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This is how it works: McCarthy calls *everyone* a communist. In response, people assume *no one* is a communist. This allows those Soviet spies that were active greater leeway in their operations. This is what the KGB meant when they said he was a boon to their operations.

What you’re saying would be true if the KGB were claiming him as one of their own. They weren’t. They only said his over-zealous activities were so discrediting to anti-Communism in general that they caused ordinary people to drop their guard.

Nobody suggested that the KGB was claiming McCarthy as 'one of their own', what the KGB was doing was attempting to discredit McCarthy by claiming that his efforts were actually helpful to them, when in fact the opposite was true. The CPUSA (which answered to Moscow) was deadly terrified of McCarthy, even more so than they were of J. Edgar Hoover because McCarthy was bringing home the reality of the Communist threat to the average working American, McCarthy wasn't interested in the opinions of eggheads and intellectuals, he was concerned with the working man. And the assertion that people 'dropped their guard' because of McCarthy is simply untrue and invalid, except to lingering fellow travelers who still want to smear and sneer at one of the great Patriots of the 20th Century.

This is how it works: McCarthy calls *everyone* a communist.

You are obviously ignorant of history. When you were born anyway? McCarthy NEVER called "everyone" a Communist, and therefore your entire premise is worthless.

In response, people assume *no one* is a communist. This allows those Soviet spies that were active greater leeway in their operations. This is what the KGB meant when they said he was a boon to their operations.

You have no idea of what you're talking about.