INVESTIGATIONS: The Battle of the Files

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Across the committee table in the Senate's marble-columned caucus room, Wisconsin's pugnacious Senator Joe McCarthy glared defiantly at his tormentors. On the witness table in front of him lay the case histories with which he promised to prove his charge that the State Department was infested with card-carrying Communists and their friends. But for two days he had been too busy fending off the heckling questions of Democratic committeemen to spread out his evidence.

Republicans sat back out of the line of fire as the Democrats bored in. Ex-Marine McCarthy might turn out to have something, after all; the State Department's reputation for security was none too savory. But until he could prove it, the G.O.P. was going to let Freshman McCarthy defend his own outpost.

Burning Fires. That was all right with Joe McCarthy. If he could once force open the full State Department files, he was sure he could round up enough evidence to keep the campaign fires burning clear through the November elections. Leaning across the committee table, he said furiously: "You are not fooling me. This committee [is] not seeking to get the names of bad security risks, but seeking rather to find out the names of my informants so they can be kicked out of the State Department tomorrow." From the other side of the table Connecticut's Brien McMahon shouted back, white with rage: "When you start making charges of that sort about me, you had better reflect on it, and more than once."

To the din of table-pounding, the battle of the files went on. The Democrats were not going to let McCarthy get a look at the files if they could help it; they demanded to hear his charges and his proof. Most of his accusations seemed to be a rehash of an old list of 108 names, dredged up in 1947 by the House Appropriations Committee. Since then, presumably, all had been rescreened by the State Deparment's security board (headed by Republican Conrad Snow) or the President's Loyalty Review Board (headed by Republican Seth Richardson).

Angry Denials. By week's end McCarthy had fetched up only two or three headline-catching tidbits for the Senate Committee. One was a passing reference to Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup ("An unusual affinity for Communist causes"). Another was the name of a suspect who turned out to be neither a Communist nor a State Department employee. She was ex-U.N. Delegate Dorothy Kenyon, onetime Manhattan municipal court judge, whom McCarthy accused of having belonged to "at least 28 Communist-front organizations."

From Manhattan Dorothy Kenyon promptly blasted back at McCarthy as an "unmitigated liar," and asked the committee's permission to prove it.