how is this an escalation portion from what elizabeth bentley or whittaker chambers were saying? what do you identify as being the new accusation here? yes, that they were known to the state department. yes. and chambers is talking about the mid 1930s and bentley is talking up until 1945. what mccarthy is saying is right now, 1950, this very moment we have communists, the state department, hundreds of communists in the state department alone and the state department knows the secretary of state knows why are they letting 200 known communists operate in the state department. well, he must be a communist himself. he must be a communist agent. now, he made this up. he didn't have a list, and he would go on to these unfounded, reckless accusations for the next several years at his this. the conspiracy theory that he offered and this was in 1951, a speech, the floor of the senate in, which he said he started talking all of the foreign policy that the united states had suffered, the communist one, the civil war in china the soviets tested an atomic bomb. and he said, how can we account