Word: huac
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...World Peace, was accused by an ex-Communist named Whittaker Chambers first of being a Communist, then later of passing State Department documents during the 1930s to the Communist underground. Chambers, a senior editor at Time, made his initial accusations in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), where Hiss vigorously denied the charges. Despite Chambers' somewhat sordid past, the weight of evidence seemed on his side in the two perjury trials that followed; Chambers produced State Department documents allegedly typed on the Hiss' Woodstock typewriter and four memos allegedly in Hiss' handwriting. Hiss, convicted and sentenced...
When the subpoenas went out, in September, 1947, J. Parnell Thomas's Committee had provided the economic ruination and moral justification for the Tens' existences. As the members of HUAC furiously prodded the screenwriters for answers which would hardly have made any difference anyhow, they filled out their wildest, most exhibitionistic fantasies and put themselves in the movies. After setting themselves up with Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou (not to mention Ginger Rogers' wailing and unspeakably irrational mother), the Congressmen waited to pin the squirming red worms to the wall...
...hard for those who did not actually live through those post-war years to appreciate the awfulness of that era. The main organs of villainy were the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. And among their agents were Representatives J. Parnell Thomas and Richard M. Nixon, Senators Pat McCarran and James O. Eastland. Citizens by the carload were hauled before the committees; and, as a result, dozens of writers, performers and other professionals were blacklisted and for years could not secure work in films, theatre, radio, television and other fields...
Having written this drama about a man whose conscience obliged him to stand almost alone against widespread folly and hysteria, Miller found himself in the same position in 1956 when, five days after receiving an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, he was summoned before the HUAC and asked for the names of other writers he had met at leftist meetings a decade earlier. As a result of his refusal to inform on others he was found guilty of contempt of Congress. His conviction was later overturned on appeal, but the experience nonetheless took its psychic toll...
Again this year the public's consciousness has been redirected to all this shameless business with the appearance of Lillian Hellman's memoir Scoundrel Time (on the best-seller list for eight weeks now), which tells the story of her own grilling by HUAC in 1952. As Miller would later do, Miss Hellman said she would answer questions about herself but would refuse to discuss anybody else. In what has become a classic statement, she declared in part: "To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent...