McCarthy Wheeling Speech Claims 205 Communists in State Department Launching Witch Hunt

On February 9, 1950, junior senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin delivered a Lincoln’s birthday address to the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, claiming he possessed a list of communists working in the State Department. McCarthy declared: “While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.” He explained that homegrown traitors were causing America to lose the Cold War. The speech vaulted McCarthy to national prominence and sparked a nationwide hysteria about subversives in the American government.

McCarthy himself was taken aback by the massive media response to the Wheeling speech, and he continually revised both his charges and figures. Though advance copies distributed to the press recorded the number as 205, McCarthy quickly changed this claim. In Salt Lake City a few days later, he cited a figure of 57, and in the Senate on February 20, 1950, he claimed 81. In a letter to President Truman the next day and in an “official” transcript submitted to the Congressional Record ten days later, he used the number 57. The constantly shifting numbers revealed the baseless nature of his accusations—McCarthy’s recklessness had finally merged with his search for a propelling issue.

Barely a month after McCarthy’s Wheeling speech, Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block coined the term “McCarthyism” as a synonym for demagoguery, baseless defamation, and mudslinging. McCarthy’s efforts never uncovered a single communist in the U.S. government, yet until his Senate censure four years later, he would be the Senate’s most controversial and destructive member. The Wheeling speech established a template for political advancement through unfounded accusations, character assassination, and exploitation of public fear—tactics that would be weaponized against labor unions, civil rights activists, and progressive movements throughout the 1950s and would echo through American politics for decades.