"I plead the Fifth."

It's one of the most recognizable phrases in American law — and one of the most misunderstood.

In this episode of America at 250: Due Diligence, Bill Bernardoni and Steve Herman look at how the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination became intertwined with guilt in the American imagination.

Brandeis University professor Thomas Doherty takes us back to the 1947 Hollywood hearings, when the Hollywood Ten refused to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee and ultimately went to prison for contempt of Congress. From there, the story moves to mob boss Frank Costello, the televised Kefauver hearings and the McCarthy era, when congressional investigations became national television events and "taking the Fifth" took on a meaning far beyond the courtroom.

Then constitutional scholar Jeffrey Rosen, former president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a professor at George Washington University, traces the protection against self-incrimination back to England's Star Chamber and explains what the Fifth Amendment actually protects — in criminal cases, congressional hearings and an era of cell phones, digital records and electronic evidence.

From Frank Costello and Joseph McCarthy to Oliver North and Anthony Fauci, it's a look at why Americans have been trained to hear silence as an admission of guilt — even though the Constitution says it isn't one.