold Stassen of Minnesota was ready to help Mc-Carran...
...Robert Mc-Cormick and the Tribune Republicans...
...He had argued that Sens...
...But what if the Senate took on some of Mr...
...Four...
...His original analysis of McCarthyism in action, "Hit and Run —How It Works," in the June 1950 issue of The Progressive, has been widely quoted and reprinted...
...Joe is becoming a liability and a danger, both to the Republicans and the nation," Life's editors belatedly declared...
...Truman's courage and defied not only McCarthy but McCarran...
...Hennings, while running for the Senate in Missouri in 1950 without President Truman's endorsement and bucking not only the Republican incumbent but the Democratic state machine, also had taken on the issue of McCarthyism and the McCarran Internal Security Act...
...Trusting the political sense of his colleagues, who were even then following the lead of the St...
...There was absolutely no expectation of getting the required two-thirds vote for expulsion, and there was much talk that Benton might have given McCarthy the setting against which to proclaim his vindication...
...Noting a Democratic political advertisement against McCarthyism, he said that his propaganda, which was normally paid for by "Communists," had on this occasion been paid for by the "candidate's [Hennings'] father," a former Missouri circuit judge...
...Two...
...They remembered only the fact that Tom was one of them, and that he had come to their midst after beating not only Republican Sen...
...McCarthy's repeated charge that Jessup had "an affinity for Communist causes" was even then being revived in Democrat Pat McCarran's investigation of the Institute for Pacific Relations...
...Green was not immune to McCarthy's "Communist" attack because he "associated" with Gerald L. K. Smith, for example...
...Republican, Sen...
...Fulbright, who had carried the brunt of the counterattack, had the last word...
...He used the McCarthy filibustering for all it was worth: "Don't ask me the same questions you asked me the other day . . . If you want to waste more time asking me, I can't give you that today . . . "I am giving you information, Mr...
...Know you will advise McCarthy that you are capable of making own decisions on matters of principle without consulting anyone...
...That was the Senator's mistake...
...But if the issue so brilliantly exhumed by Hennings was lost sight of, Hennings' confidence soon spread to some of his colleagues...
...If the Senator will forget that he is trying to be a lawyer for a few minutes . . . I intend to give this committee information . . . My answer is not going to be dictated . . . "If you want to testify, do the same as I do and put yourself under oath so we can tell where you got your information . . . "Let's not get into the realm of silly questions...
...Five...
...Fulbright . . . Why ask me such a question...
...But very few of his colleagues, in the three-day waiting period, remembered Hennings' votes...
...Finally, though floundering about uncertainly as to the best method by which to proceed, McCarthy's critic, Benton, had forced the Senate Rules Committee to consider a resolution demanding the expulsion of the junior Senator from Wisconsin...
...Three...
...Up to the week of Sept...
...Louis lawyer, though unrelenting in his questioning of the McCarthy technique in Maryland, had maintained a judicial calm...
...Hennings, the first of McCarthy's colleagues hit by the Wisconsin Senator's guilt by association technique, defended lawyer Green by pointing to the principle most despised by the McCarthyites...
...I understand, Tom," McCarthy concluded, apparently forgetting the role in which he had previously cast Hennings' father in Missouri, "that your father has a record as a fine lawyer and jurist...
...Expulsion was now...
...Between the time he had given Hennings the back of his hand and the time he had Hennings' answer, McCarthy had compounded his blunder by a statement at Savannah, Ga., declaring that some of his colleagues had "known communists" on their staffs...
...Throughout these proceedings, the St...
...In the changed atmosphere following the Hennings speech, Arkansas Democrat Fulbright and Alabama Democrat Sparkman cleared the decks for McCarthy victim Philip C. Jessup to make his defense...
...Lowry covers the Washington scene as bureau manager for the Cox papers in Ohio, Georgia, and Florida...
...Tom Hennings was a freshman, true enough...
...Tom Hennings, in short, was, in the dominant Senatorial concept, respectable...
...Former Gov...
...I hope that you will have time to be there even if it requires your temporary absence from inventing smears and lies about others...
...The last man censured by a formal vote of the Senate, Republican Hiram Bingham of Connecticut, had been defeated for reelection at the end of his term...
...We do not think his [Sen...
...But when McCarthy sought to discredit the members of the reporting sub-committee, he did not pick out Hennings or the other two Democrats but Republican Sens...
...J. Frank Norris, the fundamentalist Baptist preacher of Fort Worth, while repudiating the views of both...
...But it was more than the possible implications of McCarthy's charges that were sinking in on his colleagues...
...principal line of Jessup's defense was itself a tribute to the success of McCarthyism in the past...
...His June attack on Gen...
...Against the advice of his more timid Senate leaders...
...A good many of Hennings' other colleagues were present in the chamber, however, and these included some of the veteran Southern Democrats without which the majority party can never enforce its collective judgment...
...21, 1951...
...He was even something of a Fair Dealer, by the votes he had thus far cast...
...President Truman had sent up for confirmation the name of Ambassador Philip Jessup as a delegate to the Paris meeting of the UN General Assembly...
...Second "charge" was that Hennings received "part of his income" from the St...
...18 dawned, the identical subcommittee probing the Maryland election—Democrats Gillette, Monroney, and Hennings and Republicans Smith and Hen-drickson—were trying to set a date to hear Benton's case...
...When McCarthy went before the Sparkman committee to defend his "affinity for Communist causes" charge against Ambassador Jessup, he got a reception Democrats had not dared give him since the days of the Tydings investigation...
...The new found vigor of the Democrats plainly had the Senator from Wisconsin on the defensive...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, which not only criticized the Supreme Court's decision upholding the legality of the Smith Act, under which Gates and the other Communists had been convicted, but also had criticized (McCarthy did not add this) McCarthy...
...But he had said nothing at all about any other "associations" with the Smith and Hendrickson names, and indeed had made only indirect use of Sen...
...He had strongly attacked Sen...
...Hennings prepared to leave his office for a 2 p.m...
...They are out to save "Communism, McCarthy version" as an issue, phony or not...
...The massive force and repetition of President Truman's attacks on McCarthyism had begun to inspire even the most incredulous political pundits of the press with the conviction that Mr...
...He also deplored, without mentioning McCarthy, the practice of hurling irresponsible, unsupported charges...
...and however the case proceeded ultimately, it was proceeding at this point with a good deal of adverse publicity about the actions of Joseph McCarthy...
...Hennings, Sr., was most indignant about this part of the McCarthy effort...
...McCarthy's 24 Republican supporters are not convinced that Life is correct...
...1. Surveying these five fronts, Sen...
...Louis, by defending the right to make a public speech of Gerald L. K. Smith, head of the Christian Nationalist Party, and the Rev...
...Green had taken the same line, Hennings showed, on previous occasions in St...
...ciation" technique with which he had sought to smear so many executive officials of the government...
...In a specious editorial repeating everything the 1950 Joseph McCarthy had charged against the Truman Administration, Life magazine called on GOP candidate Robert Taft to "take a clearer stand...
...And up to this point, also, McCarthy had never used against a fellow Senator the "guilt by assoW. McNEIL LOWRY, The Progressive's Washington correspondent, has watched the unfolding of the McCarthy story from its inception a year and a half ago...
...II At the outset of this fateful week in September, however, McCarthy was at war on many fronts: One...
...Yet in mid-October the subcommittee, again unanimously, voted to investigate Benton's charges of perjury and other acts of misbehavior by McCarthy, and to report its "finding of fact" by Nov...
...Success seems farther away today than at any time since Joe McCarthy started talking about 205 Communists in the State Department...
...And so on...
...But if he were now confirmed again, it would amount to a roll-call vote decreeing that McCarthy had not known what he was talking about for the past 18 months...
...Louis Post-Dispatch in investigating Democratic Chairman William Boyle, Hennings merely said that his 70-year old law firm was proud to have the Pulitzer Publishing Company as one of its clients...
...But even the Democrats' failure to push for Jessup's confirmation has not assured them it can be saved...
...And when he finished, even the most rabid red-baiter among his colleagues forgot to raise the question of what right Green had to differ with the Supreme Court decision in the Smith Act in the first place...
...Jessup had already been confirmed by the Senate four times, and he had the strong backing of most Eisenhower Republicans...
...He joined in signing the unanimous report which characterized the Maryland campaign, partly master-minded by McCarthy, as "a despicable back-street" campaign...
...Forrest Donnell, but the Truman wing of the Democratic Party in Missouri...
...William Benton, Democrat of Connecticut, because Benton, almost alone in the Senate, had had the temerity to denounce McCarthy...
...The significance of McCarthy's blunder with Hennings lies in the fact that Hennings' counterattack was aimed not only at McCarthy but at the very heart of McCarthyism—the libel-proof (because Sena-torially immune) lynching of any man who will not bow to "common prejudice and gross misunderstanding...
...They were there to help Sen...
...18 by a bitter editorial in Collier's magazine on McCarthy's Marshall fiasco...
...as before, out of the question, since it required a two-thirds vote on the floor...
...Hennings ended his review by reading to the Senate an editorial from the American Bar Association Journal of September commending Green for doing "a lawyer's duty, to the honor of the bar" and acting "in contempt of common prejudice and gross misunderstanding...
...In a statement released for Oct...
...Truman really believed the issue would help, rather than hurt, the Democratic Party in 1952, leaving McCarthy to deplore the fact that anybody would try to play politics with his crusade...
...This was widely hailed by many of McCarthy's colleagues as beating the Senator from Wisconsin at his own game...
...And if he did start to specify, he would arouse to even greater pitch the club spirit rallying around Hennings...
...Benton's former associations with the State Department...
...It was sinking in also that the dirt the Senator had hitherto flung only at the Truman Administration was now being thrown around in the sacred precincts of the Senate itself...
...It was at that moment that Sen...
...But the...
...McCarthy was absent from the chamber despite the fact that on the previous day he had received this telegram from Hennings, who was attending the American Bar Association convention in New York: "/ propose to discuss you in the Senate on Friday...
...Until that moment, Joe McCarthy and Tom Hennings had only brushed each other in passing, as encounters in the Senate go...
Vol. 15 • November 1951 • No. 11
