Which u.s. senator led a hunt for communists within the u.s. government in the early 1950s?

The investigations by the Committee on Government Operations’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations involving Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1953 and 1954 can be divided into two distinct phases. The first consisted of a series of hearings conducted by McCarthy, as the subcommittee’s chairman, throughout 1953 and early 1954 in which McCarthy alleged Communist influence within the press and the federal government, including the State Department, the U.S. Army, and the Government Printing Office. McCarthy had first made those accusations in February 1950 during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia.

The second phase involved the subcommittee's investigation of McCarthy’s attacks on the U.S. Army. As early as 1950, some senators felt deeply troubled by what they considered McCarthy’s reckless accusations. After the army alleged that McCarthy had sought special treatment for one of his former staff members, McCarthy himself became a subject of the investigation—the Special Senate Investigation on Charges and Countercharges Involving: Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, John G. Adams, H. Struve Hensel and Senator Joe McCarthy, Roy M. Cohn, and Francis P. Carr. McCarthy temporarily stepped down as chairman and member of the committee. Karl Mundt presided over the hearings as acting chairman and Henry Dworshak was temporarily seated as a member in McCarthy’s place. Known as the “Army-McCarthy hearings,” they were broadcast on national television and they contributed to McCarthy’s declining national popularity. Five months later, on December 2, 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy.

McCarthy Hearings

Chairman: Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI)
Committee Members:
Karl Mundt (R-SD)
Everett Dirksen (R-IL)
Charles Potter (R-MI)
John McClellan (D-AR)
Henry Jackson (D-WA)
Stuart Symington (D-MO)
Hearings: February 16, 1953 to March 10, 1954
Report: January 25, 1954; February 3, 1954

Army-McCarthy Hearings

Executive Session Transcripts

In addition to the public hearings held under the chairmanship of Joseph McCarthy, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) conducted 160 closed executive sessions during the 83rd Congress. There were 395 witnesses questioned in the closed sessions, not all of whom were questioned in the public hearings. To protect those witnesses, the PSI closed the records of these hearings for 50 years. In 2004 the Senate published five volumes of these executive session transcripts.

Volumes 1–4 cover the 1953 McCarthy hearings, and Volume 5 covers the 1954 McCarthy hearings and Army-McCarthy hearings.

Volume 1 (PDF)

Volume 2 (PDF)

Volume 3 (PDF)

Volume 4 (PDF)

Volume 5 (PDF)

Index (PDF)

Featured Oral Histories

Ruth Young Watt Interview #3: Chairman Joe McCarthy (PDF)

Floyd M. Riddick, Interview #7: The McCarthy & Dodd Cases (PDF)

Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy rocketed to public attention in 1950 with his allegations that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies. These charges struck a particularly responsive note at a time of deepening national anxiety about the spread of world communism.

McCarthy relentlessly continued his anticommunist campaign into 1953, when he gained a new platform as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He quickly put his imprint on that subcommittee, shifting its focus from investigating fraud and waste in the executive branch to hunting for Communists. He conducted scores of hearings, calling hundreds of witnesses in both public and closed sessions.

A dispute over his hiring of staff without consulting other committee members prompted the panel's three Democrats to resign in mid-1953. Republican senators also stopped attending, in part because so many of the hearings were called on short notice or held away from the nation's capital. As a result, McCarthy and his chief counsel Roy Cohn largely ran the show by themselves, relentlessly grilling and insulting witnesses. Harvard law dean Ervin Griswold described McCarthy's role as "judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one."

In the spring of 1954, McCarthy picked a fight with the U.S. Army, charging lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army responded that the senator had sought preferential treatment for a recently drafted subcommittee aide. Amidst this controversy, McCarthy temporarily stepped down as chairman for the duration of the three-month nationally televised spectacle known to history as the Army-McCarthy hearings.

The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

Overnight, McCarthy's immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.

For more information: U.S. Congress. Senate. Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations (McCarthy Hearings 1953-54), edited by Donald A. Rtichie and Elizabeth Bolling. Washington: GPO, 2003. S. Prt. 107-84. Available online.

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