Irving Peress

Irving Peress (July 31, 1917 – November 13, 2014) was an American dentist and military officer who became a primary target for investigation of alleged communist leanings during the 1954 Army–McCarthy hearings.

Early life Peress was born to a Jewish family in the Bronx on July 31, 1917. From 1933 to 1936, Peress was a student at City College of New York, where he was a member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He graduated from the New York University College of Dentistry in 1940 and established a practice in New York City. He became involved in politics after marrying Elaine Gittelson, an English teacher who became a therapist and psychiatric social worker.

Military service Peress applied for a commission as an Army dentist during World War II, but failed his physical because of a hernia and did not serve.

Peress was maintaining a thriving practice by the early 1950s when doctors and dentists were being drafted for the Korean War. He gained weight in an effort to aggravate his high blood pressure, fail his physical, and avoid induction into the military. He was inducted into the Army Reserve on October 5, 1952, and reported for active duty on January 3, 1953.

Originally slated for assignment to Japan, Peress asked for and received a compassionate reassignment based on his wife's and daughter's illnesses.

As part of his application for his commission, Peress signed an oath indicating that he had never been a member of an organization that sought to overthrow the U.S. government by unconstitutional means. When he later completed a more detailed questionnaire, Peress responded to queries about membership in the Communist party or affiliated organizations with the phrase "federal constitutional privilege", an allusion to the Fifth Amendment. Although this monitoring failed to uncover any wrongdoing by Peress, he still received fitness reports that called him a "very disloyal and untrustworthy type of officer" and stated that he was devoting himself to "the seeding of dissatisfaction". The Army later described it as a "readjustment in rank" made to comply with the Doctors' Draft Act, a recent law that required that the rank of military medical professionals reflect their level of experience. He said he had and would continue to oppose any group that sought a violent or unconstitutional overthrow of the U.S. government. McCarthy called Peress "the key to the deliberate Communist infiltration of our Armed Forces" and a "Fifth Amendment Communist." Stevens believed that Peress' refusals to answer the committee's questions did not provide grounds for court-martial and approved Peress' discharge on February 2.

An FBI witness named Ruth Eagle, an undercover member of the New York City Police Department, testified on February 18, 1954, that Peress and his wife had been involved with the Communist party in the 1930s and 1940s and that Peress had been a leader of the American Labor Party.

McCarthy said that Peress' promotion had been ordered by a "silent master who decreed special treatment for Communists".

McCarthy, defending his pursuit of the Peress case when faced with censure, told a Senate committee that his own investigation contradicted Army witnesses and showed that Peress had been considered for "sensitive work" in May 1953.

McCarthy's confrontational approach, coupled with his pressure on the Army for preferential treatment of committee staff member G. David Schine, was looked on in retrospect as the beginning of McCarthy's downfall, leading to the Senate's censure of McCarthy.

Later events Following the hearings, Peress reported receiving anti-Semitic hate mail and the Peress home in Queens was stoned in late February 1954. He commented:

Peress was persuaded to remove his name from the door of his dental practice. His wife was pressured to resign as editor of the Parent-Teachers Association monthly bulletin at their local public school.

In an interview in 2005, he repeatedly declined to say whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party. Asked if he agreed with Communism, he replied: According to one of his sons, Peress had suffered complications and declining health after breaking a leg in a fall, but was determined to live long enough to watch Major League Baseball's 2014 World Series. Peress' son stated that afterwards, Peress intentionally stopped taking his thyroid medication.