Panufnik continued to find it frustratingly difficult to get permission to travel to the States. In the wake of McCarthyism, the staff at the American Embassy in London were unhelpful, and treated him with suspicion: Panufnik was surprised to have to supply fingerprints, and he was pointedly asked more than once whether he had ever been a member of the Polish United Workers' Party. The irony of this difficulty, after his recent public defection to the west, was not lost on Panufnik.