Where I Stand: Hank Greenspun, Jan. 8, 1954: McCarthy can only come to violent demise

Saturday, July 1, 2000 | 2:48 a.m.

I'VE NEVER been one to make predictions but when a thing is inevitable, even I can foresee the future.

Sen. Joe McCarthy has to come to a violent end. Huey Long's death will be serene and peaceful compared with the demise of the sadistic bum from Wisconsin.

Live by the sword and you die by the sword! Destroy people and they in turn must destroy you! The chances are that McCarthy will eventually be laid to rest at the hands of some poor innocent slob whose reputation and life he has destroyed through his well-established smear technique.

The poor victim will feel he has little left to live for, so he'll get a gun and blast Joe to Hades. It might be a bit messy but Joe is used to messiness. He has created enough of it.

Really, I'm against Joe getting his head blown off, not because I don't believe in capital punishment or because he does not have it coming, but I would hate to see some simpleton get the chair for such a public service as getting rid of McCarthy.

It would be more befitting the dignity of Joe's position in society if he leaped from a 29-story building as one of his predecessors, Marion A. Zionchek, did two decades ago. The insane congressman from the state of Washington, and the Mad senator from the state of Wisconsin had a great deal in common -- namely, softening of the brain.

Joe's Republican buddies plus some Democratic opponents have decided to cut his appropriations off if he doesn't get out of the Red-hunting racket. They object to his stealing the headlines at the expense of other investigating phonies in the Congress.

Even his comrade in pilfering the United States treasury, Sen. Pat McCarran, thinks it's time Joe was cut down to size. Most likely, the McCarran statement will earn a retort from McCarthy, and if I can add any fuel to the fire, I would like to suggest that the ideal situation would be for McCarran and McCarthy to investigate each other. The results must end in a dead heat. Both must wind up in the penitentiary.

Information from Washington from a source very close to McCarthy -- in fact one of his investigators -- has tipped me off to a possible investigation that McCarthy intends to pursue of me.

I would like to save the senator from Wisconsin some effort and money, purely in the interests of the taxpayer who must foot the bills for these personal investigations.

I am as innocent as a new-born lamb; and if I were not, I would be the first to admit it, because there is nothing bad he can say about me that others haven't already said and more forcefully. I'm ready to plead guilty to anything, but does this excuse the disreputable pervert from answering for his crimes against society?

I would like to refer McCarthy to his colleague, Sen. Pat McCarran, for advice before he starts his probe. McCarran investigated me until his senile old brain turned to jelly, and he couldn't come up with anything. I've been interrogated by the Post Office department, Internal Revenue bureau, FBI, PDQ, OGPU, and all the other alphabetical agencies of government, and they all left talking to themselves.

Even Westbrook (I see snakes in my typewriter) Pegler, thinks I am a model citizen; that is, compared to some of the other figures he writes about; like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ike Eisenhower.

Westbrook was supposed to do a job on me on orders from McCarran. In fact, Pat had one of his senatorial colleagues insert one of Pegler's columns in the Congressional Record, telling what a snake I am and what a fine man McCarran is.

In Senate circles, the Pegler column about McCarran is known as Pegler's fable. The Pegler strategy backfired because my column on him was also inserted in the Congressional Record and if I admit it myself, I out-Peglered "Poison Pen" himself.

McCarran also fared badly because his efforts to link me with the underworld only showed up his own affiliations with the criminal element; and his deposition, taken in connection with the Sun's antitrust suit, forever on file with the Federal court, tells the whole sordid story.

Save your strength, McCarthy, for someone much more vulnerable than I. Nevertheless, a summons from any of your committees will bring me post-haste to Washington. I wouldn't mind traveling at government expense every time I visit friends, the way the McCarrans and McCarthys do.

The only condition I make is that the hearings be televised so the world can know the type of immoral scoundrel who represents the state of Wisconsin. I have the facts to expose you, which is more than the McCarthy investigators can boast they have against me.

You even can dispense with serving a subpoena, Joe! Just send airplane fare. I'd even pay my own expenses, if I had had a crack at the federal treasury for as many years as you.

This challenge is being airmailed to you today!