[Wormwood]

I did a quick Google search and found that the Verona Papers indicate that indeed there were many Communists in poitions of power during the McCarthy era.

It would have been easier tif I hadn't made a typo in my original post.

Venona papers (or "Venona Project")...not Verona.

Hey, I'm barely awake here!

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Thanks. I went back and did a new Google search for Venona, and now see what you're talking about.

For others like me who are unfamiliar with the Venona Project, it was a joint project of US and UK intelligence agencies that managed to decrypt Soviet correspondence with agents in the US. It revealed that in the post-WWII period the USSR had at least 349 agents in the US. Here's a link to list of identified names:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers