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Equally careful reasoning was used as the committee reported on why it eliminated many of the charges from its public hearings. Items: ¶The charge that Senator McCarthy made an unwarranted attack upon General George C. Marshall in a speech on the Senate floor was dropped because censuring a Senator for such an act "would tend to place unwarranted limitations on the freedom of speech in the Senate."
¶ The charge that McCarthy permitted abuse of Senate privilege by Roy Cohn, former chief counsel of his subcommittee, was dropped because this was the responsibility of the whole committee, not just McCarthy.
¶The charge that McCarthy posed as the savior of his country from Communism while never turning over for prosecution any alleged Communist was dropped because it was not legal grounds for censure.
In dropping these charges, the committee carefully pointed out, it was not condoning the conduct on which the complaints were based.
The Powerful Antidote. The firmness with which the Watkins committee disposed of Joe McCarthy was a surprise to almost everyone on Capitol Hill—except Chairman Watkins and his committeemen. Four times before, McCarthy had been investigated by committees of the Senate, and never before was there a conclusive result. When the Senate established the Select Committee, there had been loud cries of stall and whitewash. Arkansas Senator Fulbright, who had been called "half bright" by McCarthy, moaned that "Joe can buffalo any committee on earth." The Fair Dealing segment of the press was angry and dismayed, e.g., the New York Post referred to the prospective committee members as "six sickly spirits." But when the nature of the report became evident, the New York Daily News's McCarthy apologist, Columnist John O'Donnell, called the committee members "six sad sacks."
Both of these angry judgments were ill-conceived and unwarranted. In their report the six Senators dramatically illustrated that they had found the antidote for McCarthyism: incisive law, logic and common sense, firmly applied. Hysterical anti-McCarthyites, who had cried so long and so ineffectively, had never found that remedy.
Among the six who found it there was not one man that Joe McCarthy could label an "extreme left-wing bleeding heart." Utah's Watkins, a lifelong Republican, comes from a family that switched to the G.O.P during the "Democratic depression" of 1893, and never switched back. During World War II the Senator's father refused to change his watch to daylight-saving time because he considered it a Franklin Roosevelt trick. The Senator, who was a close disciple of Ohio's late Robert A. Taft, has long been a clearheaded antiCommunist. His five committeemen all could be classed as conservatives. The five: ¶ Colorado Democrat Edwin Carl Johnson, 70, a Kansas-born, Nebraska-bred farmer, railroader and politician, a rough-hewn Western individualist who follows no party line.
¶Mississippi Democrat John C. Stennis, 53, a lawyer, former prosecuting attorney and judge, a reserved, quiet, tolerant Senator who is respected for his judicial approach to problems.