The Matusow affair

Albert Eugene Kahn

During the McCarthy era, Harvey Matusow was a paid witness for Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As an "expert" witness, he testified about Communist activities and Party members with whom he had come in contact. He claimed that Communists had infiltrated the Boy Scouts, had rewritten Mother Goose in order to indoctrinate children, and had lured new members with sex. He implicated trade unions, teachers, musicians, performers, and a host of others. Along with other professional witnesses, he became a national celebrity--but around him, lives were ruined. In 1954, appalled at the results of his testimony, he recanted much of it in a book titled False Witness, published by Cameron & Kahn, two men who had themselves been earlier victims of the witch hunt. This book is the story of Matusow's recantation and of the federal government's attempts to...

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