[jjoonathan]

According to

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

> historian John Earl Haynes concluded that, of 159 people identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence was substantial that nine had aided Soviet espionage efforts.

9/159. A 94% false positive rate.

[saalweachter]

You know, the problem with lists like this is that, once you've made the list, any organization with a cover-your-ass mentality (eg, every organization) is going to treat it as sacrosanct. Regardless of how flimsy the list was to start with, no amount of evidence can ever clear someone well enough. The risk isn't "chance of being wrong * real-world consequences of being wrong", it's "chance of being wrong * (real-world consequences of being wrong + career consequences of 'letting the guy on the known-threat list slip through')". The career consequences have infinite weight, so the chance of being wrong can never be low enough.

[aurelian]

Why don't you quote the next sentence? "He suggested that a majority of those on the lists could legitimately have been considered security risks, but that a substantial minority could not."

[jjoonathan]

Because it's nearly tautological: everyone on that list got there for some reason. The fact that a majority of those reasons weren't entirely made up isn't an indication of their quality as predictors of espionage.

Since we now have access to the ground truth we can compute the actual false positive rate. The great-grandparent post suggests that such an examination would vindicate McCarthy, but I have trouble sympathizing with this view. A 94% false-positive rate (96% if you use McCarthy's original figure) is bad no matter how you slice it.

[aurelian]

McCarthy identified several agents actively engaged in espionage. KGB records identify hundreds more that he missed.

McCarthy identified many more people in sensitive positions who were security risks, many with Communist associations. Even if those people were not actively engaged in espionage, they should not have held sensitive positions.

KGB/NKVD archives reveal they had hundreds of agents in the executive branch in the 1940s. McCarthy spurred the removal of Soviet moles, Communist sympathizers, and other security risks from sensitive positions. In this, he did the US a great service, as regrettable as false accusations are.

Edit: In response to your questions, it's as if you didn't read what I just wrote. Regarding the Soviet records of infiltration, several books have been written on these records and their revelations.

[jjoonathan]

I have zero sympathy for the view that people who disagree with current social/economic/espionage policy should be removed from office on that basis alone. On the contrary, such disagreement is central to how democracy works and those who would threaten it are the true threats to our society.

That said, we continue to disagree about the numbers, and I would like to know the resolution. Could you expand on your claim that "KGB/NKVD archives reveal they had hundreds of agents in the executive branch in the 1940s"? Did McCarthy have a very high false negative rate (thereby finding only 9 of the hundreds of spies)? Are you counting "security risks" as "agents"? What gives?

[aurelian]

Communists, meaning people who were members of the Communist Party or identified as Communists and associated with other Communists, were more likely to have come into contact with Soviet agents and been persuaded to spy or subvert US aims. We are talking about security risks not security certainties. It's entirely reasonable to remove risky people from sensitive positions. Any organization that failed to do so would fail to achieve the objectives given to it through the democratic process; it would serve another master. This is entirely separate from the question of who should choose the objectives of the government.

Ironically, Communists wished to overthrow the US government and were anti-democratic.

[dalke]

What are the risks, what's the error rate, and what are the consequences?

To start, what defines a sensitive position?

For example, Pete Seeger was a member of the Communist party in the US. He's a singer. He was castigated for his association with Communists, subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and found guilty of contempt of Congress before an appeals court overturned it.

Is singing a sensitive position? What about screenwriting or directing movies?

We know that "Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly" (see http://www.newsweek.com/israel-wont-stop-spying-us-249757 ) . That makes Israeli citizens a risk, no? What about Israeli sympathizers in sensitive positions? At what point do we declare that any Americans with a pro-Israeli viewpoint are a security risk and should be barred from sensitive positions? (Including singing?)

You mentioned overthrowing the government. Should all people with such ideas be removed from any sensitive position? We know that various US citizens to this day 'demand the dissolution of the Federal government', as for example http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/adam-kokesh-and-pete-santil... , as just one example of people who call for a peaceful overthrow.

My answer to all of those is "no". Having a strongly held belief which happens to be aligned with a foreign power's stated goals does not immediately make one a security risk.

Consider that in South Africa during Apartheid, and after abandoning the Native Republic policy in 1948, the South African Communist Party was one of the few that called for the end of Apartheid and equality of the races. The Suppression of Communism Act in 1950 formally banned the party and all those who supported communists. In practice then, that power was used to prosecute anyone against apartheid, since after all their aims were aligned with the presumed aims of communism.

Mandela was a member of the SACP and served on its Central Committee. As he wrote, "There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"

[A_COMPUTER]

>I have zero sympathy for the view that people who disagree with current social/economic/espionage policy should be removed from office on that basis alone.

Why? They'll just do a shitty job anyway. People rightfully get up in arms when Republicans want to see an opponent of the EPA appointed to the EPA, or department of education, because they know why it's being done, to undermine it. HUAC was set up to rout out Nazi sympathizers before it started going after communism, should they have been left alone?

[tomjen3]

I don't get why you haven't been downvoted to hell yet: removing people from their positions for the views they hold is _unamerican_.

As an entirely aside if he identified a few real spies and missed hundreds doesn't that suggest he was ineffective, to the point of actual harm?

[aurelian]

Removing enemy agents from positions is not unAmerican.

Removing people with known security risks from sensitive positions is not unAmerican.

He missed hundreds of agents, identified several agents and many more security risks, and spurred heightened security awareness that was a very good thing at the time. Expecting him to know the identity of every Soviet agent before attempting to remove any security risks is unreasonable.

[jjoonathan]

You make it sound like we're talking about a few false positives and a few false negatives.

>94% false positive rate (9/159) >95% false negative rate ((200-9)/200)

If it's unreasonable to call this a shit screening process, what would you consider reasonable?!

In any case, it seems virtually certain that McCarthy's accusations were far more effective as political tools rather than as filters against soviet subversion, in accordance with the traditional narrative.

[smutticus]

Just because some members of the American Communist party were working for the Soviets, does not mean that every member was. Guilt by association is generally not a crime under common law.

I don't know what 'unamerican' means, I know how it was used, but I don't think anyone really knows what it means. Therefore I'm bringing up common law. Whether something is unamerican or not is irrelevant. We're supposed to live in a nation of laws, not arbitrary standards.

[dalke]

I would qualify that to allow certain bona fide exceptions.

If a nuclear missile launch team has the position that nuclear weapons are unjustified and that pacifistic solutions are the only correct solution to national disagreements, then I think it's okay to remove them from their position, even if they've never acted on their views by not launching when the launch order came.

[SamReidHughes]

> removing people from their positions for the views they hold is _unamerican_.

If you're going to argue about a hiring preference being "unamerican" or not instead of its inherent morality, I don't know what game you're playing. Did you get your posting techniques from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual?

[cafard]

McCarthy was a showman, not a serious investigator. In the long run, he did more harm to the cause he nominally worked for.