McCarthyism and the Red

Scare

Senator Joseph McCarthy

In the early 1950s, American leaders repeatedly told the

public that they should be fearful of subversive
Communist influence in their lives. Communists could
be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school
teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or
journalists to aid the program of world Communist
domination. This paranoia about the internal
Communist threat—what we call the Red Scare—
reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when
Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing
Republican, launched a series of highly publicized
probes into alleged Communist penetration of the State
Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even
the US Army. During Eisenhower’s first two years in
office, McCarthy’s shrieking denunciations and fear-
mongering created a climate of fear and suspicion
across the country. No one dared tangle with McCarthy
for fear of being labeled disloyal.

Any man who has been named by a either a senator

or a committee or a congressman as dangerous to
the welfare of this nation, his name should be
submitted to the various intelligence units, and they
should conduct a complete check upon him. It’s not
too much to ask.

Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1953

It has long been a subject of debate among historians:

Why didn’t Eisenhower do more to confront McCarthy?
Journalists, intellectuals, and even many of
Eisenhower’s friends and close advisers agonized over
what they saw as Ike’s timid approach to McCarthyism.
Despite his popularity and his enormous political
capital, they believed, Ike refused to engage directly
with McCarthy. By avoiding the Red-hunting senator,
some have argued, Eisenhower allowed McCarthyism to
continue unchecked.

In this letter to his brother Milton, Eisenhower explains, "As for

McCarthy. Only a short-sighted or completely inexperienced
individual would urge the use of the office of the presidency to give
an opponent the publicity he so avidly desires."

By contrast, later scholars working from the

documentary record perceived a design in Eisenhower’s
strategy with McCarthy. Ike adopted an “indirect
approach.” Instead of going right at McCarthy,
Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to undercut and
stymie the senator and his attacks. The political scientist
Fred Greenstein, for example, argued that Eisenhower’s
handling of McCarthy provides evidence of a “hidden
hand” approach to government. In this interpretation,
Ike rode above the fray of politics while secretly pulling
levers and using White House influence to obstruct
McCarthy and his allies.

President read my text with great irritation,

slammed it back at me and said he would not refer
to McCarthy personally—‘I will not get in the gutter
with that guy.’

C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower speechwriter, 1953

Late in his first presidential campaign, Eisenhower excised a defense

of General George C. Marshall from a speech he gave in McCarthy's
home state of Wisconsin. He addressed the issue more abstractly,
stating, "The right to question a man's judgment carries with it no
automatic right to question his honor."

Looking at all the evidence, the clearest conclusion is

that Eisenhower did not want to confront Joe McCarthy
at all. And during 1953, he tried to avoid the whole
issue, hoping the Senate would silence the explosive
senator. McCarthy was a Republican, after all, and many
fellow senators supported him. Ike needed to keep his
party unified to pass bills in other areas; battling
McCarthy would only stir up a civil war inside the GOP.

Furthermore, Eisenhower did not want to appear “soft”

on the problem of internal subversion. There had, after
all, been real spies who penetrated into the State
Department, notably Alger Hiss.

Alger Hiss

And Communist agents had stolen classified secrets

from the wartime Manhattan Project that built the
atomic bomb. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were
condemned to die in the electric chair as punishment for
their theft of atomic secrets, Eisenhower did not for a
moment consider granting them clemency. On June 19,
1953, they were both put to death.

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Eisenhower in 1953 improvised in dealing with

McCarthy, at first trying to ignore him, then trying
to outdo him in the Red-hunting business. Then he
tried to seduce him with promises of new legislation
to destroy Communism in America. None of these
tactics worked.

‘The Age of Eisenhower,’ chapter 6

The first two paragraphs of the March 13, 1954 New York Times story
on McCarthy, Cohn, and David Schine

But at the start of 1954, the picture changed. Joe

McCarthy turned his investigatory resources on the US
Army and on members of the administration
itself. Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back. The
first move the White House made was to try to discredit
the men around McCarthy, notably the lawyer Roy
Cohn, who was leading the investigation, and Cohn’s
assistant David Schine, who had recently been drafted
into the Army.

The Army compiled a damaging dossier of dirt on Cohn,

showing that he used threats and intimidation to
demand that Schine be given plum assignments and
easy duty. The White House leaked this dossier to the
press and Congress. McCarthy and Cohn now stood
accused of abuse of power.

A 2003 report from NBC News reviewed newly released documents

related to the McCarthy hearings

Ike went one step further. In order to close down

McCarthy’s reckless use of subpoenas to compel
witnesses to testify before his committee, Eisenhower
invoked executive privilege.

In this May 17, 1954 memo to the Secretary of Defense, Eisenhower

ordered, “You will instruct employees of your Department that in all of
their appearances before the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee
on Operations regarding the inquiry now before it, they are not to
testify to any such conversations or communications or to produce
any such documents or reproductions. This principle must be
maintained regardless of who would be benefitted by such
disclosures.”

In May 1954, Ike simply said that administration

officials and all executive branch employees would
ignore any call from McCarthy to testify. Eisenhower
explained his action, declaring that “it is essential to
efficient and effective administration that employees of
the executive branch be in a position to be completely
candid in advising with each other on official matters,”
without those conversations being subject to
Congressional scrutiny.

It was a bold and daring move, and it worked.

McCarthy, his credibility in tatters and now starved of
witnesses, hit a brick wall—and his fellow senators
turned against him. In early December 1954, the Senate
passed a motion of condemnation, in a vote of 67 to 22.
McCarthy was ruined—and within three years he was
dead from alcohol abuse. The era of McCarthyism was
over. Ike had helped bring it to a bitter end.

Senate Resolution 301 censured McCarthy for conduct that “tends to

bring the Senate into disrepute”