Joseph McCarthy

American politician who, as a Senator representing Wisconsin in 1946, was the chairman of various investigating committees commonly known as "The Red Witch Hunts." As an inflammatory speaker and insidious interrogator, he ruined many lives and was censured by the Senate in 1954.

A Wisconsin farm-boy who became a country judge and Marine office, he was elected to the Senate in the Republican landslide of 1946 where he was known mainly for being a genial drinking companion and a soft touch for the real estate lobby. McCarthy's rise from obscurity to become a power to fear came almost overnight. Still an unknown at the start of 1950, he burst into prominence on 9 February 1950 in Wheeling, W. VA, when he uttered those now famous words: "I have here in my hand a list of 205, a list of names made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, who are nevertheless still working and shaping policy in the State Department." The numbers began the change in a matter of days to "207 bad risks", "57 card-carrying Communists," and "81 loyalty risks." Not one was a "card-carrying Communist" in the State Department and all those listed were from outdated files on government employees who had been investigated for offenses ranging from alleged communist and fascist sympathies to drinking problems and homosexuality. The bluff worked and the polls showed that half of the American public applauded while only 29 percent disapproved.

In the spring of 1950 McCarthy announced he'd uncovered "the top Soviet espionage agent," a man who was "Alger Hiss' boss in the espionage ring in the State Department." The "spy" turned out to be Owen Lattimore, a bespectacled John Hopkins University professor and East Asia expert whose only "crime" was predicting the fall of the Chinese Nationalist government and urging the U.S. to deal rationally with Mao Tse Tung. Even politicians who opposed McCarthy were not immune.