McCarthy Book Notes
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Many of the American citizens of the cold war had this growing fear of communist spies, who were paid with gold from Moscow, who were hired to infiltrate the American system, undermine the government and misdirect foreign policy. The first “which hunts”, though not as bad as later hunts, were created by president Truman when he launched a massive “loyalty” program, which drew up a list of about ninety “disloyal” organizations without giving them a chance to plead their innocence. Of the organizations, 3 million employees were investigated but only three thousand were dismissed or resigned but none of these 3000 were indicted.
National loyalty was on the rise, as fears of the cold war and communism arose in the United States and in1949 eleven communists were sent to prison for advocating the forceful overthrow of the American government, and were convicted in the case Dennis v. United States of 1951.In 1950 Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin republican burst into the world of politics and made charges that there were communists within the state department. But McCarthy failed to back up his accusations and thus creating a fear among the people and the president that the red-hunt was beginning to form into a witch hunt. Truman vetoed a bill that allowed the president to arrest and detain suspicious persons during an internal security emergency but congress overturned his veto. The United States began to use the electric chair to execute accused communists for espionage.
Eisenhower had problems with McCarthy, the anti communist crusader. McCarthy did everything in his power to revoke rights from people he wrongly accused of being a communist or having anything to do with communism. McCarthy charged, in the early fifties, that the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson was employing 205 communists in the state department. McCarthys fellow republicans, though they realized this was wrong, stated that they needed a “dirty S.O.B around at times like these, and to keep on his