The quickness of Ginzburg's conviction was also under the influence of McCarthyism. Kathryn Ganahan, the Chair of the Post Office Operations Subcommittee and Congresswoman of Philadelphia, where Ginzburg was originally put into trial, demanded prosecution of Ginzburg and claimed obscenity was "part of an international communist plot". Released documents from FBI also showed that he was under investigation for suspicion of being a communist, and there was even a letter to J. Edgar Hoover claiming that Ralph Ginzburg was an influential Communist Party member.