This biography examines the life of Paul Crouch, who spent seventeen years in the Communist Party of the United States of America and, later, five years as an informant for the Federal Government. This work demonstrates the dangers posed by ideologues and their impact on modern American history. Crouch's early political life demonstrates his enactment of a Communist agenda to undermine the American way of life by finding ways to enforce the will of the Soviet Union. Crouch worked to install Communist agents in the military and to infiltrate the White House during the presidency of Franklin Roo ... More

This biography examines the life of Paul Crouch, who spent seventeen years in the Communist Party of the United States of America and, later, five years as an informant for the Federal Government. This work demonstrates the dangers posed by ideologues and their impact on modern American history. Crouch's early political life demonstrates his enactment of a Communist agenda to undermine the American way of life by finding ways to enforce the will of the Soviet Union. Crouch worked to install Communist agents in the military and to infiltrate the White House during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. He also organized Communist units in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Utah, and California. Crouch's later political engagement, by contrast, demonstrates the willingness of anti-Communists during the Cold War and the McCarthy era to do anything, including lie, to advance their efforts to defeat Communism and the alleged Communist threat. In Congressional hearings, legal proceedings, and through countless press outlets, Crouch worked with J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy to destroy the Communist menace. Crouch even named names, linking Harry Bridges, Charlie Chaplin, Robert Oppenheimer, and dozens more with the Communist Party. Using Crouch's life as a template, this work concludes that the failure of both the Communists and the anti-Communists was their ideological certitude. Not only did that failure hurt both movements, but it undermined fundamental American values and threatened the very essence of the nation.