BTW, I didn't say all were fired, I said they resigned.

and yes, I know, wiki isn't always accurate but I trust it a fair amount since all can create input to the entry.

All he ever succeeded in doing is acting like a total jerk.

Finally, McCarthy got a list of information on all the individuals he was accusing from the State Department by requesting info on every security risk. The papers he got were about as conclusive as the original Nixon tapes; every piece of important info was eliminated. Not only THAT, he found proof on the payroll of 4 people hired for the short-term whose only duty was to tamper with the papers.

So McCarthy, actually, started becoming the butt of a smear campaign and not the other way around. Although no one to this day can name a single innocent person he ever pointed out, he was accused of lying. That's preposterous! He's trying to point out spying, espionage, and other direct risks of Soviet infiltration and no one's concerned!

The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee released, on July 30th, 1953, a report called "Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments" where it seperately substantiated McCarthy's claims.

One of the first big acts against McCarthy at this time was a book called "Senator Joseph McCarthy" by Richard H. Hovere, which was one of the first big lists of McCarthy's "crimes" of name calling. Within this book attacking name calling, McCarthy was called the following names; a bully, a seditionist, a species of nihilist, a screamer, a political thug, a master of the mob, a black arts practitioner, a champion liar, a prince of hatred, possibly a homosexual, a rue hypocrite, morally indecent, perhaps crazy, an outrageous flourflusher, a fraud, a heavy drinker, and a demon. This is the professional rejection of McCarthy's claims; it's good to see that argument ad hominem was not the order of the day and instead professionalism and intelligence refuted his arguments.

Now, as you know, McCarthy was part of the Army-McCarthy hearings of '54. Right after these started, Ike issued an executive order prohibiting testimony from any members of the executive branch without prior permission, which was never given. So, these weren't even fair hearings at all.

Senator Ralph Flanders introduced a resolution on July 30, 1954 to censure McCarthy for 46 different actions "unbecoming a member". They managed to only condemn him, which is a slap on the wrist, and only for two counts.

Now, let me give the exact stats, since I estimated before; of his list of subversives (which were by then well known, just not public. The White House knew, the State Department knew, and the Senate knew), 81 in all, the following things happened;
57 were summoned by the loyalty board and 54 admitted to all the charges.
By November of that year, all the rest had resigned suddenly.
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee reveals that, on June 27, 1956, The Security Chief of the State Department, Scott McLead, drew up a list of 847 security risks in the State Department.

As an interesting note, in New York, the Constitutional Educational League was offering 10 grand to anyone who could prove even one case of McCarthy being wrong. It was never claimed.

So, McCarthy was following the EO about loyalty risks, as well as more obvious laws regarding spies and soviet agents (which are also illegal, clearly), did nothing more than demand a fair investigation, was smeared left and right while being denied a fair investigation for years, and was finally shown to be 100% correct on every count. I fail to see a single crime McCarthy did except to underestimate the extent of the subversion.

Let me state, though, that I am not in support of COINTELEPRO or J. Edgar Hoover's campaigns. I completely dislike investigating the Hollywood Ten or other civilian communists. But that wasn't McCarthy, that was Hoover. Even if you believe McCarthy started it, what he actually DID was both correct and needed, and effects after that were unfortunate but not intended. Furthermore, if Truman had simply handed over the information requested and allowed his staff to be interviewed, the problem would have ended in perhaps a year at most and the outcry would have been limited to those spies and subversives.

Sorry to ramble on so long, it's just something I really hate; that whistleblowers on government problems, while so loved in the media or about Enron or whatever, are absolutely hated when they point out something that's not just annoying, it's downright frightening and dangerous, such as enemy spies. If you want some source material, I can rattle some off, but it's all in books.

I personally respect Senator McCarthy and think he did the right thing. He took a list of security risks provided by the FBI and campaigned to get them looked into, only withheld the info because Truman wasn't permitting interviews...

I strongly doubt that. McCarthy was asked on multiple occasions to provide the names of the people under suspicion and refused every time. From the Wikipedia entry:

"On one particular occasion, he declared in a floor speech that he would happily turn over evidence of subversive activities by government employees, whereupon Senator Herbert Lehman approached him and held out his hand. McCarthy, having no evidence with him on that or any other occasion, ignored Lehman..."

...and finally, about half of the subversives admitted, under HUAC investigation, to the charges, and the other half resigned quickly afterwards.

What charges? The only thing McCarthy ever accused anyone of was belonging to the Communist party, and that is not a criminal offense in the United States of America. The only reason anyone was forced to resign was because of the witch-hunt atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust that McCarthy and his ilk created.

As an aside, since this is a pet peeve of mine (although I am no scholar on the issue), I personally respect Senator McCarthy and think he did the right thing. He took a list of security risks provided by the FBI and campaigned to get them looked into, only withheld the info because Truman wasn't permitting interviews, and finally, about half of the subversives admitted, under HUAC investigation, to the charges, and the other half resigned quickly afterwards. Shortly after that, the head of State Department Security (not the correct title name, I'm sure) made a list of something like 800 more security risks (several times that of Joe). I just want to point that out as a point of interest (as for a source, check out "The Unseen Hand", by Ralph Epperson. The book isn't on that topic, but it has a chapter about it and references to other works).