In the summer of 1951, Senator William Benton of Connecticut introduced a resolution on the floor of the Senate calling for an investigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy and perhaps his expulsion from the Senate. In September of the same year Benton testified in support of his resolution before a subcommittee of the Senate Rules Committee, charging that “Senator McCarthy practiced calculated fraud and deceit on the U.S. Senate and the people of the country” through unproved accusations and other false statements.
McCarthy in retaliation claimed that Benton would not dare to make such accusations without hiding behind the cloak of senatorial immunity. Senator Benton waived his immunity, whereupon McCarthy filed a suit for $2,000,000 against Benton for libel and slander. On March 5, 1954, McCarthy withdrew his suit, claiming that Benton's allegations had been so preposterous that he had been unable to find a single person who believed them. Thousands of persons then wrote to Benton saying that they believed his charges and would so testify in court.
From 1951, Benton made McCarthy his personal “project.” He collected evidence relating to many phases of McCarthy's activities. Apart from efforts exerted in his own defense, Benton sought, for example, to publicize what he felt was McCarthy's deleterious effect on the U.S. public image abroad, and to explode the claims that “Joe never hurt an innocemt man,” and that McCarthy was invincible at the polls. He also gave active support to the Committee for an Effective Congress, and to the Joe Must Go movement in Wisconsin.
