Moses pioneered McCarthyite red-baiting before McCarthy himself

Evidence

And if Moses possessed no derogatory information at all about an opponent or his forebears, this was still no guarantee against attack. For Moses was an innovator in fields other than public works. He practiced McCarthyism long before there was a McCarthy. He drove Rexford G. Tugwell out of his City Planning Commission chairmanship—out of New York, in fact—helped drive Stanley F. Isaacs out of his borough presidency and destroyed the public careers of a dozen other officials by publicly, and falsely, identifying them as “Pinkos” or “Planning Reds” or “followers of the Ogpu,” the Soviet secret police. There were two widespread Communist witchhunts in New York City, one in 1938 and one in 1958. Both relied heavily on “information”—much of it innuendo or outright falsehood—leaked to newspapers by Moses. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 78

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did the 1938 and 1958 New York communist witchhunts connect to later national McCarthyism? Worth chasing.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s material on moral panics and manufactured enemies (new crusades sources).