Editing McCarthyism (section)

===Congress===
====House Committee on Un-American Activities====<!-- This section is linked from [[Pete Seeger]] -->
{{main|House Un-American Activities Committee}}
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly referred to as the HUAC) was the most prominent and active government committee involved in anti-communist investigations. Formed in 1938 and known as the Dies Committee, named for [[Martin Dies Jr.|Rep. Martin Dies]], who chaired it until 1944, HUAC investigated a variety of "activities", including those of German-American Nazis during [[World War II]]. The committee soon focused on communism, beginning with an investigation into communists in the [[Federal Theatre Project]] in 1938. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion.

HUAC achieved its greatest fame and notoriety with its investigation into the [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood film industry]]. In [[Hollywood blacklist#The blacklist begins (1946–1947)|October 1947]], the committee began to [[subpoena]] screenwriters, directors, and other movie-industry professionals to testify about their known or suspected membership in the Communist Party, association with its members, or support of its beliefs. At these testimonies, this question was asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?"<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8RxLbr0QPdgC&q=mccarthyism+64+dollar+question&pg=PA153|title=The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics|publisher=[[University of Iowa Press]]|year=1991|isbn=978-1587290343|editor-last=Case|editor-first=Sue-Ellen|page=153|access-date=October 19, 2020|editor-last2=Reinelt|editor-first2=Janelle G.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107142946/https://books.google.com/books?id=8RxLbr0QPdgC&q=mccarthyism+64+dollar+question&pg=PA153|archive-date=November 7, 2020|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dmytryk |first1=Edward |title=Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten |date=1996 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |isbn=978-0809319992 |page=59 |url=https://archive.org/details/oddmanoutmemoiro0000dmyt_j8j0/page/59/mode/1up |quote="In the early days of the Martin Dies Committee [...] the question had simply been, Are you a member of the Communist Party of the United States? As a countermeasure, the Party adopted a rule that automatically cancelled a Communist's membership the moment the question was asked. He could then answer 'No' without perjuring himself. The final wording [...] was adopted to circumvent the Party's tactic."}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=October 2023}} Among the first film industry witnesses subpoenaed by the committee were ten who decided not to cooperate. These men, who became known as the "[[Hollywood Ten]]", cited the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]]'s guarantee of free speech and free assembly, which they believed legally protected them from being required to answer the committee's questions. This tactic failed, and the ten were sentenced to prison for [[contempt of Congress]]. Two of them were sentenced to six months, the rest to a year.

In the future, witnesses (in the entertainment industries and otherwise) who were determined not to cooperate with the committee would claim their [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]] protection against self-incrimination. [[William Gropper|William Grooper]] and [[Rockwell Kent]], the only two visual artists to be questioned by McCarthy, both took this approach, and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience.<ref>{{Cite web|last=nublockmuseum|date=May 31, 2013|title=Behind Blacklisted|url=https://nublockmuseum.blog/2013/05/31/behind-blacklisted/|access-date=July 27, 2020|website=Stories From The Block|language=en-US|archive-date=July 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727105706/https://nublockmuseum.blog/2013/05/31/behind-blacklisted/|url-status=live}}</ref> However, while this usually protected witnesses from a contempt-of-Congress citation, it was considered grounds for dismissal by many government and private-industry employers. The legal requirements for Fifth Amendment protection were such that a person could not testify about his own association with the Communist Party and then refuse to "name names" of colleagues with communist affiliations.{{sfn|Fried|1990|pp=154–155}}{{sfn|Schrecker|2002|p=68}} Thus, many faced a choice between "crawl[ing] through the mud to be an informer," as actor [[Larry Parks]] put it, or becoming known as a "Fifth Amendment Communist"—an epithet often used by Senator McCarthy.<ref name="SIN">{{cite web| title = See it Now: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (transcript)| publisher = CBS-TV| date = March 9, 1954| url = http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/murrowmccarthy.html| access-date = March 16, 2007| archive-date = November 10, 2015| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151110194223/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/murrowmccarthy.html| url-status = live}}</ref>

====Senate committees====
In the Senate, the primary committee for investigating communists was the [[United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security|Senate Internal Security Subcommittee]] (SISS), formed in 1950 and charged with ensuring the enforcement of laws relating to "espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States". The SISS was headed by Democrat [[Pat McCarran]] and gained a reputation for careful and extensive investigations. This committee spent a year investigating [[Owen Lattimore]] and other members of the [[Institute of Pacific Relations]]. As had been done numerous times before, the collection of scholars and diplomats associated with Lattimore (the so-called [[China Hands]]) were accused of "losing China", and while some evidence of pro-communist attitudes was found, nothing supported McCarran's accusation that Lattimore was "a conscious and articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy". Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the charges were rejected by a federal judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955.{{sfn|Fried|1990|pp=145–150}}

McCarthy headed the [[United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations|Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]] in 1953 and 1954, and during that time, used it for a number of his communist-hunting investigations. McCarthy first examined allegations of communist influence in the [[Voice of America]], and then turned to the overseas library program of the State Department. [[Card catalogs]] of these libraries were searched for works by authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and the press. Yielding to the pressure, the State Department ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, [[fellow traveler]]s, etc." Some libraries actually burned the newly forbidden books.{{sfn|Griffith|1970|p=216}} Though he did not block the State Department from carrying out this order, President Eisenhower publicly criticized the initiative as well, telling the graduating class of Dartmouth College President in 1953: "Don't join the book burners! ... Don't be afraid to go to the library and read every book so long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency—that should be the only censorship."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/119516/report-book-burning-under-huac-and-eisenhower|title=The Horrible, Oppressive History of Book Burning in America|publisher=The New Republic|date=June 26, 1953|access-date=February 12, 2020|archive-date=February 12, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200212203141/https://newrepublic.com/article/119516/report-book-burning-under-huac-and-eisenhower|url-status=live}}</ref> The president then settled for a compromise by retaining the ban on Communist books written by Communists, while also allowing the libraries to keep books on Communism written by anti-Communists.<ref name="Abdul-JabbarObstfeld2016">{{cite book|author1=Kareem Abdul-Jabbar|author2=Raymond Obstfeld|title=Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oafiDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT53|date= 2016|publisher=Time Inc. Books|isbn=978-1618935434|pages=53–}}</ref>

McCarthy's committee then began an investigation into the [[United States Army]]. This began at the [[United States Army Signal Corps|Army Signal Corps]] laboratory at [[Fort Monmouth]]. McCarthy garnered some headlines with stories of a dangerous spy ring among the Army researchers, but ultimately nothing came of this investigation.{{sfn|Stone|2004|p=384}}

McCarthy next turned his attention to the case of a U.S. Army dentist who had been promoted to the rank of major despite having refused to answer questions on an Army loyalty review form. McCarthy's handling of this investigation, including a series of insults directed at a [[Brigadier general (United States)|brigadier general]], led to the [[Army–McCarthy hearings]], with the Army and McCarthy trading charges and counter-charges for 36 days before a nationwide television audience. While the official outcome of the hearings was inconclusive, this exposure of McCarthy to the American public resulted in a sharp decline in his popularity.{{sfn|Fried|1990|p=138}} In less than a year, McCarthy was censured by the Senate, and his position as a prominent force in anti-communism was essentially ended.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://research.archives.gov/description/1157557 |title=Senate Resolution 301: Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy |author=[[83rd United States Congress|83rd U.S. Congress]] |date=July 30, 1954 |publisher=U.S. National Archives and Records Administration |access-date=October 30, 2013 |archive-date=November 1, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131101220854/http://research.archives.gov/description/1157557 |url-status=live }}</ref>