271,000 MAX

On Feb 9th at a Lincoln Day Speech, senator Joe McCarthy claimed that the U.S State Department was full of Communists and sympathizers who were influencing US foreign policy, and that he had the names of 57 of them. The State Department denied it. On Feb 11th, 1950 McCarthy addressed President Truman in a telegram asking him to check for himself. McCarthy claimed that Truman's own screening board flagged hundreds of employees as security risks, but the Secretary of State Acheson had only fired about 80 of roughly 300 recommended for discharge and that this was only done after a lengthy consultation with Alger Hiss (who was convicted of perjury in a spy case). McCarthy demanded that Acheson give Truman and the right congressional committee the names of everyone Alger Hiss placed in the Department, plus everyone who was still curently employed that Truman's board who had been placed on a list as security risks. McCarthy demanded that President Truman revoke the order he signed blocking the State Department from giving Congress any information about employees' loyalty in an effort to expose Communists. Truman never sent McCarthy a reply to the telegram. In Private: Truman wrote a harsh draft stating that McCarthy wasn't fit to serve, but it appears to have never been sent. I'm Public: Truman did respond through the press. By McCarthy's own account in the Senate, Truman had stated during a press conference that there was not a word of truth in McCarthy's telegram with his message being aimed at the public, and not at McCarthy himself. Republicans such as McCarthy and Edward Martin kept up attacks on the administration, and McCarthy became a national figure. He chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations from 1953 onward untill the Senate censured him in December 1954. McCarthy's influence collapsed afterward, and he passed away a few years later in 1957.