Joseph R. McCarthy: Time for Truth

In early 1950 Senator McCarthy made a speech in which he probably said that there were 57 Communists in the State Department. It was sometimes erroneously reported as 205 Communists; it probably should have been 56. Whatever he said, the truth as we now know it with access to Soviet and FBI files from the period is that substantially more than 57 Communist spies, Party members, and propagandists taking orders from the Soviet Union were working for the State Department, for international organizations after working for the State Department, or elsewhere in the government after working for the State Department.

State Department Risks
The espionage problem in the State Department was fairly severe. The FBI had put together a good espionage case (Amerasia), but the Truman administration through Tommy "The Cork" Cocoran had fixed the U.S. Attorney's office to prevent a successful prosecution.

The Democrats, who knew that the loyalty/security situation was far worse than reported, feared that a public discussion would lead to an electoral disaster for them. The administration feared that exposure of the extent of Communist influence in the China section of the State Department would jeopardize the pre-Korean War, Acheson-Truman Cold War strategy of setting up our Asian defenses much further East than Eisenhower eventually did.

For these reasons and probably because of personal grudges, Democrats talked about things like expelling McCarthy. However, it turned out that he had more than 50 detailed files on Communists in the State Department. The Democrats had to back off for the moment. We now know that the FBI and the Truman White House had fierce battles over loyalty/security issues that were not made public at the time.

The loyalty/security problem had much more to do with dedicated Communist spies and propagandists than with people who were simply sympathizers. At that time, discipline within the Communist Party was extremely rigid. There were more than enough idiots around who thought it was fine to lend confidential, secret, and topsecret documents to their Communist friends or relatives. ...