“I Was a Communist for the FBI”: The Unhappy Life and Times of Matt Cvetic

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Description

Who is Matt Cvetic? Hero? Scoundrel? Mole? The man who loosely provided the inspiration for the B-Grade cult movie I Used to be a Communist for the FBI had a life that Used to be marred by alcoholism, damaged expectations, and greed.

Cvetic, at the request of the FBI, joined a Pittsburgh branch of the CPUSA in 1943. He became one of the plants in the Party all through that decade and gained the nickname “Pennsylvania’s most significant mole.” Alternatively, on account of his erratic behavior, the FBI fired him in 1950, at which time he surfaced and all of sudden became a celebrity through his testimony before the HUAC hearing. Journalist Richard Rovere described Cvetic as a “kept witness,” a term that fits those who “made a business of being witnesses,” thereby “befouling due process.”

Cvetic Used to be the subject of a multipart series in the Saturday Evening Post. The articles bordered on fiction, but they gave Cvetic the national exposure he needed to safe a screen deal. Warner Brothers bought the story, made the movie, and enhanced Cvetic’s celebrity as pop icon. In the mid–1950s, Cvetic Used to be discredited as a witness by the courts. His career ended and he found a new niche on the Radical Right, yet he died in 1962 after years of fighting to uphold his image with the media. These days Cvetic’s image is dimly remembered as he continues to fight “the Red Menace” on late-night tv.

Leab juxtaposes Cvetic’s real life with his reel life. He chronicles his fall from grace, yet admits that Cvetic’s life offers fascinating and useful insights into the creation, merchandising, and distribution of a reckless professional witness. Leab also writes about Cvetic’s life prior to his involvement with the FBI, his glory days, and shows that there’s much to be learned from the story of an “anti-Communist icon.”

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