Joseph McCarthy, the Red-baiting senator from Wisconsin, reached the apogee of his reckless charges in 1950 when he alleged not only that the U.S. State Department was infiltrated with communists, but that he had a list of their names. During a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy waved in the air a piece of paper and declared, “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”1 It turns out that the paper had no
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