He was known for being immediately fired when he invoked the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution at a Senate subcommittee hearing in 1955.
Barnet, a Harvard-educated journalist, had worked his way to The New York Times when he was implicated, in the testimony of Winston Burdett before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, as a Communist.
The committee's attorney presented the names of twenty other people and each time Barnet responded to the question with the same sentence, "I assert my privilege, sir, under the 5th Amendment."
When Burdett's name was presented Barnet still refused to identify even his accuser "as a Communist."
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