Today on the CBS Public Affairs Program, face the nation. Through the eyes of this

television camera, Senator Joseph R McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, with

correspondence across the country questioning him.

Live from Indianapolis, New York City, and also here in Washington.

Here's the moderator of face the Nation, Ted Coop.

How do you do? Welcome to Face the Nation.

Senator McCarthy, on the eve of this historic special session of the United States Senate called to debate a motion to censor you.

Millions of Americans are wondering what it's all about.

That's the very first Face the nation, which aired on CBS, November 7, 1954,

with inaugural guest Joe McCarthy. In that program, he will spar with various journalists over whether or not he should be

censured by the United States Senate.

For all the McCarthyism stuff, because as you know know Joseph McCarthy is synonymous with the red scare

a period of American history in which anti-communism became so intense, so pervasive that it undermined the legal and cultural institutions we were defending from communists.

An era where people could be cancelled, not what they would have called it back then, that's what they were,

and lose their livelihoods based not just on their political opinions, but on political opinions they used to have, or were merely suspected of having, a kind of

national witch hunt in which freedom of speech, thought, and political association were all

considered collateral damage in the greater fight

against totalitarianism.

The United States government and Hollywood and quite a few institutions decided to fight for freedom

against tyranny by restricting some of that freedom.

Something you may not know about Joe McCarthy is that he was pretty good friends with JFK. He dated not one but two of the Kennedy

sisters. Both of them hailed from old Irish Catholic families, Joe and JfK. J. Jack, and they were both staunch

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