I am looking for some history: Edward R. Morrow/McCarthy

[jwirr]

I just watched to movie "Good Night, Good Luck". It was great and said it like it was. However, I was in 3rd grade back then and all I remember is McCarthy's death. Please, how were the Kennedy brothers connected to McCarthy? Where can I find a good source of this era?

[NMDemDist2]

1. MAYBE John was in the Senate by then

Bobby was probably still in school and Ted was in short pants I would think

[OldLeftieLawyer]

5. No

It was 1951 - JFK took his Senate seat in 1952, as I recall. Bobby left McCarthy's staff to work on his election in 1951.

I remember this stuff. Amazing.

[NMDemDist2]

8. dang

you ARE older than dirt ain't ya??


:rofl:

but I knew they sure as hell weren't close colleagues ya know?

now old Joe, that might be a different story......

[OldLeftieLawyer]

9. Such a monster

He really was horrid.

And, yes, I am not only older than dirt, I ended up working for the man who had been Harry Truman's White House Chief Of Staff during the McCarthy time. You wouldn't believe the stories he told me. Plus, his stories about Douglas MacArthur were even cooler! And that was BEFORE I was born!

Once, I met Joe McCarthy's widow, in the late 1970s. She had remarried, to a man who served on the Civil Aeronautics Board. She was a very nice woman. I just wondered, ya know?

[jwirr]

10. So in the movie the young man setting beside the empty

chair may very well have represented Robert.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

11. Who knows?

I rather doubt that RFK entered George Clooney's consciousness during the making of that movie. He was about Murrow and McCarthy, and that's all.

Read up on the era. It was a hell of a time, and - personally - I think one of the most interesting periods in our short history. Check out HUAC as well as the McCarthy hearings, and see how lives were destroyed become of innuendo and lies.

[jwirr]

12. On second thought and after reading the comments here

I think it was more likely to be Cohn. Thank all of you for the help.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

14. Cohn, not Cohen

He was a perfect self-loathing Jew, so he changed the spelling of his name.

Read about him. How he died, especially. Make you believe in that old Italian saying, "You spit up in the air, it lands in your face."

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

16. Have you seen "Angels in America" with Al Pacino playing Cohn

in his latter days, haunted by Ethel Rosenberg. Well worth seeing if you haven't (although the Cohn strand is but one of many).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001I2BUI

[OldLeftieLawyer]

18. Yeah,

even though Tony Kushner's crap leaves me cold, I watched it.

Cohn didn't die hard enough, IMHO.

[China_cat]

2. Here are some links...Kennedy and Nixon

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk2.htm
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissaccount.html

[Wheres The Beef]

3. Good Bio

Try to find "Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow by Alexander Kendrick" Copyright about 1969.
Also Joe Kennedy was an early supporter of McCarthy and Bobby worked for Him for a short time.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

4. Don't take that movie as history

There's plenty of misrepresentation via omission in that movie (which I loved, by the way). The Murrow-McCarthy matters were not as clear-cut as that movie would have you believe. You'd be surprised at the things that were left out.

Bobby Kennedy worked on McCarthy's committee, thanks to the intervention of his old man, Joe Kennedy, that old monster. But, Bobby was nothing but a researcher, while Roy Cohn (you DO need to learn all about THIS guy) was McCarthy's chief counsel, as I recall. Then, JFK decided to run for the Senate, so Bobby left - I think - to work on his big brother's campaign. That's the only connection with McCarthy I can recall.

Here's a book you should read - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/015101082X/103-1199071-8655062?v=glance&n=283155 - Tom Wicker does a GREAT job.

Good luck.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Sometimes the library has that stuff.

[blondeatlast]

17. Perfect response. I invite you to visit this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2580816&mesg_id=2580816

Your valuable and concise input is sorely needed.

[pacalo]

7. Robert Kennedy was counsel for the Democratic senate committee

members during the McCarthy hearings. He was 27 yrs. old then.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

13. He was on the staff,

but he wasn't "counsel." That was Roy Cohn.

Bobby was nothing but a researcher. I think it was his first job out of law school, procured by his old man, who made a call to McCarthy.

[Breeze54]

19. Maybe Wikipedia is wrong then...? I have no idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Cohn, four months before he died from complications brought on by AIDS.
By reason of seniority, in 1953 McCarthy became chair of the Senate Committee
on Government Operations and its Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as chief counsel
and Robert Kennedy as assistant counsel to the subcommittee.

:shrug:

[OldLeftieLawyer]

20. Never trust Wikpedia for factual matter ............

But, the title "assistant counsel" is meaningless. Sounds good to the non-legal world, but, really, it's sort of "assistant janitor."

[Breeze54]

21. I don't but they have other links and

I figured you say it was a 'meaningless' title! :)
I was just wondering!! lol

"assistant counsel" = researcher... lol!

[OldLeftieLawyer]

22. Hint:

watch for the title "assistant general cousel."

Whole different ballgame.

See what a lifetime as a Washington lawyer has taught me?

<snort>

Good luck with discovering this great story. You'll love it.

[Breeze54]

23. Bet you could tell I'm not a lawyer!!

:P
I see what you are saying...
I just watched "Good Night and Good Luck" a few days a go.
I made my teen son watch it too.
But that Cohn story looks like a thriller!! :)
Yikes! Gangsers and even Trump!!
I'll have to look into that movie you suggested.
Thanks for the tip!
;)

[pacalo]

24. I was basing my knowledge on the "Point of Order" dvd

that I watched recently. But I appreciate your information, OLL.

Actually, we're both right:

His immediate superior was Roy M. Cohn, the group's chief counsel. Above them both was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, whose name was soon attached to the committee. It rapidly acquired a malodorous reputation among liberals, intellectuals and civil libertarians for its chivvying of witnesses in its investigations of asserted Communist conspiracies and plots in the Government. Robert had obtained his job through his father, who had contributed money to Senator McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign. He got along well with the Senator, a circumstance that plagued Mr. Kennedy when he became, years later, a professing liberal.

After a dispute with Mr. Cohn over the committee staff, Mr. Kennedy resigned his post in mid-1953, but rejoined it in February, 1954, as counsel to the Democratic minority. The following year -- after the Army-McCarthy hearings -- he succeeded Mr. Cohn as chief counsel and staff director when Senator John L. McClellan, Democrat of Arkansas, became committee chairman. In that post he pursued investigations into alleged Communist influence and helped develop some of the conflict-of-interest cases involving personalities in the Eisenhower Administration. Senator McClellan liked him, for he was a persistent questioner of witnesses and a resolute investigator.

Kennedy Memorial Foundation

[Rodger Dodger]

15. What makes you think the Kennedy's were involved?

In 1951/2,I believe the Kennedy's John, Robert, and Edward were in school. It was before they became politically active.