McCarthy questioning James Glatis about Communists in defense plants, September 19, 1954
Courtesy of Marquette University Archives and Corbis

Some witnesses before McCarthy's subcommittee refused to help the Senator in his investigations. Under pressure from McCarthy, employers suspended many of these witnesses from work. Most cleared their names after years of review.

 

McCarthy chaired the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. His subcommittee held 169 hearings into Communist activity in government departments and private companies in 1953 and 1954. He targeted the Voice of America, the Government Printing Office, the Army Signal Corps, General Electric, and Allis-Chalmers. The Senator identified a few suspicious individuals, but found no Communist spies.

McCarthy's subcommittee focused on weaknesses in military security in 1954. In one of his most famous investigations, McCarthy wanted the names of officers who promoted Major Irving Peress at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. In an oversight, the Army had promoted Peress, a suspected Communist sympathizer. McCarthy believed he had stumbled upon a Communist conspiracy. He verbally attacked the Camp's commander, General Ralph Zwicker, a decorated World War II veteran, for refusing to help his investigation. The Army began to make a case against McCarthy for interfering with its operations.

  • Many communists and ex-Communists invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about their association with the Communist Party. The Amendment allowed them to decline to answer self-incriminating questions. But once a witness invoked the Fifth Amendment, he or she had to maintain that stand on all related questions. McCarthy asked dramatic questions of "Fifth Amendment Communists" knowing they could not answer them. By pleading the Fifth, witnesses risked appearing guilty of McCarthy's accusations.
   
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