"it would not be fair to the accused had he named them"
Come on Frank, you know that is total BS. There were no names on any list. And if there was any evidence then they would have announced it immediately for the PR he always sought.
"57 card carrying communists"
Who issued those cards Frank and did they get a decoder ring also?
Communists were in our government long before McCarthy came along and all he did was ruin many a stealth policy dating back to the teens.
Anyone with any knowledge of espionage and intelligence knows you attempt to TURN the spies first and you do that clandestinely and never hold hearings and news conferences announcing what is going on.
But that does not sell books for the naive and gullible.
No telling how many of our suits in the field were exposed by McCarthy and the fools that followed him. If you could have asked any intelligence agent of any form, shape or fashion from that era if they believe that McCarthy and his ways helped or ruined their work the answer would be in the negative. Intelligence wants NO PR, especially hearings on the Hill.
See, my main complaint about you is that you continue to read from a playbook that is 60 years old and was total fiction when it was written.
"Blacklisted" and other books have completely destroyed, with FBI files and Soviet cables, the entire notion of what we grew up learning about McCarthy.
When McCarthy made his speech in Wheeling in Feb 1950, Truman had already decided to protect Communist at State by not allowing ANY Congressional investigation and the Executive branch stopped rooting out the Comrades.
McCarthy had a list supplied to him by State with names of Card Carrying communists on it. Joe was a lawyer and knew he could not in good conscience release the names on the list that a whistleblower at State had provided him without the benefit of independent investigation.
That was all he was asking for was for Congress to be allowed to investigate the goings-on at State, that were now being protected by the Truman Administration!
That was it!
He asked for Congress to look into possible Communist infiltration at State!
You keep parroting crap back at me without any facts, just lies that you were taught