That all changed at the end of the Cold War. In the early 1990s, top-secret Soviet-era KGB files were briefly declassified. They confirmed that over 300 Communist spies had indeed been active in the USA, working for the government and even on the Manhattan Project. Wrongheaded as their approach was, McCarthy and Hoover really had been onto something. Oxford Research Encyclopedias has the whole, fascinating story. Unlike a Puritan witch hunt, which obviously wouldn't have featured any actual witches, the Red Scare really did feature a cast of Communists hoping to undermine the United States. Yet there's also no doubt McCarthy's tactics were heavy-handed. Over 9,000 government workers were investigated, 30 times the number of actual Communists in the government.
