McCARTHYISM TODAY - 1

Johann Hari's Independent column yesterday (reproduced here at Harry's Place) makes some good points about those US rightists that want to rehabilitate Senator Joe McCarthy on the grounds that the so-called Venona transcripts show that there was a substantial Soviet spy ring at the heart of the American establishment between the 1930s and late 1940s. What he misses is that the people who have done the serious work on Venona want to have nothing to do with restoring McCarthy's reputation. Ronald Radosh put the case eloquently in this Washington Post review of Ted Morgan's (rather good) McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (for which click here).