Talk:Tydings Committee

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Its innaccurate to say that McCarthy had no names, he furnished the entire list of alleged communists to Tydings. Can we change that or what?--72.191.31.112 (talk) 00:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

All Wikipedia articles can be changed and corrected by anyone. In this case however, you will have to provide a citation from one or more reliable sources. RedSpruce (talk) 02:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

well my question is, what counts as a reliable source. I would like to see some context on the point at issue from the source that is cited. The text says "McCarthy had no names, he had a case file that had only numbers no names" and this sentence is backed up by a secondary source. What exactly does that secondary source say? Does it say that McCarthy took his list from the old State Department list, or does it actually say that McCarthy had no names. Because I can easily list a secondary source that claims that McCarthy DID in fact have names.

The sentence at issue has a semi colon. Shouldnt it be broken in half and each half cited?--72.191.31.112 (talk) 03:27, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The article currently states that McCarthy had names for some of the people he accused, so there may be no disagreement between the source you have in mind and the article's current content. I'll do some research and return later with details from various sources about this issue. You are welcome to do the same, of course. The source currently cited in the article isn't the most comprehensive or up-to-date source available on the topic, so some expansion and correction may be called for. RedSpruce (talk) 11:35, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Later: This is an interesting issue. Most sources are frustratingly vague on the question of whether McCarthy knew the names behind the "numbered cases" he presented to the Senate. It's known that most of McCarthy's cases came from the so-called "Lee List", which was compiled by former FBI agent Robert Lee in 1947 for the House Appropriations Committee. This was a list of employees of the State Department whose loyalty hearing files had been reviewed by a committee led by Lee and who, in Lee's opinion, posed "security problems". In the original list Lee presented to the House Appropriations Committee, the names had been redacted. However, in one source (Evans' "Blacklisted by History", probably the one you're using), it's stated that McCarthy sent a letter to Tydings with the names of a total of 102 individuals. Although the political slant of Evans' book clearly represents a fringe view, I don't know of any reason to doubt his fact-finding on this issue.

I've noted at least one other error in the article in my research so far, and of course there's plenty of opportunity for expansion too. I'll do some preliminary fixing-up to the article now, and hope to do more work on it in the near future. RedSpruce (talk) 02:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)