New York ? The Army-McCarthy hearings of spring 1954 have been called “the first great made-for-TV political spectacle,” and under hot TV lights in a jammed Senate caucus room this Washington miniseries hit its boiling point 50 years ago.

The unforeseen war of words the afternoon of June 9, 1954, marked the live-on-TV downfall of an era-defining demagogue, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. And it sealed a symbiotic bond between government and television that has grown only stronger in the half-century since.

McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. His ferocious inquiries, while popular with an anxious public, were denounced by critics as a communist witch hunt.

His taste for smearing the targets of his anti-communist campaign, whether guilty or not, spawned the term “McCarthyism.”

But despite his previous use of televised speeches and news conferences to win support from the commie-fearing electorate, McCarthy was, ironically, about to be undone by TV’s exposure during this, the 30th of 36 days of broadcast hearings into “red influence” in the Army.

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” erupted Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney representing the Army, as he lit into McCarthy. The watching world gasped. No one talked that way to “Tailgunner Joe.”

But Welch had been interrupted during his cross-examination of Roy Cohn, a key McCarthy aide. Butting in, McCarthy had accused Welch of trying to “foist on the committee” a young attorney from his own law firm who had communist ties — or so McCarthy said.

Welch was near tears of righteous outrage at McCarthy’s attack.

Special Army Counsel Joseph Welch, left, lashes at Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., right, calling him reckless and cruel after McCarthy threw a charge of communist association at a member of Welch's law firm during testimony at the Army-McCarthy hearings in this June 9, 1954, file photo. Lt. Col. John Murray is at center. McCarthy, who rose to prominence through a shrewd use of television for his scripted news conferences and speeches, was, ironically, about to be undone by TV exposure beyond his control.

“Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator,” said Welch, about to earn himself entry in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of honor?”

After Welch’s dressing-down and a burst of applause from the gallery, the rattled McCarthy turned to Cohn and said, “What happened?”

This is what happened: The spell of indomitability that TV helped create for him had been broken for all to see, while it happened, on coast-to-coast TV.

From that moment on, McCarthy lost his standing with the public. Charging him with abuse of his legislative powers, the Senate censured him a few months later. In May 1957, he died at age 48 of liver failure.