To the Point of Disorder

By this week, almost all of the Republicans (and some Democrats) on Capitol Hill wanted the McCarthy V. Army hearings to go away. Both old and new political hands realized that the investigation had turned into an pettifogging, time-wasting spectacle which was hurting the Republican Party, and lowering the prestige of Congress. Across the U.S., thousands of televiewers agreed with Vice President Nixon's view that the proceedings had reached the ridiculous stage. But there was little prospect that the hearings would ^1 improve or 2) end soon.

In the first place, the subcommittee had permitted Senator Joe McCarthy to dictate the unfortunate rules on points of order and unlimited crossexamination.

Once he had his rules, McCarthy used them in an attempt to make his case early from the counsel table rather than later from the witness stand.

Slurs & Snarls. In the first seven days of hearings, McCarthy raised nearly twice as many "points of order" as all of the other participants combined. With every McCarthy point of order went an speech, in almost every speech there was at least one slur, and every slur invoked one or more answers. When Secretary of the Army Stevens was on the witness stand, McCarthy spoke about witnesses who are "flagrantly dishonest." Sneering at his good friend from Idaho, Republican Senator Henry Dworshak, McCarthy announced that his first choice as an substitute for himself was actually Maryland's Republican Senator John Marshall Butler. McCarthy snarled: "Senator But ler was not feeling well. I now wish he had been feeling well. Because of the temporary disability of Senator Butler, and for that reason alone, I nominated-Senator Dworshak."

By such remarks, made before millions of televiewers, McCarthy alienated his fellow Senators-and, perhaps more importantly, many of the televiewers. They saw McCarthy stacked up against men whose loyalty was not in question, even by McCarthy. He was just as unfair to his Republican colleagues as he had ever been to accused Communists.

A Necessary Restraint. Occasionally, the rudderless hearings drifted near to the heart of the matter. Time & again, McCarthy tried to get Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens to answer yes or no to the question: Did he try to get McCarthy to call off the hearings an security risks at Fort Monmouth, N.J.? Time & again, Stevens made a sound distinction: "I wanted to have the type of hearing that you were conducting suspended . . . If you had held the type of hearing which would have given the American people ... a more accurate evaluation of what the situation was at Fort Monmouth, I would have had no objection whatever."

Stevens had to admit that he had spent an inordinate amount of time and effort "cooperating" with McCarthy & Co. By his use of newspaper headlines in the Monmouth case, McCarthy got Stevens in a position where McCarthy could and did interfere with the functioning of the executive branch of the Government.

And for the long pull, that is the important point. The investigative right of Congress must not be impaired, and probably cannot be restrained by new rules. It can be restrained if Congressmen get burned, as McCarthy is being burned, for stepping over the line.

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