McCarthy was little known before gaining national attention with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 12, 1950. In that address, McCarthy argued that the United States was denied the fruits of victory from World War II by treasonous sub

On August 6, 1945 an American bomber dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing approximately 100,000 people. With this event the United States showed the world that they now solely possessed the world's most powerful weapon. The United States tried to make sure they were the only ones in the world who knew how to make it. On September 23, 1949 the Russians exploded their own atomic bomb. Had United States' secrets not been protected? At the time, it seemed highly unlikely that the Russians could have developed this bomb on their own. It seemed that Russian spies living in the U.S. had somehow obtained the information to help construct the bomb. At first, no one had a clue to who these spies could be however, soon the FBI conducted an investigation and several arrests were made. Eventually they found two people who seemed to be the ringleaders of the spies who stole the secrets Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were convicted and sentenced to death mainly because of the testimony of Ethel's brother David Greenglass (Freeland 144).

Even when Senator McCarthy was giving his very first accusing speech in Wheeling he had not any factual information whatever to support his accusations. The truth is that in making his speech in Wheeling, Senator McCarthy was talking of a subject and circumstances about which he knew nothing. After the specially-appointed Tydings Committee reviewed McCarthy's work, they concluded that in no instance was any one of State Department employees found to be a card-carrying Communist, a member of the Communist Party, or loyal to the Communist Party (Matusow 67).

In fact, Ethel had little if anything to do with the Communist spy ring. The most she did was type some materials and was present at her husband's side during a few crucial meetings. Since the FBI and prosecutors had virtually no case against Ethel Rosenberg, it is rumored that the Greenglasses may have been persuaded to embellish Ethel's role in her husbands alleged spying. Despite the lack of a case against Ethel, she still took the stand and faced cross-examination strongly with the same story as her husband (Freeland 211).

By the mere fact of their associations with a few persons of alleged questionable proclivities, an effort had been made to harm people whose only asset was their character and devotion to duty and country. This had been done without the slightest vestige of respect for even the most elementary rules of evidence or fair play or, indeed, common decency. Indeed, it was an effort not merely to establish guilt by association but guilt by accusation alone. This was something one would expect in a totalitarian nation where the rights of the individual are crushed beneath the juggernaut of oppression: it had no place in America where government exists to serve our peop

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Approximate Word count = 1912
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)