Video: '"Have You No Decency?" | McCarthy | American Experience | PBS'

(Wednesday, June 9, 1954; during the Second Red Scare) — During the Senate-Army Hearings, Army special counsel Joseph N. Welch berated U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy today for verbally attacking a member of Welch’s law firm, Fred Fisher, asking McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Welch had challenged McCarthy’s chief counsel Roy Cohn to give McCarthy’s list of 130 subversives in defense plants to the office of the FBI and the Department of Defense “before the sun goes down.”

In response to Welch’s badgering of Cohn, McCarthy suggested that Welch should “check” on Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in Welch’s own Boston law firm whom Welch had planned to have on his staff for the hearings.

Video: 'Welch versus Joseph McCarthy 1-2'

Fisher had once belonged to the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. had called “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.”

McCarthy had previously agreed to keep Fisher’s involvement in both Welch’s law firm and the NLG confidential. In exchange, Welch agreed to leave a controversy regarding Cohn’s draft status out of the hearings.

Welch had revealed he had confirmed Fisher’s former membership in the National Lawyers Guild approximately six weeks before the hearings started. After Fisher admitted his membership in the National Lawyers Guild, Welch decided to send Fisher back to Boston.

Video: 'Welch versus Joseph McCarthy 2-2'

Welch then reprimanded McCarthy for his needless attack on Fisher, saying “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”

McCarthy, accusing Welch of filibustering the hearing and baiting Cohn, resumed his attack on Fisher, at which point Welch angrily cut him short: “Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Video: 'Murrow Versus McCarthy' (June 9, 1954, at 29:44)

Welch excluded himself from the remainder of the hearings with a parting shot to McCarthy: “Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you … You have seen fit to bring [the Fisher/NLG affair] out, and if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good! I will not discuss it further … You, Mr. Chairman, may as you will, call the next witness!”

After Welch deferred to Chairman Mundt to call the next witness, the gallery burst into applause.