Editing Joseph McCarthy (section)

===Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations===
With the beginning of his second term as senator in January 1953, McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. According to some reports, Republican leaders were growing wary of McCarthy's methods and gave him this relatively mundane panel rather than the [[United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security|Internal Security Subcommittee]]—the committee normally involved with investigating Communists—thus putting McCarthy "where he can't do any harm", in the words of Senate Majority Leader [[Robert A. Taft]].<ref>{{cite book
 |last = Fried
 |first = Richard M.
 |year = 1990
 |title = Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective
 |publisher = Oxford University Press
 |page = 134
 |isbn = 0-19-504361-8
}}</ref> However, the Committee on Government Operations included the [[United States Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations|Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]], and the mandate of this subcommittee was sufficiently flexible to allow McCarthy to use it for his own investigations of Communists in the government. McCarthy appointed [[Roy Cohn]] as chief counsel and 27-year-old [[Robert F. Kennedy]] as an assistant counsel to the subcommittee. Later, McCarthy also hired [[G. David Schine|Gerard David Schine]], heir to a hotel-chain fortune, on the recommendation of George Sokolsky.<ref name="auto">{{cite magazine |date=May 24, 1954 |title=The Press: The Man in the Middle |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,823411,00.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220202191548/http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,823411,00.html |archive-date=February 2, 2022 |access-date=February 2, 2022 |magazine=Time}}</ref>

This subcommittee would be the scene of some of McCarthy's most publicized exploits. When the records of the closed executive sessions of the subcommittee under McCarthy's chairmanship were made public in 2003–04,<ref>See "Transcripts, Executive Sessions ..." under Primary sources, below.</ref> Senators [[Susan Collins]] and [[Carl Levin]] wrote the following in their preface to the documents:

<blockquote>Senator McCarthy's zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of our government. His freewheeling style caused both the Senate and the Subcommittee to revise the rules governing future investigations, and prompted the courts to act to protect the Constitutional rights of witnesses at Congressional hearings.&nbsp;... These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to re-occur.<ref>{{cite web
  |first1 = Susan
  |last1 = Collins
  |first2 = Carl
  |last2 = Levin
  |author-link1 = Susan Collins
  |author-link2 = Carl Levin
  |title = Preface
  |work = Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
  |publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
  |year = 2003
  |url = https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Volume1.pdf
  |access-date = December 19, 2006
  |archive-date = December 28, 2006
  |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20061228010804/http://senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Volume1.pdf
  |url-status = live
  }}</ref></blockquote>

The subcommittee first investigated allegations of Communist influence in the [[Voice of America]], at that time administered by the State Department's [[United States Information Agency]]. Many VOA personnel were questioned in front of television cameras and a packed press gallery, with McCarthy lacing his questions with hostile innuendo and false accusations.<ref name="VOA">{{cite book
 |last = Heil
 |first = Alan L.
 |year = 2003
 |title = Voice of America: A History
 |publisher = Columbia University Press
 |page = 53
 |isbn = 0-231-12674-3
}}</ref> A few VOA employees alleged Communist influence on the content of broadcasts, but none of the charges were substantiated. Morale at VOA was badly damaged, and one of its engineers committed suicide during McCarthy's investigation. Ed Kretzman, a policy advisor for the service, would later comment that it was VOA's "darkest hour when Senator McCarthy and his chief hatchet man, Roy Cohn, almost succeeded in muffling it."<ref name="VOA" />

The subcommittee then turned to the overseas library program of the International Information Agency. Cohn toured Europe examining the card catalogs of the State Department libraries looking for works by authors he deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and the press. The State Department bowed to McCarthy and ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers, etc." Some libraries went as far as [[Book burning|burning]] the newly-forbidden books.<ref>{{cite book
  |last = Griffith
  |first = Robert
  |title = The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate
  |url = https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif
  |url-access = registration
  |publisher = University of Massachusetts Press
  |year=  1970
  |page = [https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif/page/216 216]
  |isbn = 0-87023-555-9}}</ref> Shortly after this, in one of his public criticisms of McCarthy, President Eisenhower urged Americans: "Don't join the book burners.&nbsp;... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book."<ref>{{cite web
 |url         = http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/stories/Ike-Milton-McCarthy.htm
 |title       = Ike, Milton, and the McCarthy Battle
 |access-date  = August 9, 2006
|publisher   = Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20060615173752/http://eisenhowermemorial.org/stories/Ike-Milton-McCarthy.htm
 |archive-date = June 15, 2006
|df          = mdy-all
}}</ref>

Soon after receiving the chair to the Subcommittee on Investigations, McCarthy appointed [[J. B. Matthews]] as staff director of the subcommittee. One of the nation's foremost anti-communists, Matthews had formerly been staff director for the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]]. The appointment became controversial when it was learned that Matthews had recently written an article titled "Reds and Our Churches",<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=%22Reds%20and%20Our%20Churches%22%20Matthews&btnG=Search%20Books|title='Reds and Our Churches' Matthews |via=Google Search}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=%22Reds%20in%20Our%20Churches%22%20Matthews&btnG=Search%20Books|title='Reds in Our Churches' Matthews |via=Google Search}}</ref> which opened with the sentence, "The largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States is composed of Protestant Clergymen." A group of senators denounced this "shocking and unwarranted attack against the American clergy" and demanded that McCarthy dismiss Matthews. McCarthy initially refused to do this. As the controversy mounted, however, and the majority of his own subcommittee joined the call for Matthews's ouster, McCarthy finally yielded and accepted his resignation. For some McCarthy opponents, this was a signal defeat of the senator, showing he was not as invincible as he had formerly seemed.<ref>{{cite book
  |last = Griffith
  |first = Robert
  |title = The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate
  |url = https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif
  |url-access = registration
  |publisher =University of Massachusetts Press
  |year=  1970
  |page = [https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif/page/233 233]
  |isbn = 0-87023-555-9}}</ref>