Sen. Joe McCarthy presides at a hearing of the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, March 10, 1954 (AP)
McCarthy Hearings Made Public Story aired: Monday, May 05, 2003
Along with "duck and cover" movie reels and backyard bomb shelters, the infamous McCarthy Hearings of the 1950s have come to define the Cold War.
Beginning in 1953, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin used his position as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to root out what he implied was a cabal of communist sympathizers within the U.S. It was a crusade that ruined lives and spawned the term "McCarthyism" to describe witch-hunt style attacks.
Now, for the first time in 50 years, 4,000 pages of transcripts from the closed door sessions of the McCarthy Hearings have been released.
