From: shmage-AT-pipeline.com
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 21:48:56 -0500
Subject: Re: M-I: Query on McCarthysim


Michael Hoover writes:

>> Could anyone give me the date of McCarthy's attack on
>> the Pentagon and say whether this was before or after the Ed Murrow report?
>> Gary
>
>McCarthy began to concentrate on the Army at the beginning of 1954...
>
>24 February 1954: Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens had been summoned
>to testify before McCarthy's subcommittee...he had prepared a statement
>accusing McCarthy of undermining Army morale...but he never read it...
>instead, he met with McCarthy and accepted a "Memorandum of Agreement".
>..this was interpreted as complete and abject surrender on the part
>of Stevens...
>
>Eisenhower began to move against McCarthy almost immediately...
>
>10 days later, Murrow used his CBS documentary show, "See It Now,"
>for a film-clip program that was decidedly anti-McCarthy (CBS
>stations reported calls that were overwhelmingly supportive of
>the program)...
>
>the Army began a counter-attack on 11 March 1954...
>
>the Army-McCarthy hearing began on 22 April 1954 and continued for
>36 days...

The other day I saw a broadcast about the late Fred Friendly (producer of
the Morrow program).
It included a segment in which he related the background of the McCarthy
program.  It seems that
the origin was a CBS Reports program in mid-1953 that reported on the
redbaiting of a young
Marine, resulting in his vindication.  The McCarthyite response was so huge
and vehement that Murrow and Friendly, without any encouragment from CBS
management, began to pay close attention to McCarthy and assemble the
documentation that was to prove so overwhelming.
Friendly was not asked why CBS chose that time to let Murrow air their
program.  If he had been,
there is no doubt that he would have attributed this access of courage to a
sense of changing winds in Washington.

Shane Mage




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