Harvey Matusow

Harvey Matusow wiki

"Harvey Matusow, a paid informer who named more than 200 people as Communists or Communist sympathizers in the early 1950's, only to recant and say he lied in almost every instance, died on Jan. 17 at his home in Claremont, N.H. He was 75.

Nancy Graton, a friend, said the cause was complications of injuries suffered in an automobile crash on Jan. 2.

"Mr. Matusow, who served 44 months of a five-year sentence for perjury in a federal penitentiary, created a sensation in 1955 when he revealed his many lies in his book False Witness (Cameron & Kahn). Some hailed it for exposing what they regarded as questionable tactics by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other zealous anti-Communists."

Books

• Robert M. Lichtman and Ronald Cohen, Deadly Farce: Harvey Matusow and the Informer System in the McCarthy Era (University of Illinois Press, 2004).