Milo Radulovich: The Case That Turned The Tide Against McCarthyism

October 20, 2025

October 20th, 1953: Renowned reporter Edward R. Murrow and producer Fred Friendly feature a disturbing “Red Scare” case against an Air Force Reservist on See it Now, their weekly TV news magazine.

It is Murrow’s first salvo against Joe McCarthy—the Wisconsin senator who was terrorizing the country with his “hunt for Reds and fellow travelers.” Exploiting Cold War tensions and fear, McCarthy had ginned up national suspicion and turned Americans against one another in vitriolic polarization with his inflammatory rhetoric and belligerent investigations. Citizens were being blacklisted, their lives ruined purely on unsubstantiated accusation or innuendo, “guilt by association,” or smear campaigns. “Better dead than red” had become a threatening mantra.

Emboldened by McCarthy, local watchdog groups were going after librarians and teachers in their neighborhoods who dared defy book bans or seemed to promulgate “radical left” thinking (like integration or improved labor laws). McCarthy cowed federal agencies into purging suspected subversives within their ranks, subjecting career federal employees and the diplomatic corps to loyalty review board hearings and oaths they must sign or be fired. Hundreds had already lost their jobs—sometimes for “crimes” as small as giving money to nonprofits helping East European refugees.

The Air Force’s attack on Lieutenant Milo Radulovich embodied all McCarthyism’s ignominies.  

A few weeks earlier, in August, Radulovich—a WWII veteran who was studying at the University of Wisconsin on the G.I. Bill—opened his door to two Air Force officers. They handed him an order that stated he’d been deemed a security risk and removed from the Reserves.

Whatever evidence against him was sealed in a Manila envelope the Air Force refused to show him. Radulovich was told his own loyalty was not questioned, but his father and sister were branded Communist sympathizers. So, he was a risk by association.  

His family’s supposed offenses? Radulovich's father, a Serbian immigrant who served in OUR army during WWI and then worked in American coal mines, subscribed to a Slavic newsletter that was deemed pro-Communist (his father said he just liked its Christmas calendar). 

Radulovich’s sister was a self-proclaimed progressive, and had picketed a Detroit hotel that refused to lodge Paul Robeson, the renowned Black Broadway musical and concert singer, who’d also happened to be blacklisted by the entertainment industry’s Red Channels pamphlet. Her reply to the Air Force’s condemnation of her brother using her as reason: “My political beliefs are my own private affair...Since when can a man be judged because of the alleged political beliefs or activities of a member of his family?”

Unlike many Americans being targeted, who agreed to “name names” of others who might be secret Communists or “pinkos” to save their own interests, Radulovich refused to denounce his family. He braved protesting and contacted The Detroit News.

Murrow saw the article. He recognized Radulovich’s case was a way to examine McCarthyism’s capricious targeting, unfair judgments, and cruel impacts. On a veteran no less—the most revered type of American in 1953, a mere eight years after WWII.

Even though oblique, the report’s ultimate effect of taking on McCarthy made CBS executives skittish. Senator McCarthy was vengeful and not above threatening to yank broadcast licenses or suggest IRS audits on his critics. Also, the program’s sponsor, Alcoa, had many military contracts. The network did not tell Murrow he couldn’t air the story, but it refused to promote the program.

Murrow and Friendly each put up $1,500 of their own money to run a promo-ad in The New York Times. It should be noted, that unlike many of today’s corporations, Alcoa valued Murrow’s independence. One company exec reportedly responded enthusiastically to Murrow saying his politics were none of the company’s business: “I knew that would be your answer!” Alcoa never tried to influence the content of Murrow and Friendly’s See It Now.

When interviewed on air, Radulovich asked with some anguish: “Are my children going to be asked to denounce me? Are they going to be judged on what their father was labeled? If this (decision) is allowed to stand, I see a chain reaction that has no end for anybody.”

During the broadcast, Murrow pointed to the Air Force’s refusal to share the evidence it claimed to have—echoing McCarthy’s tactics when grilling witnesses at his committee’s hearings (sometimes even fabricating evidence).

Murrow concluded that night’s program with: “In regard to the case of Milo Radulovich, we are unable to judge the charges against the lieutenant's father or sister, because neither we nor you nor they nor the lawyers nor the lieutenant know precisely what was contained in that Manila envelope. Was it hearsay, rumor, gossip, slander, or hard ascertainable facts that could be backed by credible witnesses?...We believe this case illustrates the urgent need for the Armed Forces to communicate, more fully than they have so far done, the procedures and regulations to be followed in attempting to protect the national security and the rights of the individual."

Murrow continued: “Whatever happens in this whole area of the relationship between the individual and the state, (the American people) will do it ourselves...and it seems to us—that is, Fred Friendly and myself—that this is a subject that should be argued about endlessly.”

Viewers agreed. Over 8,000 letters and telegrams poured into CBS’ offices—100 to 1 in support of Radulovich. Newspapers across the country ran editorials advocating his being reinstated.

Under such pressure, the Air Force relented.

Predictably, McCarthy retaliated, dredging up Murrow’s work in 1935 with the Institute of International Education to organize foreign student/faculty exchanges—to insinuate Murrow was a radical, a Marxist.

Murrow’s responding program on McCarthy in the spring of 1954 was scorching (for more on that, see the McCarthyism section on the landing page for SUSPECT RED). That March 1954 program helped break the Red Scare fever and Americans’ willingness to blindly follow McCarthy or accept his dismantling of our constitutional freedoms of speech, association, and assembly to serve his own power.

And it all started with a young, unknown 1^st Lieutenant daring to stand up for his rights and established journalists willing to risk their status and platform to report unpopular fact.