Mr. Paine. Yes.
Well, we would have to go back to a little to when I lived in New York as a school student in school, grammar school and high school. There I would see him very infrequently considering our close proximity and the fact that I found him stimulating and I liked him.
He took me to a few, one or possibly two, Communist meetings at my considerable insistence. He didn't urge this upon me. I wanted to go, to get the feeling of the—I asked him what he did or something and I wanted to know all this, my mother said he was on the radical left.
So, I went to a few of those meetings, and didn't—was unfamiliar with the issues and questions they were debating. I got the feeling, I came away with the impression, that these people, there were three Communist groups apparently in New York at the time, and they were most up in arms with each other, or there——
Mr. Dulles. Excuse me, how old were you at this time approximately?
Mr. Paine. This was somewhere from eighth grade to high school.
Mr. Dulles. Yes.
Representative Ford. What year about, what time span would that be?
Mr. Paine. Well 1947, I think I got out of high school, so it is 1943 to 1947.
Then I didn't—I got the flavor of those meetings. I found sort of an intense people, people of high intensity. I didn't feel very much at home there, and I guess I didn't go to any more.