You impression is correct. Ethel was a communist zealot and as guilty as her husband.
My point as that McCarthy was right, and that he falsely accused some out of necessity, thereby deflecting Soviet suspicion and protecting a national security treasure (the Venona project).
I have never seen anywhere that McCarthy had actual access to venona. He wasn’t playing some Byzantine game falsely accusing people knowingly. He was just wrong on some of the ones accused, on most he was correct. But he wasn’t deliberately smearing some people he knew to be innocent
I have read fairly extensively on Joseph McCarthy, and even downloaded and read a degree of the transcripts of the Army-McCarthy hearings, and had come to the conclusion years ago that Joseph McCarthy was the victim of a vindictive and partisan Leftist media which had in the intervening time influenced an entire nation by characterizing him as an evil person.
I admit that it was reading one of Ann Coulter’s books back around in early days of this century that made me pay attention to the activities of Joseph McCarthy, especially her description of the famous “Have you no decency” exchange.
Note: I had also read “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers for the first time just before I read Ann Coulter’s book, and the truth in “Witness” shone through. Reading “Witness”, I saw the tactics of the Left and the Media in full display, and with nearly no difference in the tactics we see used by them today. The lies. The scurrilous accusations. The character assassinations. All of it.
Anyway, regarding McCarthy, I knew of this exchange in the Army-McCarthy Hearings, but had never done anything less than accept it as truth (and all that went along with it) at face value. In my mind, McCarthy was a bad guy who trampled the rights of people, accused people falsely, badgered people who appeared in front of his committee, and was a known liar.
This is what I had heard growing up, it is what I read in the textbooks. Who would lie about these things?
When I read Ann Coulter’s book (I can’t remember if it was “Treason” or “Slander”) I recall being somewhat incredulous. Her account of Joseph McCarthy in general, and this exchange with the lawyer Joseph Welch in particular, was so radically different and diametrically opposed to what I had been told my entire life.
I was honestly a bit skeptical. She said that McCarthy had only outed Welch’s assistant as a communist because Welch had been badgering McCarthy’s assistant Roy Cohen continuously and sarcastically in a demeaning way for an extended period of time, in spite of repeated polite requests to stop.
But no books I read portrayed it that way, and I found out one could download the transcripts of the hearing from the early Fifties, so I did that and went right to the section after some searching, and honestly...it was exactly as Ann Coulter described it.
I didn’t need to see the video to clearly interpret the ridicule, sarcasm, and demeaning behavior on the part of Welch to the point a patient McCarthy finally exploded and said if Welch wanted to find communists so badly, he should start with his own assistant who had been a member of a communist organization.
I finally came across the book “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies” by M. Stanton Evans. That book was so thorough I ended up buying the hardcover, the audiobook, and the Kindle (which I have marked up extensively). And unlike the scum I read in other books, M. Stanton Evans had been alive and been a cub reporter at the time...and he did independent investigation, not doing what EVERY SINGLE LEFTIST book has done, which has been to regurgitate prior works done by Leftists.
M. Stanton Evans actually went looking for documents, and repeatedly, saw evidence of how files had been cleansed by leftists. Even to the point where a list of documents included in a file pointed to a key document, and when he went to it, found a staple with a little piece of paper sticking out from under the staple. That kind of thing.
McCarthy didn’t falsely accuse people, and as Ann Coulter correctly stated, they can’t even list one person falsely accused by him. The closest they will get, and they still to this day will do it, is to accuse him of falsely accusing Annie Lee Moss, a black woman. However, when the evidence is viewed, it is pretty clear McCarthy was on target with her. They all said it was a case of “mistaken identity”, he had the wrong “Annie Lee Moss”, it was some other woman. It wasn’t.
What was even more disturbing to me about this particular case is that McCarthy discussed the case of this woman in private with the Democrats on the committee, and Henry “Scoop” Jackson was one of those. You know, the honest, committed, patriot named “Scoop” Jackson who was considered to have unimpeachable character and was held up as a honest, non-partisan politician.
Jackson heard the information on Annie Lee Moss, and conceded she was what McCarthy said she was. Then, he got in front of a camera in the hearing, and knowing full well it was not a case of mistaken identity, opined that it was a case of mistaken identity and she was being unfairly treated.
And never mind what Truman did as President, putting the welfare of the Democratic Party in front of national security. It soured me on him forever.
And so on. You get the point. But that was a turning point for me, reading “Witness” and then everything that followed that.
As an aside, I have always felt that McCarthy had a source with access to Venona data. Because he was spot on in nearly all his cases, and just a bit off on a few.