Editing McCarthyism (section)

===Executive branch===
====Loyalty-security reviews====
[[File:Page one of Executive Order 9835.jpg|thumb|310x310px|Executive Order 9835, signed by President Truman in 1947]]
In the federal government, President Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds&nbsp;... for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States."<ref>{{Cite book |chapter=The Constitution of the Truman Presidency and the Post–World War II Era |editor1-first=Martin |editor1-last=Fausold |editor2-first=Alan |editor2-last=Shank |first=Donald R. |last=McCoy |year=1991 |title=The Constitution and the American Presidency |publisher=SUNY Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/constitutionamer0000faus/page/116 116] |isbn=978-0791404683 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/constitutionamer0000faus/page/116}}</ref> Truman, a [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]], was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the [[United States House election, 1946|1946 Congressional election]] and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists.{{sfn|Fried|1997}}

When President [[Dwight Eisenhower]] took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. [[Hiram Bingham III|Hiram Bingham]], chairman of the Civil Service Commission [[Executive Order 9835|Loyalty Review Board]], referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things."{{sfn|Fried|1990|p=133}} The following year, [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]], scientific director of the [[Manhattan Project]] that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the [[United States Atomic Energy Commission|Atomic Energy Commission]], was stripped of his security clearance after a [[Oppenheimer security hearing|four-week hearing]]. Oppenheimer had received a top-secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954.

Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation. In 1958, an estimated one of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review.{{sfn|Brown|1958}} Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, finding other employment could be very difficult. "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board. "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job."{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|p=271}}

The [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] started keeping a list of organizations that it deemed subversive beginning in 1942. This list was first made public in 1948, when it included 78 groups. At its longest, it comprised 154 organizations, 110 of them identified as Communist. In the context of a loyalty review, membership in a listed organization was meant to raise a question, but not to be considered proof of disloyalty. One of the most common causes of suspicion was membership in the [[Washington Bookshop Association]], a left-leaning organization that offered lectures on literature, classical music concerts, and discounts on books.{{sfn|Fried|1990|p=70}}

====J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI====
[[File:Hoover-JEdgar-LOC.jpg|upright|thumb|[[J. Edgar Hoover]] in 1961]]

[[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] director [[J. Edgar Hoover]] designed President Truman's loyalty-security program, and its background investigations of employees were carried out by FBI agents. This was a major assignment that led to the number of agents in the bureau being increased from 3,559 in 1946 to 7,029 in 1952. Hoover's sense of the communist threat and the standards of evidence applied by his bureau resulted in thousands of government workers losing their jobs. Due to Hoover's insistence upon keeping the identity of his informers secret, most subjects of loyalty-security reviews were not allowed to cross-examine or know the identities of those who accused them. In many cases, they were not even told of what they were accused.{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|pp=211, 266 et seq}}

Hoover's influence extended beyond federal government employees and beyond the loyalty-security programs. The records of loyalty review hearings and investigations were supposed to be confidential, but Hoover routinely gave evidence from them to congressional committees such as HUAC.{{sfn|Schrecker|2002|p=65}}

From 1951 to 1955, the FBI operated a secret "[[Responsibilities Program]]" that distributed anonymous documents with evidence from FBI files of communist affiliations on the part of teachers, lawyers, and others. Many people accused in these "blind memoranda" were fired without any further process.{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|p=212}}

The FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices in its pursuit of information on communists, including burglaries, opening mail, and illegal wiretaps.{{sfn|Cox|Theoharis|1988|p=312}} The members of the left-wing [[National Lawyers Guild]] (NLG) were among the few attorneys who were willing to defend clients in communist-related cases, and this made the NLG a particular target of Hoover's; the office of the NLG was burgled by the FBI at least 14 times between 1947 and 1951.{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|p=225}} Among other purposes, the FBI used its illegally obtained information to alert prosecuting attorneys about the planned legal strategies of NLG defense lawyers.{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|p=224}}<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nlg-npap.org/sites/default/files/Breach%20of%20Privilege%20NLG%20April%202014.pdf|title=Breach of Privilege: Spying on Lawyers in the United States|last=Yoder|first=Traci|date=April 2014|access-date=February 5, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180925213950/https://www.nlg-npap.org/sites/default/files/Breach%20of%20Privilege%20NLG%20April%202014.pdf|archive-date=September 25, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The FBI also used illegal undercover operations to disrupt communist and other dissident political groups. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by [[U.S. Supreme Court|Supreme Court]] decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute communists. At this time, he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name [[COINTELPRO]].{{sfn|Cox|Theoharis|1988|p=312}} COINTELPRO actions included planting forged documents to create the suspicion that a key person was an FBI informer, spreading rumors through anonymous letters, leaking information to the press, calling for [[Internal Revenue Service|IRS]] audits, and the like. The COINTELPRO program remained in operation until 1971.

Historian [[Ellen Schrecker]] calls the [[FBI]] "the single most important component of the anti-communist crusade" and writes: "Had observers known in the 1950s what they have learned since the 1970s, when the [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|Freedom of Information Act]] opened the Bureau's files, 'McCarthyism' would probably be called 'Hooverism'."{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|pp=239, 203}}

====Allen Dulles and the CIA====
In March 1950, McCarthy had initiated a series of investigations into potential infiltration of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) by communist agents and came up with a list of security risks that matched one previously compiled by the Agency itself. At the request of CIA director [[Allen Dulles]], President Eisenhower demanded that McCarthy discontinue issuing subpoenas against the CIA. Documents made public in 2004 revealed that the CIA, under Dulles' orders, had broken into McCarthy's Senate office and fed disinformation to him in order to discredit him and stop his investigation from proceeding any further.{{sfn|Weiner|2007|pp=105–106}}