Next Eisenhower ordered the publication of documents that showed Roy Cohn threatening the army to obtain preferential treatment for David Schine, who had just been drafted. Many called upon McCarthy to apologize and fire Cohn, neither of which he did. Instead, the senator rebutted the claims, stating the army was “trying to use Schine as a hostage” to blackmail him into stopping investigations on the army.

   “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
– Joseph Welch, June 9, 1954 (McCarthy, PBS)

     What followed, starting April 22, 1954, were a series of televised hearings led by Senator Karl Mundt investigating the charges made on both sides. Joseph Welch, the army counsel, sat opposite McCarthy and Cohn. Upon McCarthy’s decision to break a previous agreement (essentially double-crossing Cohn), Welch said what the public had been waiting to hear for years.

     The hearings concluded in June that McCarthy had not aided in the use of improper methods to gain preferential treatment for Schine, but that he should have disciplined Cohn for doing so.

What McCarthy truly lost was the favor of the public.