A rationalist has a hard time not reviewing history from that period and concluding that for all intents and purposes McCarthy was right about the extent of communist infiltration and may have indeed grossly underestimated and misunderstood the nature of intellectual sympathies for communism and how deeply rooted those sources of sympathy where in American elite intellectual tradition.

My impression of the situation (which has not been extensively researched) is that, although there really were plenty of spies and such, McCarthy's methods were largely ineffective at identifying them. Is my impression accurate?