Final Vote
Condemns M'Carthy, 67-22, For Abusing Senate and
Committee; Zwicker Count Eliminated in
Debate
Republicans Split
Democrats Act Solidly in Support of
Motion Against Senator
By ANTHONY LEVIERO
Special to THE NEW YORK
TIMES
Washington,
Dec 2--The Senate voted 67 to 22 tonight to condemn Joseph R. McCarthy,
Republican Senator from Wisconsin.
Every one of
the forty-four Democrats present voted against Mr. McCarthy. The Republicans
were evenly divided--twenty-two for condemnation and twenty-two against. The one independent, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, also voted
against Mr. McCarthy.
In the
ultimate action the Senate voted to condemn Senator McCarthy for contempt of a
Senate Elections subcommittee that investigated his conduct and financial
affairs, for abuse of its members, and for his insults to the Senate itself
during the censure proceeding.
Lost in a
day of complex and often confused parliamentary maneuvering was the proposal to
censure Senator McCarthy for his denunciation of Brig. Gen. Ralph W. Zwicker as unfit to wear his uniform
This proposal was defeated by a parliamentary device that avoided
a direct vote on the merits of the issue. Inquiry among influential
Senators indicated they considered the Zwicker proposal
a dilemma they wished to avoid.
Amendment
Substituted
They said
they wished to censure because the facts warranted it. If they failed to do so,
they believed large elements of the public would feel the Senate took notice of
offenses only against itself and not against ordinary citizens.
But also if
they did censure for this, then Senator McCarthy could exploit the decision,
contending he was being punished for his effort to expose former Maj.
Irving Peress, the Army dentist who was promoted
and honorably discharged, and who was denounced by Mr. McCarthy as a
"Fifth Amendment Communist."
Mr.
McCarthy's denunciation of General Zwicker, who
was commanding officer at Camp Kilmer, N. J., when Dr. Peress was discharged, occurred when the Senator
interrogated General Zwicker on the
question of who had promoted Dr. Peress.
The direct
test on the Zwicker issue was avoided by
the substitution of the amendment to condemn Senator McCarthy for having
insulted the Senate during his censure trial.
McCarthy
Loses Three Tests
Thus in its
final form the resolution of condemnation was in two parts, covering the
offenses against the Elections subcommittee and its members in the first part,
and against the Senate in the second. Three test votes were
all lost by Mr. McCarthy before the final condemnation.
First was a
motion to table the Zwicker proposal, made
by Senator Styles Bridges, Republican of New
Hampshire, the president pro tem of the Senate, who assumed the
leadership of the effort to save Mr. McCarthy yesterday.
Such a
motion, if it had succeeded, might have led to a situation that would have
prolonged the debate.
But amid
signs that the Zwicker issue would have
tough sleddings, Senator Wallace F. Bennett,
Republican of Utah, served notice that if Mr. Bridges' move were defeated he
would attempt to substitute for the Zwicker issue
his amendment for abuse of the Senate. The significance of this was that an
amendment by substitution would require no time out for debate.
Then the
voting proceeded. The motion to table was defeated 55 to 33. Mr. Bennett's
motion to substitute passed by 64 to 23 and in the next vote his
amendment was adopted by the same tally.
The final
vote placing Mr. McCarthy under moral condemnation by the Senate came at 5:03
P.M.
The moment
of decision was something of an anti-climax after days of emotional and bitter
debate. It was punctuated by mocking laughter from the hard core of Mr.
McCarthy's adherents.
The accused
Senator was present, but he was not led to the bar of the Senate to hear any
punishment. Instead Mr. Bridges arose from the coterie in the vicinity of Mr.
McCarthy and asked Vice President Richard M. Nixon if the word
"censure" appeared anywhere in the resolution in its final form.
Laughter
from Senator William E. Jenner, Republican of Indiana, and one of Mr.
McCarthy's most vociferous supporters, resounded through the chamber. Senator
McCarthy was grinning. Senator George W. Malone, Republican of Nevada, standing
by Senator Jenner, was laughing, and so was Senator Herman Welker, Republican
of Idaho, sitting beside Mr. Jenner, who all through the debate made the
running defense for Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. Jenner guffawed
loudly again as Mr. Nixon, after examining the text with a clerk announced the
word "censure" was absent. The document used the word
"condemned" in each of its two parts, it was explained.
"Then
it is not a censure resolution," said Mr. Bridges, who by virtue of his
office presides over the Senate when Mr. Nixon is absent. He also asked if
condemnation was censure.
Fulbright
Reads Definitions
"The
resolution does concern the conduct of the junior Senator
from Wisconsin," replied the Vice President. "The interpretation
must be that of the Senator or any other Senator."
Then Senator
J. William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, rose with Webster's International
Dictionary before him and read definitions of condemn and censure amid general
laughter. Senator Jenner, without asking for the floor said, "Let's
do it over again. Let's do a retake."
Senator
Bridges then remarked that this was "peculiar censure" to discover
after all the time and expense of a special Senate session that the resolution
did not contain the word "censure."
Senator
Fulbright asserted that Senator Welker had attached a more serious meaning to
"condemn" than to "censure." Earlier today in one of his
impassioned speeches Mr. Welker had said, "You don't censure a man to
death, you condemn him to death."
Senator
Arthur V. Watkins, Republican of Utah, who was chairman of the special
committee that recommended censure, then said that in the last censure
proceeding, twenty-five years ago, the word "censure" was not used
but that the resolution had stated that "such conduct s hereby
condemned."
"The
point I wanted to make," said Senator Watkins, "is that it is the
historical word used in censure resolutions."
Then
Mr. Jenner asked for the floor in the usual parliamentary way, this
time, to remark, grinning, there was some confusion and "do you suppose we
could do it all over again?"
Senator
Welker rose to comment on definitions and referred to the censure proceedings
as a "mock court."
Shortly
afterward Senator McCarthy left. He had been in the Senate chamber only
briefly, coming in after the final roll-call on the
ultimate vote had started. He said "present" instead of voting on the
issue that is bound to have a marked effect on his political career.
Later,
outside the chamber, reporters asked him if he felt he had been censured.
"Well,
it wasn't exactly a vote of confidence," replied Mr. McCarthy, who was
still wearing his right arm in a bandage for the bursitis that had interrupted
the censure proceedings for ten days.
"I'm
happy to have this circus ended so I can get back to the real work of digging
out communism, crime and corruption," he continued. "That job will
start officially Monday morning, after ten months of inaction." He was
referring to a coming inquiry into alleged Communists in defense plants.
He had
referred to the session as a "lynch party"--one of the remarks for
which he was condemned in the Bennett amendment--and was asked if he felt he
had been "lynched."
"I
don't feel I have been lynched," he replied.
He expressed
his disappointment that the Democrats had voted "straight down the party
line, even though they had declared before it started that this was to be a judicial
proceeding."
Among
Democrats the view was that he might have received a number of their votes if
he had not condemned the whole Democratic party some
months ago as "the party of treason."
Mr. McCarthy
said after referring to the "circus" that he felt no different than
he had last night. That is when he had referred to the censure proceeding as a
"farce" and a "foul job."
Shouting
objections, Senator Jenner opposed an amendment by Senator Edwin C.
Johnson, Democrat of Colorado, and vice chairman of the censure committee, that
would have placed the Senate on record in the censure resolution as being
against communism and determined to investigate subversion relentlessly.
"You're
not going to gild the lily now," shouted Senator Jenner. "The
record has been made and you are going to stay with it."
He declared
that the Democrats had permitted Communists to steal Government secrets through
infiltration of the Government.
Senator
Price Daniels, Democrat of Texas, then made an eloquent plea, proposing that the
resolution be amended to state that the resolution be amended to state that the
resolution should not be construed to limit the investigative powers of the
Senate, especially as to any communist conspiracy.
He said he
wanted to do this to counter the McCarthy charge that the Communist party had
reached into the Senate to make a censure committee "do the work of the
Communist party.
"I want
to make them [the Communists] unhappy and they will be unhappy if you will
permit this amendment to be adopted," said Mr. Daniels to Mr. Jenner.
"We will be able to say to the world that the allegation is untrue that
the Communist party instigated this."
Vice
President Nixon ruled that under a consent agreement between the two parties
neither the Johnson nor the Daniel amendment could be accepted because it was
not germane to the issue of censure.
Flanders Retracts
One Point
Toward the
end of the Senate session, which adjourned sine die for this year at 7:10 P.M.,
Senator Ralph E. Flanders, Republican of Vermont, who had sponsored the
original censure resolution, said he would stand by all the speeches he had
made against Senator McCarthy except that he would like to apologize for a
passage in a speech of last March, when he had likened Mr. McCarthy to Hitler.
He also asked
unanimous consent to strike the passage from whatever volumes of The
Congressional Record remained unbound, but Senator Welker made the single
objection that prevented this.
Senators
McCarthy, Welker and Jenner have threatened to file counter censure
resolutions against Senators Flanders, Fulbright and Morse, who had filed the
specifications for the McCarthy censure action. They gave no indication of
their plans, and adjournment of the Senate tonight would compel them to wait
until the next session.
But Senator Jenner threatened
Mr. Flanders with a subpoena if he did not appear before some committee to
testify about any relations he might have had with Owen Lattimore.
Mr. Lattimore is a former State Department consultant and
professor at Johns Hopkins University who is under
indictment on a charge of perjury in a Congressional hearing on his alleged
Communist associations.
General Zwicker, now with combat
troops in Japan, was criticized by a few McCarthy adherents today as an
arrogant and evasive witness against the contrary evidence of the censure
committee, which had called him as a witness.
He had a
great many champions, though, even among some Senators who said they would not
vote for censure in his case, though they deplored the treatment he had received.
Senator
Herbert H. Lehman, Democrat of New York, was among those urging censure in
the Zwicker incident. The view of this
group was that it would be notice to the country that the Senate was interested
only in the offenses against itselfbut cared nothing of abusive treatment of ordinary citizens.
Senator A.
S. Mike Monroney, Democrat of Oklahoma, declared
that failure to censure on this count would be notice to the public that the
Senate was "a privileged class." He asserted the Zwicker incident was a prime example of how Senator
McCarthy indiscriminately abused heroes of the United States and
Communists.
Senator Monroney also said failure to censure on this count
would be notice that it was all right to place wire taps and intercept mail and
telephone calls of teachers, professors, private citizens, whether it was
constitutional or not, but that it was not all right to do so in the case of
the ninety-six Senators.
It would
also amount to saying, he added, that "We are sacrosanct, we are going to
disregard the constitutional guarantees."
His allusion
here was to the charge by Senator McCarthy that the Elections subcommittee that
had investigated his conduct and finances in 1952 had kept a undercover watch on his mail and telephone calls.
Mr. McCarthy
contended this was illegal, but the debate brought out yesterday that the
subcommittee had been investigating the charge that Senator McCarthy was using
money sent him by the public to fight communism to speculate on a commodity
exchange.
Senator
Charles E. Potter, Republican of Michigan, a Silver Star Army veteran who lost
both legs in combat, said he also favored censure in the Zwicker case.
Senator
Irving M. Ives, Republican of New York, defeated in the race for Governor in
the recent election, kept silent on the McCarthy issue all through the debate,
but voted against Mr. McCarthy.
However,
whenever Senator Watkins made the pro forma motions to reconsider each vote--a
technicality needed to make it final--Senator Ives each time made the necessary
motion to table.