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I WAS drifting. So I decided to consult some friends who I was certain were “on the side of the angels” and would want to talk me out of wrongdoing.

I wrote down what follows early in the spring of 1952, before I’d testified “cooperatively.” It is from a diary.

A conversation with Art Mille…

Reader, I don’t seek your favor. I’ve been telling you only some of the things I was asking myself on the way “down.” But if you expect an apology now because I would later name names to the House Committee, you’ve misjudged my character. The “horrible, immoral thing” I would do, I did out of my tr…

Was I really a leftist? Had I ever been? Did I really want to change the social system I was living under? Apparently that was what I’d stood for at one time. But what shit! Everything I had of value I’d gained under that system. After seventeen years of watching the Soviet Union turn into an imper…

She was getting into bed, and that woke me. All excited and very happy, she announced her engagement. “I’m going to get married,” she said. “I made up my mind tonight.” “A hell of a time to tell me,” I said. “It’s three-thirty in the morning.” “I wanted to tell you first,” she said, “because now I’…

At the same time, when I thought about it, I agreed with Molly. I believed it was the duty of the government to investigate the Communist movement in our country. I couldn’t behave as if my old “comrades” didn’t exist and didn’t have an active political program. There was no way I could go along wi…