WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 1954 (UP) - The Senate gave overwhelming approval of one censure resolution against Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., and prepared to vote on two more. McCarthy predicted his defeat, but said he would resume his investigation into communism on Monday.
As today's Senate session opened, McCarthy's supporters moved to table - and thus kill - the second censure charge - that McCarthy abused Gen. Ralph Zwicker during a Senate hearing last Feb. 18. During questioning on why the Army promoted Dentist Irving Peress, McCarthy said that Zwicker was not fit to wear an Army uniform.
The first blow fell heavily last night when the Senate voted 67 to 20 to adopt the first of two censure counts returned by a special committee. It censured McCarthy for repeatedly abusing a 1951-1952 elections subcommittee which investigated his finances and other activities.
The censure does not affect McCarthy's rights and privileges as a senator nor his position as chairman of the Government Operations Committee. Censure means that his fellow senators find him guilty of unethical conduct in conducting the business of the Senate.
Its effect is what force such condemnation carries in the public's mind and in the minds of senators.
The approved censure charge says that McCarthy refused to cooperate with the subcommittee and abused it, thereby "obstructing the constitutional processes of the Senate, and that this conduct of (McCarthy) is contrary to senatorial traditions and is hereby condemned."
It was apparent today that McCarthy would pick up some support on Zwicker. Republican Senators George Aiken (Vt.) and Leverett Saltonstall (Mass.), both of whom voted for the first censure charge, said McCarthy should escape the Zwicker count.
Saltonstall blamed the Army for failing to extend normal courtesy toward McCarthy during the Peress investigation.
"I have come to the conclusion that the Army did promote and protect a person it had reason to believe was a Communist," Aiken said. He added that the Army did try to stop McCarthy's efforts to "get at the facts."
The third censure charge stems from a resolution by Sen. Wallace Bennett, R-Utah. He demanded McCarthy's censure for calling the Censure Committee the "unwilling hand maidens of the Communist Party."
McCarthy said he was being hit for "exposing Communists." He said that the Democratic vote against him (all Democrats voted for censure) may give the American people the why" of the action.
Separate votes were required on both the Bennett and committee resolutions. Other amendments could be introduced on the spur of the moment and likewise would require action after a maximum of an hour's debate.
In the end, however, a final vote was required on the censure resolution as finally altered or amended.
The adoption of the Censure Committee's first count last night climaxed to 10 days and hundreds of thousands of words of formal debate and it quickly erased speculation on where everybody stood.
All 43 Democrats present, 23 Republicans, and Independent Sen. Wayne Morse (Ore.), voted for it. Twenty Republicans - including GOP Senate Leader William F. Knowland - voted against.
The vote on the elections subcommittee censure count came amid a flurry of other votes in which:
A compromise by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., a McCarthy champion, was defeated 66 to 21.
A compromise sponsored by Sen. Karl E. Mundt, R-S.D., to deplore but not censure intemperate language by McCarthy and any other senator was defeated, 74 to 15.
A substitute offered by Sen. Styles Bridges, R-N.H., asserting that McCarthy violated no Senate rule in the conduct for which the Censure Committee asked that he be condemned, was defeated, 68 to 20.
On all these ballots, the Democrats voted unanimously on the anti-McCarthy or anti-compromise side. The Republicans, however, split almost down the middle on three of the four votes, although a majority was on the anti-McCarthy or anti-compromise side in each instance.
On the censure count itself, Republican breakdown was as follows:
For censure:
Abel (Neb.), Aiken (Vt.), Beall (Md.), Bennett (Utah), Bush (Conn.), Carlson (Kans.), Case (S.D.), Cooper (Ky.), Cotton (N.H.), Duff (Pa.), Ferguson (Mich.), Flanders (Vt.), Hendrickson (N.J.), Ives (N.Y.), Millikin (Colo.), Payne (Me.), Potter (Mich.), Saltonstall (Mass.), Smith (Me.), Smith (N.J.), Thye (Minn.), Watkins (Utah) and Williams (Del.)
Against censure:
Barrett (Wyo.), Bridges (N.H.), Brown (Nev.), Butler (Md.), Dirksen (Ill.), Dworshak (Ida.), Goldwater (Ariz.), Hickenlooper (Ia.), Hruska (Neb.), Jenner (Ind.), Knowland (Calif.), Kuchel (Calif.), Langer (N.D.), Malone (Nev.), Martin (Pa.), Mundt (S.D.), Purtell (Conn.), Schoeppel (Kans.), Welker (Ida.), and Young (N.D.).
McCarthy did not vote yesterday in any case.
Yesterday's voting underscored the conflict in the Republican Party over McCarthy.
Knowland voted pro-McCarthy or pro-compromise on the four votes. Leverett Saltonstall, the GOP whip, and Sen. Homer Ferguson, lame-duck chairman of the GOP Policy Committee, voted on the other side all four times.
Senate President Pro Tempore Bridges voted pro-McCarthy three times but against the Mundt compromise. Sen. Eugene D. Millikin, chairman of the Senate GOP caucus, voted against McCarthy twice, for him once and for the Mundt plan.
