Paul Crouch (1903-1955) was a naïve, ill-educated recruit who found a family, a livelihood, and a larger romantic cause in the Communist Party. He spent more than fifteen years organizing American workers, meeting with Soviet leaders, and trying to infiltrate the U.S. military with Communist soldiers. As public perceptions of Communism shifted after WWII, Crouch’s economic failures, greed, and desire for fame morphed him into a vehement ideologue for the anti-Communist movement.
During five years as a paid government informer, he named Robert Oppenheimer, Charlie Chaplin, and many others as Communists, asserted that the Communist conspiracy had reached the very doorsteps of the White House, and claimed the civil rights movement was Communist inspired. In 1954, much of Crouch’s testimony was exposed as perjury, but he remained defiant to the end.
How, and why, one individual—once known as the most dangerous man in America—could become a loyal foot soldier on both sides of the Cold War ideological divide is the subject of this fascinating, incisive biography.