Matt Cvetic

Uncovering a tangled web of officially orchestrated deception is never easy. We can only hope that we did well in unraveling the true story of the life of Pittsburgh’s Matt Cvetic, who served as an undercover agent for the FBI in the Communist Party for nine years, 1941 to 1950. Cvetic is a somewhat forgotten and often misunderstood story from the turbulent years of “McCarthyism”. I became fascinated with the life of Cvetic and his work and as a result, I decided to write another book. It is titled: I Was a Communist for the FBI: The true life and times of FBI undercover agent Matt Cvetic. The book should become available before Christmas. (If you want pre-publication notice, send me an email to: repayne@repayne.com).

This story is true, as far as we can tell. We can never be certain of all of the facts of Cvetic’s life because the very nature of what he did was clandestine. You may recall the movie “I Was a Communist for the FBI” starring Frank Lovejoy. He portrayed Matt Cvetic. Even after he became a public figure in 1950, we have no way of knowing for sure that he told us everything he knew about the Communist Party or even about the FBI, for that matter. But there is ample proof that the FBI, especially in Pittsburgh, honored and respected Cvetic and on every opportunity given, they reported their confidence to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

It is not our purpose here to praise Cvetic but, simply, to give him credit for what he did. What he did was daring and dangerous. For nine years, he lived under intense pressure, always in fear of being discovered as a mole. During this period, he did forsake his family and he suffered their ridicule and pain. His sacrifices were great.

This book chronicles the life and times of Matt Cvetic. It is written to place into perspective 1) the contributions made to raising the specter of communism to the near hysterical level it reached during the late 1940’s and the 1950’s, 2) Cvetic’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (UHAC), and 3) the true jeopardy in which he placed his own life for the sake of our country and the FBI.

To a huge extent, Matt Cvetic has gotten a bum rap from some writers, particularly Daniel J. Leab, who penned "I Was a Communist for the FBI" (Pennsylvania State University, 2000), a book supposedly entirely about Cvetic and his life. Leab makes much of the fact that Cvetic was not a FBI “special agent,” assigned to infiltrate the western Pennsylvania Communist Party in Pittsburgh. Leab likes to point out that the Bureau clarified its responses to inquiries by stating very directly that Cvetic “was not a Special Agent of the FBI.” In fact, there is a very minor difference between being “an agent of the FBI” and a “special agent” who is assigned undercover duties. The simple fact is that the FBI persuaded civilian Cvetic to join the party, infiltrate it and deliver all the information he gathered about their activities to the local FBI office in Pittsburgh. For doing this, he was paid by the FBI, at least during the last seven years. He filed thousands of pages of reports with the Bureau over the nine years he was undercover.

In this author’s opinion, Cvetic was a brave and fearless man at a time when America needed a brave and fearless man.