Point of Order!

This editorial condensation of 188 hours of television kinescopes chronicles the United States Senate's Army--McCarthy Hearings, which occupied 36 days between 22 April and 16 June 1954 in the Senate Caucus Room. As the film begins, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (known as the "McCarthy Committee"), has accused the United States Army of permitting Communist infiltration of its ranks. The Army has countercharged that McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy M. Cohn, have used threats to obtain special privileges for Cohn's friend and committee staff investigator G. David Schine, who had been drafted and sent to Fort Dix. McCarthy, in turn, has accused the Army of holding Schine for ransom to blackmail the committee into stopping its investigation. The principals in the hearing are introduced, and although several people on McCarthy's staff are pictured, including Robert F. Kennedy, it is primarily Cohn and McCarthy who are pitted against Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, Army counselor John G. Adams, and special counsel Joseph N. Welch. The subcommittee also includes special counsel Ray Jenkins and his assistant Robert Collier; Senators John L. McClellan, Stuart M. Symington, and Henry M. Jackson; and Sen. Karl E. Mundt, who has temporarily taken over as chairman for McCarthy, who is now, in effect, on trial. Stevens testifies about Army efforts to resist pressures from the McCarthy staff to give special consideration to Private Schine. In retaliation the McCarthy Committee produces a photograph of Stevens and Schine together at an Air Force base, which gives the impression that the Secretary has been particularly friendly toward the private. The next day Welch produces a photograph identical to the other in every way, except that the second picture contains a third party, an Air Force colonel. From cross-examination of McCarthy staff member James Juliana it is established that the original group photo was cropped to make it seem as if only Stevens and Schine were in the picture. Later McCarthy submits to the committee a document identified as a 1951 report by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover summarizing espionage activities at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, but Hoover, through an intermediary, disclaims any knowledge of the paper. Welch, who establishes that McCarthy has possessed the document for months, asks Cohn why the incriminating information was never relayed to Stevens. McCarthy, riled at the lawyer's intensive questioning of his colleague, divulges that a member of Welch's law firm, Fred Fisher, once belonged to the National Lawyer's Guild, an organization labeled as subversive by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Dismayed that McCarthy has used national television both to slander his associate and to exploit a minor occurrence that was already reported in the press, Welch castigates the senator in a long speech that receives loud applause from the spectators. Later McCarthy accuses Senator Symington of having advised Stevens of ways to frustrate the McCarthy staff's investigations of the Army, demanding that Symington rebut the accusations under oath. Symington criticizes the McCarthy staff's research and describes their files as the sloppiest and most carelessly handled he has seen in his government career. As Mundt calls a recess and the caucus room begins to clear, McCarthy likens Symington's statement to a Communist smear. Angrily, Symington answers that anyone critical in any way of the McCarthy staff is always certain to be branded a Communist, and he leaves the room with the others as McCarthy is left alone shouting into his microphone.