Irving Peress, dentist who was subject of Sen. Joseph McCarthys hearings, dies at 97

In more than four decades as a New York City dentist, Irving Peress pulled teeth and filled cavities in unremarkable obscurity.

But for a few months 60 years ago, he was the focus of national attention: exhibit A in Sen. Joseph R. McCarthys campaign to warn the nation of the communist threat to the American way of life and the extent to which it had already penetrated the countrys vital institutions.

Dr. Peress, who died Nov.13 at 97, was a primary target in McCarthys drive to ferret out the communist fifth column in the U.S. Army, into which the dentist had been drafted during the Korean War.

He was commissioned an officer in 1952 and signed an oath affirming that he had never been a member of an organization that sought to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means.

But he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protection against self-incrimination when asked if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party or any affiliated body. This got him put under Army surveillance, but he was promoted nevertheless from captain to major in October 1953.

An anonymous source told the Senates Government Operations Committee about it. McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican sitting on the committee and serving as chairman of its subcommittee on investigations, decided to hold hearings into communist saturation of the Army.

He wanted to know: How could someone under surveillance for communist connections get a promotion in the Army? This looked like yet another example of coddling communists, the senator said, adding that there was somewhere at the Pentagon a secret master who had somehow engineered Dr. Peresss promotion.

In hotbeds of anti-communism around the nation, the question was asked: Who promoted Dr. Peress?

Several times during his testimony before McCarthys committee, Dr. Peress invoked the Fifth Amendment. McCarthy called him a Fifth Amendment communist. Dr. Peress said anyone attacking him for exercising this right was himself guilty of subversion. He repeated that he never sought the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

To McCarthy, Dr. Peress remained the key to the deliberate Communist infiltration of our Armed Forces.

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Irving Peress, dentist who was subject of Sen. Joseph McCarthys hearings, dies at 97