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Did Welch set up Senator McCarthy? By Brian Burns The most famous quote uttered by a Walpole resident was an unquestionably effective outburst of moral indignation, though it may not have been as spontaneous as it once seemed. The quote, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” was asked of the notorious Senator Joe McCarthy by Attorney Joseph Welch at the climactic moment of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, a 55-day spectacle that riveted the attention of the nation in the spring of 1954. A grandfatherly, bespectacled man with a fondness for neckties, Walpole’s Welch was the lead counsel for the Army during the hearings, which aired live on the ABC and DuMont networks. Welch’s memorable excoriation of McCarthy came as the bullet point of a tearful and impassioned speech in which he blasted McCarthy for his “cruelty and recklessness.” It was a moment that would forever alter the lives of both men. The bad blood between the Army and the McCarthy camp began in early 1953, after a McCarthy aide named David Schine was drafted into the Army. McCarthy’s head aide – the ruthlessly ambitious Roy Cohn – tried to use his clout to secure preferential treatment for Schine. After the Army refused and produced detailed evidence of Cohn’s influence peddling, McCarthy leapt to his aide’s defense. He charged that the Army was preventing Schine from releasing important information about Communists in the Army ranks. After simmering for a while, the conflict eventually boiled over into the Army-McCarthy hearings, which began on April 22. Welch, an attorney at the Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr, was hired to represent the Army. A relative unknown before the hearings began; Welch immediately gained national attention for the wit and intelligence that he employed in confronting the blustery McCarthy. The penultimate confrontation with the Wisconsin senator came on June 9, while Welch was needling Cohn in cross examination about the contention that there were 130 known Communists working in Army labs throughout the country. After stewing for a while in the background, McCarthy finally interjects after Welch playfully asks Cohn why he doesn’t just have the FBI get all of the Communists out of the Army by sundown. McCarthy tells Welch that one of his co-workers at Hale and Dorr, “a young man named Fischer,” had belonged for three or four years to the National Lawyers Guild, an organization that was named “years and years” ago as the legal bulwark of the Communist party. Since Welch was so interested in ferreting out Communists, he should be made aware of the fact that Fischer was a member of his own firm, McCarthy said. Welch’s response was brutally effective.
Welch: Until this moment,
Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your
recklessness.
Fred Fischer is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School
and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant
career with us. When I decided to work for this committee, I asked
Jim St. Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I
said to Jim, "Pick somebody in the firm to work under you that you
would like." He chose Fred Fischer, and they came down on an
afternoon plane. That night, when we had
taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about, Fred
Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then
said to these two young men, "Boys, I don't know anything about
you, except I've always liked you, but if there's anything funny in the
life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case, you
speak up quick." And Fred Fisher said,
"Mr. Welch, when I was in the law school, and for a period of
months after, I belonged to the Lawyers Guild," as you have
suggested, Senator. He went on to say,
"I am Secretary of the Young Republican's League in Newton with the
son of [the] Massachusetts governor, and I have the respect and
admiration of my community, and I'm sure I have the respect and
admiration of the twenty-five lawyers or so in Hale & Dorr." And I said, "Fred I
just don't think I'm going to ask you to work on the case. If I
do, one of these days that will come out, and go over national
television and it will just hurt like the dickens." And so,
Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad...It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a
gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other
than me. McCarthy:
Mr. Chairman, may I say that Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and
reckless. He was just baiting; he has been baiting Mr. Cohn here
for hours, requesting that Mr. Cohn before sundown get out of any
department of the government anyone who is serving the Communist cause.
Now, I just give this
man's record and I want to say, Mr. Welch, that it had been labeled long
before he became a member, as early as 1944 Welch:
Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers
Guild. And Mr. Cohn nods his head at me. I did you, I think,
no personal injury, Mr. Cohn? Cohn:
No, sir. Welch:
I meant to do you no personal
injury, and if I did, I beg your pardon. 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’s stirring condemnation was the beginning of the end for McCarthy, who would be censured by the Senate later that year. Following his censure McCarthy returned home to Wisconsin, where he died of complications from alcoholism in 1957. He was only 48. Welch, on the other hand, found himself a national celebrity. His exposure of McCarthy’s bluster earned him high praise from the media and various civic organizations and his stirring speech secured him a permanent place in the annals of history. In the six years before his death in 1960, Welch parlayed his newfound fame into a number of different film and television roles. In 1959, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his supporting role as a judge in Otto Preminger’s “Anatomy of a Murder.” He also appeared on television as the host of the Dow Hour of Great Mysteries and the Omnibus program, where he explained important documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. A self-described poor farm boy from Iowa, Welch and his family moved to Walpole in 1929, settling at 129 Plimpton St. Welch’s two sons, Joe Jr. and Lyndon graduated from Walpole High School. An article on Welch that appeared in the Walpole Times during the hearings described him as a particularly well-known and close advisor to the residents of Plimptonville. “He is a familiar figure on the morning and evening commuter run to and from Boston, his stop being Plimptonville,” the Times added. The paper went on to report that Welch was known in Washington for insisting that the hearings wrap up early each Friday so that he could get back home to Walpole for the weekend. In welcoming Welch back home at the end of the hearings, the Times quoted the editorial page of a recent Boston paper. “Walpole friends of Joseph Welch pay tribute to his recent unselfish and lengthy tour of duty in Washington for a thankless and difficult job well done.” The Times went on to credit Welch for his intellect, competence and wit, saying that he came through “in flying colors.” “Again we say well done and thank you.” “He did a wonderful job,” Calvin Plimpton agreed. Plimpton, a former Walpole resident and one-time owner of most of the Plimptonville homes, was a close friend of Joe Jr. while growing up. Plimpton described the elder Welch as a colorful character. He wasn’t tall, but he was dignified and composed, with a slightly regal air about him, Plimpton said. “He was very bright,” Plimpton said, adding that Welch could always be counted on to dispense sound advice. For instance, after he graduated from medical school, Plimpton had considered joining the paratroopers to fight in Europe during World War II. It was Welch that talked him out of it, he said. “Callie, don’t be a damn fool,” Welch told him. “You have a wife and two children at home. Stay put.” Plimpton did eventually go to Europe to serve in the war effort, but it was as a doctor working in a field hospital. Although it’s been almost 50 years since the hearings took place, Plimpton still has high praise for Welch’s performance. “The way he dealt with McCarthy, he brought dignity to the whole business,” he said. “McCarthy was just wheeling and thrashing around.” While there is little question of the effectiveness of Welch’s condemnation, recent evidence has suggested that it may not have been as spontaneous as it seemed to those who watched it unfold live on the air. A number of historians now believe that McCarthy may have blundered his way into a carefully planned trap. One of the strongest advocates of this theory is Nicholas von Hoffman, who describes the encounter from Cohn’s perspective in Citizen Cohn (The Life and Times of Roy Cohn. Doubleday). Von Hoffman writes that despite the animosity between the two parties, Welch and McCarthy agreed before the trial that several areas would be off limits. Welch agreed that he would not mention Cohn’s avoidance of the draft during World War II. In return, McCarthy’s camp agreed that they would not bring up Fischer’s membership in the Lawyer’s Guild. Von Hoffman and several other sources suggest that the agreement also extended to Cohn’s sexual orientation. Though he denied it to his dying day, Cohn was widely known as a homosexual, especially to the Washington insiders that packed the hearing room each day. According to several sources, it is possible that Welch had intentionally provoked McCarthy earlier in his cross examination by showing Cohn a picture that had been doctored by the McCarthy camp prior to being submitted as evidence. After Cohn offers no explanation for how the altered picture came to be, Welch playfully asks him if it might have been created by a pixie. McCarthy angrily jumps in. McCarthy: Will the counsel for my benefit define – I think he might be an expert on that – what a pixie is? Welch: Yes, I should say, Senator, that a pixie is a close relative of a fairy. Shall I proceed, sir? Have I enlightened you? At this point, according to sources, the room erupted in laughter. It was a dig at Cohn’s expense, but it wasn’t a direct violation of the agreement, a subtle point that may have been lost on McCarthy. Von Hoffman quotes from Michael Straight, who wrote about the moment in the New Republic. “As law the comment was improper; as humor it was unjust; as drama it was beyond anything that the theatre could conceive or reproduce.” Was this dig, and Welch’s subsequent needling about getting all the Communists out by sundown, designed to lure McCarthy into making a foolish attack on Fischer? There seems to be some legitimacy to this argument, especially when one considers the way that McCarthy later reacts. McCarthy:
Mr. Chairman, may I say that Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and
reckless. He was just baiting; he has been baiting Mr. Cohn
here for hours...” Cohn, a talented if unscrupulous lawyer in his own right, is smart enough not to respond to Welch’s thrust and later tries to dissuade McCarthy from pursing his inquiry into Fischer, though it is to no avail. Welch: Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. And Mr. Cohn nods his head at me. I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn? Cohn: No, sir. Yet McCarthy insists on pursing the issue, sealing his own fate at the hands of Welch’s eloquence. Without asking Welch himself, it’s difficult to know how much of his speech was real and how much was part of a carefully designed plan. This anecdote recounted by von Hoffman seems to suggest that it was a bit of both. “Welch had tears in his eyes as he delivered the last line; they were rolling down his cheeks as he left the center area; he passed a young reporter named John Newhouse who had been late and had to accept standing room by the door. As Welch went by, tears still coursing, he looked at Newhouse and winked.” |
