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It was McCarthy's charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department that shot him into prominence in 1950. On February 9th speech in Wheeling, [[West Virginia]] at the Colonnade Room of the McClure Hotel he stated:  

It was McCarthy's charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department that shot him into prominence in 1950. On February 9th speech in Wheeling, [[West Virginia]] at the Colonnade Room of the McClure Hotel he stated:  

''“And ladies and gentlemen, while I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as active members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, 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.”<ref>The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 224."</ref>

:''“And ladies and gentlemen, while I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as active members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, 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.”''<ref>The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 224."</ref>

The State Department denied McCarthy’s claims. In a radio interview in Utah the following day, McCarthy had changed the number to 57, and on February 11, in Reno at the Mapes Hotel, McCarthy again invoked the number 57 instead of 205, and named Robert Service, Gustavo Duran, Mary Jane Keeney and Harlow Shapley as being on the list. Several days later, when McCarthy was speaking to the Senate in Washington DC, the number had changed to 81. <ref>The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pgs 222-238 </ref>

McCarthy compiled a list of 57 security risks and publicly named Robert Service, Gustavo Duran, [[Mary Jane Keeney]] and Harlow Shapley as being on the list. <ref>The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pgs 222-238.</ref>  These names came from the "Lee List" of unresolved State Department security cases compiled by the earlier investigators for the House Appropriates Committee in 1947.  Robert E. Lee was the committee’s lead investigator and supervised preparation of the list.  <ref>U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, State Department Employee Loyalty Investigations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1950).</ref>

The source for the original number McCarthy offered, “205,” turned out to be a letter written in 1946 by Secretary of State James Byrnes in reply to a question from Democratic Congressman Adolph Sabath about the screening of several thousand federal employees in the wake of post-war reassignments. There was no mention of either Communist party membership or names in that letter. The names McCarthy later offered in Reno came from a 1948 report by an ex-FBI agent Robert E. Lee on “incidents of inefficiencies” in the state department that had subsequently been passed on to the HUAC.  

The source for the original number McCarthy offered, “205,” turned out to be a letter written in 1946 by Secretary of State James Byrnes in reply to a question from Democratic Congressman Adolph Sabath about the screening of several thousand federal employees in the wake of post-war reassignments. There was no mention of either Communist party membership or names in that letter. The names McCarthy later offered in Reno came from a 1948 report by an ex-FBI agent Robert E. Lee on “incidents of inefficiencies” in the state department that had subsequently been passed on to the HUAC.