Recently, the National Archives released some 9,000 pages of heretofore-secret testimony from the famous Commie-hunting inquiries by Senator Joe McCarthy. Here is an article that will give you some background on it all. And here's a link to a page through which you can access the transcripts. The interrogation of the great mystery writer Dashiell Hammett occurs in Volume 2 but is generally unremarkable. They keep asking him if he's a member of or has ever contributed money to the Communist party. He keeps invoking the Fifth Amendment. Still, the whole fishing expedition is pretty scary.