The lesson of past hearings. . .
Joseph Welch, hand in head, being questioned by Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Welch was the chief legal counsel for the U.S. Army when it fell under the gaze of Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy asserted that there were Communist that had not been brought to light by the Army in the Army, in defense plants, or in institutions associated with national defense. The claim wasn't actually wholly without merit, actually as at least a few Communists, in 1954, were in the service and more in industry, which was not surprising if we consider that the 1930s had been the high water mark of American Communism and there were more at that time, the 30s, than there ever would be again. Some would end up in the service by default, and indeed at least one openly Communist American officer, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, received the Silver Cross for heroism in the Pacific before later being killed in action. The Army certainly wasn't a hotbed of Communism, however, and the claims were seen as extreme at the time.
On June 9, 1954, Welch, now in day 30 of the hearings, challenged McCarthy confederate Roy Cohn to provide the Attorney General with the names of the 130 subversives that McCarthy claimed were working in American defense plants "before sundown" that day. That wasn't done, but McCarthy called out the name of a lawyer who worked in Welch's Boston law office as a member of a Communist front organization. The lawyer had indeed been a member of it in his youth (recall the comment about the 30s again).
When this occurred, the famous exchange resulted. Welch at first commented:
Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us....Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
McCarthy should have known better than to attempt to joust with a figure like Welch, but he kept on and didn't yield, resulting in:
Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild ... 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?
McCarthy still wouldn't yield. Welch rebuked him and informed him he wouldn't answer any more questions. The audience broke into applause.
McCarthy was wrecked forever.
Yesterday Republicans in the Impeachment hearings suggested that Lt.Col. Vindman, the child of Ukrainian immigrants, might not be fully loyal to the United States as the Ukrainian administration offered him a position as their defense chief several times. He declined every time. There's no suggestion that he ever entertained the offer, and to entertain it would not be a sign of anything in particular. After all, Douglas McArthur was head of the Philippine's army after retiring, the first time, from the U.S. Army. That didn't make him disloyal. And apparently at least one senior American Air Force officer with Eastern European ties has taken up such a position. Claire Chenault spent years in the service of the Nationalist Chinese, but he's never been considered to have been disloyal.
The real question should have been what did Lt. Col. Vindman hear, and what did it mean. Both Vindman and another witness said that they were distressed by what they heard, Vindman very much so, but that they didn't hear the word "bribe" and neither came so far as to claim what they heard was regarded as a bribe. Vindman did go further than the other witness in his opening remarks in upholding the reputation of the removed ambassador, a noble thing to do, but perhaps straying outsides of the confines of what he should have done.
Still, for the second time in two weeks the House Republicans have managed to attack a witness and have the attack fall back on themselves.
Joseph McCarthy attacked a lot of witnesses in his hearings in the early 1950s. Now forgotten, McCarthy's claims were a lot more accurate, indeed highly accurate, than recalled. He benefited from the work of a prior committee from the 1930s and he was also almost certainly getting information secretly and without Administration knowledge from the FBI. But his behavior just went to far. Attacking the Army itself went too far, and then attacking Fred Fischer in a collateral attack went way too far. It was so devastating, in fact, that McCarthy's apologist have accused Welch of cleverly setting it up. But McCarthy' set himself up.
Americans don't like politicians attacking servicemen, and the GOP, which has been closest to the service since World War Two, has members who dislike it most of all. McCarthy didn't survive attacking the Army. Today's House Republicans would have done well to remember that.
The results of these hearings, as already noted, are foreordained. But the election isn't. For undecided voters seeing a soldier like Vindman impugned may be hard to forget.
McCarthy ended up censured later that year. His career declined. He died in 1957 with the cause officially being hepatitis, but which is widely believed to have been due to alcoholism or contributed to by alcoholism. He was 48 years old. He left behind a wife of for years, Jean, whom was 33 years old at the time of his death.
Joseph Welch would die three years after that, at age 69. He's often best remembered today for his role as the judge in Anatomy of a Murder, which he played after his role in the Army McCarthy hearings.
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