interesting article - Huac- McCarthy - Kennedy's - Nixon - LBJ - Nexushttp://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/herman-mccarthy.htmlJoseph McCarthy - Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator By ARTHUR HERMAN
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That determination to succeed in a hostile environment was one of
the bonds that drew together Joe McCarthy and another prominent Irish Catholic family in the fifties, the Kennedys.
Robert Kennedy had joined McCarthy's staff in 1953 at the behest of his father, the senator's keen admirer.
Like McCarthy, Joseph Kennedy was a former Roosevelt Democrat and a fervent anti-Communist. He often invited McCarthy to stop by for drinks at the Kennedy house at Palm Beach and to stay at the family compound at Hyannis Port. The senior Kennedy's view of politics, and of life, was much like McCarthy's: "It's not what you are that counts, but what people think you are."
McCarthy became a minor figure in the Kennedy circle. To the ex-ambassador's delight, he dated two of the Kennedy daughters, Patricia and Eunice, who discovered "he had a certain raw wit and charm when he had not had too much to drink," as Eunice later put it. Joe also played shortstop in family softball games (he did so badly that the Kennedys eventually had to bench him).
Robert Kennedy served McCarthy loyally as assistant counsel for his Subcommittee on Investigations, until a personal quarrel with the chief counsel, Roy Cohn, forced him to quit.
But
he and Joe remained close, and Joe McCarthy stood as godfather for Bobby and Ethel's first child. One day after McCarthy's censure by the Senate in 1954, Bobby was sailing on the Potomac with a group of reporters. He started defending McCarthy against their criticisms. "Why do you reporters...feel the way you do?" he wanted to know. "OK, Joe's methods may be a little rough, but after all, his goal was to expose Communists in government — a worthy goal. So why are you reporters so critical of his methods?"
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John Kennedy's views, on communism and the Soviet threat, were not so different from McCarthy's either. Although a loyal Democrat, Kennedy had also bashed the Truman administration for its dismal China record.
One night in February 1952 he heard a speaker at Harvard's Spree Club denounce McCarthy in the same breath as Alger Hiss. Kennedy shot back, "How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!" Later he would back the Communist Control Act, a measure that went far beyond anything McCarthy had ever proposed, by virtually outlawing the Communist Party in the United States. During
the debate on McCarthy's censure in 1954, while most Democrats lined up against him Kennedy warned that censure might have serious repercussions for "the social fabric of this country." And when the actual censure vote came,
John Kennedy carefully contrived to be in the hospital for a back operation, so that he would not have to cast a vote against a man who was wildly popular with not only his father but his Irish and Italian constituents. ...
Here the better comparison is not with John Kennedy (or even Richard Nixon, whom he resembled in certain other ways), but with another Senate colleague,
Lyndon Baines Johnson. It was Johnson who arranged for the Senate to censure McCarthy in December 1954, the move that effectively ended McCarthy's career. But in the end they shared more than they differed.
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So LBJ went after McCarthy and so he wanted his man (Nixon (=Bush oil man)) to be on the committee ?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_CohnRoy Cohn
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The Rosenberg trial brought the 24-year-old
Cohn to the attention of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover, who recommended him to Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy hired Cohn as his chief counsel, choosing him over Robert Kennedy, reportedly in part to avoid accusations of an anti-Semitic motivation for the investigations
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After leaving McCarthy,
Cohn had a 30-year career as an attorney in New York City.
His clients included Donald Trump,
Mafia figures Tony Salerno, Carmine Galante, and John Gotti, Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager,
the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Texas financier and philanthropist Shearn Moody, Jr.[13] and the New York Yankees baseball club. He was known for his active social life, charitable giving, and combative personality. In the early 1960s he became a member of the John Birch Society and a principal figure in the Western Goals Foundation.
He maintained close ties in conservative political circles, serving as an informal advisor to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan...
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/RFKOH-RMC-01.aspxDescription:
Cohn discusses his hostile relationship with Robert F. Kennedy, his work with Joseph R. McCarthy on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and court cases against him prosecuted by New York attorney Robert Morgenthau, among other issues.