Abraham Chasanow (December 1, 1910 – June 11, 1989) was a United States government employee who was suspended from employment in July 1953, during the McCarthy era, on the grounds that he was a security risk.
[3] On September 1, 1954, Assistant Secretary of the Navy James H. Smith, Jr. issued a formal apology to Chasanow and described the accusations against him as "a grave injustice."
It said in a letter to Charles S. Thomas, Secretary of the Navy, that "under the present loyalty program there is far too much room for action based on suspicion, arbitrary conjecture and secrecy.
[8][9] Investigative reporter Anthony Lewis won the 1954 Heywood Broun Award of the American Newspaper Guild for a series of articles describing the Chasanow case.
[11] In 1956, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith sponsored the publication of a study of antisemitism in the United States, Cross-Currents in America, that used the security investigation of Chasanow as a principal example.
[13] Bosley Crowther in The New York Times called it a "plainly pussyfooting picture" in which "the obvious point of the real-life drama is avoided and an imaginary target is devised."
The film assigned blame to a vague personal enemy and local gossips while the role of those responsible for the investigation was "sweetly glossed".
Their second child Phyllis C. Richman (née Chasanow) became an influential writer who served as the food critic for The Washington Post for 23 years.