Joseph McCarthy

Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14 1908 – May 2 1957) was an American politician originally aligned with the United States Democratic Party and later with the United States Republican Party. McCarthy served as a U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957. During his ten years in the Senate, McCarthy and his staff became notorious for aggressive investigations of people in the U.S. government and others who were suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers.

VENONA files

In 1995, when the VENONA transcripts were declassified, further detailed information was revealed about Soviet Union espionage in the United States. VENONA specifically references at least 349 people in the United States—including citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents—who may have cooperated in various ways with Soviet intelligence agencies. It is generally believed that McCarthy had no access to VENONA intelligence, but VENONA supports the view that some of the individuals investigated by McCarthy were indeed Soviet agents. These are several prominent examples:

Related Topics:
1995 - VENONA

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• Mary Jane Keeney, a United Nations employee, and her husband Philip Keeney, who worked in the Office of Strategic Services;
• Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to President Roosevelt;
• Virginius Frank Coe, Director of Division of Monetary Research, U.S. Treasury; Technical Secretary at the Bretton Woods Conference; International Monetary Fund
• William Ludwig Ullman, delegate to the United Nations Charter Conference and Bretton Woods Conference;
• Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, Chief Planning Technician, Procurement Division, United States Department of the Treasury and head of the Silvermaster network of spies;
• Harold Glasser, U.S. Treasury Representative to the Allied High Commission in Italy;
• Four staff members of the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee, a Senate subcommittee on labor rights chaired by former Senator Robert La Follette, Jr., whom McCarthy defeated for election in 1946;
• Allan Rosenberg, Chief of the Economic Institution Staff, Foreign Economic Administration; Counsel to the National Labor Relations Board; argued cases before the United States Supreme Court.

While the underlying premise of Communists in the government was true, there remains no evidence that many of individuals targeted by McCarthy had done anything illegal.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~