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Episode Summary:
Cvetic (an FBI agent that has infiltrated a communist organization) gave the FBI information on a communist in the Connover Plant (a factory working for the military). The FBI arrests the communist. Now the communist organization knows that someone tipped off the FBI. There are three main suspects, Cvetic, Bemis, and Cooke. The head commie puts Cvetic in seclusion and starts to interrogate him. Can Cvetic survive.
The opening of this episode also shows how devastating trying to be a double agent can be when Cvetic is heard talking on the phone with his mother and has to lie to her.
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Program Summary:
"I was a communist for the FBI - I walk alone."
Do ya hate commies? I mean REALLY hate the dirty reds, I don’t want anyone listening to this who doesn’t HATE em, and hate em good.
This series was based on the experiences of Matt Cvetic, who was a real life double agent, working for the FBI, infiltrating communist organizations in the US. Cveltic wrote about his experiences in books and magazines in the mid-1940s. There was even a movie in 1951 about his story. Matt Cvetic was played by Dana Andrews in this radio show, and by Frank Lovejoy (that can’t be his real name, hmmm…) in the movie.
The radio show is filled with the tension that a double agent lives. Does someone in the communist party know that he is reporting to the FBI, is he being spied on: what about that guy in the doorway, had he seen him before, and what about the little old lady, is she talking to someone on the phone, reporting on him? His family life is basically destroyed by his career, he cannot take his family into his confidence, and is forced to lie to them for his country. The communists in the show are portrayed as conflicted characters themselves, just striving to do the right thing, in a world turned upside down by depression and war, and….oh wait, no they aren’t. All commies are wrong, humorless, worse than the nazis, and bent on world domination.
The show contains a lot of red bashing, it aired from 1952-1954, which was during the McCarthy era, but it is based on Cvetic’s real life experiences, and does show how alienating it can be to lead this type of double life, even isolating yourself from your family. Proving that if you do this, then you truly do walk alone.
9 фев 2019
