1950

• J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, publicly opposes the creation of a national police agency to control domestic communists.
• On January 25, Alger Hiss, the State Department official under investigation for his communist ties, receives a five-year prison sentence for perjury.
• On February 9, at Wheeling, West Virginia, the politically obscure senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) charges that there are "a lot" of communists working and making policy in the United States State Department.
• On March 8, Senator McCarthy lists fifty-seven communists he claims are employed in the State Department.
• On March 28, President Harry S. Truman launches an investigation into officials cited by Senator McCarthy as communists.
• On June 6, Senator McCarthy claims that at least three top officials in the State Department are communists.
• On June 15, David Greenglass confesses to providing the...