Beloved Franklin, American patriot.

The Venona Project constituted the definitive proof of the massive extent of Soviet espionage activities in America, which for many decades had been routinely denied by many mainstream journalists and historians, and it also played a crucial secret role in dismantling that hostile spy network during the late 1940s and 1950s. But Venona was nearly snuffed out just a year after its birth. In 1944 Soviet agents became aware of the crucial code-breaking effort, and soon afterwards arranged for the Roosevelt White House to issue a directive ordering the project shut down and all efforts to uncover Soviet spying abandoned. The only reason that Venona survived, allowing us to later reconstruct the fateful politics of that era, was that the determined Military Intelligence officer in charge of the project risked a court-martial by directly disobeying the explicit Presidential order and continuing his work.^[1]

But Joe McCarthy was some kind of low life for daring to ask why so many communists were employed by the federal government. Yes, that was "McCarthyism" when what we really ought to talk about is "dishonest, manufactured, diversionary, anti-McCarthy hysteria."

Notes
^[1] "American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence." By Ron Unz, The Unz Review, 6/12/19.