United States Senator Joe McCarthy has accused more than 200 staff in the State Department of being members of the Communist Party.
He made the startling allegation in a public speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, saying the State Department was infested with communists and brandished a sheet of paper which purportedly contained the traitors' names.

Senator McCarthy told the Ohio county women's Republican Club that Secretary of State Dean Acheson knew the names of 205 people who were in his words still "working in and shaping the policy of the State Department".
His comments brought an immediate denial from Lincoln White, press officer at the State Department.
Mr White said: "If he is correctly quoted, his allegation that the Secretary of State has a list of 205 Communist Party members who are working and shaping policy in the State Department is entirely without foundation.
"We know of no Communist Party members in the department and if we find any they will be summarily dismissed. We did not furnish Senator McCarthy with any such list and we would be interested in seeing his list."
Senator McCarthy has made his claims against a background of growing anti-Communist feeling.
Alger Hiss, a former senior public servant, was convicted and jailed last month of perjury after being accused of being an accomplice to a self-confessed former member of an underground Communist network.
Senator McCarthy's speech also coincides with the collapse of the Kuomintang regime in China and the establishment there of a Communist government, adding to American fears about the global spread of Communism.
Mr McCarthy was defeated for the Republican nomination for the Senate in 1944 but two years later was able to win the Republication nomination away from veteran Senator, Robert La Follette.
In the election he beat his Democrat opponent after a campaign of continuous misrepresentation of Professor Howard McMurray as a Communist sympathiser.