This first week in May of 1954 saw the beginning of the infamous Army-McCarthy Hearings regarding Communist infiltrators within the Military. This broadcast, from May 5th, wraps up the days proceedings from May 4th, which was Day Nine in the seemingly never-ending hearings.

This was one of the first gavel-to-gavel live Senate hearings to be broadcast on radio and television. The first was the legendary Kefauver Crime Committee Hearings, and the audience for those hearings went through the roof.

Likewise with the Army-McCarthy Hearings, some four years later. These hearings were epitomized by the now-famous showdown between Chief Counsel Welsh and Sen. Joe McCarthy several weeks later that ended in the quote "Have you no shame, Senator?".

These days, with C-Span, we take hearings like this for granted. But in 1954 it was a first glimpse for many into the inner-workings of Capitol Hill.

So here is Day 9 as reported by George Herman and Griffing Bancroft of CBS Radio with excerpts from the days proceedings (for those who missed it live).

At the end of over 30 straight days of broadcast hearings (on radio and TV), which included the now-famous "At long last Senator, have you no sense of decency?" between Attorney Joseph Welch and Senator Joe McCarthy, the seemingly endless display of innuendo, character assassination and dirty laundry was coming to an end.

On June 15th 1954, it was a comparatively calm day, with closing statements, cross examinations and a general feeling of winding down the proceedings, which were to conclude within the next two days.

So here is a half-hour recap of the days testimony, offered by CBS Radio as part of their daily broadcast of the hearings, hosted by CBS Newsmen Griffing Bancroft, Daniel Schorr and George Herman.

If you were around on this day, no doubt you would have been glued to the radio or TV.

(Truman - fear was gripping the country and some people liked it that way)

There's a curious comparison to be made with our current state of smear, fear and hate politics and what was going during the Truman Administration. Only then it was under the guise of the Red Scare. Now, it's just partisanship, race baiting, fear, innuendo and character assassination because it can be gotten away with.

But in 1951 the air was pretty thick with paranoia and the McCarthy's of Washington were shot gunning hate at every opportunity. So much so, that President Truman had a few words to say about it at an American Legion building dedication on August 14, 1951.

Pres. Truman: “Character assassination is their stock and trade. Guilt by association is their motto. They have created such a wave of fear and uncertainty that their attacks upon our liberties goes almost unchallenged. Many people are growing frightened – and frightened people don’t protest. Stop and think. Stop and think where this is leading us.”

Funny - he could have said that about an hour ago.

(Sen. Millard Tydings - smeared into losing re-election in 1950)

Before there was Limbaugh there was Fulton Lewis Jr. whose news/commentaries over The Mutual Radio network carried more water for the right wing than just about anyone else during the 1940s and 1950s. Lewis was a staunch supporter of Sen. Joe McCarthy and pretty much an attack dog with a microphone, digging dirt, spreading innuendos and fabricating stories.

One such target was Democratic Senator Millard Tydings(D-MD) who chaired the Tydings Committee in Washington investigating Communists in the government.

The reason for the target was two-fold. A: Tydings was running for re-election in 1950 and B: He criticized McCarthy for creating hysteria where there was none.

So on October 18, 1950, Lewis issued a stinging denunciation of Tydings, saying his committee was "whitewashing" the investigations and that Tydings had communist leanings himself. There was a doctored photograph widely circulated around the time of the campaign that allegedly showed Tydings with Communist Party Candidate Earl Browder - a photo later admitted to being spliced from two different sources since Tydings had never met Browder.

But the fact of the matter was, Lewis was carrying water for McCarthy and his commentary forced Tydings to defend himself which he did on the night of October 19th 1950.

Sen. Tydings: “It is always easy however, for those without facts to raise the cry of whitewash. And remember, that Mister Lewis never said . . never saw any of the 81 files of the persons mentioned which my committee examined. But he knows all about them. Remember too, that of all the Republican members of my committee, Senator Hickenlooper read only 9 of the 81 files and Senator Lodge read only 12 of the 81. I read all the 81. My oh my, what Mister Lewis would have said that if I, a Democrat, had read only 9 or 12 of the files of the 81 that were to be read, wouldn’t he have cut loose for fair? But on that score of course he’s as silent as the tombs.”

Even though rebuttal time was given over Mutual - the irony is that "a technical problem" prevented the first three minutes of his broadcast from being aired and no make-good time was offered.

In the end, Tydings lost his bid for re-election several days later and the forces of smear and fabrication won.

Sound familiar?

(1954 - not complicated, but no less surprising - even to Robert Mitchum)

(Robert Mitchum with Simone Sylva at the Cannes Film Festival 1954)

With the Korean War truce holding, Joe McCarthy stopped dead in his tracks and a gang of Puerto Rican nationals shooting up the House chamber wounding five Congressmen, 1954 would probably be less complicated than other years during the Eisenhower tenure but no less momentous. There was the fall of Dien Bien Phu and what would eventually become our foray into Southeast Asia, the landmark School Desegregation decision by The Supreme Court, the end of British occupation of Egypt - everything that would have some repercussions for the future, but what seemed at the time like orderly passage.

So today's recap of events from 1954 offers further proof that, no matter how innocent or innocuous something may seem at the time, it invariably winds up playing a major role in a future we hadn't anticipated.

(Joe McCarthy - Crown Prince of Making It Up As He Went Along)

I've been hearing the name Joe McCarthy being bandied around in recent days - mostly misquoted and misrepresented by people living in a fact-free environment.

Joe McCarthy probably represented one of the darker periods in American history - one based on fear and hysteria and paranoia. A period where innuendo carried weight and facts were so hazy and misquoted that shreds of truth were difficult, if not impossible to find - and it was McCarthy who held court during this reign of terror - one which destroyed and mutilated countless innocent lives. And all because the new-found power was intoxicating and McCarthy luxuriated in it.

Portraying himself as the selfless crusader for Justice in America, he took advantage of the susceptible, the easily led, the malleable - much the same as the Teabag movement is doing now. Make up facts if they don't subscribe to a certain ideology and repeat them over and over until they become true. McCarthy was master at it.

Here he is at an Irish Fellowship meeting on the occasion of St. Patrick's Day in Chicago, speaking to a group of 1500 on March 17, 1954.

Joe McCarthy: “There’s only one Communist Party. The Communist Party that puts out this pamphlet. Setting the line for the Communist Party in the United States, is the same Communist Party that tells 5th Amendment Communists how they should testify. It’s the same Communist Party , if you please, that ordered American boys, have their hands wired behind their backs, and their brains blown out with Communist machine guns. It’s one and the same party, my good friends. Now there are those who say ‘well, it’s all right to dig them out, but oh we don’t like your method. Well, my good friends, up to this date, to this very moment, none of those who said they don’t like the methods have told us any other method they could use that would be effective. And when you hear them crying that they don’t like the methods I suggest that you ask them when and where they ever exposed a Communist by their methods? They say, when they say ‘you don’t treat them like gentlemen’, I’d like to ask them, take the twenty, the twenty whom I’ve named to you. If they don’t give us general statements my good friends, say pick out one of those cases, and tell us where we ever mistreated any of those innocent Communists? You know, it’s easy to make those general comments. And when they say we don’t treat them like gentlemen, while we do I might say that if we did not, I would not cry for them. Traitors are not gentlemen, my good friends. They don’t understand being treated like gentlemen!"

As ever - some things just never change. Only the names and the faces.