Another Bad Week

Joe McCarthy had another bad week in Washington. Just after Redhunter J. B. Matthews' forced resignation (TIME, July 20) came blows less visible, but possibly more hurtful. Joe was 1) bluntly stopped by his fellow Republicans from carrying out his threatened investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency; 2) turned down when he asked the resigned Democratic members of his subcommittee to rejoin him; 3) faced with further pressure from the G.O.P. leadership to tone down his antics. Against these rebuffs he was able to produce one solid achievement: his subcommittee's report on Western trading with the Chinese Reds (see below). For the rest, there was only a flurry of backpedaling statements and ingenious explanations for his difficulties.

McCarthy's threat to investigate the guarded activities of CIA came to a head when he demanded that CIAman William P. Bundy be fired. His reason: Bundy, a son-in-law of Dean Acheson, had reportedly contributed $400 to the Alger Hiss defense fund.

Last week, in a series of heated conferences, Vice President Richard Nixon curtly told McCarthy that Bundy, already thoroughly cleared for security, will not be fired. Furthermore, said Nixon, if Joe tried to pull CIA into his subcommittee, he would be outvoted by his fellow Republicans. To screen his defeat, Joe sent off a face-saving letter to CIA Director Allen W. Dulles, asking him to fire Bundy if the charges against him proved correct.

The Democrats, for their part, were solidly lined up to exploit McCarthy's discomfiture. When he wrote a 2,000-word letter to Senators John L. McClellan, Stuart Symington and Henry M. Jackson, asking them to return to their seats, all three sent back a firm "Thanks, no." Wrote Jackson: "I can find nothing in your letter that indicates any change in subcommittee policies or any desire to afford subcommittee members the authority, right and voice commensurate with their responsibility."

Behind the scenes, G.O.P. Senators were trying to work out an agreement whereby the Democrats would rejoin the committee in return for a moderation of McCarthy's tactics. Said a fellow Senate Republican : "Joe's in very bad shape, and we've told him so."

Early this week, in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press program, Joe tried to clear up his setbacks with some typical explanations. The Democrats had left his subcommittee, he said, because they feared to join the other members in exposing the "graft and corruption" of the Truman Administration. He added that criticism of his chief investigator, 26-year-old Roy Cohn, was the "most flagrant, most shameful example of anti-Semitism I ever saw."

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