Background
Dodd was born on May 15, 1907 in Norwich, Connecticut, to Abigail Margaret O'Sullivan and Thomas Joseph Dodd, a Connecticut contractor.
Dodd was born on May 15, 1907 in Norwich, Connecticut, to Abigail Margaret O'Sullivan and Thomas Joseph Dodd, a Connecticut contractor.
Dodd attended Norwich Free Academy and St. Anselm's Academy and graduated from Providence College in 1930, where he majored in philosophy. He earned his law degree in 1933 from Yale University.
Upon his Yale graduation, Dodd worked as a field agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1935, he left the FBI to serve as Connecticut's state director of the National Youth Administration under President Roosevelt's New Deal until 1938.
Dodd served in the U. S. Justice Department from 1938 to 1945 as a special assistant to five successive attorneys general in the newly formed civil rights division and specialized in prosecuting cases against the Ku Klux Klan and acts of industrial espionage during World War II. At the close of the war, Dodd was named chief assistant prosecutor to Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in Germany.
He returned to America in 1946 and entered private law practice with the Hartford firm of Pelgrift, Dodd, Blumenfeld, & Nair. He also returned to his family.
After unsuccessful attempts for the state's gubernatorial nomination in 1948 and 1952, Dodd was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives from Hartford and reelected in 1954. In 1956, he lost in his bid to unseat the incumbent Republican, Prescott Bush, from the U. S. Senate. Two years later, he defeated Republican William Purtell in the 1958 race for the U. S. Senate from Connecticut.
Dodd served as Connecticut's U. S. senator from 1959 to 1970. He proved a staunch supporter of President Kennedy's domestic agenda; was an outspoken champion for President Johnson's Great Society programs such as Medicare, Civil Rights, and the war on poverty; and in 1970 was a leader in expanding the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
During Nixon's presidency, Dodd joined with liberal Democrats in defeating the nominations of Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. As Chairman of the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Dodd led a 1962 investigation into the effects of television violence on youth and criticized the television industry for its lack of responsibility for the general welfare. In 1965, Dodd used his subcommittee to conduct hearings calling for gun control legislation, but had his strict proposals watered down in the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control Act.
In 1970, Dodd sponsored the Drug-Abuse Prevention Act, which reduced criminal penalties for minor drug violations, but allowed police the right to search for suspected drugs without a search warrant or a warning through the act's controversial "no knock" provisions. In foreign affairs, Senator Dodd used his seats on the Foreign Relations Committee and the Internal Security Subcommittee to promote his hawkish anti-Communist beliefs. He was a steadfast supporter of U. S. military efforts in South Vietnam throughout the 1960's and voted in full support of the Johnson and Nixon administrations to escalate the conflict in Southeast Asia. He vigorously denounced the Cooper-Church Amendment in 1970 as cowardly appeasement of the enemy even though the proposal would become the War Powers Resolution Act of 1973, which sought to restrict presidential authority to use U. S. combat forces.
In June 1966 the Senate Select Committee on Standards and Conduct began formal hearings on charges against Senator Dodd for official misconduct in office. Dodd had been the subject of a lengthy series of newspaper articles by investigative journalists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, alleging that he had misappropriated campaign funds for his private use, peddled his influence in the U. S. Senate for prominent businessmen, and falsified his travel records for monetary gain. The Committee hearings concluded in April 1967 and found Dodd at fault in these areas by unanimous vote; he was, however, formally acquitted of the charge of falsifying travel expenses.
On June 23, 1967, the full Senate formally censured Dodd for his misconduct by a vote of ninety-two to five in a highly emotional debate. Dodd's censure was only the seventh in the Senate's history. Nevertheless, Dodd, proclaiming his innocence from all wrongdoing, continued to serve in the Senate until his term of office expired in 1970. Undaunted, Dodd sought reelection to his Senate seat in 1970 as an independent after the Connecticut Democratic party opposed his candidacy. He lost in his bid for reelection in a three-way race to Republican Lowell Weicker.
Dodd played a substantial role in securing the conviction of major Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity and was awarded a Presidential Certificate of Merit and Medal of Freedom by President Truman in 1946. Thomas J. Dodd Memorial Stadium in Norwich was named in his honor. In 1995, The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center was established at the University of Connecticut. The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center or Dodd Research Center houses the Human Rights Institute, Archives & Special Collections for the University of Connecticut Libraries, and the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut. In 2003, the University of Connecticut established the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights.
In 1967 Dodd became the first Senator censured by the US Senate since Joseph McCarthy in 1954, and was one of only six people censured by the Senate in the 20th century. The resulting censure was a condemnation and finding that he had converted campaign funds to his personal accounts and spent the money. Beyond the Senate Ethics Committee's formal disciplinary action, other sources (such as investigative journalist Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson's Congress in Crisis) suggest Dodd's corruption was far broader in scope, and there were accusations of alcoholism. In response to these accusations, Dodd filed a lawsuit against Pearson claiming that Pearson had illegally interfered with his private property. Although the district court granted a partial judgment to Dodd, the appellate court ruled in favor of Pearson on the grounds that Dodd's property had not been physically abused. In 1970, the Democrats endorsed for his seat Joseph Duffey, who won the nomination in the primary. Dodd then entered the race as an independent, taking just under a quarter of the vote, in a three-way race which he and Duffey lost to Lowell Weicker.
Dodd was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Connecticut's 1st district.
Dodd's wife was Grace Murphy, whom he had married on May 19, 1934. His family comprised of six children, including a future U. S. senator from Connecticut, Christopher J. Dodd.
