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This is on point.

I'm Megna Chakrabardi.

Even if there are only one Communist in the State Department,

that would still be one Communist, two minutes.

Senator Joseph McCarthy there on February 9, 1950 in Wheeling, West Virginia.

That iconic and infamous speech in which McCarthy waved a piece of paper before the crowd.

A list of 205 names of supposed Communists who'd infiltrated the State Department.

Now McCarthy never produced any evidence that there was even one Communist in the State

Department.

He had struck a cord and he launched the Red Scare.

The anti-communist witch hunt lasted approximately four years under McCarthy.

But there was another contemporary scare that lasted even longer.

On February 28, 1950, so just a few weeks after McCarthy's original speech, US Undersecretary

of State John Purfoy testified that since 1947, the State Department had dismissed some

200 employees who were considered poor security risks.

But what risk exactly did they pose?

...