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CONCERNED friends have asked why I didn’t take the “decent alternative,” tell everything about myself and not name the others in the Group. But in the end that was not what I wanted. Perhaps ex-Communists are particularly unrelenting against the Party. I believed that this committee, which everyone…

I STILL hadn’t made up my mind what to do. I was edging toward cooperating with the committee, but of all the people I might name, the one for whom I felt the most concern and affection was Clifford. I certainly couldn’t name him—if I chose that way—without his permission. I made up my mind, as I a…

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…