Federal Loyalty Boards 1947

[Gadawg73]

from the Truman administration is where Joe McCarthy got all of the supposed names of the "I have in my hands the names of 205".
Immediately after the war State Department had opened 225 loyalty cases allof which involved employees of wartime agencies which were absorbed into State Dept. after the war including the OSS (Office of Strtegic Services), the predecessor to the CIA.
In August 1946 there were 205 employees from OTHER agencies in the State Dept. who had been screened but were deemed to be insufficient information for termination according to Congressional Committees.
In March 1948 only 58 of those 205 employees were still on the job at State.
The numbers "205" and "57", which McCarthy offered, were the product OF TRUMAN administration loyalty investigations years before McCarthy was advised by Father Walsh to use them as a device to invigorate McCarthy's political career.
Prior to all of this McCarthy was known as the "Pepsi King"for taking large sums of $$ from Pepsi to fight the Federal sugar rationing program. The large irony in this is that McCarthy was first elected to the Senate in 1946 with the help of Communist influenced labor unions in Wisconsin that were very angry at incumbent Robert LaFollettes' bad mouthing of the Soviet Union.
Ruining families, lives and careers the often intoxicated McCarthy then traveled around the country naming so called "communists" in the State Dept and other agencies of government. He targeted General George C. Marshall labeling him with "implementing the will of Stalin".

 

[Madeline]

I'm about halfway through a biography of McCarthy, called "The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy", by Thomas C. Reeves.

Chronologically, I have reached the point where the McCarthy Hearings begin in earnest, and yes, it is clear that he did not have -- never had -- anything like a list of names of "communists in the state department" or anywhere else in government.

McCarthy was a man of huge ambition and when he reached the Senate (after some misconduct in his campaign), he did not want to be unnoticed. He sought fame first by championing the rights of disabled veterans to receive the sort of public housing assistance they needed...but this issue failed to produce the sort of headlines he wanted.

It seems fairly clear he could have been a force for good, if he had found the right issue. He was a complex man, and others had a heavy influence on him.....to a degree, his bad intentions were vicarious.