OPINION:
In your recent editorial “Accusation is still not evidence” (Web, Oct. 8) you casually toss out the standard references to the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, drawing a comparison between McCarthy’s tactics and those of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers. Such references to McCarthy are easy to make given the conventional wisdom on his activities, but they are also mistaken.
McCarthy offered plenty of evidence to support his allegations of security risks in people working for the government, evidence gathered from State Department files, the FBI and prior investigations, such as the investigation conducted by the late Rep. Martin Dies, Texas Democrat, in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
And as the release of the Venona transcripts in 1995 made clear, many of those McCarthy accused were in fact agents of the Soviets, including Lauchlin Currie, Solomon Adler and Mary Jane Keeney, among many others.
The Washington Times and its readers would be well served by reading “Blacklisted by History” by M. Stanton Evans. If you do, I suspect that in the future you will avoid facile references to McCarthy.
STEVE BRADLEY
McLean, Va.
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