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When the constitutional foundation of the U.S. Senate was built in 1787, the builders believed they were constructing a citadel of deliberation and dignity. Said James Madison: "The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom than the popular branch." One hundred and sixty-seven years later, when the floodlights blazed on the Army-McCarthy hearings, wisdom, system and coolness seemed to have vanished in the glare. But this week, out of a tidy office on the fourth floor of the Senate Office Building, came a ringing reassertion of the U.S. Senate's dignity.
A Select Committee of the Senate recommended the censure of Wisconsin's Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and thereby erected a new landmark in U.S. government. The report was carefully constructed by six shirtsleeved men in the office of Utah's Senator Arthur Vivian Watkins, a man little known in the past who should be long remembered in the future. Unanimously, firmly, unequivocally. Chairman Watkins and his five committeemen recommended that McCarthy be censured by the Senate on two counts: ¶ He had been contemptuous of, and had obstructed, the Senate Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections, which in 1951-52 had attempted to investigate him; he had denounced, "without reason or justification," a member of that subcommittee, New Jersey's Republican Senator Robert C. Hendrickson.
¶ He had acted in an "inexcusable" and "reprehensible" manner toward an honorable and honest soldier, Brigadier General Ralph Zwicker, who was a witness before his investigating committee.
Documented & Direct. The committee's recommendations were, perhaps, not as important as its manner. Its report, like its hearings, was a product worthy of an unusually able appellate court. It was direct, documented and unequivocal. Its impact was far broader than the two censure recommendations. In sum it was a scathing indictment of McCarthyism, condemning the Wisconsin Senator for disregarding the principles of democracy, good government, fair play and decency.
In eight weeks the committee had carefully weighed 46 specific complaints against McCarthy, itemized by Vermont's Republican Senator Ralph Flanders and other members of the Senate. For its first grounds for censure, the committee reached back to an earlier Senate attempt to investigate McCarthy.
Carefully, thoroughly, the six men studied and reported on the record of that investigation. On Aug. 6, 1951 Connecticut's then Senator William Benton, a Democrat, had introduced a resolution asking the Senate to consider whether Member McCarthy should be expelled. The question was referred to the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections, which set out to investigate a number of questions raised by Benton and others, including: 1) Were funds received by McCarthy to fight Communism diverted to his personal use? 2) Did McCarthy use his position as a member of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee to obtain a $10,000 fee from the Lustron Corp.? 3) Were close associates and relatives of McCarthy used, for ulterior motives, to secrete financial transactions?