The Smith Act trials (there were several around the country, including one in Los Angeles) had drained its national treasury. The National CRC under its trustees had raised money to post enormous bonds for all the Smith Act defendants, and its trustees were hauled up before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to produce the names of funders and contributors. One of these trustees was the writer Dashiell Hammett, whose refusal to cooperate earned him a five-month jail sentence for contempt at age fifty-seven. Hammett’s prison stint broke his health; he died at the age of sixty-six. At the end of July, on the day the Los Angeles Smith Act trial defense rested, J. Edgar Hoover released a supersecret intelligence report revealing a Communist Party plot to overtake the government and occupy the country. The Los Angeles press ran the story in massive-font headlines for days. It was, as Dalton Trumbo wrote, “not a good time in which to stand trial for a political belief that had been up-graded to treason.”
