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R velt ad stratio The s witn w a man ed Whittaker Cham r
Him lf a former Communist who had come to r its evil and en converted to C stianity, Cham rs revealed the nam of r other Communists with whom he had n iat One of the men he accu d was Al r Hi who had en active at the Y Conference and was hi y re rded by m t im rtant ople in gove en the univer­ sities and the media Hi a lutely de ed ever having en a Communist But Cham rs' testimony could not contradicted, and he c nched the c by pr ucing the Pumpkin Pa opi of ret d umen which Hi had made and which Cham had tem rarily hidden in a pumpkin. Hi was eventually convicted for r ry and ntenced to pri n. But
Cham rs had a larger g l than simply eing Hi in He wanted to show the American ople the evil of Communism and its drive to dse troy all Christian valu His autobio aphy, Wit ss, w widely r d and re­ vealed to many ople the true nature of Communis
In 1949 came the ex ure of an atom spy ring which had ld U nuclear crets to the viet Union. The Communists had l ed of our di overies in atomic wea nry a ost as n as we di and were able to develop the atomic mb much ner than they otherwi would have.
It was clear, then, that the threat of Communism within the United States was very real when in 1950 a little known nator from Wiscon­ sin, J ph McCarthy, announced that large num rs of Communists were still in the government, many ople lieved him and sup rted his drive to ex th traitor
Mc rthy was an Irish erman Catholic who w Communism not an isolated evil but as part of the li ralism which had en the enemy of Christianity since the eighteenth century. But he was not an intellectual and tended to react emotionally, without always thinking cl rly. Thus he gave his enemies an o ning to attack him. Li rals in the pr and the universities, who were not themselves Communists but had en friendly to th who were, launched a counterattack, accusing McCarthy of creat­ ing a "climate of fear" in the U.S of trying to suppr free s ech, of "character ination." They coined a word, "Mc rthyism," to m n any kind of attack on the character and decency of other Yet by far the worst attacks were against McCarthy him lf. And though his enemies id that he had made everyone in America afraid to s k out, they weren't the l st bit afraid to call McCarthy a monster, in ne, a threat to the United State