Word: matusow
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...Matusow had been making a miserable $35 a week as a Red errand boy, and he had noted the rise of McCarthyism. Matusow now says that anti-Communism looked like "a good racket." He was soon in business right up to his mouth. He named more than 150 persons as Communists (the fact that many of them were was purely coincidental). He testified against the 13 second-string Communist leaders (Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, et al.); he was a witness in the trial of Clinton Jencks, official of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union. He appeared four times before...
Advance Payment. But Matusow's popularity soon began to wane. At social gatherings he was a braggart and a bore. His only talents were telling involved dirty stories and twisting pipe cleaners into animal-like figures, e.g., he made a little kangaroo and named it Billie-Bunk. When the novelty and profits of his career wore off, Matusow sulked. Moreover, anti-Communist investigators began-although not soon enough-to distrust him. The FBI now says that it dropped him in 1950-yet Matusow was permitted to testify at great length (some 700 pages in the record) in the Government...
...Matusow's book was turned down by several reputable publishing firms. Finally, he got in touch with Publishers Angus Cameron and Albert Kahn. Until 1951, Cameron was editor in chief of the old Boston publishing house of Little, Brown & Co., padding its lists with Communist-line books. When some scattershot antiCommunists suggested that Little, Brown had itself become a front organization, the firm parted company with Cameron. Later, he appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and used the Fifth Amendment when asked if he was a secret member of the Communist Party. Cameron joined up with tweedy, seedy...
...Matusow's conversion from anti-Communism came about in a strange way. He says that he was walking down New York's Fifth Avenue one day when he passed a synagogue and read the inscription: "Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God." This so moved him that he hastily entered into an agreement with Cameron and Kahn- not forgetting to collect an advance payment. His book's title was changed to False Witness...
...Harvey Matusow now confesses that he testified falsely against the 13 second-string Communists. He says that he was coached in this by Roy Cohn, then an assistant U.S. attorney. (Cohn denied the charge.) Matusow says he also lied in the Jencks trial...