Two for Five

Arthur Watkins of Utah is a hard man who knows how to use a gavel. Four weeks ago, he used one to discipline Joe McCarthy. And in his committee's 60-page censure report there is a hardness and a sharpness which brings to mind those early rings from the Senator's gavel.

In the most unequivocal language, the six senators of both parties, who made up the select committee, called McCarthy to account for his conduct in two of the five main groups of charges. He was, they declared, both contemptuous in his refusal to appear before the Hendrickson Committee (which investigated his finances in 1952) and reprehensible in his treatment of General Zwicker. In a manner entirely free from timidity or politicking, they unanimously asked for his censure on both these counts.

On the three other categories of charges, the senators felt free to criticize, but refrained from recommending censure. Why the Zwicker and Hendrickson charges were used is clear: they were the most obvious instances of McCarthy's misconduct. And so, quite understandably, they cut off the turtle's tail because it stuck out the farthest, and left the neck alone.

Neither the Zwicker nor the Hendrickson charges focused on the real issue; they were merely instances of the Senator's obscene and uncouth manner. The issue--in the five groups of charges there seemed to be but one--came up under Category Three, which stated that McCarthy "invited and urged federal employees to furnish him with information to aid in his investigations even if they would be violating the law, Presidential orders and their oaths of office."

Charge Three is an issue because it accuses the Senator of being more than a boor; it shows that he would subvert constitutional guarantees. To manhandle generals and senators is one thing; to manhandle the law is quite another. McCarthy claimed that federal employees are duty bound to give him information, "even though some little bureaucrat has stamped it 'secret' to protect himself." Either he had a right to make such a claim on the prerogatives of the executive, or he didn't. The Watkins Committee should have made this clear one way or the other.

What they did, instead, was to make an incomplete gesture that leaves the problem little clarified. Although they felt that such conduct could not be condoned, they hesitated to recommend censure, preferring to give McCarthy "the benefit of whatever doubts and uncertainties have confused the issue in the past."

McCarthy has been judged, but the real issue has not yet been disposed of. Eventually some final decision on the overlapping rights and powers of President and Congress will have to be made. But for the present, the Watkins Committee is not to be judged harshly for sidestepping this one. Americans have been doing it for nearly a hundred and eighty years.