Ronald D. Cohen

Robert M. Lichtman

No issue so possessed the nation in the first half of the 1950s as alleged Communist subversion in the United States. Deadly Farce presents Harvey Matusow, a young Bronx "wise guy" who became a Communist Party member, an undercover FBI informer inside the Party, and then a leading witness for the government during the McCarthy era--until he recanted his testimony. His story illuminates a disturbing time in American history, one with renewed relevance today. Matusow was easily the most flamboyant of the "professional" ex-Communists, a celebrity informer who considered himself "booked" by Congressional committees not just to testify, but to entertain. He testified that Communists fostered loose sex, taught politicized Mother Goose rhymes to small children, and tried to infiltrate the Boy Scouts. He also named more than 200 people as Communists and was a prosecution witness in major criminal cases. Robert M. Lichtman and Ronald D. Cohen draw on FBI records, court transcripts, personal interviews, private papers, and other primary sources, most never before utilized, to describe the unusual role of ex-Communist informer-witnesses during the McCarthy era. The Justice Department kept several dozen political informers on the government's payroll to testify in hundreds of deportation, sedition, and contempt of Congress cases. Some informers achieved celebrity as the result of high-profile appearances at criminal trials and before Congressional committees. But as the era continued, instances of perjury began to appear. Harvey Matusow's sensational recantation in 1955 gave him his biggest audience yet. It led to the dissolution of the Justice Department's informer stable and ended the public's infatuation with the group. Matusow's unrepentant and at times vaudevillian appearances before the Senate red-hunting committee investigating his recantation, followed by his prosecution for perjury--for the recantation, not his original testimony--and prison sentence, mark the climax of Deadly Farce. Matusow's career, during which he came to know Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Pat McCarran, and Elizabeth Bentley, among many others, offers an inside, entertaining, and closely documented view of a largely untold part of McCarthy-era history. The columnist Murray Kempton described Matusow as a "truly remarkable witness in the opera bouffe sense demanded by inquisitions of the 1950s."

Harvey Matusow and the Informer System in the McCarthy Era

Deadly Farce

"In Fred Vinson's term as chief justice (1946-53), the court largely rubber-stamped government action against accused Communists and 'subversives.' After Earl Warren replaced Vinson as chief justice in 1953, however, the Court began to rule against the government in 'Communist' cases, choosing the narrowest of grounds but nonetheless outraging public opinion and provoking fierce attacks from the press and Congress. Legislation to curb the Court flooded Congress and seemed certain to be enacted. The Court's situation was aggravated by its 1954 school-desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education, which led to an anti-Court alliance between southern Democrats and anti-Communists in both parties. Although Lyndon Johnson's remarkable talents as Senate majority leader saved the Court from highly punitive legislation, the attacks caused the Court to retreat, with Felix Frankfurter leading a five-justice majority that decided major constitutional issues for the government and effectively nullified earlier decisions. Only after August 1962, when Frankfurter retired and was replaced by Arthur Goldberg, did the Court again begin to vindicate individual rights in 'Communist' cases--its McCarthy era was over"--Provided by publisher.

One Hundred Decisions

The Supreme Court and McCarthy-era Repression

The 1950s "Red Scare" marks one of the stormiest periods in U.S. Supreme Court history. Robert M. Lichtman provides the definitive history of the high court's decisions in every one of the "Communist" cases it decided, placing each within the context of the time and revealing the broad range and impact of McCarthy-era repression. Making extensive use of the justices' papers, Lichtman examines the dynamics of the Court's changes in direction, from the Vinson Court's rubber-stamping of government action against subversives to the Warren Court's more liberal rulings and the subsequent retreat led by Felix Frankfurter. Lichtman's account details the Court's surprising vulnerability to popular and political attack and reveals the behind-the-scenes relationships and rivalries among justices. At the same time, he recounts in devastating detail the injuries inflicted by McCarthyism on individuals and the nation.

Robert M. Lichtman

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