In the spring of 1951, after Swing had been offered a position with the Voice of America (VOA), the entertainment industry periodical "Counterattack" called him a Communist sympathizer. He then received his security clearance and joined the VOA as a political commentator in May. In 1953, he was called to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy's Investigations Subcommittee, but was questioned for only a few minutes in private. Because he objected to McCarthy's treatment of the VOA and to the State Department's failure to defend the service and its employees, he resigned, sending a copy of his resignation letter to the press. It said he was resigning to protest the State Department's "spineless failure...to stand by its own staff," citing the recent resignation of Theodore Kaghan in particular. He said the VOA "has been crippled, perhaps beyond recovery, by slanderous attacks on its integrity."