Welcome to Russian History Retold, Episode 263, KGB operations in Europe and the U.S.

Part 2.

Last time, we began our discussions on the spying operations carried out in Europe and

the U.S. before and immediately after World War II on behalf of the Soviet Union.

Today, we begin with the big red scare in the U.S. of the 1950s led by the junior senator

from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.

As I mentioned in the previous episode, there were a lot of Soviet spies in the United States

and they did a great deal of harm through their acts of espionage.

It caused people to panic, especially in the political arena.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was the leader of the mass hysteria that gripped the U.S. in the

1950s.

While he was correct that the threat was real, the problem was he was pointing his finger

at both guilty and innocent people.

In his book Reds, author Ted Morgan writes this about the senator, quote,

McCarthy did not emerge in a vacuum, but as the most prominent and a long line of men who

exploited the communist issue for political advantage, recklessly smearing their opponents

with false accusations.

These McCarthyites used forged documents to make their case or conducted raids of questionable

legality to enhance their political reputations of the subborn perjury and the testimony of

professional informants or use the communist issue to smear the new deal.

Still, he did acknowledge that there were spies.

Quote, the other side of the equation was that the American Communist Party served as a recruitment

...