9 June

'You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?' Council for the US army, John Welch

June 9, 2009 · 1 min read

On 9 June 1954, on the 30th day of the Army-McCarthy hearings of alleged communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps, Senator McCarthy accused a junior partner in the Joseph Welch’s law firm of membership of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which J. Edgar Hoover was seeking to have designated as a Communist front organization.

Welch responded accusing McCarthy having no sense decency and demanded that the chairman called the next witness. The gallery erupted in applause.

The hearing was broadcast live on television and marked the beginning of the end for McCarthy’s communist witch-hunting.

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