Editing Joseph McCarthy (section)

===Tydings Committee===
{{main|Tydings Committee}}
McCarthy himself was taken aback by the massive media response to the Wheeling speech, and he was accused of continually revising both his charges and figures. In [[Salt Lake City]], Utah, a few days later, he cited a figure of 57, and in the Senate on February 20, 1950, he claimed 81.<ref>{{Cite thesis|type=Master's thesis|last=Swanson|first=Richard|date=1977|title=McCarthyism in Utah|url=https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5154|publisher=Brigham Young University|access-date=January 17, 2020|archive-date=November 8, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191108125345/https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5154/|url-status=live}}</ref> During a five-hour speech,<ref>Also reported as up to 8 hours in length.</ref> McCarthy presented a case-by-case analysis of his 81 "loyalty risks" employed at the State Department. It is widely accepted that most of McCarthy's cases were selected from the so-called "Lee list", a report that had been compiled three years earlier for the [[United States House Committee on Appropriations|House Appropriations Committee]]. Led by a former [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] agent named Robert E. Lee, the House investigators had reviewed security clearance documents on State Department employees, and had determined that there were "incidents of inefficiencies"<ref>
{{cite book
  |last = Reeves
  |first = Thomas C.
  |title = The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography
  |publisher = Madison Books
  |page = 227
  |year=  1982
  |isbn = 1-56833-101-0}}</ref> in the security reviews of 108 employees. McCarthy hid the source of his list, stating that he had penetrated the "iron curtain" of State Department secrecy with the aid of "some good, loyal Americans in the State Department".<ref>
{{cite book
  |last = Griffith
  |first = Robert
  |title = The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate
  |url = https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif
  |url-access = registration
  |publisher = University of Massachusetts Press
  |year=  1970
  |page = [https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif/page/55 55]
  |isbn = 0-87023-555-9}}</ref> In reciting the information from the Lee list cases, McCarthy consistently exaggerated, representing the hearsay of witnesses as facts and converting phrases such as "inclined towards Communism" to "a Communist".<ref>
{{cite book
  |last = Griffith
  |first = Robert
  |title = The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate
  |url = https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif
  |url-access = registration
  |publisher = University of Massachusetts Press
  |year=  1970
  |page = [https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif/page/56 56]
  |isbn = 0-87023-555-9}}</ref>

[[File:Millardetydings.jpg|thumb|Senator [[Millard Tydings]]]]
In response to McCarthy's charges, the Senate voted unanimously to investigate, and the [[Tydings Committee]] hearings were called.<ref>David M. Barrett, ''CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy'' (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), p. 65.</ref> This was a subcommittee of the [[United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations]] set up in February 1950 to conduct "a full and complete study and investigation as to whether persons who are disloyal to the United States are, or have been, employed by the Department of State".<ref>
''Congressional Record'', 81st Congress, 2nd session, pp. 2062–2068; quoted in:<br />
{{cite book
  |last = Reeves
  |first = Thomas C.
  |title = The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography
  |publisher = Madison Books
  |page = 243
  |year=  1982
  |isbn = 1-56833-101-0}}</ref>

Many Democrats were incensed at McCarthy's attack on the State Department of a Democratic administration, and had hoped to use the hearings to discredit him. The Democratic chairman of the subcommittee, Senator [[Millard Tydings]], was reported to have said, "Let me have him [McCarthy] for three days in public hearings, and he'll never show his face in the Senate again."<ref>
{{cite book|last = Oshinsky |first = David M.|title = A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy |publisher = Oxford University Press |year=  2005 |page = 119 |isbn = 0-19-515424-X|orig-year= 1983}}</ref>

During the hearings, McCarthy made charges against nine specific people: [[Dorothy Kenyon]], [[Esther Brunauer]], Haldore Hanson, [[Gustavo Durán]], [[Owen Lattimore]], [[Harlow Shapley]], [[Frederick L. Schuman|Frederick Schuman]], [[John S. Service]], and [[Philip Jessup]]. They all had previously been the subject of charges of varying worth and validity. McCarthy came to focus particularly on Lattimore, who at one point he described as a "top Russian spy".{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}

From its beginning, the Tydings Committee was marked by intense partisan infighting. Its final report, written by the Democratic majority, concluded that the individuals on McCarthy's list were neither Communists nor pro-communist, and said the State Department had an effective security program. The Tydings Report labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax," and described them as using incensing rhetoric—saying that the result of McCarthy's actions was to "confuse and divide the American people ... to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves". Republicans were outraged by the Democratic response. They responded to the report's rhetoric in kind, with [[William E. Jenner]] stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history".<ref>{{cite book
  |last = Griffith
  |first = Robert
  |title = The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate
  |url = https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif
  |url-access = registration
  |publisher = University of Massachusetts Press
  |year=  1970
  |page = [https://archive.org/details/politicsoffearjo00grif/page/101 101]
  |isbn = 0-87023-555-9}}</ref>
The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last = Fried
 |first = Richard M.
 |year = 1990
 |title = Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective
 |publisher = Oxford University Press
 |page = 128
 |isbn = 0-19-504361-8
}}</ref>