News Conference - Release of Secret McCarthy Transcripts: Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Executive Sessions

SEN. COLLINS: Good morning. Today, Senator Levin, Senator Coleman and I are joining with the Senate Historian's Office in releasing transcripts from the secret executive sessions of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held during 1953 and 1954 by the chairman, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The transcripts, which comprise five volumes, include 9,675 pages representing the testimony of more than 500 witnesses in 160 executive sessions. These five volumes provide the first public look at the closed sessions conducted by Senator McCarthy and his intimidating interrogations that were conducted behind closed doors. These transcripts had been sealed for more—for almost 50 years. They shed new light on a shameful chapter in American history, a time when hundreds of innocent people were paraded before a Senate subcommittee with little regard for due process or their constitutional rights; a time when character assassination, mud-slinging and guilt by association trumped the truth and fairness. This was a time when simply belonging to a great books club, where you may have read Karl Marx, among many other authors, could make you suspect in the eyes of Senator McCarthy.

In this very room, this historic Senate Caucus Room, Senator McCarthy held numerous sensationalist hearings, including the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings. He questioned witnesses not only about their own possible affiliations with the Communist Party, but also grilled them about their friends and family, their co-workers and their neighbors. Senator McCarthy subpoenaed famous composers and writers, such as Aaron Copland and Dashiell Hammett, journalists such as James Reston, and numerous actors and actresses.

But many—indeed, most—of the witnesses were low-level government employees from the State Department, Voice of America, the U.S. Overseas Library, the Government Printing Office and the Army.

While Senator McCarthy informed witnesses of their constitutional right to decline to answer a question, he interpreted any refusal to do so as an admission of guilt. As he lectured one witness, a communist and an espionage agent has the right to refuse on those grounds.

He also encouraged government agencies and private corporations to fire anyone who invoked his or her Fifth Amendment right. He threatened witnesses with contempt and incarceration.

Now not everyone remained silent in response to these excesses. I'm very proud that the very first senator to speak out against Joseph McCarthy was Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who denounced his tactics in the strongest possible terms. While many other senators were afraid to confront Senator McCarthy, Senator Smith took to the floor and delivered her famous declaration of conscience. She warned against fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.

Senator Smith, many years later, noted that she would probably be best remembered for speaking out against Joseph McCarthy. She said she spoke in condemnation of McCarthy as "when the junior senator from Wisconsin had the Senate paralyzed with fear that he would purge any senator who disagreed with him."

She made her floor speech, her famous declaration of conscience, in June of 1950. That was three years before Joseph McCarthy began his infamous hearings. And as the Senate assistant historian said this morning, Margaret Chase Smith was a lonely voice indeed when she first spoke out against Senator McCarthy in 1950.

In her speech she said, "As a United States senator, I am not proud of the way in which the Senate has been made a publicity platform for irresponsible sensationalism. I'm not proud of the reckless abandon in which unproven charges have been hurled. I don't like the way the Senate has been made a rendezvous for vilification, for selfish political gain, at the sacrifice of individual reputations and national unity.

I'm not proud of the way we smear outsiders from the floor of the Senate and hide behind the cloak of congressional immunity."

Today, by providing broad public access to the transcripts from this era, we hope that the excesses of McCarthyism will serve as a cautionary tale for future generations. And by making these transcripts available not just to scholars who go to the archives but to everyone who wishes to see them, we hope to further educate the young people today about this very unfortunate chapter in American history.

I want to recognize the hard work of the historian's office, particularly Dr. Don Ritchie, who is with us today. He and his talented staff spent more than two and a half years transcribing and editing all of these transcripts. It was a massive job.

I'd now like to turn to my colleague Senator Levin. Senator Levin and I have served on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, alternating, as far as who was chairman, for several years, but we have always been partners in our investigations. We teamed up with the historian's office to ask that these transcripts be made public, and I am pleased to recognize him today. Senator Levin.

SEN. COLLINS: To me, it was a section of the transcript in which Senator McCarthy is explaining to the witnesses—and this is in the Senate historian's introduction to the volume—he's explaining to a witness his constitutional right to invoke the 5th Amendment and not to answer questions. But he does so in a way where he tells the witness that the only grounds are if he believes that the—answering the question would incriminate him, and he does it in a way by citing communists and spies would take the 5th Amendment. So in other words, he not only strongly implies, he outright says that anyone who would invoke the 5th Amendment is guilty. That's doing away with the whole premise of the 5th Amendment. It's really chilling to read that exchange.

SEN. LEVIN: I've only had the opportunity to look at a few pages, but one of the ones that struck me was this question and answer between the counsel for the committee, Roy Cohn, who's obviously McCarthy's voice, and Langston Hughes.

Cohn: "Have you ever believed there is a form of government better than the one under which this country operates today?"

"No, sir, I have not."

"You have never believed that?"

"No, sir."

"That is your testimony under oath?"

"That is right."

"Have you ever attended a Communist Party meeting?"

"No, sir, I have not."

"And if witnesses said that you did, they would be lying?"

"They would be lying, and as far as I know, I was never to a Communist Party meeting."

"Could it happen that you have been?"

"No, sir, it could not." Then it goes on and on. "As far as I know, not. That is the best I can say."

Cohn: "Were there any meetings you now think might have been Communist Party meeting?"

"No, sir, there were not."

On and on. This kind of raking over a witness who's testifying under oath just is typical of what McCarthy had engendered at these hearings. I look forward to reading all -- (aside) -- how many pages are there, Dr. --

SEN. COLLINS: Nine thousand six hundred -- (laughs).

SEN. LEVIN: Nine thousand six hundred. But those are a few I was able to read this morning.

SEN. COLLINS: There's one other incident that sticks out in my mind, and that is when McCarthy is questioning a young soldier. And he can't get anything out of the soldier, so then he asks the soldier about his mother and whether his mother was once a member of the Communist Party. So, it wasn't enough for him to press this young soldier, but then he starts asking the young soldier about his mother's previous membership in the Communist Party.

Dr. Ritchie, are there any sections that you'd like to --

MR. RITCHIE: That section was about the soldier and his mother. His mother had been a member of the party; she'd actually had (sic) resigned from the party because she was afraid that it might affect her son's government employment. And Senator McCarthy asks, did he know his mother was a communist? And he said, no, he didn't. And then he said, "Did you ever ask your mother if she was a communist?" And that sort of epitomized to me the types of questions that people—that their families were always, in a sense, part of the whole picture, and how much circumstantial evidence was brought up against these various witnesses.

SEN. COLLINS: Yes?

Q I wonder if Dr. Ritchie could talk a little bit about what these documents add to what is already known about Senator McCarthy?

How do we advance our knowledge?

MR. RITCHIE: This is the largest opening of records dealing with Senator McCarthy. Senator McCarthy's own personal papers are still closed.

We—all we've had until now are the public records that were available in 1953 and 1954. These were the hearings that were held behind closed doors -- 160 hearings. By contrast, the year before he became the chairman, the committee had only held six closed-door hearings. So they did a very large percentage of their work behind closed doors, and that was the period in which they winnowed out witnesses to decide who to call into the public sessions.

And also, we got a chance to really look at what McCarthy's tactics and Roy Cohn's tactics were like. So for scholars, for historians and political scientists who are studying this period, this is the first new material that we've had, literally, in a half- century.

Q Senator Collins and Senator Levin, McCarthy came to power in Congress at a time when there was a great deal of public fear, the Cold War and the Korean War and Stalin, et cetera, and he was able to get to the point he was because he was able to exploit that fear and make people feel, I think, more of a threat than there really was at home. What comes to your mind in terms of what we see in this country and the dangers and—what are the lessons for today, given the big fear of other kinds of—the quite intense public fear today?

SEN. COLLINS: Well, the McCarthy hearings led directly to changes in the Senate rules to prevent the kinds of abuses that he engaged in. So I don't think we would see those kinds of abuses reoccur, given the protections in our Senate rules.

In addition, the Supreme Court issued a series of cases, after the McCarthy excesses, which gave witnesses before congressional committees additional rights and made their rights clearer than they had been.

Nevertheless, Congress has extremely broad investigative power, and I think it's always a useful reminder to those of us who head investigative subcommittees to be reminded of the excesses that occurred during the McCarthy period.