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Some may raise an eyebrow at the apparent hijacking of mainstream media and public affairs institutions by leftist thought police, imagining this to be a fairly recent phenomenon.

In her book "Treason" (Random House, 2003) Anne Coulter builds a jaw-dropping case that this is not so. It has been de rigeur, she shows, since the Second World War era and before.

Of course this kind of narrative is not something you will readily find on CBS, even a Rather-less CBS, or in the morning broadsheet.

Instead you will find clues. Like the negative connotations immediately conjured by the word "McCarthyism", a malediction Ms. Coulter believes is used or assumed by many of us, but truly understood by very few.

The author proceeds to demonstrate that the routinely reviled Senator Joseph McCarthy in fact:

- Intended to prevent - not mythical but real, actual, active, proven - agents of a foreign country from operating in high-level positions in the US government;

- Never set out to interfere with freedom of speech, or with freedom of political association;

- Was supported in his endeavours, at the time, by most Americans and had the unreserved - and fully deserved - respect and admiration not only of Republicans but of Democrats like John and Robert Kennedy;

- Achieved popular support despite being badgered by a universally hostile media literally to his death at the age of 48.

That is, far from there being anything like the anti-Communist atmosphere of terror mythologised in Hollywood today, media and public affairs institutions belittled, besmirched and rounded on McCarthy in virtual unison.

They did so without any semblance of fear, and in the face of contrarian public opinion and evidence.

Similarly, supporters of McCarthy - principally, one Richard M. Nixon - were never forgiven for the very real inroads they made against actual Soviet infiltration. Retribution was taken against them, their legacies smeared.

Coulter begins her account with one Whittaker Chambers, an American Communist Party member who becomes unnerved by the activities of his political associates. He decides to inform US Government officials of disturbing goings-on.

Chambers tells authorities that the USA Communist Party is not merely a passive political collective. Many of its members, including whistleblower Chambers himself, are actively involved in spying on behalf of the Soviet Union and infiltrating the US Government. He names Roosevelt confidante Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy.

Alger Hiss was not some insignificant political hack. Far from it. He worked closely with Roosevelt at the post-WWII Yalta conference, when the American president agreed to cede Poland to Stalin's Soviet bloc. You have to keep in mind that the Nazi invasion of Poland was the reason WWII started. Poland was the proverbial line in the sand crossed by Hitler, but later crossed out for "Uncle Joe".

Hiss was a key advisor at Yalta. He was also the official United States representative who crafted and signed off on the Charter establishing the United Nations.

According to Coulter, Mr. Hiss was an Ivy League man with buddies in the media and in high places.

The friends of Hiss did not take kindly to the (ugly, unrefined) outsider Chambers' shocking accusations, and Chambers was routinely bucketed and reviled in a very public affair that stretched out over a number of years.

In the face of loud doubters Chambers again and again produced evidence of Hiss's spying: documents, cables, minute personal knowledge about a man who claimed never to have met him.

Hiss was eventually brought down, screaming, while the media all the while and ever since highlighted his protestations of innocence and never accepted his guilt.

Despite this, it became clear to a few that the Alger Hiss affair did not occur in a vacuum.

Even Roosevelt's Vice-President Henry Wallace, as well as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (who gave the Soviet Union the nuclear bomb) and as many as 300 high-ranking US Government and army officials, have since been shown to have been Soviet spies (!)

The evidence has come from secretly decrypted cables to the Soviet Union, direct testimony from the likes of former Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev and from KGB operatives who confirm they "handled" the Americans. In recent years it has come to light (though reports have of course been buried by the New York Times and other news outlets) that J. Edgar Hoover orchestrated a secret project known as "Venona", which gave the FBI access to decoded communiques between the Soviet Union and many of its spies in the USA.

The amount and quality of evidence, and the subterfuge it indicates, appears to be staggering.

In the post-WWII period, there was enough evidence to set off significant alarm bells. It was in response to this and in this atmosphere that Joseph McCarthy sought to protect the US Government from infiltration.

McCarthy never tried to malign anyone, and did evidently try hard to protect the identities of persons under investigation. He sought only to prune actual foreign operatives from dangerously sensitive positions within the US government.

We know what has become of the poor man's name since that time.

Anne Coulter provides an astounding amount of detail in presenting a viewpoint that might dramatically alter the historical perspective of many who read this book, and provides a service to anyone seeking truth in history.