FOR MANY the McCarthy era stands as the grimmest time in recent
memory. Beset by Cold War anxieties, Americans developed an obses-
sion with domestic communism that outran the actual threat and
gnawed at the tissue of civil liberties. For some politicians, hunting Reds
became a passport to fame--or notoriety. It was the focal point of the
careers of Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy; of Richard Nixon
during his tenure as Congressman, Senator, and Vice President of the
United States; of several of Nixon's colleagues on the House Committee
on Un-American Activities (HUAC); of Senator Pat McCarran and other
members of the Senate Internal Security Subcommitteee; and of a pha-
lanx of understudies at the national, state, and local levels.

A new vocabulary entered political discourse. "Are you now or have
you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" "I refuse to answer
on grounds that the answer may tend to incriminate me." "Fifth-
Amendment Communist!" "Soft on communism...." "Witch-hunt!"
"McCarthyism!" In the barrage of accusations that rumbled through
the late 1940s and early 1950s, reputations were made or ruined, ca-
reers blasted or created, lives and families shattered.

It is tempting to locate "McCarthyism" only in the realm of high
politics--as the combined sum of national news headlines, noisy rheto-
ric, and congressional inquiries. Yet it was more than that. The anti-

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