COMMITTEE OF SENATOR ERVIN

a reference to a committee formed in the 1950s that censured United States Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957) who was investigating the unproven charges of communist infiltration in the high echelons of the United States government. United States Senator Samuel James Ervin, Jr. (1896-1985) was a member of the committee. In the 1970s, Ervin became best known as the chairman of a committee for conducting the investigation into the illegal presidential campaign activities of president Richard Nixon (1913-1994), which eventually led to Nixon's 1974 resignation.