Tail Gunner Joe claimed 32 combat missions, a commendation from Admiral Nimitz, and a war wound from anti-aircraft fire. In reality the wound came from a drunken hazing party, and he forged the Nimitz letter himself. That audacity set the template for one of the most destructive careers in American politics.

This episode constructs a story-driven biography of Joseph McCarthy, examining the mechanics of how he rose, terrorized, and fell, without litigating 1950s politics. We trace the bluffs, the shifting lists, the media cycle that amplified him, and the live television that finally exposed the man behind the curtain.

• How he won a judgeship by adding seven years to his opponent’s age, then a Senate seat by smearing La Follette
• The Wheeling speech and the ever-changing number of communists, recycled from a three-year-old list
• Why 1950s wire-service deadlines and verbatim reporting mechanically turned the press into his megaphone
• The Army-McCarthy hearings, Welch’s have you no sense of decency, and Murrow letting him hang himself
• The Venona files revealing only 9 of his 159 names aided Soviet espionage, plus his secret morphine addiction