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Joseph McCarthy (view source)

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McCarthy read: "This individual is 43 years of age. He is with the Office of Information and Education. According to the file, he is a known Communist. I am not evaluating the information myself, I am merely giving you what is in the file. This individual also found his way into the Voice of America broadcast. Apparently the easiest way to get in is to be a known Communist." <ref>The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 240."</ref>

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McCarthy made charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department, the administration of [[Harry Truman|President Truman]], Voice of America, and ~~a United States Army research laboratory~~. He tried to expose government employees as CPUSA members and security risks. With the highly publicized Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade due to his lack of actual evidence and defendant convictions. Later in 1954, a special Senate committee was appointed to study and evaluate McCarthy's methods and actions. The committee exonerated McCarthy on all substantive charges (citation needed). Following the recommendations of this committee, the full Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 65 to 22 (the votes for censure included all the Democratic senators and about half the Republican senators) for failing to cooperate with the subcommittee that was investigating him, and for insults to the committee that was trying to censure him <ref>Senate Report 104-137 - Resolution For Disciplinary Action. Library of Congress (1995). Retrieved on 2006-10-19.</ref>, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. [http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/60.htm] McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The cause of his death was acute hepatitis from smoking and drinking.

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McCarthy made charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department and the administration of [[Harry Truman|President Truman]] and a United States army research laboratory. In 1953 McCarthy claimed that employees at [[Voice of America]], were engaging in deliberate sabotage, selecting sites for transmitters that would make it easier for the Soviets to jam signals. Attention was also focused on the content of VOA broadcasts, which in Truman’s time had a policy of “balanced presentation” that did not exclude communist writings. VOA overseas libraries were scrutinized, and among the several hundred books that ended up being purged from the libraries at the urging of McCarthy’s staff were works by Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, [[Jean Paul Sartre]], and Theodore H. White.

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The VOA hearings that resulted often involved closely questioning witnesses, not about the transmitters, but about their past and present political or religious orientations. Director of Religious Programming Roger Lyons was asked if he was or had ever been an unbeliever. Lyons insisted “I am not an atheist. I believe in God.” When he mentioned that he had studied in Switzerland under associates of Carl Jung, McCarthy asked if “this professor” attended a church or a synagogue. <ref>“Time Magazine, March 16, 1953” ."</ref>

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Reed Harris, acting chief of the IIA, was repeatedly questioned over three days of testimony about statements he’d made in a book he’d written twenty one years before as a college student at Columbia University. (The offending statement had been the assertion that communists had the right to teach.) Harris resigned from his job shortly after appearing before the committee. <ref>”McCarthy Hearings, 1953-54 Vol 1. February 23, 1953"</ref>

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Dr. Julius Hlavaty, a teacher of Mathematics at Bronx High School and the first Chairman of that prestigious target school’s mathematics department, was called as a witness because of a broadcast he’d made in 1952. After being questioned about his personal beliefs and asked if he were a Communist, Dr. Hlavaty invoked his rights under the Fifth Amendment, which resulted in his automatic dismissal from the New York School system. <ref>“Time Magazine, March 23, 1953"</ref>

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One potential witness, Voice of America engineer, Raymond Kaplan, was so frightened by the prospect of testifying before McCarthy’s committee that he committed suicide after writing a lengthy suicide note. “You see, once the dogs are set on you everything you have done since the beginning of time is suspect,” he wrote. “I have never done anything that I consider wrong but I can’t take the pressure upon my shoulders any more.” <ref>The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves, pg 485."</ref>

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No evidence of espionage was found in the VOA investigation, though hundreds of employees were fired, some overseas libraries were closed, and some foreign language programming discontinued.

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He tried to expose government employees as CPUSA members and security risks. With the highly publicized Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade due to his lack of actual evidence and defendant convictions. Later in 1954, a special Senate committee was appointed to study and evaluate McCarthy's methods and actions. The committee exonerated McCarthy on all substantive charges (citation needed). Following the recommendations of this committee, the full Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 65 to 22 (the votes for censure included all the Democratic senators and about half the Republican senators) for failing to cooperate with the subcommittee that was investigating him, and for insults to the committee that was trying to censure him <ref>Senate Report 104-137 - Resolution For Disciplinary Action. Library of Congress (1995). Retrieved on 2006-10-19.</ref>, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. [http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/60.htm] McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The cause of his death was acute hepatitis from smoking and drinking.

==VENONA files==

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#The life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography, Thomas C. Reeves

#Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, Ellen Schrecker

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#Time Magazine

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#McCarthy Hearings, 1953-54 Vol 1.

PF Fox

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