In 1950, Joseph McCarthy accused Owen Lattimore of being a "top Russian spy." Lattimore's experience defending himself explains how the anti-communist system worked. | American Experience | PBS

By 1950, it seemed that Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, was doomed to fade into obscurity. But with a single speech in Wheeling, West Virginia on February 9 of that year, he ignited a firestorm that would forever change American politics—and carve out his space in history. Speaking before a small Women’s Republican Club, McCarthy claimed to have a list of 205 "known communists" in the State Department, sparking a nationwide hysteria over subversive elements in the United Stat