But we do know, that McCarthy announced he had a list of x numbers of commies, when he did not.
Grade A BS.
In the Wheeling speech, McCarthy referred to a letter that Secretary of State James Byrnes sent to Congressman Adolph Sabath in 1946. In that letter, Byrnes said that State Department security investigators had declared 284 persons unfit to hold jobs in the department because of communist connections and other reasons, but that only 79 had been discharged, leaving 205 still on the State Department's payroll. McCarthy told his Wheeling audience that while he did not have the names of the 205 mentioned in the Byrnes letter, he did have the names of 57 who were either members of or loyal to the Communist Party. On February 20, 1950, McCarthy gave the Senate information about 81 individuals - the 57 referred to at Wheeling and 24 others of less importance and about whom the evidence was less conclusive.
He didn't make these names public because
"if I were to give all the names involved, it might leave a wrong impression. If we should label one man a communist when he is not a communist, I think it would be too bad." What McCarthy did was to identify the individuals only by case numbers, not by their names. But, he DID give the names to Senate investigators.
The [Tydings]
committee cleared everyone on McCarthy's list, but within a year the State Department started proceedings against 49 of the 62. By the end of 1954, 81 of those on McCarthy's list had left the government either by dismissal or resignation.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm