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WBUR Podcasts, Boston. This is on point.

This is on point.

I'm Megna Chakra-Bardi.

In 1950, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy grabbed the public's attention

with his allegations that hundreds of communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies.

By 1953, McCarthy had become chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, where he shifted the committee's focus from investigating fraud and waste to hunting for communists.

He held scores of hearings and ruined thousands of lives.

By mid-1953, the panel's three Democrats resigned,

and Republican senators stopped attending because so many of McCarthy's hearings

were called on short notice or held away from Washington.

That left McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, to run the hearings largely by themselves.

And they were relentless and cruel to their witnesses.

Irvin Griswold, then dean of the Harvard Law School, described McCarthy as, quote, judge, jury, prosecutor, castigator, and press agent, all in one, end quote.

And by the way, as an aside, Roy Cohn later became a mob attorney and represented Donald Trump for years before he became president.

He said that he considered Trump to be his best friend.

Now, all of this serves as a critical backdrop to understand the events of June 9, 1954.

McCarthy had decided to take on the United States Army, claiming that there was lack security at a top-secret military facility.

What followed was a three-month televised event known as the Army McCarthy hearings.

The Army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch.

And on June 9th, McCarthy decided to attack a member of Welch's law firm.

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