The Human Yo-Yo

Speaking of Harvey Matusow the liar, Mississippi's Senator James Eastland recently linked the man's weapon and his crime. "His mouth," said the Senator, "has been used against his country." Matusow has quite a mouth, and he was busily using it again last week to his country's detriment and the Communist Party's advantage.

Whom the Boom. Matusow, expelled from the Communist Party in 1951 as a cheat and informer, has become a party hero since repudiating the testimony that he once copiously volunteered against Communists (TIME. Feb. 14). Questioned by Senator Eastland's Internal Security Subcommittee, Matusow alternately peddled the party line and his own brand of humor. With a sly smile he told of writing a poem, For Whom the Boom Dooms, about the H-bomb.

Senator Eastland mentioned that a Communist-assigned bodyguard was staying with Matusow almost every night. "With whom," he asked, "did you spend the other nights?" "It was a lady friend," replied Matusow. He refused to name her, not out of gallantry alone but because "if you force me to tell. I'll never be able to return there." It was "no lady," shouted Eastland, but "a Communist bodyguard." Matusow insisted that it was a lady. "I did," he snapped, "play chess with a lady on Thursday night."

Matusow was in good voice and--for part of the time--in good humor. On the stand he idly twisted pipe cleaners into animal forms, shaping a dog, a rabbit and a kangaroo. He testified that he had recently invented "an entertaining, nondestructive toy," but he refused, claiming the immunity granted by the Fifth Amendment, to name the manufacturer for fear of hurting the toy's sales. Curious, Senator Herman Welker persisted: What was the toy? A miniature lie detector? "Well," said Matusow coyly, as the hearing-room crowd roared, "I call it a stringless yo-yo."

Invisible Pull. But the method in Matusow's mendacity showed up like a red light. Asked about the Communist Party conspiracy, he called it "a lot of unfounded hysteria." He charged that investigating committees "forced me and many others" to bear false witness against Communism. In one remarkable sentence, he orated: "I'm for the country, and I'm for God, and therefore, sir, I can't see myself being anti-Communist."

Playing an obvious game of guilt by association, he implied that all ex-Communist witnesses were lying. His special target: Elizabeth Bentley, whose testimony about Communist espionage is needed to convict the Silvermaster spy ring that she exposed.

Matusow, careful to avoid incriminating himself, was thoroughly briefed by attorneys (including Communist Nathan Witt). In one day he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times, and, while flaunting his falsehoods, he never once confessed to perjury. Throughout the hearings Communist Hero Matusow revolved like a sort of human yoyo, pulled carefully back and forth by the party's invisible strings.

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