Senator Millard Tydings (left) was one of McCarthy’s most vicious, dishonest critics. Tydings stood on the Senate floor and claimed he had a recording of McCarthy’s Wheeling, West Virginia, speech that proved McCarthy had said he had the names of 205 communists in the State Department. However, Tydings was later forced to admit that he had no such recording. Also, further investigation found that at least 67 State Department personnel had been identified as communists by other investigators.

Senator McCarthy is still attacked for saying that Owen Lattimore (left) was “the top Russian espionage agent in America.”  Yet, many facts support McCarthy's charge. Louis Budenz, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA, detailed how Lattimore helped the Communist Party in the Amerasia case. Lattimore was also identified by former Soviet Army General Alexander Barmine as a member of Russian Military Intelligence (GRU). In a unanimous report, the McCarran Committee of the U.S. Senate identified Lattimore as a "conscious articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy." Lattimore wrote a letter of introduction for Soviet contact Haakon Chevalier to KGB operative Lauchlin Currie. Chevalier was trying to get a federal job at the time, even though he was a Soviet intelligence contact and was associated with members of the Communist Party. Currie, in turn, recommended Lattimore to President Roosevelt to serve as a special advisor to Chiang Kai-Shek, China's anti-communist leader. Lattimore played a key role in smearing Chiang while praising Communist mass murderer Mao Tse Tung, helping Mao to take over China. If Lattimore was not the top Soviet agent in America, he was certainly among the top ten.

According to Senator McCarthy's critics, his "most outrageous smear" was his attack on George Catlett Marshall (left). Marshall was the Army Chief of Staff during World War II and was President Truman's Secretary of State and then his Secretary of Defense. However, McCarthy was by no means the only person to criticize Marshall's disastrous foreign policy actions, especially his apparent betrayal of the anti-communist forces in China. 

McCarthy caused outrage because he voiced the suspicion that Marshall's many damaging actions were not blunders but were deliberate acts of treason. Given the facts about Marshall's record, McCarthy's suspicion is understandable, if not plausible. For example, read what General Claire Chennault said about Marshall in his book The Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee Chennault. General Chennault spends many pages discussing how Marshall repeatedly undermined the anti-communist forces in China and enabled Mao's communist thugs to take over the country. In 1949, none other than future president John F. Kennedy harshly criticized Marshall for his role in the communist takeover of China.  Senator William Jenner called Marshall "a front man for traitors" and a "living lie." 

McCarthy's enemies were infuriated by his Senate speech about Marshall's record, but McCarthy's critics have minimized or ignored most of the facts he presented in the speech.

During Marshall's stint as Secretary of State, the State Department dismantled its own security staff and neutralized its security board. Marshall was strongly critical of Chiang Kai-Shek and his anti-communist Chinese Nationalists, but Marshall expressed sympathy and even admiration for the Chinese Communists and their murderous leader Mao Tse-Tung. When OSS officer Colonel Ivan Yeaton warned Marshall about Mao Tse-Tung and his Communist forces, Marshall ignored him, causing Yeaton to remark that the only person Marshall would listen to was Communist official and Mao deputy Zhou Enlai.