The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy Read online

  The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

  James Cross Giblin

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  Clarion Books

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

  BOSTON NEW YORK 2009

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the following institutions that provided illustrations and information for this book: AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS, New York; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Raynor Memorial Library, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wise.; The National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Outagamie County Historical Society and Museum, Appleton, Wisc.; and the Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisc.

  Special thanks to Michael Cooper, who researched the photographs and cartoons from the Library of Congress and the National Archives, and to my assistant, Mordechai Czellak, who listened to me read aloud drafts of many chapters and offered helpful comments.

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  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2009 by James Cross Giblin

  The text was set in 12-point Minion Pro.

  Book design by Carol Goldenberg

  Map by Kayley LeFaiver

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton

  Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America.

  VB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Giblin, James.

  The rise and fall of Senator Joe McCarthy / by James Cross Giblin.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-618-61058-7

  1. McCarthy, Joseph, 1908–1957—Juvenile literature. 2. Anti-communist movements—United States—

  History—Juvenile literature. 3. Legislators—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature. 4. United States.

  Congress. Senate—Biography—Juvenile literature. I. Title.

  E748.M143G535 2009 973.921092—dc22 [B] 2009015005

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  FRONTISPIECE:

  Joe McCarthy, at the height of his political power, leaves the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, March 8, 1954. The Library of Congress

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  For Dinah Stevenson

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  Contents

  Prologue: More Powerful Than the President • [>]

  1. Chickens, Groceries, and a High School Diploma • [>]

  2. Days and Nights at Marquette • [>]

  3. Joe's First Campaign • [>]

  4. Judge McCarthy • [>]

  5. "Tail Gunner Joe" • [>]

  6. One Fight Ends, Another Begins • [>]

  7. Defeating a Legend • [>]

  8. Newcomer in Washington • [>]

  9. Charges of Torture • [>]

  10. The Speech That Started It All • [>]

  11. Where's the Evidence? • [>]

  12. The Top Russian Spy • [>]

  13. War Breaks Out in Korea • [>]

  14. Revenge • [>]

  15. "We Like Ike!" • [>]

  16. The Missing Paragraph • [>]

  17. "I Can Investigate Anybody" • [>]

  18. Cohn and Schine Go to Europe • [>]

  19. McCarthy Gets Married • [>]

  20. The Dangerous Dentist • [>]

  21. Grilling General Zwicker • [>]

  22. Exposed on Television • [>]

  23. A Devastating Report • [>]

  24. McCarthy on the Receiving End • [>]

  25. "Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?" • [>]

  26. Censured • [>]

  27. "His Time to Die" • [>]

  Epilogue: Another McCarthy? • [>]

  After McCarthy's Death... • [>]

  Bibliography and Source Notes • [>]

  Index • [>]

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  An Uncomfortable Situation —By Hunger ford

  Cartoon by Hungerford, published December 3, 1953. The Library of Congress

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  PROLOGUE: More Powerful Than the President

  THE CARTOON TO THE LEFT, published in December 1953, bears the title "An Uncomfortable Situation"—which is certainly an understatement. It shows President Dwight D. Eisenhower sitting at his desk and confronting three folders labeled "National Issues," "Foreign Policy," and "GOP Political Plans." The initials GOP stand for Grand Old Party, a nickname for the Republican Party.

  The president is startled to look up and find a determined-looking man sitting on the left arm of his chair. The man, whose last name appears on his trousers, is Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. He dips a pen in ink, and his intended action is clear; he, not Eisenhower, will sign the papers awaiting the president's attention. Or perhaps he plans to hand the pen to the president, then tell him how to sign the documents, which would be just as bad.

  The cartoon raises many questions. Who, exactly, was Senator Joe McCarthy? (His given names were Joseph Raymond, but he wanted everyone, strangers and friends alike, to call him Joe.) And what made him think he could dictate policy to the president of the United States?

  Joe McCarthy was a complex, fascinating, and highly controversial figure who left an indelible mark on the political life of America in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and whose influence is still felt today. This book will explore the questions about him that the cartoon raises, and many others. The story does not begin in Washington, D.C., where Joe McCarthy reached his zenith, but in the tiny farm community of Grand Chute, Wisconsin, where he was born on November 15, 1908, the fifth of seven children.

  The McCarthy family's farm near Grand Chute, Wisconsin, around 1908, the year of Joe McCarthy's birth. Outagamie County Historical Society, Appleton, Wisconsin

  1. Chickens, Groceries, and a High School Diploma

  EVEN AS A BOY, Joe McCarthy was ambitious. "Joe always wanted to do something," his younger sister Anna Mae recalled in a 1970s interview. "He never kept still. He was always exploding on something."

  Joe grew up in a large Irish American family on his father's 141-acre farm. The farm had been purchased for his father, Tim, by his father, who had emigrated from Ireland during the deadly potato famine of the mid-1800s and homesteaded in Wisconsin in 1855. All the McCarthys—Tim, his wife Bridget, and their seven children—helped to keep the farm going. They raised corn, oats, barley, cabbage, and hay, and had several dozen cows, a coop full of chickens, and a few horses. The 1920s were a prosperous time in America, and the McCarthys did reasonably well, although they never seemed to have any extra money.

  They were a close family. The boys worked with Tim in the fields and the cattle barn, while the girls helped Bridget with the household chores. Every Sunday, even in the snows of midwinter, the family drove to the nearby town of Appleton to attend mass at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church.

  When he was seven, Joe entered Underhill Elementary School, about a mile south of the McCarthy farm. It was a one-room schoolhouse in which a single teacher taught all eight grades, usually between twenty and thirty students. Joe was no scholar, but he had a quick mind and an excellent memory, and always got decent grades. He completed the seventh and eighth grades in just one year, and graduated in 1923 at the age of fourteen.

  Joe was a good-looking boy whose features reflected his Irish heritage. Thick black hair topped his broad face. He had heavy eyebrows, blue eyes, and pale skin. A
lthough he loved a good joke and laughed a lot, his expression could change in a flash from a smile to a frown.

  Joe McCarthy (at right, in shadow), with his brothers William (left) and Howard (center) on the family farm.

  Outagamie County Historical Society, Appleton, Wisconsin

  Joe was strong physically. His father had taught him how to box when he was twelve, and he put this skill to good use in boxing matches with neighborhood boys. In his teens, Joe also liked to wrestle with his pals at church picnics. He never seemed to run out of energy and could get by on just a few hours of sleep a night. But he was dogged by a chronic health problem. From childhood on, he suffered from frequent bouts of acute sinusitis, an infection of the sinuses. It was an affliction he was never able to conquer.

  The fall after his graduation from elementary school, Joe's parents expected he would go on to high school. But at that point he wasn't interested in any further education. Ready to make his way in the world, he wanted to make some money on his own. He bought two dozen chickens with sixty-five dollars he had earned working for an uncle in his spare time, fenced the birds into a corner of his father's property, and built a shed for them.

  Joe sold the chickens' eggs to stores in Appleton and with the profits bought more chicks. Soon he was making enough money to buy a beat-up used truck. Making deliveries to stores in an even wider area, he increased his sales. By the time he was seventeen, in 1925, Joe owned two thousand egg-laying hens and ten thousand broilers for eating, and was driving as far as Chicago to market his eggs and poultry. The future looked bright indeed for Joe McCarthy, chicken farmer.

  Disaster struck in the spring of 1928. On one Chicago trip, Joe's truck overturned. He was unhurt, but many of his chickens were killed, which was a major setback to his business. That was just the beginning. The following winter was unusually cold, and Joe came down with a bad case of the flu after making midnight trips to the chicken house to check that the birds weren't freezing. The flu, complicated by his recurring sinusitis, kept Joe in bed for more than two weeks. He hired some local boys to look after his chickens, but they neglected their duties, and a fatal poultry disease, coccidiosis, infected the birds. In a short time, thousands of Joe's chickens lay dead and he himself was broke.

  When he recovered fully from the flu, Joe tried to rebuild the flock, but his heart wasn't in it. He had been a success as a chicken farmer, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life on a farm. After handing over the surviving chickens to his father, he found a job as a clerk at a Cash-Way grocery store. He performed so well that the higher-ups soon promoted him to manager, then assigned him to open a new Cash-Way store in the small town of Manawa, thirty miles from Appleton.

  Joe McCarthy (third row, fourth from right) at the one-room Underhill Elementary School, less than a mile from his home, around 1918.

  Outagamie County Historical Society, Appleton, Wisconsin

  Joe plunged enthusiastically into his duties and tried some unusual tactics to draw attention to the store. He drove along country roads near Manawa, knocked on farmhouse doors, introduced himself to the farmers and their families, and invited them to stop by the new Cash-Way. Later, he would put this tactic of meet, greet, and make the sale to good use in his political campaigns.

  At the store, he shelved the merchandise along aisles instead of putting it behind counters, and urged customers to wait on themselves. This practice—standard in supermarkets today—was novel in the late 1920s, when most products were kept behind the counter and a clerk picked them out for each customer. Joe also bought merchandise in large quantities, thus getting it at better prices, and kept the store open late on Saturday evenings to increase business. Before long, the new store was operating at a profit, and in a few months it led the twenty-four-store Cash-Way chain in sales.

  Joe wasn't satisfied with his success as a storekeeper. Again, he wanted something more—something that would take him beyond the small Wisconsin towns where he had lived and worked thus far. He had no idea what that something might be, but he knew he would need more than an eighth-grade education to achieve it. His expanded life would require at least a high school diploma, and probably a college degree. But how could he go back to high school now? He was twenty years old, and he had heard that the Little Wolf High School in Manawa did not admit anyone over the age of nineteen.

  He mentioned the problem to his rooming house landlady, and she suggested he talk it over with the high school principal, Leo D. Hershberger. The principal was impressed by Joe's earnestness and agreed to admit him as a freshman in the fall. He went on to tell Joe about a new, experimental program the school was introducing. It would permit students to advance at their own pace, depending on how hard they were willing to work.

  Joe leaped at the idea and signed up for it as soon as he entered Little Wolf High School that September. He was nervous all the same. Years later, he confided to an interviewer, "The day I first walked into that classroom, and sat down with those thirteen and fourteen-year-old kids, I would have sold out for two cents on the dollar. But they all knew me pretty well [from the Cash-Way store, which had become a young people's hangout], so I got along all right."

  Joe requested the hardest assignments and took on a heavy load of homework. After closing the store in the evening, he studied in his room until the early hours of the morning, snatched a couple of hours of sleep, and then downed a quick cup of coffee before opening the store at eight A.M. This demanding schedule began to tell on him, and it wasn't long before a Cash-Way official informed him he would have to choose between running the store and going to school. Without hesitation, Joe chose school.

  Fortunately, he had saved enough money from his job to pay his basic expenses in Manawa. He also picked up a little extra cash by coaching the high school boxing team. But he felt a need to speed up his studies and started working at his books on weekends as well as weekdays. By Thanksgiving, he had passed his freshman tests and begun classes on the sophomore level. Early in the new year, he progressed to the junior level, and by Easter he was working on senior class assignments.

  A page from McCarthy's Little Wolf High School record. Marquette University Archives

  Joe McCarthy's high school graduation photograph. Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin

  The faculty backed Joe strongly as he sped ahead. Later he recalled, "The teachers were swell, and gave me special instruction after school, and at noon, and even at night." All this hard work paid off, and twenty-one-year-old Joseph Raymond McCarthy graduated from Little Wolf High School in June 1930. Joe was by far the oldest of the thirty-nine seniors who received their diplomas at the graduation ceremony. He was also the school's only student to complete four years of high school in nine months.

  Principal Hershberger waited until the end of the proceedings to present Joe with his diploma. As Joe's mother and father, his brothers and sisters, looked on with pride, the principal said of Joe, "We never graduated a student more capable of graduating." He went on to describe Joe as "the irresistible force who overcame the immovable object."

  By the summer of 1930, the effects of the stock market crash on Wall Street the previous October were felt in rural Wisconsin. The prices farmers got for their milk, wheat, and corn were heading down, like everything else in the economy, while jobs were harder and harder to find. It was anything but an encouraging prospect for a recent high school graduate.

  Joe tried not to let the prevailing mood get to him. Because of his record with Cash-Way, he was able to obtain a job for the summer at a store in the town of Shiocton, twenty miles from Manawa. He already knew what he'd be doing in the fall. Despite the hard times, he'd applied for admission to Marquette University in Milwaukee and, with the help of a strong recommendation from Principal Hershberger, had been accepted. How would he pay for a college education? Joe had no doubt he would find a way.

  2. Days and Nights at Marquette

  JOE'S HIGH ENERGY LEVEL and ability to get along on a minimum
of sleep came in handy at Marquette. He moved into a boarding house where eighteen other young men lived, and he took part-time jobs to pay the eight-dollar-a-week charge for his room and meals. On top of that, he had to cover his tuition and other university expenses.

  He couldn't afford to be choosy about the jobs he took. At various times, he worked as janitor for a somewhat shady tavernkeeper known as Dirty Helen; he washed dishes and was a short-order cook in a diner; he sold flypaper door to door; and when things got really tight, he sold pints of his blood to city hospitals. By the end of his second year at Marquette, he had worked out a deal that provided him with a steadier income. He managed two gas stations, working ten to twelve hours a day for thirty-five cents an hour, plus tips.

  Along with the jobs, Joe somehow managed to carry a full load of classwork. He started at Marquette as an engineering major, taking courses in science, mathematics, English, economics, and public speaking. In a class called Debate and Argumentation, he was so nervous at first that he could barely speak in front of his fellow students. He shifted his feet uneasily from side to side and extended his arms for no apparent reason. But with encouragement from the teacher, he learned to stand still, move his arms only when he wanted to make a point, and speak clearly and with expression. His only failing was the flat, nasal quality of his voice, a result of his chronic sinusitis.

  McCarthy (center) leaning on the shoulders of two Marquette University classmates, October 1931. Marquette University Archives

  Joe's success at public speaking was one of the reasons he changed direction in his junior year at Marquette and decided to study law instead of engineering. He was also influenced by the legal students he had met at the boarding house. Their spirited conversations about shaping the arguments for cases, and cross-examining witnesses in the courtroom, made the practice of law sound much more interesting than engineering. Marquette's law school accepted the credits Joe had amassed in his first two years at the university, and he made the transfer at the beginning of his junior year.