Discrediting the Red Scare

"After joining a tiny and insignificant extreme left-wing group, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), in the 1930s, Kutcher was drafted shortly before American entry into World War II. He saw frequent battle action in North Africa and Italy, and both of his legs were blown off by a German mortar shell during the American invasion of Italy in late 1943. After having both legs amputated and learning to walk with artificial limbs and two canes, Kutcher was hired in 1946 in a menial position as a Veterans Administration (VA) file clerk, with no access to national security information. However, as a result of President Truman's March 1946 federal loyalty program, and more specifically due to the listing of the SWP on the so-called "Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations" ... in 1948 as seeking the violent overthrow of the government, Kutcher was fired from his VA position. Subsequently ... the government also sought to take away Kutcher's World War II disability pension and to evict him (and his ill and aged parents, whom he supported) from their federally subsidized public housing unit in Newark, New Jersey. ... Kutcher described the decision he made to fight his case to the end as one he preferably would never have had to make ... . In the end, Kutcher won all of the fights for his rights, and in doing so helped to expose some of the worse abuses of the Red Scare."--Preface, page ix-xi.