9

Contempt by Silence

The United States

versus

Corliss Lamont

On February 9, 1950, a comparatively unknown United States Senator from Wisconsin, who was beginning the fifth year of a colorless first term, addressed the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. His subject was “Communism in Government.” Halfway through his talk, in a gesture that was shortly to become his trademark, he held up a sheaf of papers and announced to his startled audience that “I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy in the State Department.” Before he sat down, linotypers, the country over, were busy punching out the words that were to free him from the obscurity he abhored. Whether he said 57 or 81 or 205 didn’t seem to make much difference—Joseph Raymond McCarthy, ex-Democrat, ex-judge, ex-Marine, had struck pay dirt.

Eleven days later, McCarthy took his attack on the State Department to the floor of the Senate. In a tumultuous six-hour presentation, that was interrupted more than one hundred and fifty times, he dredged up eighty-one cases, all of which had been developed some years earlier by State’s own security investigators. Of these eighty-one, he discussed some seventy-six, broken down into varying degrees of risks. He made no attempt to prove that any of these “risks” were “members of the Communist Party,” or even that they were all State employees, as he had alleged at Wheeling, but contented himself with the observation that there was “something radically wrong” with an agency that did not fully investigate its own suspicions. Before the stormy session broke up, a few minutes shy of midnight, the gentleman from Wisconsin was hoarse and incoherent, and his fellow Senators were so thoroughly confused by the discrepancies in his figures that they had given up all pretence of trying to understand them. The Big Lie, or, as one writer later pluralized it, the Multiple Untruth, had rarely gone over so well.

The immediate result of McCarthy’s February 20th speech was Senate Resolution 231, which authorized the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations “to conduct a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State.” On March 8th, a Foreign Relations subcommittee, headed by Senator Millard Tydings, Maryland’s patrician legislator, began what was to be a four-month investigation of McCarthy’s charges. After more than 1500 pages of testimony had been taken, most of it supplied by the parvenu accuser, the hearings ground to a close in late June with Owen Lattimore, a professor of government at Johns Hopkins, being offered up as a blood sacrifice. Lattimore, who had never been a State Department employee, was described by McCarthy as “the chief architect of our Far Eastern policy” and “Alger Hiss’ boss in the espionage ring in the State Department.”

“I’m willing,” he told Tydings, “to stand or fall on this one. If I was wrong on this, I think the subcommittee would be justified in not taking my other cases too seriously.” The subcommittee apparently took him at his word because it found that “starting with nothing, Senator McCarthy plunged headlong forward, desperately seeking to develop some information which, colored with distortion and framed by a blaze of lies, would forestall the day of reckoning.” But, although Tydings and a majority of his colleagues were convinced that the junior Senator from Wisconsin had been guilty of perpetrating a “fraud and a hoax” upon the country at large, the very publicity that the hearings received quickly established McCarthy as a farce to be reckoned with. The wrong man and the right moment had met head-on.

In the Fall of 1951, Senator William Benton of Connecticut persuaded the Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections of the Senate’s Committee on Rules and Administration “to determine whether expulsion proceedings should not be instituted against Joseph R. McCarthy” for lying to the Senate and to the Tydings Committee. As Benton put it, McCarthy, by being unable to substantiate his claimed list of 205 (or 81 or 57) party members in the State Department, was clearly “a calculating dispenser of false and perverted information.” But the change in Senate leadership occasioned by the Eisenhower sweep in 1952 resulted in the tabling of the subcommittee’s report, a document which raised a great many intriguing (and unanswered) questions about its subject’s financial dealings. McCarthy, who had been instrumental in Tydings’ November defeat, became the chairman of both the Senate’s Committee on Government Operations and its roving subsidiary, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the perennially ill-shaven gentleman from the lake country had an open field before him.

On September 23, 1953, the Permanent Subcommittee, consisting (as it so often did) only of its chairman, was ensconced in Room 128 of New York City’s United States Court House. The day before, a subpoena had been served on Corliss Lamont, the maverick son of one of J. P. Morgan’s partners, ordering him to appear at 2:30 the next afternoon to “testify what you may know relative to the subject matters under consideration by said committee,” namely Communist infiltration in the Army. Dr. Lamont, a leading exponent of what he described as “Democratic Socialism,” who was then teaching philosophy at Columbia University, was the author of several books, including one entitled The Peoples of the Soviet Union.

When Lamont, who had been cooling his heels for more than an hour in an anteroom, walked into Room 128 a few minutes after 3:30 on the afternoon of September 23rd, he had no way of knowing that his case was to be, in a sense, his interrogator’s epitaph. 1953 had been a big year for McCarthy. Before it ended, he and his road-show juveniles, Cohn and Schine, had been involved in some 157 inquiries concerning mainly the Voice of America and the Signal Corps installations at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During the first two months of 1954, he was, with the unwilling help of an honorably discharged army dentist and an insulted brigadier general, to set the stage for his own Götterdämmerung. But Irving Peress, Ralph Zwicker and the Army-McCarthy vendetta were still tomorrow’s headlines when the mild-mannered Lamont eased himself into the witness chair and immediately announced that he had a statement objecting to the subcommittee’s jurisdiction which “I would like to read into the record.”

The chairman, always a great stickler for the amenities, informed him that he would have to be sworn before he made any speeches. The witness indicated that he would rather affirm than take an oath, and McCarthy promptly acceded to his request. As Lamont adjusted his glasses and again prepared to read his statement, the chairman interrupted to ask him, “Why you want to affirm rather than be sworn?” When Lamont objected to having to explain his religious beliefs, the Senator snapped, “You will be sworn unless you tell us you have got some ground for refusing to be sworn.” The exchange ended when McCarthy, who apparently felt that he was getting in beyond his depth, capitulated, after warning Lamont that he hadn’t heard the last of the matter. He couldn’t have been more prophetic if he had tried.

Lamont had barely started reading his prepared statement when the chairman suddenly exhibited a compelling curiosity to learn the names of his two attorneys, although one of them, Philip Wittenberg, had submitted his calling card when the hearing opened. When Wittenberg had formally introduced himself and his associate, Irving Like, McCarthy waved Lamont on. The witness, with a remarkable show of almost saintly patience, picked up where the last interruption had left him, and continued his statement.

After informing the chairman that he was “not now and never had been a member of the Communist Party,” Lamont vigorously attacked the subcommittee’s jurisdiction. As far as he was concerned, McCarthy had no power to inquire into his “personal and private affairs.” Not only was this prohibited by the Constitution’s First Amendment, but no statute or Senate rule gave the Permanent Subcommittee the right to question a private citizen as to his “personal conduct, personal beliefs and associational activity.” Indeed, if any governmental agency had this right, it was the judiciary and not the legislature. Lastly, Lamont maintained that the absence of the subcommittee’s three Democrats, who had resigned in a huff in the late summer of 1953 over the chairman’s insistence on hiring staff personnel without consulting them, “has deprived this committee of its competency to act until it has been properly constituted.”

If McCarthy was impressed by what he had heard, his visage didn’t reflect it. Frank Carr, the subcommittee’s staff director, who was hovering at his elbow, handed him a dark-covered book which turned out to be Ernest J. Simmons’ U.S.S.R., a Concise Handbook, to which, it seemed, Dr. Lamont had contributed a chapter entitled “National and Racial Minorities.” After observing darkly that this book was “being used by the military to indoctrinate our troops,” the chairman wanted to know whether the witness had been paid for his chapter. Lamont couldn’t remember whether he had or not, but promised to furnish that information after checking his records.

The next order of business was a mysterious pamphlet called Psychological and Cultural Traits of Soviet Siberia, which later turned out to have been prepared by Army Intelligence. Its bibliography referred to The People of the Soviet Union by a “C. Lamont.” Lamont readily admitted that he had written a book by that name in 1946, but had never read or even heard of the long-named work in which it was cited. In fact, he had tried to find a copy after it was mentioned by McCarthy at a pre-hearing press conference, but was unable to locate it. The Senator promptly asked Frank Carr to supply the witness with a copy. He directed Lamont “to examine the document and then mark those passages which come verbatim from your book.”

Up to this point, there had been little to distinguish the proceedings from the almost two hundred that had preceded it since the Wisconsin Republican had decided that the national destiny called for more drastic tactics than the Constitution permitted. Outside of the fact that Louis Budenz, hardly a stranger at Congressional hearings, was sitting in a corner of the room, the executive session seemed destined for next morning’s back pages. But what had all the earmarks of an innocuous little query began to stir things up. The question: “Do you know a Mr. Louis Budenz, Mr. Lamont?”

Lamont refused to answer the question. When McCarthy asked him for his reasons, the witness offered to read his statement again, but the chairman wasn’t having any more of that. Anticipating that Mr. Lamont would still refuse to answer the question, he ordered him to do so.

Q. I say, so the record is complete, you are being ordered to answer, and I assume you are refusing to answer?

A. Yes, on the grounds stated.

The chairman followed up his first question about Budenz with another concerning the ex-Communist. “Did you ever admit to Mr. Budenz, in a telephone conversation” he asked him, “that you were a member of the Communist Party?” Again, the witness failed to give satisfaction. “I refuse to answer that on the same grounds, Mr. Chairman, as set forth in this statement.” But he was quick to point out that he was not standing on the Fifth Amendment.

Q. You are not refusing under your rights under the Fifth Amendment, right?

A. No, no.

With the cavalier observation that “I think it is necessary for the Chair to order him to answer in case the committee decides to take contempt proceedings against him,” McCarthy waited for his man to come to heel.

Lamont, who recognized a crossroads when he entered one, decided to confer with Wittenberg. The chairman, while very solicitous of the right of a witness to consult his attorney, reminded the official stenographer to make a notation of the fact “so that the record is complete.” After a brief parley, Lamont had his answer ready. “I am declining to answer on the ground that I do not wish to involve myself in controversy with a known provocateur, and I am a loyal American. As I said in the statement, I am not and never have been a member of the Communist Party.” No, he would not identify “the known provocateur,” other than the “person you named in the statement, Mr. Chairman.”

Then McCarthy turned to “a Clarence Hathaway.” Had the witness worked with him “in connection with the penetration of various organizations by the Communist Party?” Lamont objected to the form of the question and, when his objection was promptly overruled, went back to his basic point that the subcommittee did not have jurisdiction to interrogate him. When the Senator pumped him as to whether he had been doing any undercover work for any Communist Party members, the witness, after characterizing the questions as “outrageous,” lapsed into stony silence.

Scarcely concealing a growing jubilation, McCarthy decided that it was time to remind the witness that he was digging a hole for himself. After marking Lamont’s statement as Exhibit 1, he ordered the stenographer to “have the record show the only grounds for the refusal on the part of the witness are the grounds referred to in Exhibit 1; that the witness has said that he is not relying on the Fifth Amendment.” When Wittenberg pointed out to him that his client had also objected to the form of the questions, McCarthy brushed him aside. However, like Lamont, Wittenberg, too, had his flinty side. “But, sir, you were dictating to the stenographer the reason for the refusal of the witness, and he should have the full record.” The chairman’s answer was brief and conclusive: “You may show whatever you like in the record.”

Then McCarthy returned to Ernest J. Simmons and his U.S.S.R., a Concise Handbook. But Lamont was just as adamant as he had been with Budenz and Hathaway. As far as he was concerned, “the book speaks for itself.” This was all the opening an old infighter, who had learned his trade in the North Woods, needed. “You think the book speaks for itself whether he [Simmons] was a Communist?,” he asked the witness. Wittenberg’s somewhat hurried instructions to “decline to answer” proved to be totally unnecessary since, like all good rhetoricians, the chairman was determined to answer his own question. He leaned back in his chair, tugged at his right ear lobe, and solemnly announced: “This might be the first time today that I would agree with you. I think it does speak for itself. He uses you and other men named as Communists almost exclusively.” Lamont, who had been listening politely, hardly seemed impressed by this revelation.

By the time the five-o’clock shadow on the Senatorial jowls had reached its hirsute zenith, Lamont had refused to answer some twenty-three questions, one of which was framed in Russian and was destined to be lost to posterity because the stenographer’s knowledge of the language was limited to “Da” and “Nyet.” It was obvious that the witness was more than prepared for any eventualities. When McCarthy pointed out to him that “you can make a very good test case, Mr. Lamont,” Thomas W. Lamont’s middle son replied, with some fervor, “I hope so.”

As the long afternoon drew to a close, Lamont was ordered to come back at ten o’clock on Monday morning, this time to Room 318 of the Senate Office Building in Washington. When Wittenberg pleaded a previous engagement, the time was changed to one p.m. Before the session ended, McCarthy informed Wittenberg that, while he could not supply him with a copy of the testimony, he was free to correct any errors in the transcript when it was ready. As the brief cases were being snapped closed, the chairman turned to apostate Budenz, whose role as the silent observer was not his usual one.

Q. Before we go, Mr. Budenz, you have listened to the testimony. Can you identify this as the man whom you discussed in your testimony before?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Good.

No sooner had Lamont and his retinue walked down the courthouse steps than the Senator closeted himself with the waiting reporters who knew that a subcommittee rule that “all testimony taken in executive session shall be kept secret and will not be released for public information without the approval of a majority of the subcommittee” had never stood in its chairman’s way before.

Two days later, Irving Like received a call from a member of the subcommittee’s staff, informing him that there had been a change of plans and that Dr. Lamont’s appearance on Monday, the twenty-eighth, would be quite unnecessary. Like stated that his client would show up in Room 318 of the Senate Office Building at the appointed time unless the oral adjournment was confirmed in writing. At 2:41 p.m. a telegram was dispatched from Senator McCarthy’s office, addressed to Corliss Lamont.

PURSUANT TO CONVERSATION WITH MR. LIKE OF MR. WITTENBERG’S OFFICE THIS DATE, YOUR APPEARANCE BEFORE THIS SUBCOMMITTEE IN WASHINGTON, D. C. ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1953, HAS BEEN POSTPONED. HOWEVER, YOU ARE UNDER CONTINUING SUBPOENA AND BOTH YOU AND YOUR COUNSEL WILL BE NOTIFIED WHEN YOUR APPEARANCE IS REQUIRED.

JOE McCARTHY, CHAIRMAN SENATE PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS.

Wittenberg received a similar wire.

At ten a.m. on Monday morning, McCarthy and five members of his staff marched with measured tread into Room 318. The chairman solemnly called the committee to order. “We had announced last week that Mr. Corliss Lamont would be before the committee today, Mr. Lamont has not been subpoenaed. He was notified that he could come today and purge himself of the contempt for failure to answer last week.” As his words trailed off into ether, McCarthy looked around the room and, with a bemused innocence that would have put Scarpia to shame, asked, “Is Mr. Lamont here?” The official transcript notes that “There was no response.” With a grave shake of his head, the chairman ordered Lamont’s testimony made public “so that the reason for the citation for contempt will be very clear.”

On October 2nd, Dr. Lamont wrote to the Senator and reminded him that he was indeed under subpoena on September 28th, and that his appearance in Washington had been postponed by McCarthy himself. Almost a month later, he received a brief letter from Frank Carr, informing him that he had been entirely correct in his earlier communication and that the transcript of the hearing would be rectified accordingly. The next day, Lamont addressed another letter to McCarthy, asking how he intended “to make the record conform to fact and correct the flagrant injustice to me.” There was no answer.

McCarthy didn’t get around to Lamont’s citation for contempt until the following July. In between, he had found bigger game. On January 30th, Major Irving Peress, an army dentist, had refused to answer some questions put to him by the Wisconsin Senator on the ground that his answers “might tend to incriminate me.” Three days later, Peress was given an honorable discharge and became, posthaste, the Fort Sumter of his time. When McCarthy, in a temper tantrum over Peress’ recent promotion to major, told Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of the Bulge, that he was “a disgrace to the uniform [and] not fit to be an officer,” the long-simmering conflict between the Senator and the Administration was in the open. On February 21st, Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens finally screwed up his courage and condemned what he termed “the humiliating treatment” Zwicker had received, and the White House followed suit on March 3rd when it announced that no officer was required “to submit to any kind of personal humiliation when testifying before Congressional committees or elsewhere.” Indian Charlie’s knee had found its target at last.

A week later, Stevens released a thirty-four-page report which, in effect, accused Frank Carr and Roy M. Cohn, the subcommittee’s chief counsel, of persecuting the Army for its failure to defer or commission G. David Schine. In retaliation, McCarthy asserted that Stevens and his generals were holding Schine as a “hostage” in order to prevent a thorough investigation of the Fort Monmouth personnel. The net result—thirty-six days of testimony, 187 hours of televised proceedings, thirty-two witnesses, and 7424 pages of transcript. The hearings, which were conducted before the temporarily McCarthy-less Permanent Subcommittee, made Joseph Welch famous, established “point of order” as a household phrase, cost both Cohn and Carr their jobs, and started the soybean trader from Appleton on his Retreat from Monmouth. Although the major charges of both sides went largely unsubstantiated, it was clear, as a suddenly fearless Stuart Symington told the two-penny Torquemeda (and a national television audience) that no one was “afraid of anything about you” anymore. Apparently, Joe Welch wasn’t the only one who “had never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness....” The bubble had, at long last, resoundingly burst.

It was at this ticklish moment in his career that McCarthy urged his fellow Senators to cite Lamont for contempt. On July 16th, four days before Cohn’s resignation, he introduced Resolution 281, which asked the President of the Senate to forward the Lamont case “to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York to the end that the said Corliss Lamont may be proceeded against in the manner and form provided by law.” Accompanying the resolution was a carefully edited version of the Lamont testimony, which omitted any reference to the affirmation incident or the discussion of the adjournment date. Apparently, photographs weren’t the only things that could be cropped if one had a talent for that sort of business.

It wasn’t until August 11th that McCarthy’s resolution reached the top of the Senate agenda. Nine days earlier, Senator Ralph E. Flanders’ Resolution 301 to censure his Wisconsin colleague had been referred to a select committee of three Republicans and three Democrats, headed by Utah’s austere Arthur V. Watkins. This didn’t seem to faze McCarthy, who blithely informed his brethren that he had received an opinion from the Attorney General that the matter of Lamont’s recalcitrance “could well be submitted to the grand jury for indictment.” When New York’s Lehman let it be known that he intended to object to any summary treatment of the resolution, McCarthy suddenly remembered that he had left a “number of witnesses” simmering in the committee room, and hurriedly left the chamber.

Because of Lehman’s objections, it was not until August 16th that full debate began on the Lamont citation. The late Senator Langer, with McCarthy baying at his heels, spread on the pages of the Congressional Record the complete story of the adjournment of the September hearing to one o’clock on the afternoon of the following Monday, and the subsequent telegrams which postponed it until further notice. McCarthy’s defense was that Lamont had been “told by telephone that if he wanted to appear and purge himself of contempt, Monday would be the deadline....” It was simply a case of a refusal to take advantage of some misguided but well-intended official benevolence. Besides, why all the furor about this “very wealthy man, not in his own right, but through inheritance,” who had “done more to damage this nation than any other man in the country, with the possible exception of Frederick Field.”

Langer didn’t seem particularly concerned with the size of Lamont’s bank roll. Observing that the only thing in which he was interested was “fair play to the witness,” the Senator from North Dakota hammered home his thesis that McCarthy had been guilty of a gross misstatement when he had announced on September 28th that “Mr. Lamont has not been subpoenaed.” Just read the telegrams of September 25th, he urged his fellows: what could be plainer than the words “You are under continuing subpoena”? Obviously, there was little a body could say about that and the Badger State’s junior Senator slipped out the back of the Senate chamber.

He returned shortly after Langer had yielded the floor to Lehman who decided to explore McCarthy’s insistence that Lamont explain why he chose to affirm rather than take an oath. With a fat tongue in a fat cheek, McCarthy assured the Senators that he was certain that Lehman was “not doing it at all purposely” when he had misinformed them. The real truth of the matter was, he told them, that, while a witness had the right to affirm, he had to state that he had religious scruples against an oath. This was too much for New Mexico’s Chavez whose Jesuit law school training had taught him that there was no difference between swearing and affirming, and that neither had to be explained.

But Lehman’s real argument against the proposed citation had nothing to do with whether a man took an oath or not. He reminded the Senate that another case—United States v. Emspak—which involved the extent of Congressional investigating powers, was pending before the Supreme Court. Since he was certain that its decision would be handed down in “a reasonable number of months” (it took eight), he saw no reason for not adjourning the proposed citation for a little while. McCarthy, who had been pleading with Lehman to yield the floor, could restrain himself no longer. Why, this man Lamont, he reminded his friend from New York, has never reformed. “He is the same tool of the Communist conspiracy.” Did the Senator realize that, as late as May of 1954 the witness had had the effrontery to attack “every committee that has ever exposed a Communist from the committee headed by Martin Dies, down to date?” Such a man was totally unworthy of any Senatorial support.

Just as it looked as if Lehman was getting somewhere, pro-citation help arrived from an unexpected quarter. Leverett Saltonstall heaved his lanky bulk out of his chair and persuaded the New Yorker to give him a moment. He had known Lamont since the latter was ten years old. He had nothing but respect for his parents and his brothers but, as for Corliss, he was “different from his brothers,” who were doing very nicely indeed. The difference, as he explained it, seemed to lie in the fact that “he is a man who has very firm opinions.” Naturally, the Senator from Massachusetts thoroughly disagreed with those opinions, notwithstanding their firmness. In fact, on one occasion, he had come to blows with Lamont over his unorthodox views. The best thing the Senate could do “would be to cite him for contempt and let the court decide on the issues and the facts as we have presented them here tonight.” The successor to Sam Adams, John Hancock and James Otis had spoken.

After Wayne Morse had nobly declaimed that “we, as Senators, owe it to our committees to support them when they come to the floor of the Senate and make a prima facie case in support of a contempt citation,” Lehman made his final pitch. He didn’t believe that the record justified Lamont’s citation. “I very much fear,” he said, “that very serious results may ensue if we permit the record to remain unchallenged and merely say that because a committee brings in a resolution of citation for contempt, the Senate should, in the natural course of events, vote in favor of such resolution. I regard it as a very dangerous procedure.”

But, despite a last ditch stand by Langer, Senator Thomas H. Kuchel, who was presiding, finally put the matter to a vote. The result was seventy-one yeas and three nays. Only Messrs. Chavez, Langer and Lehman voted against the citation. On October 14th, a Federal grand jury in New York, in Indictment No. C 145-216, accused Lamont of refusing to answer the twenty-three questions that McCarthy had asked him one year and three weeks before. The next day, the defendant pleaded not guilty and was released on $1000.00 bail. The gauntlet he had thrown down in the same courtroom on a sunny fall day in 1953 had at last been picked up.

But the junior Senator from Wisconsin was hardly in a position to gloat over his triumph. Three weeks before Lamont’s indictment, the Watkins Committee had unanimously recommended that the man from Appleton be censured by his colleagues. In its report, the Select Committee, which had been handpicked by Vice-President Nixon, stated that McCarthy had been guilty of contempt of the Senate and had flagrantly abused General Zwicker. It wasn’t until the beginning of December that the upper house, by vote of 67 to 22, got around to “condemning” rather than “censuring” him, mainly for his attack on the Select Committee itself. Five days later—on the thirteenth anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor—“Tail Gunner Joe” retaliated by apologizing to the American people for supporting Eisenhower in 1952. A man guilty of such a “shrinking show of weakness” just wasn’t fit to occupy rent-free government quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On October 29, 1954, Wittenberg moved to dismiss the indictment against his client on fifteen grounds, the most important of which were his claims that no Congressional committee had the constitutional right to interfere with a private citizen’s First Amendment rights, and that the Permanent Subcommittee was not authorized to conduct its investigation of Lamont. Four weeks later, Wittenberg and J. Edward Lumbard, the United States Attorney, took all day to argue their respective points before District Judge Edward Weinfield. Then they sat back and waited for him to make up his mind, a process that was to take two days short of eight months.

While Weinfield’s meditations were in progress, the Emspak case, which Lehman had tried to use as a roadblock the preceding August, was decided by the Supreme Court. In it and a companion case—Quinn v. United States—Chief Justice Warren put a brake on the powers of Congressional committees. “The power to investigate,” he said, “... is also subject to recognized limitations. It cannot be used to inquire into private affairs unrelated to a valid legislative purpose.” With what many observers believed was a judicial slap at the suddenly vulnerable gentleman from Wisconsin, Warren let it be known that the Court would accept nothing less than a rigid adherence to what he called “minimal procedural standards” as far as legislative investigating committees were concerned.

On July 27, 1955, Weinfield announced his decision. He agreed with Wittenberg that, since the indictment did not allege that Lamont’s refusal to answer the twenty-three questions was wilful, it was fatally defective. But he refused to rest his opinion on the safe ground of improperly drawn charges. He found that there was no evidence that the Permanent Subcommittee ever had the authority to conduct an inquiry of Lamont—or of other witnesses for that matter. Lastly, even assuming that McCarthy had the power he claimed, the judge wasn’t convinced that the Lamont interrogation was within the scope of that power or that any of the questions were pertinent to an investigation of “Communist Infiltration into the Army.” One week later, Senator Langer, with the pious observation that he hoped that “we shall stand fast in following our conscience and doing what is right, in accordance with the truth, in any matters which may develop, even though such a course may be unpopular,” obtained unanimous consent for Weinfield’s opinion to be printed in the Congressional Record.

But there was still some life left in the prosecution. Paul W. Williams, Lumbard’s successor, decided to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a redoubtable bench that sat three floors above Weinfield’s courtroom. The arguments were much the same as they had been in the District Court. The Government insisted that “wilfullness” was not an element of Lamont’s crime and that it did not have to allege that the McCarthy subcommittee was “duly empowered” to hold its hearing. Wittenberg, on the other hand, was content to ride along with Judge Weinfeld’s interpretation of the law.

On August 14, 1956, the three judges on the appellate court affirmed the dismissal on the somewhat narrow ground that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations did not have the authority to venture down the path along which its chairman had led it. This, they reasoned, made the defendant’s First Amendment objections moot. Ad quod non fuit responsum.

Williams made no effort to ask the Supreme Court to review the adverse ruling, and, on September 13th, a consent decree was entered, ending the case against Dr. Lamont. Just ten days short of three years since he had refused to answer McCarthy’s twenty-three questions, the taciturn witness was home free. At long last, the rampage was officially over. As the Hartford Times editorialized, “It is all couched in quiet judicial language, of course, but what it really says is that Senator McCarthy and the Committee were asking questions about things that were none of their business.”

When it became clear that the Government had no intention of carrying the case any further, Lamont told the press that “I am very glad that my court battle has resulted in hammering another nail into the political coffin of Senator McCarthy.” But the Lamont case had little to do with what Richard H. Rovere has referred to as the “interior collapse” which had afflicted Timothy and Bridget McCarthy’s fifth child after the Army hearings. For the last two and a half years of his life, he was back where he had been before the Wheeling revelations, a dispirited jackstraw who began to spend more time in the hospital than he did on the floor of the Senate.

On April 28, 1957, he entered the Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, with what his wife described as a “knee injury.” Later, his condition was diagnosed by the Navy doctors as “peripheral neuritis.” At 6:02 on the evening of May 2nd, he died of “acute hepatic infection,” which his enemies intimated had been caused by an overabundance of bourbon. After a funeral in the Senate chamber, he was flown back home to Appleton where he was buried in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Church, a rather pretty spot overlooking the meandering Fox River. The golden years were over.

But if Lamont, as an individual, had no more to do with McCarthy’s overnight submergence than did Annie Lee Moss, Irving Peress, Ralph Zwicker, Owen Lattimore, and the others who had to endure his bad manners, churlishness and downright lunacy, he was very much a part of the cumulative evidence against the grand inquisitor. Too many scalps too soon might have been Indian Charlie’s considered verdict. In the last analysis, it was probably the conservatives who defeated McCarthy, but it was only when they became frightened at what might be the logical extension of his maltreatment of those who could hardly be classed as toilers in their vineyards that they finally closed ranks and smoked out the Big Bad Wolf from Shawano County. American populism would have to find some way to get rid of the Lamonts before it found another champion.