80.24

Sworn Affidavit of Norman Mailer, 7 January 1953. In The Law of the Land: The Evolution of Our Legal System, by Charles Rembar, 370–375. New York: Simon and Schuster. Mailer’s deposition concerns the loyalty of his father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, an accountant with the War Department, whose job was under the Civil Service Commission. Despite Norman Mailer’s own leftist sympathies, his testimony convinced the Commission to clear his father without even holding a hearing. Mailer says he himself is not a “concealed Communist,” as charged, but “admittedly and openly a dissident from the conventional and generally accepted attitudes about America and its position in the world today.”