McCarthy reconsidered: A look at how the historiography of Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism has changed in light of new information.

Abstract

The immediate origins of this thesis may be traced to the release by the United States Government in 1995 and 1996 of the Venona files, some 2,900 Soviet intelligence messages intercepted and decoded during the Cold War period by the National Security Agency and its U.S. Army predecessor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the British and allied services. These deciphered messages confirm that at least 350 Soviet espionage agents in the United States, including many in the U.S. government, had covert ties to Soviet intelligence agencies by the 1940s, much as Senator Joseph McCarthy had charged. This, of course, reawakened my interest in McCarthy and McCarthyism. In the chapters that follow, I first examine some of the historiography on McCarthyism and point out recent revelations about individual espionage cases, which show that many of McCarthy's charges need to be revisited due to new and ever-changing evidence. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)