10 Americans You Won't Believe Were Accused Of Being Communists

2. President Harry S Truman

The 33rd President of the United States, Harry S Truman was the leader of the so-called "free world" when Joe McCarthy's investigations were on-going - and he was even suspected of being a Communist sympathiser himself! Accusations that Soviet agents had infiltrated Truman's Democratic government - and particularly the State Department - were so widespread that 78% of the American public believed them to be true in 1946, and this was seen as a key factor in helping Republican Dwight Eisenhower to win election in 1952. Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 - which called for restrictions on the power of labour unions, fearing they were harbouring communism - although he was over-ruled by Congress, and also criticised McCarthy on a number of occasions for being over-aggressive in his attempts to root out socialism in America. On one occasion Truman even asserted that McCarthy was "the best asset the Kremlin has", claiming the Senator was "sabotaging the foreign policy of the United States" during the Cold War. In reverse, McCarthy alleged that Truman and the Democratic Party were guilty of "20 years of treason" due to the fact that they were "in bed with" the Communist Party. Such public condemnation of a President and his supposed Communist leanings gave McCarthy plenty of airtime to express his controversial views during the 1950s - and he seemed to love every minute of it.