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one can only come away with the impression that not only was McCarthy right, he must have had intelligence (from Venona, possibly) being fed to him.

In Evans's book (Chapter 23, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," he speculates on evidence that McCarthy's source was probably someone in the State Department. Another may have been Sen. McCarran himself, who had access to FBI reports and other documents as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

While publicly condemning McCarthy as having no credibility, the Truman Administration was panicked by his revelations and began a vigorous hunt for the leaker.

Evans concluded the chapter: "Throughout, the White House, Department of Justice, and other agencies of the Truman government showed far more interest in tracking down McCarthy's sources than in uncovering alleged Soviet agents or Communist Party members, or in addressing the lax security standards deplored by the L.R.B. [Loyalty Review Board of the State Department]. In the view of the Truman administration, the problem with Joe McCarthy was not that he didn't have inside sources of loyalty data but that he all too obviously did."