[1] At the University of Michigan he won several annual prizes given for undergraduate dramatic writing, including the top award in 1935 for a play called Unfinished Picture, later read but not performed by the Group Theatre, named in 1948 as a Communist front organization by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
[7] He also said that when the two "have made half the record I have in the field of psychological warfare against communism, then perhaps the money this trip of theirs is costing the American taxpayer might begin to pay off."
And he offered to show McCarthy his record fighting communism "here in Europe, where the threat is an everyday reality rather than an excuse for creating political confusion.
He denied Communist Party membership at any time, but supposed he had attended social gatherings organized by his roommate without realizing the political nature of the events.
[6] To support his testimony, Kaghan offered the committee a letter from Leopold Figl, a prominent anti-Communist politician and first Federal Chancellor of Austria after the Second World War.
He described his Washington experience as "disillusioning," and explained: "When you cross swords openly with Senator McCarthy, you cannot expect to remain in the State Department, even though you have, as I do, loyalty and security clearance and an anti-Communist record reaching from Vienna to Berlin.
"[9] A week later Raymond Swing resigned his position as senior analyst for the Voice of America to protest what he called the State Department's "spineless failure ... to stand by its own staff.
"[10] In October 1954, Kaghan congratulated Time magazine when it reported that McCarthy's investigations had "hurt his country's chances to rally the peoples of Europe against Communism."
[1] Kaghan died of heart failure on August 9, 1989, at Memorial Hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont, survived by his wife Nancy, a son Benjamin, and a daughter Susan.