McCarthy Claims a List of Communists in the State Department, Then Loses Everything on Live Television
What happened
On 9 February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy told a Republican audience in Wheeling, West Virginia, that he held a list of Communist Party members working inside the State Department. The number he cited did not stay fixed: advance press copies of the speech and a State Department telegram recorded him saying 57 card-carrying Communists, while a transcript McCarthy later submitted to the Congressional Record quotes him saying he had a list of 205 names made known to the Secretary of State as Communist Party members. The State Department's own files show officials investigating the discrepancy by requesting notarized affidavits from the radio station that broadcast the speech. McCarthy's charges fed a wider anti-communist campaign that included House Un-American Activities Committee investigations, a blacklist of entertainment figures accused of Communist ties, and loyalty oaths required of government employees.
Why it matters
The campaign McCarthy fronted did lasting damage to people who were never charged with any crime, driving writers, actors, and directors out of work through blacklisting and pressuring thousands of federal employees to sign loyalty oaths or face investigation regardless of evidence. It also set a precedent for how anti-communism could be weaponized domestically that outlasted McCarthy himself, shaping government hiring practices and public discourse well after his own downfall.
How we know
The State Department's Office of the Historian has published the original 1950 telegrams and internal correspondence documenting the Wheeling speech controversy, including the department's contemporaneous effort to pin down what McCarthy actually said via notarized witness statements.
Sources
- US Department of State, Office of the Historian. Historical Documents, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Volume I, Part 2, Document 174 · Primary source (author-declared)history.state.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineThe Cold War33 events · From a speech in a small Missouri gymnasium to a flag lowered over the Kremlin, the decades-long standoff that shaped the modern world, every event sourced.View all →