The term for them is useful idiots not assets. The democrats did enormous damage to the Ukrainian cause pushing the russia hoax in 2017/18. Steele assumed there was competent intelligence analysts to analyse what he collected but instead it was politicians.
I think the complaint is with the government hearings to investigate individual citizens political views. Doesn’t seem especially aligned with the supposed values of the country.
Many of the people outed and persecuted for homosexuality were really gay. That doesn’t make it any less offensive.
It's just not even good security policy, and in some cases will do irreparable harm. These are incredibly smart and valuable people who are leaving and no longer under your sphere of influence, and where their work will now massively benefit your perceived adversary, eg China wouldn't have a nuclear program today if it weren't for the 50s episode.
It's cutting off your nose, face, and brain just to get a little bit of fun discrimination in.
Even if they were communists or had communist sympathies, who cares? I am pretty sure Oppenheimer did way more for the country than McCarthy. We should persecute/prosecute for illegal things they do, not for their political leanings.
McCarthy accused 12,000 people of being Communists.
Of those 12,000, fewer than 1000 were actually members of the Communist Party. Many of the accused (an estimated 5000) were just gay (at a time when that was still illegal).
Of those 12,000, fewer than a dozen were actually spies for the Soviets.
McCarthy leaked more classified information in his hunt for Communists than the spies actually did.
I never liked him. It's just a fact that America was full of communists before the liberal-tankie split when it no longer was socially acceptable to be a communist since they started pasting protesters with tanks.
