{
  "id": 856,
  "subject_type": "incident",
  "subject_id": 207,
  "field": "stated_justification",
  "value": "McCarthy's theory of covert Communist messaging",
  "statement": "Senator McCarthy said a way to spread material favoring Communism would be to misleadingly claim to have deserted the party and then use control of a newspaper to \"attack and smear anybody who actually was fighting Communism,\" according to Reason magazine.",
  "attribution": null,
  "source_id": 562,
  "evidence_quote": "would be to claim that we deserted the party and, if we got in control of the paper, use that paper to attack and smear anybody who actually was fighting Communism.",
  "evidence_date": "2008-02-14",
  "method": "outlet_report",
  "verified_at": "2026-09-26",
  "confidence": "medium",
  "status": "current",
  "supersedes_id": null,
  "superseded_by": null,
  "supersede_reason": null,
  "batch_label": "historical-2026-09-26",
  "created_at": "2026-09-26T18:05:50Z",
  "url": "https://thewaronnews.com/claims/856",
  "subject_url": "https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1953-us-wechsler-mccarthy-subpoena",
  "source": {
    "id": 562,
    "url": "http://reason.com/archives/2008/02/14/mccarthy-and-his-friends",
    "final_url": "https://reason.com/2008/02/14/mccarthy-and-his-friends/",
    "title": "McCarthy and His Friends (Reason)",
    "publisher": "McCarthy and His Friends (Reason)",
    "published_on": "2008-02-14",
    "link_state": "redirected",
    "link_state_since": "2026-09-26T18:11:00Z",
    "wayback_url": null,
    "wayback_saved_at": null
  },
  "license": {
    "name": "CC BY 4.0",
    "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  }
}