"I hold here in my hand a list..."
VENONA notwithstanding, McCarthy was a lunatic.
"McCarthy had shopworn goods and fishing expeditions," said Don Ritchie, the Senate's associate historian who began poring over the transcripts in 1976. He said the files won't provide fodder for any revisionists arguing McCarthy was right.
No one McCarthy summoned went to jail -- even the few who were convicted of contempt won on appeal. But his probes ruined lives and careers with unproven hints of communist taint.
- from the Reuters article in the Washington Post
The "list", by the way, was a handful of blank pages.