ABSTRACT
The editorial conceded that there was more significant Communist infiltration of the US government than McCarthy's critics have acknowledged but still implied that efforts to document the story are somehow illegitimate. And, in The Amerasia Spy Case, two of us made the point that "precisely because Senator McCarthy was reckless and made false charges, actual Communists who engaged in and contemplated espionage sought to claim the status of victims." There is simply no evidence in the Commenter or Communist Party of the United States archives in Moscow, or in the recently released decoded KGB cables, that supports the general charge by Joe McCarthy that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were part of, or assisted, a Communist conspiracy. The myth's devotees insist that anyone who linked American Communists to Soviet espionage was a McCarthyism and that those accused of Soviet espionage were innocent victims of McCarthyism persecution.
