Army – McCarthy hearings The Army – McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate ' s Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954 . The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy . The Army accused chief committee counsel Roy Cohn of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to G . David Schine , a former McCarthy aide and a friend of Cohn ' s . McCarthy counter - charged that this accusation was made in bad faith and in retaliation for his recent aggressive investigations of suspected Communists and security risks in the Army . Chaired by Senator Karl Mundt , the hearings convened on March 16 , 1954 , and received considerable press attention , including gavel - to - gavel live television coverage on ABC and DuMont from April 22 to June 17 . The media coverage , particularly television , greatly contributed to McCarthy ' s decline in popularity and his eventual censure by the Senate the following December . Background . McCarthy came to national prominence after giving a February 9 , 1950 speech claiming to have a list of 205 State Department employees who were members of the Communist Party . McCarthy claimed the list was provided to and dismissed by then - Secretary of State Dean Acheson , saying that the " State Department harbors a nest of Communists and Communist sympathizers who are helping to shape our foreign policy " . In 1953 , McCarthy was reelected to a second term and the Republican Party regained controlled of the Senate ; with the Republicans in the majority , McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations . This committee included the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations , and the mandate of this subcommittee allowed McCarthy to use it to carry out his investigations of Communists in the government . McCarthy appointed 26 - year - old Roy Cohn as chief counsel to the subcommittee and future Attorney General Robert F . Kennedy as assistant counsel ; reassigning Francis Flanagan to the ad hoc position of general counsel . In 1953 , McCarthy ' s committee began inquiries into the United States Army , starting by investigating supposed Communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth . McCarthy ' s investigations were largely fruitless , but after the Army accused McCarthy and his staff of seeking special treatment for Private G . David Schine , a chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a close friend of Cohn ' s , and who had been drafted into the Army as a private the previous year , McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith . The inquiry . The Senate decided that these conflicting charges should be investigated and the appropriate committee to do this was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations , usually chaired by McCarthy . Since McCarthy was one of the targets of the hearings , Republican Senator Karl Mundt ( South Dakota ) was reluctantly appointed to replace McCarthy as chair of the subcommittee . John G . Adams was the Army ' s Counsel . Acting as Special Counsel was Joseph Welch of the Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr ( now called WilmerHale ) . The hearings were broadcast nationally on the new ABC and DuMont networks , and in part by NBC . Francis Newton Littlejohn , the news director at ABC , made the decision to cover the hearings live , gavel - to - gavel . The televised hearings lasted for 36 days and an estimated 80 million people saw at least part of the hearings . The photograph . During the hearings , a photograph of Schine was introduced , and Joseph Welch accused Cohn of doctoring the image to show Schine alone with Army Secretary Robert Stevens . On the witness stand Cohn and Schine both insisted that the picture entered into evidence ( Schine and Stevens alone ) was requested by Stevens and that no one was edited out of the photograph . Welch then produced a wider shot of Stevens and Schine with McGuire AFB wing commander Colonel Jack Bradley standing to Schine ' s right . A fourth person also edited out of the picture ( his sleeve was visible to Bradley ' s right in the Welch photograph ) was identified as McCarthy aide Frank Carr . The Hoover memo . After the discrediting of the photograph , McCarthy produced a copy of a confidential letter he claimed was a January 26 , 1951 memo written and sent by FBI Director J . Edgar Hoover , to Lieutenant General Alexander R . Bolling , Army Intelligence warning of subversives in the Army Signal Corps . McCarthy claimed the letter was in the Army files when Stevens became secretary in 1953 , and that Stevens willfully ignored it . Welch was the first to question the letter ' s validity , claiming that McCarthy ' s " purported copy " did not come from Army files ; McCarthy stated he never received any document from the FBI , but when questioned on the stand by special Senate counsel Ray Jenkins and cross - examined by Welch , McCarthy , while admitting that the document was given him by an intelligence officer , refused to reveal the name of his source . Robert Collier , assistant to Ray Jenkins , read a letter from Attorney General Herbert Brownell , Jr . , in which he stated that Hoover examined the document and that he neither wrote nor ordered the letter , and that no such copy existed in FBI files , rendering McCarthy ' s claims meritless , and the letter spurious . Homosexuality . Though the hearings were primarily about government subversion , the hearings also took on occasional accusations of a different taboo : A portion of the hearings were taken up for the express purpose of evaluating the security risk of homosexuals in government and the issue would be brought up on other occasions , as well as being an undercurrent in the investigations . One such example of this undercurrent during the testimony was this humorous exchange between Senator McCarthy and Joseph Welch ; Welch was questioning McCarthy staff member James Juliana about the unedited picture of Schine with Stevens and Bradley asking him " Did you think this came from a pixie ? " , at which point McCarthy asked to have the question re - read : Welch was largely responsible for the homosexual undercurrents permeating the hearings as he unmercifully gay baited Roy Cohn , inferring he was having a homosexual relationship with another member of McCarthy ’ s investigative team , David Shine . Welch ’ s apparent goal was to embarrass McCarthy & pay him back for his accusations against the Army . Cohn , Schine and McCarthy . At least a portion of the Army ' s allegations were correct . Roy Cohn did take steps to request preferential treatment for Schine , going so far on at least one occasion to sign McCarthy ' s name without his knowledge on a request for Schine to have access to the Senators ' Baths . The exact relationship between Cohn , McCarthy and Schine is not known . Cohn and Schine were certainly close , and rather than work out of the Senate offices , the two rented nearby office space and shared bills . McCarthy commented that Cohn was unreasonable in matters dealing with Schine . It is unclear if Schine ever had a romantic or sexual relationship with Cohn , who was a closeted homosexual . ( Three years after the hearings Schine married and eventually had six children . ) Some have also suggested that McCarthy may have been gay , and even possibly involved with Schine or Cohn . Joseph Welch confronts McCarthy . In what played out to be the most dramatic exchange of the hearings , McCarthy responded to aggressive questioning from Army counsel Joseph Welch . On June 9 , 1954 , day 30 of the hearings , Welch challenged Cohn to give McCarthy ' s list of 130 subversives in defense plants to the office of the FBI and the Department of Defense " before the sun goes down " . In response to Welch ' s challenge , McCarthy suggested that Welch should check on Fred Fisher , a young lawyer in Welch ' s own Boston law firm whom Welch planned to have on his staff for the hearings . McCarthy then mentioned that Fisher had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild ( NLG ) , a group which Attorney General Brownell had called " the legal bulwark of the Communist Party " . Welch revealed he had confirmed Fisher ' s former membership in the National Lawyers ' Guild approximately six weeks before the hearings started . After Fisher admitted his membership in the National Lawyers ' Guild , Welch decided to send Fisher back to Boston . His replacement by another colleague on Welch ' s staff was also covered by " The New York Times " . Welch then reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher , saying that " Until this moment , Senator , I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness . " McCarthy , accusing Welch of filibuster ing the hearing and baiting Cohn , dismissed Welch ' s dissertation and casually resumed his attack on Fisher , at which point Welch angrily cut him short : " Senator , may we not drop this ? We know he belonged to the Lawyer ' s Guild . . . Let us not assassinate this lad further , Senator ; you ' ve done enough . Have you no sense of decency , sir ? At long last , have you left no sense of decency ? " Welch excluded himself from the remainder of the hearings with a parting shot to McCarthy : " You have brought it out [ the Fisher / NLG affair ] . If there is a God in heaven , it will do neither you nor your cause any good ! " After Welch deferred to Chairman Mundt to call the next witness , the gallery burst into applause . Fisher was relatively unscathed by the incident and went on to become a partner in Boston ’ s prestigious Hale & Dorr law firm & organized its commercial law department . He also served as president of the Massachusetts Bar Association and as chairman of many committees of the American and Boston bar associations . He was a former trustee of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and chairman of the Franklin N . Flaschner Foundation in Waban , Mass . , while Welch ' s maneuvering helped to ruin McCarthy ’ s life and career . McCarthy died a sad and downtrodden national outcast at the relatively young age of 48 . Conclusion and aftermath . Near the end of the hearings McCarthy and Senator Stuart Symington ( D - MO ) sparred over the handling of secret files by McCarthy ' s staff . Symington hinted that some members of McCarthy ' s own staff might themselves be subversive and signed a document agreeing to take the stand in the hearings to reveal their names in return for McCarthy ' s signature on the same document agreeing to an investigation of his staff . But McCarthy , after calling Symington " Sanctimonious Stu " , refused to sign the document , claiming it contained false statements , and called Symington ' s accusations an " unfounded smear " on his men . He then rebuked Symington by saying , " You ' re not fooling anyone ! " , but Symington retaliated with a prophetic remark of his own : " Senator , the American people have had a look at you now for six weeks ; you ' re not fooling anyone , either . " In Gallup polls from January 1954 , McCarthy ' s approval rating was at 50 % , with only 29 % disapproving . By June both percentages had shifted by as much as 16 % , with more people ( 34 % approving , 45 % disapproving ) now rebuking McCarthy and his methods . After hearing 32 witnesses and two million words of testimony , the committee concluded that McCarthy himself had not exercised any improper influence on behalf of David Schine , but that Roy Cohn , McCarthy ' s chief counsel , had engaged in some " unduly persistent or aggressive efforts " on behalf of Schine . The conclusion of the committee also reported questionable behavior on the part of the Army : That Secretary Stevens and Army Counsel John Adams " made efforts to terminate or influence the investigation and hearings at Fort Monmouth , " and that Adams " made vigorous and diligent efforts " to block subpoenas for members of the Army Loyalty and Screening Board " by means of personal appeal to certain members of the [ McCarthy ] committee . " Before the official reports were released Cohn had resigned as McCarthy ' s chief counsel , and Senator Ralph Flanders ( R , Vermont ) had introduced a resolution of censure against McCarthy in the Senate . Despite McCarthy ' s acquittal of wrongdoing in the Schine matter , the Army – McCarthy hearings ultimately became the main catalyst in McCarthy ' s downfall from political power . Daily newspaper summaries were frequently unfavorable toward McCarthy , while television audiences saw the junior Senator from Wisconsin as foolhardy , dishonest and intimidating . On December 2 , 1954 , the Senate voted 67 – 22 to censure McCarthy , effectively eradicating his influence , though not expelling him from office . McCarthy continued to chair the Subcommittee on Investigations until January 3 , 1955 , the day the 84th United States Congress was inaugurated . McCarthy died of hepatitis on May 2 , 1957 .