>> from their recent trip to cheyenne wyoming, roger mcdaniel author of buying for joe mccarthy discusses the life and death of the senator lester hunt. >> the most significant positions in the country whose name is not remembered. part of the problem is the nature of his death overshadowed the accomplishments of his life to cause in 1954, there was an enormous stigma of move about homosexuality and about suicide. and lester hunt's widow made it

her life work to make sure the story of the suicide was never told. she went so far as to threaten the author of the wyoming history textbook that if he put anything about the suicide in the textbook that she would sue him. so although he knew part of the story about the blackmail he left it out and so for all the students of wyoming history they have read a book on page 521 gets that in the semester but on page 521 of the book essays overcome by personal and political problems he took his life in 1953. as a politician, he was enormously well-liked. the first time here in for office he was the top go-getter in the county and got elected to

the legislature and people around the state asked him to run for office and he became secretary of state. he was somebody that public service seriously and believe that there was a problem to be solved he needed to lead the way to get it done and as a result, he became a most popular politician in the state. he had been governor for six years re- elected to the term and started thinking about running for the second term. mccarthy was elected two years ahead and the relationship was bad from the very beginning. three months after hunt was sworn into the senate he was appointed to a select committee to investigate nazi war crimes at the battle of the bulge. at the end of world war ii, nazis had massacred dozens of

american soldiers after the battle of the bulge and after the war they were tried as war criminals. they began making charges that the american military officers in the prosecution accused torturer and a variety of other techniques to extract confessions. in the early years of the cold war the senate decided they should investigate and hunt was one of three members to conduct that investigation. mccarthy wasn't on the committee that he insinuated himself into the committee preceding. at the 27 plus hearings be held in washington and around the country, mccarthy sat in on the panel and when you read the transcripts of those hearings, it is the mccarthy we know from history, constantly interrupting

and berating witnesses and other members of the committee and ironically taking the position favorable to the nazis. eventually come he stormed out of the committee, read his own report and accused the other two of whitewashing the investigation. so that was the introduction not just to washington but to joe mccarthy. he would soon become the first major politician in the country to challenge mccarthy publicly. he called him a liar and a drunk. they lived in a house that overlooks some apartment buildings below and he could see the patio behind the apartment and he often talked about how he was forced to sit and watch him convert with women and he just wasn't his type of guy. hunt introduced legislation to allow citizens to sue members of

congress for slander specifically first lander specifically targeted at mccarthy for the ways in which he had ruined so many lives so that two of them were very antagonistic. at one point in the elevator operator reported to the senator that he had overheard a conversation. mccarthy to another person where mccarthy said i'm going to get that sop if it is the last thing i do. and so they were at each other from the beginning. that relationship was up three antagonistic. in june of 1953, his son, a young adult, was arrested in lafayette park across the street from the white house by an undercover agent for soliciting homosexual sex. the background to that incident is a fascinating piece of history because when you look at the community certainly there

was discrimination but they were not targeted. they seldom lost their job because their orientation. they have a vibrant community including washington where there were parks and restaurants and bars and other places they gathered without being hassled by policemen or others. mccarthy comes along and makes his west virginia speech with the allegation there were all these communists in the state department. when he couldn't prove that, senator bridges who was one of the conspirators was a senate pro tem in those days third in line to become president of the united states. he goes to mccarthy and says you're having a hard time proving there are.

we all know homosexuals are security risks. during one of the hearings on mccarthy's allegations, the state department justified and they were asked one of the senator said we are aware you recently fired 91 people in the state department jobs. he said they were not. there was an executive order back to truman and eisenhower that required a discharge and mccarthy and others began to conflate the issue of national security with sexual orientation saying that homosexuals were a security risk and went so far as to make the outrageous claim that adolf hitler had assembled a list of american homosexuals with the goal of compromising their loyalty and turning them into spies cannot seize and at

the end of what were to have had a falling into stalin and then he was recruiting spies for the soviet union so in all of the fervor about the cold war, this allegation overnight turned much of the country against homosexuals. they put pressure on the district of columbia police force to make arrests to cite so they could be identified and they could be fired from federal government jobs and have a result thousands lost their jobs. the dc police department created the elimination squad that was about 600 undercover officers who would go out into the communities and the restaurants and the parks to make eye contact with targeted males and arrest them and that was one of the undercover officers

recovered. initially the attorney into and the arresting police officer made the decision that the charges should be dismissed. he was a seminary student, never had any problem with the law, would have been kicked out of the charge went forward church went forward and so they said we will dismiss the charges. senators bridges and welker from idaho where the two leading republicans that learned about this and so they called in the police officer and made all sorts of threats about him and claimed they had evidence he had taken a bribe in order to drop the charges. then they contacted a friend of lester hunt who was also a friend of herman welker who was a big name in wyoming history. he was the athletic director in the years when they won the national basketball championship and they were going to major

games. he'd grown up with herman welker in idaho idaho and they were big sports fanatics. and so welker and bridges called and said what you need to warn your good friend if he doesn't resign from the senate immediately, we are going to make sure the charges against his son are reinstated if we are going to get him convicted and that will be a problem for him politically. >> she said i would be blackmailed and so they get the charges reinstated into the other weeklong trial and he was convicted. those who knew them watched them everyday at the trial and said you could visibly see them age. his hair went from brown to gray nearly overnight.

he wouldn't even eat lunch in the senate cafeteria. it was almost destroyed his life. he considered if he could run in 1954. while there was a burning christmas, someone broke into their washington, d.c. apartment are ransacked and took nothing of value. there was something they thought there was nothing. imagine the pressure that was put on senator hunt and his wife having had your privacy being invaded like that. and so, they talked for several months about whether or not to run again. in april of 1954 he announced that the election. the senators welker and bridges

continue to the pmt and printed 25,000 posters, told senator hunt if he didn't resign immediately that they would put one of those every mailbox in wyoming. the reason they needed him to resign immediately as the control of the senate is one seat to the democrats and here you have a democrat and republican in wyoming republican governor would control the senate and they would shift overnight. that's why the pressure. at some point in may of 1954 in white house staff in the eisenhower administration shows up at his office. the president approved and said if he will resign immediately and agree to never run for the

senate again you can run for the governor in wyoming but never again for the senate president eisenhower will appoint you to the federal trade commission which was a six-year appointment at the salary of up with the senators were paid. he wants to do it. he's tired of the pressure and wants to get up behind him. his wife and his friends say how can you do that come have explained this to your friends back home that you have this important job and the control has shifted to the republican party? so he decided he wouldn't do that and send word that he wasn't interested and then on the day before = self with the reason that it happened, people understand a suicide to say that those that think about it over kind of a roller coaster up and

down. one day they feel like they want to take their life and the next day not. but for those of you that do theirs something that happens in the hours preceding the suicide that is the final straw. and for lester that was a joe mccarthy press conference on friday afternoon when mccarthy announces publicly that he intends to open a hearing to investigate the member of the senate involved in taking the bribe. that's the big piece of evidence that connects them to the conspiracy because the only people who ever talked about the bribe were senators bridges and welker in the fall when a private meeting with the police officer when they said we have evidence that you took a bribe. my sense of these things is when that happened, when mccarthy made that announcement he felt he was innocent.

he understood as well as anybody what it would mean to be dragged through a mccarthy hearing and how much of your name would be sneered and reputation ruined. he was already distraught because he knew if he had just resigned from the senate there it could have been spared. now we are in june of 1954 and his son has been convicted. there've been all these threats about being the black male and now he's looking at a future he is going to be a target of a mccarthy hearing. he pulled out of the race but that wasn't an effort for these people they needed him out now so the control could shift before the fall elections and so my sense after getting to know

through his letters and his diaries and speeches, that's the moment he says there's only one way out of this and early the next morning he took it. in my view, that was the end for joe mccarthy. a few days later with the hearings that really started the downfall and caused the public to begin to turn on mccarthy that a colleague committed suicide. when it was one of their own and a man is popular and well-liked. the end came for him.

i have an old friend whose family was very political and whose hand was on senator hunt's desk. bernie said i remember a time in our family where. so there came the day that we never talked about it again. he said i didn't understand that until now. but the nature of his death and the circumstances. one of the pleasures about researching and writing this book was to learn about his accomplishments and write about them because while his death was sensational and it's certainly a compelling story, as i said,

this is an individual who is probably forgotten at the time of his death. he spoke at the eagle forum leadership summit in washington, d.c.. this is about a half an hour. >> we have a very exciting afternoon. and we are going to lead with the wonderful author named andrew mccarthy has written faithless execution building the political case for b