Question

<3help**What institution did Senator Joe McCarthy attack which finally led to the downfall of his own campaign of Communist hysteria

Answer 1

Senator Joseph McCarthy had begun his infamous career as a "witch-hunter" in February 1950 by attacking the State Department, alleging that the Secretary of State and the President were allowing known Communists to hold high-level positions shaping American foreign policy.

In 1953, he shifted his attention to the United States Army. This involved him in a variety of issues involving conflicts of interest. One member of his staff, G. David Schine, was drafted about this time. Roy Cohn, the brilliant but problematic lead counsel for McCarthy's committee, kept pressuring the Army to allow Schine special privileges, ostensibly so that he could continue working for the committee. When top Army officials insisted that Schine be treated like the regular soldier he really was, Cohn threatened to use the committee investigations to ruin the Army.

Meanwhile, McCarthy made an inconsequential case into a major issue. During the Korean War, the Armny had drafted a number of people who worked in various professions that the Army needed to draw on. Dentist were drafted. One drafted dentist was Irving Peress, a dentist from New York, who had been in various left-wing group before he was drafted -- none of them explicitly communist. Peress had refused to answer certain questions about his political background, and when the Army discovered this, it began to process him for discharge. About this time, McCarthy stumbled onto the situation. Rather than simply allow Peress to be discharged so that eh could return to his New York City practice, McCarthy demanded that he be tried by court martial. This was ridiculous: Peress had done nothing criminal. McCarthy demanded that Peress appear at a hearing. Peress appeared, but he exercised his constitutional right to refuse to answer McCarthy's questions. Peress then asked that the Army discharge him immediately, and the Army did.

McCarthy then turned his wrath on those who were allegedly responsible for what he insisted was a cover-up. This led him to subpoena General Ralph Zwicker. Zwicker had been a combat commander throughout World War Two and had acquired a remarkable record for bravery, daring, and resourcefulness. In a stupidly brutal confrontation McCarthy insisted that Zwicker was protecting communists and others who would likewise protected communists. In a scathing rebuke, McCarthy told Zwicker that he was a disgrace the army and unfit to wear the uniform of an American soldier. This behavior enraged the Army as a whole, so that the Secretary of the Army insisted on certain rules of conduct for McCarthy. McCarthy responded by charging that the Secretary of the Army was trying to conceal communists and incompetents. Charges and counter-charges followed, and eventually led to the Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the Army charged that McCarthy had tried to coerce it into unreasonably favorable treatment for Schine and McCarthy charged that the Army was hiding communists.

On the real issues, the hearings were inconclusive. What was much more important was the overall impression that people garnered from McCarthy's own abusive behavior. He ranted, rave, brow-beat witnesses, and generally alienated everyone. By the end of the hearing, he had mightily offended the Senate and had substantially destroyed his own political base.

The Senate soon turned to another issue, whether his conduct violated rules of Senate propriety and decency. Ruling that it did, the Senate condemned McCarthy in a censure resolution that passed in December 1954, with the support of every Democrat present and one half of the Republicans. His reputation severely damaged, McCarthy never again wielded the sort of power he once had. Largely ignored by fellow Senators and the once fawning press corps, he fell to drinking and eventually drank himself to death in 1957.

[McCarthy did not attack people in the entertainment industry. Those attacks came from the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Nor did he attack other Senators, except through off-handed comments.)