Who Created Matusow?
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
The turncoat informer's book tells us much about how people become Communists, and about our own failings in permitting political degenerates to rise WHO CREATED MATUSOW? By William E....
...When Danny got into the Army, Harvey's "anxieties were built to a fever pitch," waiting for the day when he would be old enough to enlist...
...A little earlier, after his first splash in the Hearst press, he reveals his psychology in a more amusing way...
...Politicians like McCarthy, who descend from the discussion of issues to the spreading of personal scandal, need speakers like Matusow...
...All through the book, in fact, there is hardly any evidence of the author's attitude toward moral or political problems...
...But with his discharge came the return to the lonely street corner...
...In the first place, it cannot be all lies...
...The monologue in this book is the sort of thing which a man blabs out when he lies on the much-derided couch...
...This was the type of sustenance I needed as a witness...
...In one of his affidavits, Matusow describes in detail how he and Roy Cohn manufactured a piece of evidence against Alexander Trachtenberg...
...There are others like him, whose morals were—and are—just as low-down...
...In his speeches against Senators Mansfield and Jackson, Matusow told prodigious lies...
...he had none...
...The purpose of the plan, according to Matusow, was to tie Trachtenberg in with a certain passage in Andrei Vishin-sky's book, Law of the Soviet State...
...On the street corner, Danny had friends...
...The thing for Americans to think about is the fact that people like this are playing a part in our public life...
...After testifying before the House Committee, he dashed to the newsstands to gloat over the headlines...
...Older brother Danny gave him an inferiority complex...
...Then, according to the tale as it is here set down, conscience began to prod him unpleasantly, he returned to the Bolshevik fold and denounced his former testimony as false...
...If he was, they were two skunks in the same hole...
...So far as one can guess from this record, the young man was thinking exclusively about himself, his own comfort, his own security...
...The boy's heart beats fast when he thinks of these goings-on of the upper classes...
...Such a piece of social evidence cannot be a symbol of health or happiness...
...Incidentally, he enjoyed during this period a greater degree of prosperity than he had known before...
...There is no discussion of Fascism or Communism, no expression of feeling for or against anything...
...I had dinner in the famous Cub Room of the Stork Club with Howard Rushmore and his wife, Roy Cohn and his girl friend...
...This was, according to the story, a pure fabrication...
...They were the backers of my show...
...I was his right arm, just as he was my left arm...
...They all love to put on an act, and they are all happiest when they wallow in conspicuous luxury...
...I began to get a sense of belonging...
...In the Army, he had a sense of belonging...
...What can one think of a party which makes a hero of such a character...
...And here is where Communism came in...
...In addition to the author's account of his various deeds, attitudes and statements, it contains forty documents, chiefly photostatic copies of letters, notes, affidavits and other legal items...
...Danny did it better...
...But, under the tutelage of Cohn, we are told, he later testified in court that Trachtenberg had expounded a particular paragraph and had recommended a wide study of it...
...Then he deserted the Communists and testified against them—sending a variegated lot of his erstwhile comrades to jail...
...They furnish substantial proof of the truth of some of his important contentions...
...We can find out a lot about why people become Communists, how they feel while they are Communists, and, finally, why they cut loose from Communism...
...Yet, it seems to me that the matter of truth or falsehood is not the most important point about this book...
...He wanted to achieve an identity...
...He may be telling lies which he knows are lies, but in nearly every word he is revealing himself...
...The King had to die on my day of triumph...
...A friend invited him to a meeting of American Youth for Democracy, the name under which the young Communists were operating at that time...
...There is no reason why we should bother our heads about such a guy...
...Even when he sank to the lowest depths, there is little to show that he felt any degradation...
...In connection with his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities on November 8, 1951, he makes the following revelation: "The dramatics of my testimony were all directed at the Committee members...
...All that really happened, Matusow now says, was that Trachtenberg came into the Communist bookstore which Matusow was managing and asked how the book was selling...
...One must make a note here about the Communist party...
...Danny made the team...
...What I am interested in is little things in which Harvey Matusow gives himself away, shows what he really cares for and is driving at...
...The party leaders were unobservant to the individual...
...But here was a tragedy: "King George of England had died...
...What a hell of a break for me...
...And I knew that, if I pleased them in my first reading, I'd open with my name in lights...
...But it was impossible...
...I hate liars, and I have long regarded all Communists as potential liars, but a good deal of what this man says can be proved true...
...Soon after this, he helped his lady escape a process-server...
...I am not trying to estimate the number of our people who are represented by its level of morals and manners...
...As far as you can tell from this account, Matusow went through the performance without a qualm...
...A reader is struck by the absence of any serious thought about this important step...
...Political degeneration permits degenerates to play a part...
...So, in 1950, he dialed the FBI...
...there was warmth, comradeship...
...Matusow is now its great hero, continuously glorified with front-page publicity...
...Like many other Communists and ex-Communists, Matusow showed from earliest childhood all the tendencies of a ham actor...
...I am convinced, however, that this volume contains data which merit attention...
...He was consciously out to make his mark, to win distinction, to be recognized...
...But the young swain's chief interest is not in his lady's danger but in her luxurious ways of travel...
...When it was all over," writes the young man, "I found myself relaxed for the first time in months, for they had the same kind of esprit de corps I had found in the Army...
...At the AYD meeting, the feeling of belonging once again reappeared...
...so we can take care of him satisfactorily by giving him the silent treatment...
...The little job I propose to do now should be done by a psychiatrist...
...He drew the comic-strip figures...
...Had there been no cold war, no prosecution of the Communists, no McCarthy, no internal-security regulations, there would have been no such book...
...Looking at the volume as a social document, there are a number of obvious things to be said...
...The very existence of fellows like this is a result of our political failings...
...They were satisfied...
...He was a catcher...
...It is a volume about lies written by a confessed liar...
...The author was a Communist...
...For example, it was in this Northwestern foray that he said that Governor Dewey was tied up with the Communists and that the New York Times had 126 Communists working on its Sunday section...
...He has put on acts at night clubs and has, now and then, had a part in a television show...
...If we have sent people to jail on perjured evidence, that fact is important to all of us...
...Matusow obviously shares with the whole group with which he was traveling: Senator McCarthy, Roy Cohn, David Schine and others...
...if he was lying before, he may just as well be lying now...
...When in the Army, I had discovered that somebody else had to depend upon me...
...He is, I suppose, a little better than a mere show-off...
...We can get out of it something that goes deeper than trials or sentences...
...By William E. Bohn Harvey Matusow's book, False Witness, is a disturbing product of our time...
...Some of his qualities Mr...
...His object was to show that Roy Cohn was a skunk...
...Yet, these people were deep in the last political campaign...
...So it is natural for politicians and editors to say: "The man is a confessed prevaricator...
...She was, of course, a millionaire...
...Matusow fairly crows with satisfaction the first time he is allowed to spread himself in the Stork Club: "I played in grandiose style one night...
...It left me feeling important...
...Instead of raving about her beauty, her charm or her intelligence, he tells about her great house, which "had all the luxury that is found in the American dream of wealth...
...In the course of time, our young man on the make met his lady love...
...Over and over, his book furnishes evidence that his acts before Congressional committees and Federal courts ?even when they sent people to jail—were for him nothing more than agreeable opportunities to exhibit his talent...
...No place, no purpose...
...But it does come from the depths of our experience...
...She had, the story goes, lent Senator McCarthy large sums of money, and a Congressional committee was on her trail...
...To elude pursuers, she buys tickets for one plane and travels on another?or even goes to the length of renting private planes...
...Harvey Matusow is not the only one...
...The fact that the author preserved these pieces of evidence through all of his changes of employment and residence sheds a peculiar light on his character and purposes...
...From 1948 to 1950, Matusow worked hard in the Communist party...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 12
