Author: Mike Magee
The date is June 9, 1954. This comes more than a year after Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, took over as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. History shows that he “came to public attention in 1950 by accusing hundreds of Communist Party members of infiltrating the State Department and other federal agencies.” Clearly a psychopath, he escaped the control of his gentle voice and took on larger targets, including what is now the U.S. Army.
Ervin Griswold, dean of Harvard Law School, described him this way: “Judge, jury, prosecutor, punisher, and press agent all rolled into one.” In 1954, McCarthy accused the Army of “lax security at its top-secret military installations,” which he claimed had been infiltrated by Communists. In response, the Army hired veteran Boston attorney Joseph Welch to defend itself.
According to the documentary filmmaker, “Mothers who never watched television during the day were obsessed with watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. “ McCarthy's right-hand chief adviser that day was attorney Roy Marcus Cohen. Cohen's career was launched by McCarthy, a pragmatic, ruthless, evil man whose taint ruined lives and weakened the U.S. government for the next three decades until his death from HIV/AIDS in 1986.
Today, his style and tactics are widely viewed as strategic scaffolding for our executive branch’s attempt to take over the U.S. government. Not surprisingly, direct attacks on U.S. military control functions, values, and traditions are the primary impediments to these attacks. they do have exploded Last week, it was revealed that Defense Secretary Peter Heggs had personally given the order to “kill 'em all”, ultimately devouring two survivors of a rocket attack on a speedboat suspected of transporting drugs.
In this 5-minute summary of the televised events of June 9, 1954, you (and our leaders) are able to witness Welch (with Cohen as witness) in his historic crackdown on McCarthy—ultimately destroying McCarthy's “dragon slaying” once and for all.
Cohen made a deal with Welch that McCarthy would refrain from attacking a specific Army soldier as a communist if Welch remained civil. But Welch set a trap, deliberately letting McCarthy lose his temper in front of the camera, violate protocol and “attack the good boy”, and an angry Welch tearfully defended him in his historic and well-prepared rebuttal.
As historian Thomas Dougherty recalled, “It was as if the entire country was waiting for someone to finally say the words, 'Don't you have any manners at all?'” As Welch pounced on his victim, Cohen frowned as his dragon was slain. Jelani Cobb added, “By the end, any illusions, comforting illusions McCarthy had about himself were effectively dispelled.”
As Congress grapples with a situation that has spiraled dangerously out of control, we can only hope that this time “history will repeat itself.” Courage must come from within. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously said: “In the end, it is not the words of our enemies that we remember, but the silence of our friends.”
Mike Magee, MD, is a medical historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of “Code Blue: Inside the American Medical-Industrial Complex.” (Grove/2020)
