magnificent setting. when there's an investigation, it usually has a large cast of characters and a very convoluted plot and everyone sits around waiting for the witness to sing. television came along in 1947. the first televised hearing was general george marshal testifies before the foreign relations committee. this had to do with american foreign policy. he was secretary of state at the time. the marshal plan was one of the big issues of the day. >> europe is still emerging from the devastation and dislocation of the most destructive war in history. within its own resources, europe cannot achieve within a reasonable time economic stability. the solution would be much easier, of course, if all the nations of europe were cooperating, but they are not. >> the real excitement of television covering hearings didn't happen until 1950 when a

freshman democratic senator from tennessee began a special investigation into organized crime, the mafia or the crime in cities of the country. and he started going around with the committee to the cities rather than have everybody come to washington. it made the circuit. when it got to new orleans, the local tv station pre-empted howdie doodie and put the hearings on. that got a lot of attention in new orleans. this was senators and mobsters. it was a great combination and investigation. really shocking evidence was coming across. so as the committee traveled, the local tv started picking up on this. bit time it got to new york, it

was like a broadway show doing its tryouts and getting to great white way, of course, the new york networks all broadcast it. they were national networks. it wasn't just local television anymore. one of the witnesses was frank costello, who was a mobster in new york. of course, they came to washington and tv came into this room to cover this. housewives were holding parties, inviting friends over to watch this. it was the best daytime television ever at this point. it turned this man into a presidential candidate. he ran in the 1952 primaries and did very well. he didn't get the nomination, but in 1956 he ran for vice president. a lot of other senators obviously noted that television could really identify them as a major player and could elevate their stature and turn them into presidential candidates. in 1953, senator joseph mccarthy

became the chairman of the old truman committee, the permanent subcommittee on investigations. mccarthy had been a senator since 1947. he had gotten into the anti communist business in 1950 when he went to west virginia to give a lincoln's day talk and held up a piece of paper and said, i can't give all the names but i hold in my hand the list of the known communists in the state department that the secretary is not doing anything about. he had a specific number. at the time, mccarthy was reading from notes rather than a prepared speech. even he couldn't remember exactly what he said. an associated press story came out and made huge headlines around the country. mccarthy suddenly became the nation's number one red hunter. this was at the time when the rosenberg case was going on.

mccarthy was making charges against all sorts of people, including george marshal and secretary of state dean achison and people who he he was implicating. when he got to be chairman of the committee on the permanent subcommittee investigation, the senate thought that he would get off of that issue, because there was an anti-communist subcommittee, the intern security subcommittee. it had jurisdiction over communist issues. mccarthy felt his committee had jurisdiction over everything and he could do what he wanted. he was looking around to hire a chief counsel. he had some senior people, some people who had decent reputations. he looked at robert kennedy as a possible counsel. instead he hired roy cohen, a prosecutor from new york and who

worked in the justice department. this was a big mistake. mccarthy needed somebody to slow him down. he sometimes would lose control. he needed a ma juror force. cohen was young and totally ruthless. and egged mccarthy on. i've done a lot of oral histories with people who worked here at the time. mccasually has a villianous illage. almost all the people who worked for him really liked joe mccarthy. he was a nice guy. he was the only senator who gave one of the staff a christmas present for instance. he went out of his way to help people. he was lending money to the police. he was a hail fellow well met. but when he would get before the tv cameras, it was a dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. a different side of his personality came out. shocked the people who liked him.

>> i'm glad we're on television. i think the millions of people can see how low that a man can sink. i repeat, they can see how low an alleged man can sink. >> whether the cameras were turned off, he would throw his arm around the people he just attacked on the floor. he was a very odd person in a lot of ways. he was totally inept investigator. he was not focused enough to be able to do the hard work. cohen was also not a really great investigator in the long run. the records of the committee are a total mishmash for that time period. they called up hundreds of witnesses to come to talk in closed session. we recently published those closed sessions. it's clear they were rehearsals. mccarthy was looking for who to bring out before the tv cameras. if a person grovels in front of mccarthy or if a person

absolutely stonewalled mccarthy, they were likely to be called to the public session. if on the other hand a person said, it's true, in 1932, i was a member of the communist party. we thought the economy was collapsing. after a while i realized the party was ridiculous and i got off after they signed a pact with germany in 1939. i have been totally anti-communist since. if they offered a reasonable explanation of their behavior, they were less likely to be called out in public. mccarthy wanted people who were either going to humble themselves in front of him or were going to look awful by stonewalling and taking the fifth amendment in these investigations. we know now that -- because of the intercepts that there were communist spies in the government in the 1940s. we also know that practically no one that mccarthy paid a great amount of attention to was involved in spying.

he missed the boat. e house and american activities committee had a better track record in terms of investigating than did mccarthy. mccarthy floundered around. by the end of 1953, however, roy cohen had started an investigation of the army signal corps in new jersey. he convinced mccarthy they had finally found a link. rosenberg had worked there. he was still there was a spy ring at work. eventually, the army let something like 32 engineers be suspended because of the investigation. as investigation was going on, it turned out mccarthy didn't have evidence on these people. most all of them were offered their jobs back. some of whom refused to go back to work. really, actually wound up hurting our signal corps, which was our investigation, the army,

one way they were able to track what was happening in the world. that was sort of crippled by the mccarthy investigation. in the middle of all of this, one of mccarthy's staff members, an unpaid consultant by the name of david shine got drafted. this is the days of universal draft. he was a young man. he got brought into the army as a private. mccarthy and roy cohen in particular -- cohen tried to get shine an army commission, but he wasn't qualified. so he went in as a private. then they began to bombard the army with requests for david shine to get weekends off. the committee was going to need him for things and all the rest. eventually -- the army tried to placate mccarthy. they didn't want to make him mad. after a while it got to be too much. they started documenting this. finally, the army charged that mccarthy was continuing his

investigation as -- to blackmail them into special treatment for private shine. mccarthy responded that the army was holding private shine hostage to stop his investigation. now you have charge and counter charge. the senate had to investigate. this is senator mccarthy's own committee. but he is one of the plaintiffs. so he had to step down as chairman and let another chairman -- senator chair. and then it became the army versus mccarthy hearings. of course, the president of the united states at this time was a republican president, dwight d. eisenhower who spent his adult life in the army. the one institution that president eisenhower identified the most with and felt the warmest about was the institution that mccarthy was investigating. so now the entire eisenhower administration came down on the other side. a lot of republicans who had been supporting mccarthy really realized they needed to support the president. so mccarthy's support began to

erode at this point. the army mccarthy hearings were hot television. abc, which was the third television network at the time, covered it gavel to gavel during the day. acti abc had very little daytime programming. nbc and cbs covered it but at night they would do highlights. they would have a special program in the evenings. if you worked during the day, you could still catch up with mccarthy at night. during the day, everybody was glued to this. again, i do oral histories. a lot of people say i came home from school and my mother was sitting watching television. she never did that. but she was caught up watching the army mccarthy hearings. senator mccarthy was no longer chairman of the committee. so he couldn't control the committee. but he had a way of making sure

that he was sort of the major domo in all of this by interr t interrupting. as soon as the first witness tried to speak, it was point of order, mr. chairman. senator mccarthy was badgering in. he would badger the witnesses. he would attack the witnesses. raise questions about their credibility, implied they were all communists. >> you are not running this committee. >> do i have the floor? >> the chair has the floor. he is endeavoring to determine whether senator mccarthy is speaking to a point of order. >> mr. chairman -- >> state your point of order and speak to it. >> mr. chairman, may i suggest -- >> i'm getting sick of sitting here at the end of the table and having whoever wants to interrupt in the middle of a sentence. >> roy cohen said watching television that night he realized mccarthy was coming across terribly, a bullying,

humorless figure. the army had the wisdom to hire a very talented lawyer from boston, robert welsch, who was the old school -- a country lawyer type. but a very cagey fellow. he badgered roy cohen and he badgered mccarthy with humor through the program as it developed and got under mccarthy's skin. eventually, mccarthy attacked not him but one of his young assistant attorneys who had been a member of the national lawyers guild, which was the justice department that was a communist front. it didn't mean people in it were communist but they were communists that were using this as a front organization and implies the attorney was secretly a communist. basically, welsch worked out a

deal with cohen. we won't bring those things up as long as you don't bring up anything about this young attorney. when mccarthy couldn't control himself and brought this up, cohen was aghast and tried to stop him. that's when welsch said, have you no sense of decency and gave list famous speech about that. >> let us not assassinate this lad further. you have done enough. have you no sense of decency, sir? at long last. have you left no sense of decency? >> i know this hurts you. >> i will say it hurts. >> i would like to finish this. >> senator, i think it hurts you, too. >> there's some evidence that he expected mccarthy to do this. in fact, was prepared to do this and wasn't quite as shocked as he appeared on television at the time. the television audience was shocked.

mccarthy's personal standing really eroded as a result of all of this. interestingly enough, hollywood hired robert welsch later on. if you see him later on, he is the cagey judge. he had a certain theatrical side to him along the way. but he really did show mccarthy for what he was. that undermined mccarthy's standing among the other senators. they began an investigation of mccarthy and his tactics. in december of 1954, a few months after the army mccarthy hearings, the senate voted to censure mccarthy for conduct unbecoming a senator. all of the democrats, except for john kennedy who was in the hospital, and half of the republicans, including bush, wound up voting to censure senator mccarthy. senator mccarthy was never able to regain his national standing after that. he went into a tailspin and he

died at the age of 48 a few years later. when roy cohen stepped down as the counsel of the committee, the committee hired robert kennedy to replace him. you can go through the records. you can tell the moment that cohen leaves and kennedy takes over. this mishmash of paperwork that's thrown into boxes is suddenly replaced by typed depositions. it looks like a serious attorney is in charge at this point. kennedy brought together a very talented staff and they began investigating and continued some of the investigations that mccarthy allowed to drift off, including an investigation of general electric and it had a union that was communist dominated. and general electric as a result of this tried to improve its public relations and hired an actor by the named of ronald reagan to be a spokesman. >> good evening.

tonight john forsythe stars in the general electric theater. at general electric, progress is our most important product. >> this was a big change for reagan, making him less of a hollywood actor and more of a public figure. kennedy then -- when the democrats came back into the majority became the chief counsel of the committee and launched an investigation into labor racketeering. so in the late 1950s, this is the room where robert kennedy interrogated hoffa and other labor leaders. on the committee, serving with him were his brother john f. kennedy and a republican senator barry goldwater. it was the first time that national television audienced got a chance to watch the two kennedy brothers and senator goldwater. it had an impact on their careers. >> the only -- you can't tell us who he talked to beside s you, mr. hoffa?

i'm asking you. you are the one who made the report to the committee about the -- what your accountant found. there are no records. the whole transaction was in cash. >> that investigation was on through about 1960 when robert kennedy became the campaign manager for his brother's presidential campaign. in fact, john f. kennedy declared his presidential candidacy in this room in january of 1960. >> senator john kennedy of massachusetts, democrat, throws his hat in the presidential ring at a washington press conference. >> i'm announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the united states. >> a lot of the staff of the permanent subcommittee on investigation who during the day were investigating mccarthy at night were in the back rooms planning john f. kennedy's campaign. kenny o'donnell, people who became major players in the kennedy administration started out on the senate staff of that

permanent subcommittee on investigations. actually, that was not the permanent subcommittee. that was the -- a special committee created out of the labor committee and the permanent subcommittee. so it was a hybrid committee created. robert f. kennedy announced in 1968 that he was run fog are president in this room. senator edward kennedy had a very long career in this room, as chairman of the judiciary committee and other committees involved in things. so when senator kennedy died in 2009, the senate named this room for the three kennedy brothers, all of whom had served in the senate, john, robert and edward and all of whom had some major event from hearings, like the hoffa hearings, through announcing their candidacy to chairing other investigations. so this room is the kennedy caucus room.

in 1973, the watergate hearings opened in here. watergate was a real turning point. it was a turning point formation and for the nixon administration but it was also a turning point for the investigations. joe mccarthy had given a bad name to congressional investigati investigations. supreme court had to weigh in. it gave a certain stigma to congressional investigations. so there are a nm of books that came out from people who were real civil libertarians in the 1950s denouncing investigations in general and saying that they weren't good for the irresponsi they investigated. then the watergate break h-in happened. while "the washington post" covered it for months, the rest of the press let watergate story drop. they didn't think it was the big issue. they followed the campaign, president nixon versus george mcgovern. and in the end, nixon won an

enormous victory over mcgovern in 1972, despite the vest -- "the washington post's" investigation of the stories that were appearing. by january of 1973, enough stories were coming out. a reporter for "the new york times" and had discovered the whitehouse connection to the hush money paid to the burglars to keep them from spilling the beans when they were being tried. congress realized they needed to look into it. mike mansfield was the majority leader at the time. usually, when a resolution is submitted to hold a special investigation, the person who submits the resolution backs chairman. edward kennedy had been chair of the a subcommittee of judiciary that started looking into watergate. he suggested creation of the special committee. people thought of edward kennedy

ace potential president or presidential candidate. mike mansfield realized they should not have anybody on this committee who could be seen a a presidential candidate. he prevailed on sam urban. he was a very conservative constitutionally oriented lawyer from -- and a judge from north carolina. and not a presidential person by any means. and several other senators like senator joseph montoya who were respected by the senators but not seen as presidential candidates. the republicans picked howard baker as their ranking member on the committee. sort of a mix of members of their -- from their caucus as well. and they began investigating, closed door and then they went to public hearings. again, i was in graduate school and working in the library of

congress. we were just fixed on watching the hearings. pbs was broadcasting the hearings live. the other networks were doing highlights. i lived in a group house full of graduate students and watched loads of watergate stories. i took day off from working on the library, came here, sat on the stairs for hours waiting to get my turn to come in here. i stood over there by the column, very back of the room, watched john dean on the third or fourth day of his testimony. all of the senators were there the room was bright white especially the front because of the tv lights. it was like watching a hollywood set. these were tv personalities, and it was just a really electric time to be here for that, for that hearing. >> i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by. i also told him --

>> the senator got ready to hold an impeachment trial, looked into. they never had tv cameras in the senate chamber and the public would look at this as a star chamber event if they weren't allowed to watch it. they installed the first cameras in the chamber in 1974. president nixon resigned before there was a trial but kept cameras there until december, in which case the -- they turned them on once, for nelson rockefeller's inauguration as vice president, and turned the cameras off, took them out, and it's not until 1986 that cameras go back into the national chamber. >> so help me god. >> so help me god. [ applause ] >> watergate was 1973 and '74.

then, in the late '70s, you have senator frank church, investigating irregul reregular the cia and fbi in 1975 and 1976. there are major hearings held in here for than that leads to the creation of senate intelligence committee, because as a charge that parts of the executive branch are operating without congressional oversight and you need to have regular committee investigations. of course, most of what the intelligence committee does is done in closed doors because it's all classified. we don't see it as dramatically as we saw what the church committee was doing at that time. after that, you know, in 1983, the hart building opens up, the third of the senate office buildings, because the growth of the staff is happening at a very rapid pace. as late as the mid 1960s, there were less than a thousand

employees on the senate staff, paid in cash twice a moon. they stood in line to get a little envelope full of cash. by early 19 0s because of vietnam and wart gate, the legislative branch felt it couldn't trust the executive branch as much and they were relying on agencies to do the leg work. now they needed independent staff to evaluate what was happening. so they increased the size of the senate house staff considerably, and the senate staff went from about 1,000 to maybe close to 7,000. so eventually they built the hart building, which is designed for modern senate operations. half of the senates operate over there. there's a large room, the central hearing room, dined for modern television. this room was designed before there was television. there is no space to build in any televised or lights or what was necessary.

everything had to be done, brought in temporarily for investigations here. so, since then, most of the big investigations have switched over to the hart building central hearing room. a few of the senior senators, like ted kennedy, and others, liked this room. they remember this. this is where the iran-contra hearings were held in the 1980s. even then iran-contra chaired by senator inoue, one of the senior members and he liked this room as opposed to the heart central hearing room. so you get some major hearings here. and also because sometimes the other room's booked and so this room is available. but this the room where the bork nomination hearings, robert bork, nominated to be supreme court justice. >> i never advised the white house how to meet, how to deal with the watergate special prosecution force. >> and clarence thomas'

nomination, very controversial nominations that took place here. bork voted down. thomas narrowly approved. hearings were very important for both nominations, and this room added to the setting. >> we are -- >> you can almost hear the echoes. you can hear the gavel of the chairman. i can remember, sam irvin sitting up there. it brings back lots of memories over time. it certainly filled with the echoes of history. up next, the herbert hoover presidential library hosts author annette dunlap as she explores the evolution of first ladies' fashion. she chronicles on the public image of the women living in the white house and what their wardrobe choices reveal about the times in which they lived. this program runs about an hour.

>> well, good afternoon, and welcome to the herbert hoover presidential library museum. my name's tom schwartz, and i'm the director. and i'm pleased you have joined us for another program celebrating america's first ladies. in the lobby at the ticket desk, you'll find a palm card which talk about some of our other upcoming events. also dealing with our first ladies exhibition. we're honored today to have annette dunlap as our speaker. annette was awarded an mba from washington university at st. louis. and has more than 30 years of experience as a writer, speaker and entrepreneurial consultant. in her spare time, when she's not raising cattle on a 29-acre farm in north carolina, annette writes books. her first biography was "frank: the story of francis folsom cleveland, america's youngest

first lady." and her second book, "the gambler's daughter: a personal and social and personal history" involved a bit of autobiography in exploring her father's gambling addiction. dunlap's current research brings her to lou henry hoover. she has twice been a recipient of the hoover presidential foundation's travel grants for visiting scholars, allowing annette to mind the lou henry hoover manuscript collection here in west branch. dunlap was featured as scholar for frances cleveland and lou henry hoover on c-span's recent series, "america's first ladies." more than a decade has lapsed since lou hoover received a book-length biography. so dunlap's published research is eagerly awaited. anyone who's had the briefest introduction to lou immediately recognizes an individual possessing a powerful intellect, an infectious and generous