False Witness

The witnesses against the Communists have included such young patriots as Herbert Philbrick. persuaded by the FBI to infiltrate the Communist Party at great personal sacrifice, and such tortured souls as Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley. Inevitably, the witnesses have also included a few prize phonies, interested only in the fast dollar and the big headline. Last week the biggest phony of them all, Harvey Marshall Matusow, a Communist who turned professional antiCommunist, and is now headed full circle, faced the press in room 108 of Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel.

Except for some potted palms and a waiter dispensing Four Roses, the place looked much like an official hearing room. At one end was a 12-ft. conference table, with a grimly busy stenographer, and in front of it stood Matusow, seeming right at home. Posing for pictures, he asked photographers if he should hold up his right hand, witness style. The first news man to question Matusow went straight to the point: "How can we be sure that what you tell us now is the truth?" Matusow replied blandly: "I feel that the truth kind of speaks for itself." It had better; little help could be expected from the likes of Harvey Matusow.

The press conference was held to blurb Matusow's forthcoming autobiography, False Witness, in which he tells of being a highly successful liar while serving as a professional witness. The book will not, however, tell the whole story of Harvey Marshall Matusow.

The Contest Cheater. The son of a Russian-born Bronx cigar-store keeper, Matusow emerged from World War II as a staff sergeant. He was intrigued by Communist ideas, mainly insofar as they concerned male-female relationships. In 1947 he joined the party. He was not a success : his one minor triumph as a Communist eventually helped get him kicked out of the party.

In 1948 the Daily Worker ran a contest in which the person selling the most subscriptions would get a free trip to Puerto Rico, then the Red equivalent of TV's trip to Bermuda. Harvey Matusow badgered his friends to contribute to various causes (he offered a wide selection, since he was a member of 46 front organizations), and diverted the money he got into the Daily Worker contest. When he learned that he was still far behind in the competition, he dug up $100 out of his own pocket and faked a list of new subscribers. The party proudly announced that Harvey Matusow had sold 350 Worker subscriptions, and Matusow went to Puerto Rico.

It took quite a while for the Communists to catch up with Matusow, but, when he was finally kicked out of the party in 1951, one of the two reasons given was that he was a contest cheater. The other--and the more pressing--reason was that by this time Matusow, having turned informer to the FBI, was an "enemy agent."

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 the Subversive Activities Control Board, four times before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, twice before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and several times before Joe McCarthy's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee. Matusow hobnobbed with McCarthy and Roy Cohn, and he married the wealthy ex-wife of Michigan's Republican Representative Alvin Bentley. Matusow's new wife divorced him, remarried him, then divorced him again. Last year he began work on his autobiography. Its planned title: Blacklisting Is My Business.

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's trial of Gurley Flynn & Co. in 1952.

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 Albert Kahn, a veteran Soviet apologist. Among the firm's recent products: The Testament of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Associated with Cameron and Kahn is Carl Aldo Marzani, wartime OSS employee, who served two years in prison for hiding his Communist Party affiliations in a federal loyalty test.

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.

At last week's press conference Matusow admitted having lied when he said publicly in 1952 that there were more than 100 Communists working for the New York Times and 76 on the staff of TIME Inc. This statement, reiterated again and again on a western tour which Matusow made as a third-string campaigner for McCarthy-approved candidates, had been promptly picked up and spread by Rumormongers Walter Winchell and Joe McCarthy. Last week Matusow said that the charge originated around Labor Day of 1952, when he was a McCarthy guest in Milwaukee's Schroeder Hotel. McCarthy, who is sensitive in odd places, was annoyed, Matusow recalled, because TIME had said that Joe served warm martinis (TIME, Sept. 8, 1952). Matusow--"just to show off"--made his statement about TIME and, for good measure, the New York Times. McCarthy, says Matusow, suggested that the charge be made public. Matusow now admits that the whole story was a fabrication.

The Children's Friend. During the press conference Angus Cameron and Albert Kahn walked around the room shaking their heads sadly, with Kahn muttering "jeez" whenever a newsman asked a harsh question. There were many such questions. Does Matusow think the Communist Party is a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government? Answer: "I have not found a conspiracy in the Communist Party." If Matusow knows the names of people who really are Communists, will he identify them? Answer: "It's not my business to go around knocking people, discrediting people." Is Matusow planning to skip the country? Answer: "I'm going to stay right here. I am also going to continue to entertain children in hospitals and orphanages."

Even as Matusow spoke, the Government was belatedly moving against him. He was ordered to appear before a federal grand jury in New York, and he was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. The FBI has known for years that Matusow was a squalid liar. Its failure to expose a false witness the Government had used played into the hands of the anti-anti-Communists who want the public to believe that all anti-Communist witnesses are perjurers. Even the Baltimore Sun editorialized that the Matusow case "reminds us that stool pigeons are as a class to be despised and not to be trusted." Matusow's old contest sponsor, the Daily Worker, began serializing his recantations. The real cause of real anti-Communism had been gravely damaged by the people who believed--or pretended to believe--Harvey Matusow.

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