Weird Career of a Weird Committee

After a while, a long while, there was hardly any distinction attached to a subpoena summoning a witness to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In my case, as in many others, the summons confirmed what the author of this engrossing history of the Committee terms the “close and mutually rewarding relationship” between the Committee and the FBI.

On my first day of freedom after 30 years of self-imposed bondage in the Communist movement, the inevitable FBI agent was tailing me. He accosted me with a pleasant smile and the suggestion that my country needed me as an informer. I told him off and the next day the inevitable marshal was at my door with a subpoena indicating that now the Committee needed me. In some ...