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00:20The life of Joseph McCarthy is part American success story, part national nightmare.
00:27McCarthy was a Wisconsin farm boy who didn't graduate from high school until the age of 21, and yet 17
00:34years later he became the youngest member of the U.S. Senate.
00:37But McCarthy was a relatively obscure congressman until he began making accusations that communists had infiltrated the government.
00:46McCarthy's crusade, which some described as a witch hunt, inflamed America's Cold War suspicions, made McCarthy a household word,
00:54and in the process destroyed many lives, including ultimately his own.
01:00Biography looks at the life of Joseph McCarthy.
01:04A little over a hundred years ago, a little group of men in Europe conspired to deliver the world to
01:11a new system, to communism.
01:15In 1950, the United States is in the midst of a Cold War against the Soviet Union.
01:21And many Americans are convinced that the battle against Soviet communism is being fought within the U.S. government itself.
01:29Someone in the Pentagon knew about each and every communist which goes before, before they're sold.
01:40May I repeat that?
01:41Their goal is the overthrow of our government.
01:44There were thousands of people who were called before the congressional committees.
01:50And thousands who lost their jobs.
01:53It will become known as the era of McCarthy.
01:55Joseph R. McCarthy, the junior senator from Wisconsin.
01:59The communist affiliations of service are well known.
02:03His background is crystal clear.
02:06Are you now, have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?
02:09Are you a member of the Communist Party?
02:11Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
02:13Oh, I think that McCarthy is a nasty thing.
02:16It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life.
02:21He was really the most feared political figure of his time.
02:27Rest upon your shoulders.
02:30Yet McCarthy fails to turn up a single proven act of subversion in the government.
02:35An anti-communist like me wishes he had never existed.
02:40Before the decade is over, he will die in disgrace.
02:44An embarrassment to his party, the Senate, and the nation.
03:00On February 9th, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy, the little-known junior senator from Wisconsin,
03:07travels to Wheeling, West Virginia to address the Ohio County Republican Women's Club at their Lincoln Day dinner.
03:14In his speech, McCarthy makes a remarkable charge.
03:19He held up, he said, I have in my hand a list of 205 communists, card-carrying communists, working in
03:28the State Department.
03:29The State Department knows they are there.
03:32Well, it was a sensational speech.
03:34I had never heard of McCarthy before, or if I had, he was merely one of 96 senators.
03:43The content of the speech, the way in which it was given, indicated that we had a new rabble rouser
03:50on the scene,
03:52and that he was out to make a name for himself.
03:56In Salt Lake City, he declares he does have a list, and it names 57 officials in the U.S.
04:02State Department who are card-carrying communists.
04:06Americans are worried about communists, and the news that they are operating inside the government, making U.S. policy, is
04:13stunning.
04:15When Senator McCarthy lands in Washington, he discovers to his surprise that he has kindled a firestorm.
04:22Well, the story exploded at that time, exploded on the front pages.
04:28He sort of forgot that he was a United States Senator, and that people paid attention to what he said.
04:36A Senate committee, chaired by Democrat Millard Tidings, is formed to investigate the charges.
04:46Are communists or communist sympathizers in the State Department and other branches of the government...
04:52McCarthy does have some documents, but they do not support his allegations.
04:56Such is the case.
04:57When he got back, he asked me for information.
05:00This was raw information, I warned him that it was, and I assumed that, as a United States Senator,
05:05that he had sent investigators out to find out whether the charges were true.
05:10And not too long afterwards, he got up on the Senate floor and read from the raw material that I
05:17gave him.
05:18Mr. Chairman, today this man, John S. Service...
05:21He calls dozens of people before the committee and accuses them of working on behalf of the Communist Party.
05:27The Communist affiliations of Service are well known.
05:30His background is crystal clear.
05:34He put on a performance which was unmatched in the history of the Senate.
05:38In his lies and allegations.
05:42Even Senator Taft, who was the most powerful senator and Republican senator at the time,
05:47called it an absolutely reckless performance.
05:51McCarthy's charges are drawn primarily from a hodgepodge of old security reports.
05:55They are dramatic, but unsubstantiated.
05:58Have you in your possession any memorandum, any affidavits, any paper, any paper, any photo stat,
06:08which would tell us who this individual is?
06:13Like I again tell you, that all of the affidavits, all of the photo stats...
06:18Let me finish, let me finish all of the affidavits, all the photo stats are easily accessible to you.
06:23You can get them without any trouble at all. They're all in those files.
06:27McCarthy turns the tables on the committee. He makes more charges. He ruins more careers.
06:32I think any feelings of sympathy to the people he was chasing, they never occurred to him at all.
06:41They were merely props, which he could use to put on his show.
06:48In June 1950, the Tidings Committee reports that McCarthy's charges are a fraud and a hopes,
06:55and that they represent perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruths in Senate history.
07:01But the committee Republicans support McCarthy.
07:05The top-ranking Republicans of the Senate liked it.
07:09Here they found somebody who could say things they wouldn't dare to say themselves.
07:14And he did it with absolute reckless abandon. Ruthless.
07:20Outside of Washington, Joseph McCarthy has become one of the nation's best known and most popular politicians.
07:28It's hard to remember how popular he once was. I would say in those days he was running 65-70
07:33% popular in the polls.
07:35Part of his appeal is his simple and engaging manner. He nurtures his image as a farm boy and a
07:40war hero.
07:42Colonel, you spend a lot of time on the service, so did I, and I don't believe your troops need
07:47to be spoon-fat.
07:48I think they can take the raw, harsh facts as they are and they should get them.
07:52And in a nation consumed by the threat of communism, McCarthy plays the rough-hewn sheriff.
07:58If fighting communists and getting a bit rough with them, Mr. Hilley, is un-American, then I must plead guilty
08:04to being un-American.
08:06The Senate was a gentleman's club in those days.
08:09They'd never had anyone quite like Joe McCarthy in their midst.
08:14McCarthy would attack anybody who went after him. He found that the best defense was an offense.
08:20He was building a following by this time. And that made him a power.
08:26Senator Tidings is up for re-election only five months after he called McCarthy a fraud.
08:33McCarthy's staff distributes a fake photograph of Tidings with the head of the American Communist Party.
08:39Tidings loses. And McCarthy seems unstoppable.
08:45Everybody who challenged him was immediately identified by him as a communist, or a friend of the communists, or covering
08:54up for communists.
08:55Now, how do you define McCarthyism, sir?
08:59A year after he began his attacks on communism, Senator Joseph McCarthy has become one of the nation's most powerful
09:06men.
09:06And the word McCarthyism has entered the language.
09:10I was putting it the way one columnist did the other day. He said, frankly, McCarthyism means calling a man
09:16a communist who is later proven to be one.
09:22And for a random quote from a report delivered at the national conference of the Communist Party of the United
09:30States.
09:31Well, he was a different kind of a demagogue. He was a kind of a demagogue that America had never
09:37seen.
09:41Never finding what he was looking for, mumbling and muttering, and a lot of people, a lot of Americans took
09:49that to be sincerity.
09:56Joe McCarthy had risen to the Senate from a place far removed from Washington's corridors of power.
10:02He is born on November 14, 1908, on a farm outside Appleton, Wisconsin, a quiet backwater on the banks of
10:11the Fox River.
10:13His parents, Tim and Bridget McCarthy, are farmers.
10:17There were seven McCarthy children.
10:22And Joe was the fifth child in the family and was the first child born in this house.
10:31Never did I detect anything that wasn't just genuine amongst the whole family.
10:38Like most of Appleton's Irish families, the McCarthys work hard and stick together.
10:43But young Joe stands out.
10:45He was remarkably bright.
10:48I had a sister who had him in the grade school for three years.
10:56And she was amazed.
10:59I first met Joe McCarthy when I was about ten years old.
11:02He was a hick.
11:03He wore overalls, bib overalls in the days when those weren't popular.
11:06And we saw him as some kind of a target that we liked to tease.
11:14McCarthy leaves school after the eighth grade to work on the farm.
11:18At 16, he starts his own business, raising chickens.
11:24Well, I was in the grocery business and Joe came in one day and he said,
11:27Well, I've got some eggs for sale.
11:29I said, Okay, Joe, how many you got?
11:31He says, I've got more eggs than you want, more eggs than you can handle.
11:34I'm going to have 10,000 chickens before I get through.
11:36So I started buying eggs than Joe.
11:40But McCarthy gets a bad case of the flu and his thriving business folds.
11:44He takes a job managing a grocery store.
11:47There, he sets a new goal, a high school diploma.
11:51Years later, Joe said to me, You remember, Honor, the day you came in, you jumped up on the counter
11:58and you said,
11:58Joe, why don't you go to high school?
12:01And he said, I hadn't thought about it.
12:04He was 19 years old.
12:07He wanted to try and go through in two years.
12:11I told him I didn't think he could.
12:14Joe not only did it in two years, he did it all in one.
12:20He was a very determined young man.
12:24And I remember him as a boy who really wanted to get ahead once he found out he could.
12:33In 1930, McCarthy moves to Milwaukee and enters Marquette University to study engineering.
12:39He is a popular student.
12:41His main interests, however, are elsewhere, in the boxing ring and at the card table.
12:48Joe is a good card player.
12:50I don't know anybody that could bluff more than Joe could or would bluff more than he could.
12:54And all the time he was doing it, he was carrying on a line of chatter.
12:57That was interesting.
12:59But a bluffer from the word goal.
13:03McCarthy holds down two or three jobs to pay his way through school.
13:07After two years, he switches his major.
13:10Law will use his greatest talents, his phenomenal memory and his charm.
13:15He graduates in June 1935.
13:18It is the middle of the Great Depression.
13:21President Franklin Roosevelt's new deal has begun,
13:24but the ambitious social programs haven't made much of a dent in rural Wisconsin's economic misery.
13:32McCarthy moves to Shawano County and struggles to build a practice, and he sets out to make his mark.
13:40Joe tried to remember and know everyone in the city of Shawano and call them by first name.
13:46He made a point of doing that, and I think that was a little bit politically inclined, wouldn't you think?
13:54In 1936, McCarthy runs for district attorney as a Democrat.
13:58He's qualified for the job, he says, because he's an expert on poultry raising, and he's committed to Roosevelt's new
14:05deal.
14:06He did run against me for district attorney one term.
14:12I had to be successful, and he wasn't.
14:14At that time, he was running on the Democratic ticket in Shawano.
14:19In 1938, he runs for circuit court judge.
14:23This time, he's a Republican.
14:26I was interested to know him and meet him and said rather casually that I thought I could help him
14:31out in my hometown.
14:32And then I got to know that here was no ordinary man out running for a job that was the
14:40kind of job that would ordinarily go to a man 60 years old.
14:43He was then only 29 or 30.
14:46McCarthy is only four years out of law school.
14:49I didn't think he could. No, I didn't think Warner could be beat.
14:53He'd been on for 24 years, liked by the people.
14:57Generally, he was a pretty fair circuit judge.
15:01But he campaigns with relentless energy.
15:05He knew, as I know now, and as a certainty, that it only takes one small reason to get the
15:13mass of voters to vote for you.
15:16McCarthy defeats Werner decisively.
15:18At 29, he's the youngest judge in Wisconsin's history.
15:23He was cut out for politics.
15:25He was a born politician.
15:27We knew he was going someplace.
15:30He just couldn't hold him in the city of Walpaca or the city of Shano and expect him to spend
15:34his life there practicing law.
15:36He was on to something bigger and wider and larger.
15:46Flash, Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
15:51On December 7, 1941, 4,000 miles from Shawano County, Wisconsin, Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
16:00A date which will live in infamy.
16:07The next day, the United States enters the Second World War.
16:11Joseph McCarthy is 33 years old.
16:14He has done well in his three years on the bench, but he has grown restless.
16:19In August 1942, he takes a leave of absence to join the United States Marines.
16:26When he left the bench, he tried to figure out, he told me, what would be the best thing you
16:30could do to have a good war from a political point of view.
16:33And he was very much torn between the Army Air Force and the Marine Corps.
16:37So when he found out that there was a program where he could be with the aviation Marines, he thought
16:42that he'd hit the jackpot.
16:44Unfortunately, he didn't understand that a guy his age could never qualify for flight training.
16:49He was a ground officer in an aviation squadron, which is about a second class citizen as you can be.
16:58McCarthy is sent to the South Pacific as an intelligence officer.
17:02His job is to debrief pilots after combat missions.
17:07I was a combat correspondent with the Marine Corps and I'd been a newspaper man before the war.
17:12And he said, hey, Penn, do you think that you could dream up, sign some kind of a story that
17:17I could send back to my friends in Wisconsin
17:20who are kind of keeping track of me when the war is over and I go into politics?
17:26And I said, Joe, there's an old rule in the newspaper business.
17:29You can't write a story about it if you don't do something.
17:32And he said, well, I'll see if I can think of anything.
17:34And he came back to me a few days later and he told me, he said, my squadron has been
17:38assigned to make a lot of milk runs on the south end of Bougainville.
17:43And maybe if I went along that, you could think of some way to write a story.
17:46And I said, well, that sounds promising. Why don't you do it?
17:48So, indeed, his squadron flew all day long.
17:51And at the end of the day, I concoct a story about how they had set a new world's record
17:56for dropping bombs in the South Pacific.
17:59And one of the people who had gone on every mission was Captain Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin,
18:03the former judge who had ridden as a tail gunner on the missions.
18:09Joe wasn't a gunner. I tried to teach him how to become a gunner.
18:13I wasn't too good a teacher because the gun wasn't synchronized correctly.
18:20He shot the tail off the plane.
18:23It wasn't in flight. It was just we were practicing shooting down trees.
18:29The next time he came up to Munda on the mission, he had in his hand a fistful of clippings,
18:35which he showed to me.
18:36And he said, hey, Penn, look at these clippings.
18:38He said, these are worth thousands of votes to me if I survive this war and get to run in
18:44Wisconsin.
18:44So that in one sense, it's always haunted me through the years that maybe I am the person who invented
18:50the myth,
18:50and it was a myth, of tail gunner Joe.
18:55In 1944, McCarthy runs in Wisconsin's Republican senatorial primary from his post in the South Pacific.
19:02He pledges to work for lasting peace throughout the world and a decent job for every man and woman.
19:10McCarthy finishes a respectable second.
19:14In February 1945, McCarthy resigns from the Marines.
19:19He has been neglecting his judicial duties, he says.
19:23Back in Wisconsin, he immediately begins a campaign to capture the 1946 Republican Senate nomination.
19:31War heroes, in a sense, had a premium.
19:37In our first meeting we had at the Young Republicans at the Pfister Hotel,
19:40of course, Joe showed up in uniform, and this didn't hurt him any.
19:44But the incumbent Senator Bob La Follette is considered unbeatable.
19:49Stunningly, McCarthy defeats La Follette in the primary.
19:53Joe McCarthy is barely 15 years out of high school.
19:57At 38, he's the youngest senator in the country.
20:00The first World War II fighting man to be elected to national leadership.
20:05He's young, single, energetic, appealing.
20:09I knew him as a gregarious fellow.
20:12I remember one occasion he stopped at, he was shopping in a supermarket,
20:18and a woman struggling with a baby in a cart full of groceries.
20:23Couldn't handle both of them, so he stepped up and said,
20:26here, let me hold the baby while you finish your shopping.
20:29And he held the baby for about 10 minutes while she finished her shopping,
20:32and handed the baby back.
20:34Never bothered to tell her that he was a United States Senator.
20:38He was capable of doing things like that.
20:41America is ready for a senator who is just one of the guys.
20:44The nation is grateful to its fighting men.
20:47It delights in their successes and in the booming economy that victory has unleashed.
20:52And shortly, washing machines and other luxuries we've missed will be pouring from the factories.
20:58Americans are secure in the knowledge that their country is victorious.
21:03And that the power of America's atomic bomb will keep the peace for a long, long time.
21:08The symbol of modern destruction.
21:10But not everything is working out the way people hoped.
21:14There are still shortages, and not every returning vet can find a job or a home.
21:20With the nation needing millions of dwellings immediately.
21:23McCarthy, as the Senate's only World War II vet, takes on some veterans' issues.
21:29And like most young vets, McCarthy himself is not financially secure.
21:34When Joe came down here, the issues that he looked for really were those which were of personal benefit to
21:40him.
21:41We carried stories on his efforts for the sugar people.
21:44He made a great case.
21:45He was trying to help the women do their home canning.
21:48But he was not.
21:49He was helping the big sugar interest.
21:53Lobbyists are not the only friends McCarthy makes in Washington.
21:56He was very open to the press.
21:59He was extremely gregarious.
22:01He was available.
22:02He would tell you anything.
22:04My job was to find out what was going on behind the scenes.
22:08There was nothing he wouldn't tell me.
22:09If he knew about it, he'd tell me.
22:10His information was accurate.
22:12As the red tide rolled over Europe, the Truman answer was immediately.
22:16One of the biggest issues of the day is communism.
22:18On the brutal face of communism. Berlin, powder keg of Europe.
22:22The Soviet Union has installed communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe.
22:26Stalin has declared that communism will someday rule the world.
22:30The free peoples of the world live to us.
22:33In 1947, President Truman vows to contain the communists.
22:37But most people think it will take a war to stop them.
22:41Americans' fear of communist expansion is exploited by politicians.
22:46Are you a member of the communist party?
22:48Or have you ever been a member of the communist party?
22:51It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the basic principles of Americanism.
22:56That's not the question.
22:56That's not the question.
22:58Ten noted Hollywood directors and scriptwriters are jailed for refusing to answer committee questions.
23:05American citizens.
23:06The American citizens.
23:07That's not the question.