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71-577: Created during the period of the Second Red Scare (1946–1954), the act was one of many bills drafted with the intention of protecting the American government from the threat posed by international communists. During this time, some argued that "the pursuit of subversive aims even by peaceful means should [have been] outlawed". Thus, many opposed communism because of its explicitly declared and historically demonstrable goal to undermine liberal democracy . In

142-592: A political cartoon by Herblock in The Washington Post . The term has since taken on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts to crack down on alleged "subversive" elements. In the early 21st century, the term is used more generally to describe reckless and unsubstantiated accusations of treason and far-left extremism, along with demagogic personal attacks on the character and patriotism of political adversaries. The primary targets for persecution were government employees, prominent figures in

213-1645: A current social problem. Alumni of The Yale Law Journal have served at all levels of the federal judiciary. Alumni include Supreme Court justices ( Samuel Alito , Abe Fortas , Brett Kavanaugh , Sonia Sotomayor , Potter Stewart ) and numerous judges on the United States courts of appeals ( Duane Benton , Stephanos Bibas , Guido Calabresi , Steven Colloton , Morton Ira Greenberg , Stephen A. Higginson , Andrew D. Hurwitz , Robert Katzmann , Scott Matheson , William J. Nardini , Michael H. Park , Jill A. Pryor , Richard G. Taranto , Patricia Wald , Cory T. Wilson ). Alumni have also served as United States Attorneys General ( Nicholas Katzenbach , Peter Keisler ) and United States Solicitors General ( Walter E. Dellinger III , Neal Katyal , Seth P. Waxman ). In addition, numerous editors have gone on to serve as high-ranking public officials (Senator Arlen Specter , Senator Michael Bennet , Senator Richard Blumenthal , former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich , Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar , FBI Director Christopher A. Wray , White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler , National Security Advisor John R. Bolton ). Former editors also include prominent law professors ( Matthew Adler , Akhil Amar , Ian Ayres , Barbara A. Babcock , Philip Bobbitt , Stephen L. Carter , Alan Dershowitz , John Hart Ely , Noah Feldman , Claire Finkelstein , Joseph Goldstein , Dawn Johnsen , Randall Kennedy , Karl Llewellyn , Jonathan R. Macey , Charles A. Reich , Reva Siegel , John Yoo , and Kenji Yoshino ), as well as

284-473: A finding of "membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association" with any organization determined by the attorney general to be "totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive" or advocating or approving the forceful denial of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking "to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means". The historical period that came to be known as

355-458: A growing demand among certain industries to certify that their employees were above reproach. Companies that were concerned about the sensitivity of their business, or which, like the entertainment industry, felt particularly vulnerable to public opinion, made use of these private services. For a fee, these teams investigated employees and questioned them about their politics and affiliations. Yale Law Journal The Yale Law Journal ( YLJ )

426-404: A legal body." The Internal Security Act of 1950 had defined two types of "communist organizations." Senator Butler later proposed a bill aimed at the removal of Communists from leadership positions in labor unions, adding a third class, that of "communist-infiltrated organizations." Afterwards, Democratic Senator Humphrey put forward a substitute to that bill with the intention of directly tackling

497-510: A number of his communist-hunting investigations. McCarthy first examined allegations of communist influence in the Voice of America , and then turned to the overseas library program of the State Department. Card catalogs of these libraries were searched for works by authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and

568-543: A number of instances during which a literal interpretation of key passages would have caused entire sections to fall because of the use of comprehensive, unspecific language. McAuliffe notes that, because of these complications, the Act was never "used as a major weapon in the legislative arsenal against Communism," apart from two minor cases in the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1973, a federal district court in Arizona decided that

639-428: 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." The Department of Justice started keeping a list of organizations that it deemed subversive beginning in 1942. This list

710-591: A piece of paper, which he claimed contained a list of known communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is usually quoted as saying: "I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." This speech resulted in a flood of press attention to McCarthy and helped establish his path to becoming one of

781-658: A program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds ... for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States." Truman, a Democrat , was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists. When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing

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852-513: A series of insults directed at a brigadier general , led to the Army–McCarthy hearings , with the Army and McCarthy trading charges and counter-charges for 36 days before a nationwide television audience. While the official outcome of the hearings was inconclusive, this exposure of McCarthy to the American public resulted in a sharp decline in his popularity. In less than a year, McCarthy was censured by

923-564: 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

994-459: A series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that

1065-573: A set of free dishes and a case of soap." A number of anti-communist committees, panels, and "loyalty review boards" in federal, state, and local governments, as well as many private agencies, carried out investigations for small and large companies concerned about possible Communists in their work forces. In Congress, the primary bodies that investigated Communist activities were the HUAC, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee , and

1136-550: A variety of "activities", including those of German-American Nazis during World War II. The committee soon focused on communism, beginning with an investigation into communists in the Federal Theatre Project in 1938. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of

1207-470: Is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School . Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students at Yale Law School. The journal is one of the most cited legal publications in the United States (with an impact factor of 5.000) and usually generates the highest number of citations per published article. The journal, which

1278-470: Is published eight times per year, contains articles, essays, features, and book reviews by professional legal scholars as well as student-written notes and comments. It is edited entirely by students. The journal has an online companion, the Yale Law Journal Forum , which features shorter pieces and responses from scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The Yale Law Journal , in conjunction with

1349-676: The Harvard Law Review , the Columbia Law Review , and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review , publishes The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation , the most widely followed authority for legal citation formats in the United States. The Michael Egger Prize is awarded on the recommendation of the Board of Officers of the Yale Law Journal for the best student Note or Comment on

1420-562: The Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley affairs had raised the issue of Soviet espionage in 1945, events in 1949 and 1950 sharply increased the sense of threat in the United States related to communism. The Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in 1949, earlier than many analysts had expected, raising the stakes in the Cold War. That same year, Mao Zedong 's communist army gained control of mainland China despite heavy American financial support of

1491-637: The Michigan Law Review in 1955 suggested that the Communist Control Act was a "dramatic political gesture" rather than a genuine attempt to "kill Communism at its root." McAuliffe underlines the anomalies surrounding the Act; in particular, the Act was unorthodox since it bypassed the usual process of committee hearings and deliberations and was immediately introduced to the Senate floor. The Act has no recorded legislated history, undoubtedly because it

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1562-507: The Republican Party ) to stand on a platform atop a teetering stack of ten tar buckets, the topmost of which is labeled "McCarthyism". Block later wrote: "Nothing [was] particularly ingenious about the term, which is simply used to represent a national affliction that can hardly be described in any other way. If anyone has a prior claim on it, he's welcome to the word and to the junior senator from Wisconsin along with it. I will also throw in

1633-540: The Second Red Scare , was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s. After the mid-1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy , who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made

1704-540: The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations . Between 1949 and 1954, a total of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other committees of Congress. On December 2, 1954, the United States Senate voted 67 to 22 to condemn McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute". In the federal government, President Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated

1775-606: The United States Army . This began at the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth . McCarthy garnered some headlines with stories of a dangerous spy ring among the Army researchers, but ultimately nothing came of this investigation. McCarthy next turned his attention to the case of a U.S. Army dentist who had been promoted to the rank of major despite having refused to answer questions on an Army loyalty review form. McCarthy's handling of this investigation, including

1846-449: The liberals has attracted much attention from historians such as Mary McAuliffe ( The Journal of American History ). McAuliffe argues that the perceived gravity of the threat of Communism during the Cold War led some liberals to ignore the fact that the CCA suspended the citizenship rights of the Communist Party members. Most liberal Democrats did not even offer a token opposition to the Act; on

1917-524: The "haste and confusion of the Act’s passage" which led to many "vague and ambiguous provisions." The incongruity of its provisions, a grave constitutional defect, was in part attributed to obscure language. For example, the nature of the "rights, privileges, and immunities" to be terminated by the Act was never explicitly stated as relating to state or federal jurisdiction. Also, the Yale Law Journal underlined

1988-558: The "root of evil," the Communist Party members. Through an amendment by Senator Daniel, both the Butler and Humphrey bills were merged into one, winning unanimous approval in the Senate from both Democrats and Republicans. The House of Representatives also made some additions to the bill, notably a section which listed the criteria for "determining what constitut[ed] membership in the Party and related organizations." The overwhelming support provided by

2059-618: The 1930s and the Great Depression when opposing the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt . Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and thought the policies were evidence of too much influence by allegedly communist policy makers in the Roosevelt administration. In general, the vaguely defined danger of "Communist influence" was a more common theme in

2130-639: 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. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly referred to as the HUAC) was the most prominent and active government committee involved in anti-communist investigations. Formed in 1938 and known as the Dies Committee, named for Rep. Martin Dies , who chaired it until 1944, HUAC investigated

2201-469: The Communist Party and then refuse to "name names" of colleagues with communist affiliations. Thus, many faced a choice between "crawl[ing] through the mud to be an informer," as actor Larry Parks put it, or becoming known as a "Fifth Amendment Communist"—an epithet often used by Senator McCarthy. In the Senate, the primary committee for investigating communists was the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), formed in 1950 and charged with ensuring

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2272-496: 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. The FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices in its pursuit of information on communists, including burglaries, opening mail, and illegal wiretaps. The members of

2343-580: The McCarthy era began well before Joseph McCarthy's own involvement in it. Many factors contributed to McCarthyism, some of them with roots in the First Red Scare (1917–20), inspired by communism's emergence as a recognized political force and widespread social disruption in the United States related to unionizing and anarchist activities. Owing in part to its success in organizing labor unions and its early opposition to fascism , and offering an alternative to

2414-666: The Senate, and his position as a prominent force in anti-communism was essentially ended. On November 25, 1947, the day after the House of Representatives approved citations of contempt for the Hollywood Ten, Eric Johnston , president of the Motion Picture Association of America , issued a press release on behalf of the heads of the major studios that came to be referred to as the Waldorf Statement . This statement announced

2485-660: The Soviet Union installed communist puppet régimes in areas it had occupied across Central and Eastern Europe. In a March 1947 address to Congress, Truman enunciated a new foreign policy doctrine that committed the United States to opposing Soviet geopolitical expansion. This doctrine came to be known as the Truman Doctrine , and it guided United States support for anti-communist forces in Greece and later in China and elsewhere. Although

2556-468: The United States on charges of stealing atomic-bomb secrets for the Soviets, and were executed in 1953. Other forces encouraged the rise of McCarthyism. The more conservative politicians in the United States had historically referred to progressive reforms, such as child labor laws and women's suffrage , as "communist" or "Red plots", trying to raise fears against such changes. They used similar terms during

2627-401: The United States." The Act made membership to the Communist Party a criminal act and stipulated that all Party members would be sanctioned with up to a $ 10,000 fine or imprisonment for five years or both if they failed to register with the U.S. Attorney General as such. Additionally, according to the third section, the Communist Party would be deprived of "the rights, privileges, and immunities of

2698-720: The act was unconstitutional, and Arizona could not keep the party off the ballot in the 1972 general election ( Blawis v. Bolin ). In 1961, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the act did not bar the party from participating in New York's unemployment insurance system ( Communist Party v. Catherwood ). Second Red Scare Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other McCarthyism , also known as

2769-641: The avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham , chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board , referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things." 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 Atomic Energy Commission ,

2840-463: The bill on the count that it would have forced the Communist movement underground. In addition, the Michigan Law Review argued that the politically charged Act was plagued by a number of constitutional problems which would have undermined its effectiveness. The Yale Law Journal lauded the Act as the "most direct statutory attack on internal communism yet undertaken [by 1955] by Congress," but stressed

2911-534: The bill was drafted with the intention of tackling the root of pro-communist sentiment in the United States: the Communist Party. In its second section, the CCA of 1954 portrayed the American Communist Party as an "agency of a hostile foreign power." The Party was described as "an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the government," and as a "clear, present, and continuing danger to the security of

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2982-418: The committee's questions. This tactic failed, and the ten were sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress . Two of them were sentenced to six months, the rest to a year. In the future, witnesses (in the entertainment industries and otherwise) who were determined not to cooperate with the committee would claim their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. William Grooper and Rockwell Kent ,

3053-409: The contrary, they ardently supported it. McAuliffe further acknowledges that the Act "served to avert possible disaster for individual politicians" who feared being labeled as Communists for their left-minded ideas. In the words of Senator Humphrey, "the amendment [was sought] to remove any doubt in the Senate as to where [Democrats and liberals] [stood] on the issue of Communism." An article published in

3124-510: The crackdowns on suspected communists, and some were outright imprisoned. Most of these reprisals were initiated by trial verdicts that were later overturned, laws that were later struck down as unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable , and extra-judiciary procedures, such as informal blacklists by employers and public institutions, that would come into general disrepute, though by then many lives had been ruined. The most notable examples of McCarthyism include

3195-626: The enforcement of laws relating to "espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States". The SISS was headed by Democrat Pat McCarran and gained a reputation for careful and extensive investigations. This committee spent a year investigating Owen Lattimore and other members of the Institute of Pacific Relations . As had been done numerous times before, the collection of scholars and diplomats associated with Lattimore (the so-called China Hands ) were accused of "losing China", and while some evidence of pro-communist attitudes

3266-399: The entertainment industry, academics, left-wing politicians, and labor union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive and questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations and beliefs were often exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and the destruction of their careers and livelihoods as a result of

3337-554: The firing of the Hollywood Ten and stated: "We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States..." This marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist . In spite of the fact that hundreds were denied employment, the studios, producers, and other employers did not publicly admit that a blacklist existed. At this time, private loyalty review boards and anti-communist investigators began to appear to fill

3408-592: The form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means." The following year, the Czechoslovak coup by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia heightened concern in the West about Communist parties seizing power and the possibility of subversion. In 1949, a high-level State Department official was convicted of perjury in a case of espionage, and the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb . The Korean War started

3479-506: The graduating class of Dartmouth College President in 1953: "Don't join the book burners! … Don't be afraid to go to the library and read every book so long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency—that should be the only censorship." The president then settled for a compromise by retaining the ban on Communist books written by Communists, while also allowing the libraries to keep books on Communism written by anti-Communists. McCarthy's committee then began an investigation into

3550-417: The identities of those who accused them. In many cases, they were not even told of what they were accused. 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. From 1951 to 1955,

3621-564: The ills of capitalism during the Great Depression , the Communist Party of the United States increased its membership through the 1930s, reaching a peak of about 75,000 members in 1940–41. While the United States was engaged in World War II and allied with the Soviet Union , the issue of anti-communism was largely muted. With the end of World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately, as

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3692-660: The investigations of alleged communists that were conducted by Senator McCarthy, and the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Following the end of the Cold War , unearthed documents revealed substantial Soviet spy activity in the United States, though many of the agents were never properly identified by Senator McCarthy. President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947, required that all federal civil-service employees be screened for "loyalty". The order said that one basis for determining disloyalty would be

3763-611: 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. Among other purposes, the FBI used its illegally obtained information to alert prosecuting attorneys about the planned legal strategies of NLG defense lawyers. The FBI also used illegal undercover operations to disrupt communist and other dissident political groups. In 1956, Hoover

3834-678: The most recognized politicians in the United States. The first recorded use of the term "McCarthyism" was in the Christian Science Monitor on March 28, 1950 ("Their little spree with McCarthyism is no aid to consultation"). The paper became one of the earliest and most consistent critics of the Senator. The next recorded use happened on the following day, in a political cartoon by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block (Herblock) . The cartoon depicts four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant (the traditional symbol of

3905-608: The next year, significantly raising tensions and fears of impending communist upheavals in the United States. In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party USA working in the State Department, which attracted substantial press attention, and the term McCarthyism was published for the first time in late March of that year in The Christian Science Monitor , along with

3976-439: The only two visual artists to be questioned by McCarthy, both took this approach, and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience. However, while this usually protected witnesses from a contempt-of-Congress citation, it was considered grounds for dismissal by many government and private-industry employers. The legal requirements for Fifth Amendment protection were such that a person could not testify about his own association with

4047-532: The opposing Kuomintang . In 1950, the Korean War began, pitting U.S., U.N., and South Korean forces against communists from North Korea and China. During the following year, evidence of increased sophistication in Soviet Cold War espionage activities was found in the West. In January 1950, Alger Hiss , a high-level State Department official, was convicted of perjury. Hiss was in effect found guilty of espionage;

4118-609: The press, calling for 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 opened the Bureau's files, 'McCarthyism' would probably be called 'Hooverism'." In March 1950, McCarthy had initiated

4189-403: The press. Yielding to the pressure, the State Department ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers , etc." Some libraries actually burned the newly forbidden books. Though he did not block the State Department from carrying out this order, President Eisenhower publicly criticized the initiative as well, telling

4260-583: The rhetoric of anti-communist politicians than was espionage or any other specific activity. An example of this was Leland Olds , an economist who was Chairman of the Federal Power Commission but failed renomination due to earlier suspected Communist sympathies. McCarthy's involvement in these issues began publicly with a speech he made on Lincoln Day , February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia . He brandished

4331-450: The statute of limitations had run out for that crime, but he was convicted of having perjured himself when he denied that charge in earlier testimony before the HUAC. In Britain, Klaus Fuchs confessed to committing espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950 in

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4402-598: The term McCarthyism is, in the modern day, outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism , after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover , is more appropriate. What became known as the McCarthy era began before McCarthy's rise to national fame. Following the breakdown of the wartime East-West alliance with the Soviet Union , and with many remembering the First Red Scare , President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order in 1947 to screen federal employees for possible association with organizations deemed "totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive", or advocating "to alter

4473-472: The usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion. HUAC achieved its greatest fame and notoriety with its investigation into the Hollywood film industry . In October 1947 , the committee began to subpoena screenwriters, directors, and other movie-industry professionals to testify about their known or suspected membership in the Communist Party, association with its members, or support of its beliefs. At these testimonies, this question

4544-494: The words of Ernest van den Haag , there was "no place in democracy for those who want to abolish [it] even with a peaceful vote". The Communist Control Act was originally proposed as an amendment to the Internal Security Act of 1950 , which had sought to combat the spread of communism in labor unions. Apart from its secondary focus which concentrated on the illegality of "communist front organizations" (i.e. labor unions),

4615-438: 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

4686-468: Was asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?" Among the first film industry witnesses subpoenaed by the committee were ten who decided not to cooperate. These men, who became known as the " Hollywood Ten ", cited the First Amendment 's guarantee of free speech and free assembly, which they believed legally protected them from being required to answer

4757-471: Was becoming increasingly frustrated by 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 . 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

4828-754: 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. 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

4899-562: Was found, nothing supported McCarran's accusation that Lattimore was "a conscious and articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy". Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the charges were rejected by a federal judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955. McCarthy headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953 and 1954, and during that time, used it for

4970-480: Was rush-printed in the early hours of the morning. In 1955, an outraged American Civil Liberties Union characterized it as "a mockery of... [Americans’] most basic constitutional guarantees." Mary S. McAuliffe commented that use of the Communist Control Act of 1954 was an illustration of "how deeply McCarthyism penetrated American society." There was much controversy surrounding the act. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director, J. Edgar Hoover , opposed

5041-441: Was stripped of his security clearance after a 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. Once

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