(Senator Martin Dies with a fistful of "known Communists")

"I believe that if we are to prove an exception to the tragic fate of all of the republics, we must aggressively and fearlessly expose and combat the insidious forces that are tirelessly at work to destroy the American system and substitute in its stead some alien form of dictatorship." - Martin Dies, October 31, 1938

Before there was Joe McCarthy we had Martin Dies, whose House Un-American Activities Committee became the Dies Committee and changed course from investigating the attempted overthrow of the government in 1934 and various Nazi sympathy groups to reeking a goodly amount of havoc around the country, whipping up the Red Scare to a fevered pitch prior to World War 2. Another ideologue who was convinced Communists were hiding in the woodwork, Dies set out to "clean up" Hollywood (again!), by dragging in the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Lucille Ball and even Shirley Temple on suspicions they were harboring Communist sympathies. His paranoia that Soviet operatives were everywhere, from Cabinet posts to Clerical positions, bent on disrupting his crusade caused many in his party, including FDR, to distance themselves and give his rantings a wide berth.