Yep. In the last ten years or so, I have had to completely alter my outlook on many things, and the catalyst for it was, of all people, Ann Coulter. I read her books “Treason” and “Slander”, and her account of Joseph McCarthy is so diametrically opposed to what I have been taught, told by television and newspaper and read in many books.
I read “Witness”, and was appalled to see the same type of politics, used with the same tactics on the same type of people that are used by the Left today (and have been since then)
In particular, the thing that stuck out at me was the “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” exchange with Joseph Welch. That is like gospel, unassailable. When I heard her account, I thought “Okay, someone is flat out wrong here. They cannot both be right, all the historical accounts, papers, schoolbooks, etc and Ann Coulter. Someone had to be just wrong.
So, I went and found the transcripts to the Army-McCarthy hearings, and...lo and behold, Ann Coulter was spot on.
So I began reevaluating my stance and outlook on many things, especially this. I have read at least a dozen books from various sources, and 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. He had to have something.
My impression of Truman has dramatically changed as well, in addition to my regard for Marshall. Truman was not in bed with the communists, but he took the actions he did to protect the Democrat party, NOT our country!
The fact that these nitwits think McCarthy was involved with HUAC doesn’t surprise me a single bit.
I hope one of the books you read was M. Stanton Evans' "Blacklisted by History." Meticulously researched and documented, it turns the popular "history" of the McCarthy era on its head. It's frightening to learn how many presumably "official" archival documents have been destroyed.
I agree with you that McCarthy probably had solid evidence of Communist penetration of both the State Department and White House from some source, possibly VENONA.
Congress held hearing after WWII, which were public record, McCarthy was credited with much that he had nothing to do with. The Congressional record was open to any citizen o communist for the asking.
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."