The unhappy life and times of a FBI informant and other considerations about the Cold War: an interview with Daniel Leab

Abstract

This e-article is a transcription of an interview with the American historian Daniel Leab, who is a Professor of History at Seton Hall University, conducted on November 18, 2011 by Michelly Cristina da Silva, a graduate student at the University of São Paulo. Professor Leab talks about his interests in domestic Cold War developments in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950, and his research into the career of the FBI "confidential informant" Matt Cvetic. For the Bureau he had infiltrated the CPUSA during the 1940s in order to spy on the Party, its members, and its activities. Leab authored a book, "I Was a Communist for the FBI": the Unhappy Life and Times of Matt Cvetic [Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000], which analyzes his career as a "professional witness". Like many of his peers he had moments of glory before becoming completely ignored and the book deals in detail with those ups and downs. This interview relates why this book came to be, how it was researched, and what the FBI response to Cvetic was while he was employed by them and afterward. Cvetic’s story, like that of others like him, is an intriguing one. At the peak of his notoriety a version of his story was made into a Grade B gangstermovie, I Was A Communist For The FBI.