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I'll give my interpretation of the events that led up to Welch's quote. I assume it will be much different than Semper's since he is using it to justify his dislike of McCarthy:

Roy Cohn was approached by someone (I think Mr Welch himself) in the days before the hearing in question. In this private meeting Cohn agreed that their side (i.e. McCarthy's side) would not bring up the issue of Welch's associate having ties to a communist front organization, the Lawyer's Guild and in return Welch would not bring up some embarassing information on Mr Cohn. In my opinion, Welch set this up intentionally, because he new that as soon as he started yanking McCarthy's chain, McCarthy would use it.

I've forgetton what it was, but I think it had to do with how he was trying to get an better military posting for a former
McCarthy aid. This aid had been 4F, but the Rats in the Senate put pressure on the draft board and got him reclassified 4A. So Cohn was putting as much reverse pressure as possible to get him a good posting.

This gets really long to try to explain fully and I think it shows that McCarthy enemies took a political issue and turned it into a personal vendetta against McCarthy. You really need to read Cohn's book to get the full story from his prospective. I'm not doing it justice here.

Anyway, the hearing comes and Cohn is on the stand and Welch starts pushing McCarthy's buttons by inferring that Cohn was trying to help the soldier because they were homosexual lovers and by a bunch of other remarks. Welch eventually said something to the effect that if Cohn knows of any communists on his [Welch's] staff that he would hopefully tell them right away. This was said in a sarcastic tone and for Joe it was the last straw.

He blew his cool and blurted out the info about Welch's associate (info that had already been printed in the newspapers by the way).

Now Semper would apparently have us consider only McCarthy to be a fault here. But I know I've lost my temper and said things I shouldn't have. But, was that an unjustifiable means or was it just an imperfect man losing his temper.

And why is it only McCarthy that got tagged for playing politics and not Welch. In my opinion it was only because McCarthy was rocking the boat in public and Welch did all
his assasinations behind closed doors.