Albert E. Kahn - Cameron and Kahn

Cameron and Kahn

In the early 1950s, Kahn and Angus Cameron, an eminent Little, Brown editor who had recently been blacklisted, formed the publishing firm Cameron & Kahn. In 1955 the firm published False Witness, the confession of former Communist and paid government witness, Harvey Matusow, that he had repeatedly lied under oath. Matusow's announced confession caused a sensation, and the government's response to pending publication of the book was to subpoena Kahn, Cameron and Matusow to appear before a federal grand jury. The publishers were accused of bribing Matusow to falsely assert that he had committed perjury on behalf of the government. After months of hearings and thousands of pages of testimony, the grand jury declined to issue indictments against Cameron or Kahn.

Simultaneously with the grand jury proceedings, Kahn, Cameron and Matusow were subpoenaed to testify before the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by the segregationist Mississippi senator, James Eastland. The purpose of the hearings was to determine whether publication of False Witness was the result of a Communist conspiracy, rather than to assess the origin and consequences of Matusow's admitted perjury.

The story of the book's publication and its aftermath was written by Kahn in the late 1950s, but not published until 1987, eight years after his death (The Matusow Affair, Moyer Bell).

Other books published by Cameron and Kahn included The testament of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Seeds of destruction; the truth about the U.S. occupation of Germany by Cedric Belfrage and The ecstasy of Owen Muir by Ring Lardner.