Full text of "Communist legal subversion : the role of the Communist lawyer : report"

See other formats

rE"

cAr99.135.4a358

copy

86th Conccross, 1st Session

Union Calendar No. 12

House Report Xo. 41 i

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

^^CoJ^^

THE ROLE OF THE COMMUNIST LAWYER

REPORT

BY THE

COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
EIGHTY-SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

FEBRUARY 16, 1959

(Including Index)
(Original Release Date)

February 23, 1959. — Committed to the Committee of the Whole House
on the State of the Union and ordered to be printed

36911 o

, UNITED STATES

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFP^ICE

WASHINGTON : 1059

H-

i> n s T T n

-T^v^

OCT 19 1562 \

COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES
United States House of Representatives

FRANCIS E. WALTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
MORGAN M. MOULDER, Missouri DONALD L. JACKSON, California

CLYDE DOYLE, California GORDON H. SCHERER, Ohio

EDWIN E. WILLIS, Louisiana WILLIAM E. MILLER, New York

WILLIAM M. TUCK, Virginia AUGUST E. JOHANSEN, Michigan

Richard Arens, Staff Director

Union Calendar No. 12

86th Congress ) HOUSE OF EEPEESENTATIVES ( Report
1st Session j \ No. 41

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION
The Role of the Communist Lawyer

February 23, 1959. — Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the
State of the Union and ordered to be printed

Mr. Walter, from the Committee on Un-American Activities,

submitted the following

REPORT

[Pursuant to H. Res. 7, 86th Cong., 1st sess.]

Ill

CONTENTS

Page

Int reduction 1

Lawyers identified as Communists 3

A Communist 's loyalty versus the lawyer's oath 4

Communist abuse of the courts 6

Behavior before congressional committees 9

National Lawyers Guild 16

Services to the Communist Party by identified Communist lawyers 17

Recruitment of fellow lawyers into the Communist Party 18

Circumventing the law 18

Espionage and subversion in Government 19

Lawyers as Communist Party officials 19

Activities in unions 20

Leadership in Communist fronts 24

Candidates for public oflSce 24

Propagandists for Communist causes 25

Case histories of some identified Communist lawyers 26

Conclusion 75

Index i

Public Law 601, 79ih Congress

The legislation under which the House Committee on Un-American
Activities operates is Public Law 601, 79th Congress [1946], chapter
753, 2d session, which provides:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, * * *

PART 2— RULES OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Rule X

SEC. 121. STANDING COMMITTEES

*******

18. Committee on Un-American Activities, to consist of nine Members.

Rule XI

POWERS AND DUTIES OF COMMITTEES

*******

(q) (1) Committee on Un-American Activities.

(A) Un-American activities.

(2) The Committee on Un-American Activities, as a whole or by subcommit-
tee, is authorized to make from time to time investigations of (i) the extent,
character, and objects of un-American propaganda activities in the United States,
(ii) the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-American propa-
ganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and attacks
the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution, and
(iii) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in any necessary
remedial legislation.

The Committee on Un-American Activities shall report to the House (or to the
Clerk of the House if the House is not in session) the results of any such investi-
gation, together with such recommendations as it deems advisable.

For the purpose of any such investigation, the Committee on Un-American
Activities, or any subcommittee thereof, is authorized to sit and act at such
times and places within the United States, whether or not the House is sitting,
has recessed, or has adjourned, to hold such hearings, to require the attendance
of such witnesses and the production of such books, papers, and documents, and
to take such testiniony, as it deems necessary. Subpenas may be issued under
the signature of the chairman of the committee or any subcommittee, or by any
member designated by any such chairman, and may be served by any person
designated by any such chairman or member.

Rule XII

LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT BY STANPING COMMITTEES

Sec. 136. To assist the Congress in appraising the administration of the laws
and in developing such amendments or related legislation as it may deem neces-
sary, each standing committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives
shall exercise continuous watchfulness of the execution by the administrative
agencies concerned of any laws, the subject matter of which is within the jurisdic-
tion of such committee; and, for that purpose, shall study all pertinent reports
and data submitted to the Congress by the agencies in the executive branch of
the Government.

RULES ADOPTED BY THE 86TH CONGRESS
House Resolution 7, January 7, 1959

****** 4:

Rule X

STANDING COMMITTEES

1. There shall be elected by the House, at the commencement of each Con-
gress,

*******

(q) Committee on Un-American Activities, to consist of nine Members.

*******

Rule XI

POWERS AND DUTIES OF COMMITTEES

*******

18. Committee on Un-American Activities.

(a) Un-American activities.

(b) The Committee on Un-American Activities, as a whole or by subcommittee,
is authorized to make from time to time investigations of (1) the extent, char-
acter, and objects of un-American propaganda activities in the United States,
(2) the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-American prop-
aganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and
attacks the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitu-
tion, and (3) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress
in any necessary remedial legislation.

For the purpose of any such investigation, the Committee on Un-American
Activities, or any subcommittee thereof, is authorized to sit and act at such times
and places within the United States, whether or not the House is sitting, has
recessed, or has adjourned, to hold such hearings, to require the attendance
of such witnesses and the production of such books, papers, and documents, and
to take such testmiony, as it deems necessary. Subpenas may be issued under
the signature of the chairman of the committee or any subcommittee, or by any
member designated by any such chairman,^ and may be served by any person
designated by any such chairman or member.

*******

26. To assist the House in appraising the administration of the laws and in
developing such amendments or related legislation as it may deem necessary,
each standing committee of the House shall exercise continuous watchfulness
of the execution by the administrative agencies concerned of any laws, the subject
matter of which is within the jurisdiction of such committee; and, for that
purpose, shall study all pertinent reports and data submitted to the House by
the agencies in the executive branch of the Government.

VII

"The proletariat must gather and organize those lawyers and
learned barristers in various countries who sympathize with the
liberation struggle and are prepared, together with the legal
bureau of the IRA, to assist and give legal help to the victims of
the class domination of the bourgeoisie * * *.

"To organize legal bureaus in every country where they do
not yet exist and where this is possible, in particular in England,
the U. S. A. and Japan * * *.

"To strive to enlarge the number of lawyers who take part in

this work by attracting more and more new cadres of lawyers^jid

jurists who can be stimulated by their own interests and their

sympathy with the revolution to gather around the IRA legal

bureau."

(The above directive was issued by the International Red Aid (IRA) at
its Second International Conference (Moscow, 1927). The International
Red Aid was established by the Comintern in 1922 for the purpose of
providing organizations of lawyers for the legal defense of Communists
and Communist causes in all parts of the world. )

VIII

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION
The Role of the Communist Lawyer

INTRODUCTION

Hearings and investigations conducted by the Committee on Un-
American Activities in the course of the hist few years have produced
a massive array of facts regarding efforts directed at the perversion
of our democratic processes of government by the Communist con-
spiracy in the United States.

On the basis of these facts, tlie committee issued the report entitled
"Communist Political Subversion" ^ on August 16, 1957. The com-
mittee described therein the Communist Party's campaign, through
the instrumentality of several hundred party-created organizations,
to sinuilate a "grass roots" pressure on Federal and local govern-
ments for the purpose of nullifying our Xation's security programs.

A subsequent committee report, published on November 8, 1957,
under the title ''Operation Abolition," outlined additional organized
efforts to undermine the security programs of our Government, to
hamper the effectiveness of the Committee on Un-American Activities
and to discredit the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director,
J. Edgar Hoover.

The committee is issuing the present report as a result of substantial
evidence that the Communists, over the course of the past several
decades, have sought and are seeking to pervert our democratic proc-
esses not only by their campaign of political subversion but by a
parallel operation which may be designated as "legal subversion.''
This operation involves subversion by Communists trained in the law.

The mechanics of legal subversion extend far beyond any legitimate
process of legal representation. They embrace the efforts of a con-
spiratorial minority, trained in the use of the legal instruments of our
society, to turn those instruments into weapons for the destruction of
our free society.

While relatively few in number, the principals in this operation
enjoy a far disproportionate influence in the American community as
a result of a combination of legal training, schooling in Communist
subversive techniques and the fact that they have behind them the
entire Communist apparatus and are made the subjects of favorable
publicity build-ups on the part of the Communist Party, its fronts
and fellow travelers in all walks of life.

The locus operandi of the Communist lawyer has ranged from the
Communist Party and its myriad front groups and enterprises to the

^ See Comnuinist Political Siil)version, Hearings and Appendix, November and Deceniher
1956 (pts. 1 and 2), and H. Rept. No. 1182, August 16, 1957.

36911 0—58 2 1

2 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

most respected institutions of our Republic. The record will show,
for example, that Communist lawyers have not only been in the fore-
front of the party's own organizational apparatus and of particular
party projects such as the campaign of political subversion, but that
they have also promoted the Communist cause in the courts, the
Congress, and executive agencies of our Government.

From the scope and nature of their activities, it is evident that
Communist lawyers rank as part of an elite corps within the Com-
munist fifth colunni on American soil.

The Committee on Un-American Activities has never investigated
the legal profession or any other professional group as such. Legis-
lative mandates require, however, that this committee and, in turn,
the Congress, be informed of the constantly changing strategy and
tactics of the Communist conspiracy in this country as preparation
for the enactment of remedial security legislation when the exigencies
of the situation demand it.

In keeping with these mandates, the committee has investigated the
conspiracy in whatever sphere its agents have been found operating.
The committee has discovered as a result of these investigations that
the Connnunist program of subversion in this Nation is so broad in
scope that most segments of our society have been its targets. Hear-
ings have disclosed, for example, the operations of Communist agents
within our Federal Government, our trade unions, and local com-
munity organizations, as well as within numerous professional group-
ings such as lawyers, doctors, educators, and scientists.

In this report, the committee has extracted from its past investiga-
tions and hearings some of the information it has received regarding
the aims and activities of Communists admitted to the practice of law.
Despite the fact that the information was obtained incidentally in the
course of investigations into broader aspects of the Communist con-
spiracy, the committee believes this evidence is justification for con-
cern by those, both within and without the legal profession, who would
preserve our democratic institutions and processes. Therefore, it was
decided to publish this report.

How can a lawyer maintain his oath to uphold and defend the Con-
stitution of the United States when he is an agent of a conspiratorial
apparatus designed to destroy the Constitution ?

How can a lawyer carry out his duty to serve the interests of a client
if he is under Communist discipline which subordinates professional
loyalties to the interests of the Connnunist Party ^

How can a lawyer meet the high standard of ethics and conduct,
historically re({uired of members of the bar, if he exploits the know-
how and prestige of his profession in behalf of Communist propa-
ganda, subversion, and espionage ?

The committee cites facts which shed light on these and other ques-
tions in the following report in the belief that reliable data on a vital
problem is the first step toward its eventual solution. It is encourag-
ing to note that many loyal members of the bar have long demon-
strated concern about Connnunist lawyers. The American Bar Asso-
ciation, for example, established a Special Committee on Connnunist
Tactics, Strategy and Objectives in 1950. As a result of its com-
mittee's studies, the Association has adopted a number of recom-
mendations directly relating to communism and Communist lawyers.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 3

Among the measures urged by the Association is the disbarment of
lawyers who are found to be members of the Communist Party or who
invoke the fifth amendment regarding party membership.

The ramifications of legal subversion are such, however, that the
problem demands innnediate and serious consideration not only by
the overwhelming majority of patriotic lawyers in our country but
by the Congress and the citizenry at large.

LAWYERS IDENTIFIED AS COMMUNISTS

Committee investigations and hearings over the years have stripped
the cloak of secrecy from Communist conspirators operating in many
diverse groupings of American society. Organized Communist activi-
ties centered in various cities of the Ignited States, or around key
Communist targets such as the Government, labor unions, basic indus-
tries, and educational and cultural institutions formed the scope
of manv committee hearings.

In the course of these hearings, which it has held throughout the
country, the committee has repeatedly received evidence that certain
members of the conspiratorial Communist operation were masquerad-
ing as respected members of the legal profession.

In the decade from 1947 through 1957, for example, more than 100
of the individuals identified as members of the Communist Party by
former Conununists testifying before this committee have also been
identified as members of the bar.

Most of these lawyers have appeared as witnesses before this com-
mittee or other congressional committees. Approximately a dozen
of them informed this committee that they were no longer part of
the conspiracy and presented valuable testimony regarding their past
activities as lawyers in the party. However, no less than 67 other
lawyers have refused to answer questions of this committee or other
congressional committees regarding their membership or activities
in the Communist Party, despite the existence of sworn testimony
regarding their affiliation with the conspiracy. All but four of these
lawyers invoked the protection of the fifth amendment against self-
incrimination in refusing to respond to questioning.

These lawyers represent only a fraction of the total number of in-
dividuals engaged in the practice of law in the United States. The
fact that a relatively ;-:mall number of Conununists have attained
status in the legal profession should not be construed as a reflection on
the overwhelming majority of the legal profession, in whose loyalty
and patriotism tlie committee has the highest confidence.

On the other hand, the fact that more than 100 Comnuniist lawyers
have been identified in sworn public testimony before the committee
must not be construed as a complete picture of Communist legal sub-
version. The connnittee emphasizes again that its information on the
subject was obtained incidentally in the course of its public hearings on
broad-scale Comnuniist operations in this country. The factual
material upon which this re})ort is based does not include infonnation
on Comnuniist lawyers who have not been publicly identified, nor on
lawvers who are not actual partv members for ''security" or other
reasons but who nevertheless unswervingly support the Communist
Party and its program. Nor does this report attempt to exhaust in-

30774 O — 59 2

4 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

formation on the subject which may be available as a result of hearings
by other committees of the United States Congress, various State
investigating committees, and governmental agencies such as the Sub-
versive Activities Control Board, or information obtained as a result
of testimony in the numerous Smith Act trials.

The fact that identified Communist lawyers are very much in a
minority does not alter the seriousness of the situation whereby agents
of the Communist Party, by gaining entry into the legal profession,
are in a unique position to serve as instruments for those who would
pervert the very democratic processes a lawyer is sworn to defend.

Under the mantle of the legal profession, the Communist can
operate as an ostensibly respectable and influential member of the com-
munity despite his dedication and subservience to Communist doc-
trines and directives.

The frequency of their appearances before our most important and
highly respected democratic institutions is evidence of the prominence
attained by Communists who have been admitted to the bar. They
appear not only before congressional committees but, because of their
highly respected profession, are given free access to executive agencies,
such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and to the State
and Federal courts, including our highest tribunal — the United States
Supreme Court.

In the past decade alone, identified Communist lawyers appeared in
person before the United States Supreme Court or were on the princi-
pal brief in at least 32 important cases adjudicated by the Court on
some vital issue affecting the operations of the Communist Party
itself.

This report must not be construed as a reflection on the right and
privilege of legal representation for Communists. The cherished
American concept of the right to counsel must never be denied even to
Communist conspirators who would render such concepts meaning-
less if their efforts to subvert our Government were to succeed.^

A COMMUNIST'S LOYALTY VERSUS THE LAWYER'S

OATH

A Communist owes his primary loyalty to an international revolu-
tionary conspiracy, masterminded in Moscow toward the goal of
complete enslavement of the earth's people. By subordinating him-
self to this conspiracy, a lawyer becomes part and parcel of an opera-
tion designed to abolish our constitutional form of government and its

^ The Rules of Procedure of the Committee on Un-American Activities, a printed copy of
which is furnished to all witnesses, require that "At every hearing, public or executive,
every witness shall be accorded the privilege of having counsel of his own choosing." Wit-
nesses who appear at committee hearings without legal representation are asked if they
have deliberately chosen to testify without benefit of counsel.

When such witnesses indicate they desire counsel but are unable to obtain it, the com-
mittee postpones interrogation of the individual and contacts local bar associations or legal
aid societies in order to insure that the witness has the benefit of legal advice.

As examples, the committee cites the appearances of Stanley William Henrickson before
the committee in Seattle, Wash., June 16, 1954, and the appearance of William Matthews
in Atlanta, Ga., in July 1958. Mr. Henrickson, an identified member of the Communist
underground organization in Washington State, invoked the fifth amendment as a witness
before the committee. He was accompanied by Michael K. Copass, president of the Seattle
Bar Association, wlio represented Mr. Henrickson without compensation after the com-
mittee had solicited the l)ar association for legal assistance for Mr. Henrickson. In
connection with the appearance of William Matthews before the committee in Atlanta,
Ga., in July 1958, the committee solicited and obtained legal assistance for the witness
from the local Legal Aid Society.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 5

guaranties of equal justice under the law in favor of a slave-state
existence.

A Communist operates under an iron discipline which places his
party's subversive purposes above even professional and personal loy-
alties. No Communist, therefore, can in good faith take the oath,
administered to all members of the bar, to uphold and defend the
Constitution of the United States. No Communist can qualify for
the trust imposed upon a lawyer "to devote his ability, skill, and
diligence along ethical and professional lines to the interests of his
client, and to refrain from entering into any alliance or incurring any
obligation connected with the litigation in which he is engaged as
counsel that would place him in a position where his pereonal interests
would be adverse to those of his client." ^

A member of the bar is considered an officer of the court. In a
sense, he is also an officer of the State, with an obligation to the public.
He plays a role that is indispensable to the very system of the adminis-
tration of justice, and as a result has a solemn duty to assist the court
in keeping legal proceedings dignified, orderly, impersonal, and free
from issues aside from the merits of a case. With their loyalties else-
where, (^ommunists cannot be counted upon to carry out such import-
ant responsibilities.

The anomaly of a Communist lawyer is further pointed up by the
fact that the prerequisites for admission to the bar include not only
adequate training in the techniques of the law but also good moral
character. A member of a conspiracy, dedicated to a course of deceit,
subversion, and even violence, obtains and holds membership in the
legal profession in ^ross violation of the bar's character requirements.

That a Communist lawyer's first allegiance is to the party itself
was demonstrated by the testimony of a group of Los Angeles lawyers
who had quit the party in disillusionment in the late 1940's, and later
described their party experiences to this committee.*

Most of these lawyers had been recruited into the Communist Party
after other lawyers already in it had induced them to attend in-
formal "legal" discussion groups where they were gradually exposed
to Marxist views. When they actually joined the party the new
recruits were placed in a special lawyers' group whose membership
was kept secret. There they received intensive indoctrination aimed
at guiding their thinking along accepted Communist Party lines.
Communist lawyers, the witnesses declared, were not allowed to dis-
agree with party theory and policies. Those who differ "either
change their minds and think right, or else they get out," accord-
ing to David Aaron, a lawyer and former Communist who, since
breaking with the party, has rendered outstanding service by revealing
tlie machinations of Connnunist lawyers.

Mr. Aaron stated that the lawyers who were "Communists in the
true sense of the word" were those who "feel that the most important
thing is the aims of the party." A. Marburg Yerkes, another lawyer
who broke with the party, related that he found his concern for high
ideals was being submerged by concern for the Connnunist Party as
such. Still another former member of the Los Angeles Communist

37 Corpus Juris Secundum 708.

* Testimony of David Aaron and Albert >I. Herzig. .January 23, 1952 ; A. Marburg Yerkes,
January 24, 1952; and William G. Israel, January 25, 1952.

6 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

lawyers' group, William G. Israel, testified that he quit the party group
because "in 1947 it became perfectly obvious that to remain a member
of the Communist Party was to be an absolutely disloyal American."

COMMUNIST ABUSE OF THE COURTS

The Communist Party attitude toward our courts was frankly stated
in a pamphlet instructing the party faithful on the behavior they were
to adopt in the event of arrest and trial. The pamphlet bluntly re-
quired them to "bring the class struggle into the courtroom." The
"dignity" and "sanctity" of the courts, according to this pamphlet, are
merely "a means of paralyzing the struggling of the workers against
capitalist institutions."

These instructions further declare :

The class struggle goes on in the courtroom as well as it does
on the picket line, in the shops, and in the mines. The worker
must learn to carry into the courtroom the same determined mili-
tancy that brought him there.

The worker must also understand that courts are not impartial,
any more than any other agency of capitalist government is im-
partial. Those who drag the worker into court do so because they
know that the court will serve the bosses and not the worker.

To summarize the point : the workers must see through the sham
and ceremony, and recognize the capitalist court as a class enemy —
as a weapon in the bosses' hands, with which to suppress work-
ers' militancy. The worker must train himself to bring the class
struggle into the courtroom into which he was dragged by the
bosses' servants.^
Another Communist pamphlet told party members that they must
use trials of Communists as a means of attacking capitalism and pro-
moting the revolution :

A Communist must utilize a political trial to help on the revolu-
tionary struggle. Our tactics in the public proceedings of the
law courts are not tactics of defense but of attack. Without cling-
ing to legal formalities, the Communist must use the trial as a
means of bringing his indictments against the dominant capitalist
regime and of courageously voicing the views of his party."
The application of these Communist principles to an American
court trial was observed as far back as 1929 in the notorious Gastonia
case.

In this case, seven defendants were convicted of second-degree mur-
der as a result of the death of a Gastonia, N. C, police chief during a
violent Communist-directed strike of textile workers in the area. The
conviction marked the conclusion of two trials held in Charlotte, N. C,
between August 26 and October 21, 1929, in a blaze of nationwide
publicity capitalized on by the (^omnuniist Party.

Many years later, Fred E. Beal, one of the defendants who was also
a Communist, and Liston Oak, a Communist functionary on the scene,
appeared as witnesses before this committee. Both men had left the

^ Under Arrest ! Workers' Self-defense in the Courts, International Labor Defense,
pp. 6 and 7.

* Johannes Buchner, The Agent Provocateur in the Labour Movement, New York :
Workers Library Publishers, early 1930's pp. 51 and 52.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 7

Communist Party in disillusionment. They revealed to the committee
that the Communist Party had gone all-out in an effort to induce
defense counsel to follow a "class struggle" line in the Gastonia trials
and to utilize the courtroom for Communist propaganda purposes.

Among those sent by the party to the area to accomplish this objec-
tive was Leon Josephson, a. Communist lawyer from New Jersey, w^ho
operated as the party's legal representative. Although Josephson
did not take part in the actual trial proceedings, he attempted to
influence the defense counsel and, in interviews with the imprisoned
defendants, sought to instruct them on their testimony in the event
they should be called to the witness stand.

Mr. Beal stated that the Communist Party was more interested in
creating a propaganda forum and making a show for Moscow than
in obtaining the defendants' acquittal. The party succeeded in get-
ting one of its representatives from New York on the witness stand.
This party agent thereupon introduced into the trial Communist prop-
aganda speeches having no relation to the defense of the case and
actually prejudicial to the defendants. Such tactics, accompanied by
Communist agitation in the community, hampered the case for the
defense to such an extent that Mr. Beal in retrospect was convinced
the Communist Party was chiefly responsible for the defendants'
conviction.

A former judge who was chief counsel for the defense resigned
from the case as a result of such Communist efforts to make a mockery
of the trial. A non-Communist lawyer from Charlotte, N. C, who
eventually replaced him, subsequently confirmed Mr. Beal's version
of the case in a communication to the committee. This lawyer told
the committee :

All of the bigwigs of the American branch of the Communist
Party were on hand for the trials. They did everything they
could to interfere with the proper defense of the accused, and
tried constantly to embarrass the court.

When the solicitor for the State, in the second trial of the case,
announced that he would not ask for conviction on the capital
charge, but would reduce the charge to murder in the second
degree the Communist leaders insisted that I protest the reduc-
tion and that I "demand" that the defendants be tried for their
lives. They made no secret of the fact that they would like to
see them sentenced to death, for that, the leaders said, would give
them "more mass space," and enable them to push their cause with
more effectiveness. During the trial of the case they tried to
tamper with State witnesses, tried to get our own witnesses to
swear to all sorts of lies, and constantly tried to dictate to defense
lawyers. By the time the case had ended the Communists hated
me about as much as they did the attorneys for the prosecution,
and largely because the prisoners were not sentenced to the electric
chair. The whole ugly affair seems almost like a nightmare.
The behavior of defense counsel in the Smith Act trial of the 11
top Communist Party officials in New York in 1949 was in complete
accord with the Communist Party courtroom strategy outlined
above.

Throughout the 7-month trial of the Communist leaders charged
with conspiracy to advocate forceful overthrow of the United States
Government, a group of defense lawyers indulged in a spectacular

8 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

display of abusive and disruptive conduct. These lawyers, it became
apparent, were determined to break up the legal proceedings by any
means and to introduce Communist propaganda at every opening
as long as the trial should continue." In pursuing these tactics, coun-
sel were observed to pass up actual opportunities to benefit their
clients' case. Presiding Judge Harold Medina declared at one point
in the trial that "The amount of disorder and contemptuous behavior
I have witnessed here is beyond anything I could have thought possi-
ble in an American court."

At the conclusion of the trial, Judge Medina meted out jail sen-
tences for criminal contempt of court to six defense counsel. He
charged them with "a deliberate and willful attack upon the adminis-
tration of justice, an attempt to sabotage the functioning of the Fed-
eral judicial system and misconduct of so grave a character as to make
the mere imposition of a fine a futile gesture and a wholly insufficient
punishment." ^

Judge Jerome Frank, in a concurring opinion in the United States
Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, decision which upheld the con-
tempt sentences against the defense counsel, said :

* * * We affirm the orders punishing these lawyers * * * be-
cause of the lawyers' outrageous conduct — conduct of a kind
which no lawyer owes his client, which camiot ever be justified,
and which was never employed by those advocates, for minorities
or for the unpopular, whose courage has made lawyerdom proud.
The acts of the lawyers for the defendants in this trial can make
no sensible man proud.

What they did was like assaulting the pilot of an aeroplane in
flight or turning out the lights during a surgical operation. To
use homelier words, they tried to throw a wrench in the ma-
chinery of justice. Whatever may have been their purpose, their
acts might have made a trial of Iheir clients impossible.^
Among those sentenced for contemptuous conduct was Eugene
Dennis, general secretary of the Communist Party, U. S. A., who
was a defendant in the trial. Although not a lawyer, Dennis had
served as his own counsel. Three of the remaining defense counsel
sentenced by Judge Medina — Harry Sacher, Richard Gladstein, and
Abraham J. Isserman — are active practitioners of the law who have
been identified by witnesses before this committee as members of the
Communist Party.

At the time of this contemptuous behavior by defense counsel in the
New York Smith Act trial, A. Marburg Yerkes was still a member of a
Communist Party lawyers' group in Los Angeles. Mr. Yerkes sub-
sequently told this committee that he was profoundly disturbed by the
conduct of the lawyers in the New York trial and that he tried to raise

' Hawthorne Daniel, "Judge Medina, A Biography," New York : Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1952,
pp. 230, 231, 265, 288, and 289.

8 Ibid.

9 182 F. 2d 416.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 9

questions about it with other Communist lawyers in his group. Mr.
Yerkes received no answer and shortly thereafter left the Connnunist
Party in disgust with its policies and methods.

The American Bar Association's Special Committee on C^ommunist
Tactics, Strategy and Objectives expressed concern that conduct such
as that engaged \u by defense counsel in the aforementioned Smith Act
trial ''might well bring down the wrath of the American people upon
the legal profession, and if permitted to continue would tend to make
the Bar generally the object of scorn, derision and contempt of the
American citizen." ^°

The Attorney General of the United States warned in 1953 that the
inculcation of Americans with a contemptuous attitude toward our
judicial process is exactly what the Communist Party seeks to achieve :
Higli on their [the Communists'] list of objectives is a pro-
gram designed to instill in our citizens contempt for our judicial
process. They know that our court system, which is fair and im-
partial, is one of the strongest bulwarks of democracy. Conse-
quently, as we expose their members for what they are, and try
them for their crimes, they have used every device available in an
attempt to turn our judicial process into a "three-ring circus" in
order to bring it into disrepute.

Unfortunately, they have been partially successful in this
program. * * * ^

BEHAVIOR BEFORE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES

The Communist Party's position regarding congressional commit-
tees investigating subversion is well documented. The party has con-
tinuously propagandized against the very existence of such committees.
It has also instructed its members who are subpenaed to appear as
witnesses before these committees to refuse to furnish any informa-
tion on Communist activities. Former Communists have testified
that, in order to insure complete resistance to congressional commit-
tees. Communist lawyers are often assigned to Communists who have
been subpenaed.^^

In appearances before this committee as counsel to uncooperative
witnesses, many identified Communist lawyers have furthermore vio-
lated the ethical standards of the bar by a display of contemptuous and
abusive behavior. The committee on occasion has had to have such
counsel escorted from its presence in order to enable a hearing to
proceed.

'« Report of the Special Committee on Communist Tactics, Strategy and Objectives, Amer-
ican Bar Association, February 27. 1951.

'1 Speech of Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., delivered before the National Con-
ference on Citizenship, Washington, D. C, September 19, 195.'?.

" See testimonv before House Committee on Un-American Activities by Matthew Cvetic,
February 22, 1950, and William A. Wallace, May 23, 1956.

36911 0—58-

10 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Witnesses, represented by identified Communist lawyers, have also
frequently engaged in disorderly and disruptive tactics, apparently
with the knowledge and approval of their counsel. That much of
this behavior was part of a prearranged Communist Party strategy
has been revealed in the testimony of former Communists.

Mrs. Anita Schneider,^^ a former FBI undercover agent within
the Communist Party, described how Communist lawyers provided
witnesses under subpena with abusive speeches to memorize and use
when they appeared as witnesses:

Mr. Arens. In their appearance before various congressional
committees, are the comrades given a little briefing before they
appear as to what they are to say ?
Mrs. Schneider. They certainly are.

Mr. Arens. Can you give us any firsthand observations on that ?
Mrs. Schneider. Yes, I can. On one occasion while I was still
in the Communist Party — in April 1954, I believe — the House
Committee on Un-American Activities had hearings in San Diego.
Many of our local Communist Party people had been subpenaed
to appear. * * *

I was shown a long sheet of nasty remarks that David and
Miriam Starcevic were given with orders to memorize them before
they went on the witness stand so that no matter what they were
asked they had a nasty answer to give. And if you will consult the
transcript, you will see that the nasty answers didn't at all fit
the questions. But, no matter what they were asked, they had an
answ^er to give, a nasty one.^*

Mr. Doyle. By whom were you shown that list of nasty
answers ?

Mrs. Schneider. By David Starcevic * * * who is a member
of the Communist Party in San Diego. * * *

Mr. Scherer. Do you know of any cases other than the one you
related about the list given to the Starcevics where attorneys have
told witnesses who were to be called before this committee what
to say ? Any specific examples ?

Mrs. Schneider. In each case when the Un-American Activities
Committee was going to have hearings the Communist Party at-
torneys would coach the witnesses very carefully beforehand —
exactly what to say and what not to say.

" Hearings on Communist Political Subversion, House Committee on Un-American Activi-
ties, December 7, 1956, Los Angeles, Calif., pp. 6727, 6728, and 6734.

^ David and Miriam Starcevic, accompanied by identified Communist attorney, Ben
Margolis, appeared as witnesses before the Committee on Un-American Activities on April
21, 1954. They conducted themselves in such an obstreperous manner that the committee
decided to forego extensive questioning.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 11

Mr. ScHERER. To the extent of baiting the committee?
Mrs, ScHXEiDER. Certainly. That was the main emphasis on
their testimony. They were carefully coached on exactly how to
make the committee the angriest.

Mr. ScHERER. We have had testimony in other cities from indi-
viduals like yourself that that has been the universal practice by
Communist lawyers, to coach witnesses how to bait the committee,
although under the rules of the committee and as attorneys, they
are not supposed to tell witnesses what to say. They are merely
supposed to advise them as to their legal and constitutional rights
with reference to answering questions that might be asked.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated that Communist publications
in the United States serve as organs for the transmission of direc-
tives to party members. It is therefore pertinent to observe that the
Communist press has consistently given prominence to the abusive
behavior of identified Communists appearing as witnesses before
congressional committees.

For example, the Daily People's World, West Coast Communist
newspaper which functions as a transmission belt for directives to
party members in that area, played up the appearance before the com-
mittee on April 21, 1954, of the Starcevics and similarly uncoopera-
tive witnesses under the headline "Seven San Diegans Flay Un-Ameri-
cans War Aims." The Starcevics and other identified Communists
who refused to answer committee questions were hailed in the Com-
munist newspaper for their "fighting, challenging statements" to the
committee. The party publication quoted generously from these
"statements" which, it stated, the chairman of the committee would
not permit the witnesses to read during the course of their testimony.
What the Communist newspaper failed to mention was that the state-
ments were so abusive and so irrelevant to the investigation that
committee rules prevented their introcTuction into the record.

Among the "statements" quoted by the Daily People's World was
one prepared for delivery by La Verne Lym, former San Diegan
and identified Communist, which charged that the committee's hear-
ings on Communist activities in the San Diego area were actually
timed to coincide with a Government effort to "silence the cry for
peace in the world" and to stop resistance to the involvement of our
country in "military adventures."

Another tirade quoted in the Communist newspaper came from
Phillip Usquiano, an identified Communist of San Diego, and con-
tained such remarks as :

This committee is creating hysteria in San Diego by bringing
in here those who have sold their birthright for 30 pieces of
silver, by recalling the dead from their graves.

I accuse this committee of undermining the Constitution of the
United States and I refuse to cooperate with it.^^

« Dally People's World, April 23, 1954, p. 6.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

The following exhibits indicate the support given by the Communist
press to the disruptive tactics of Communist lawyers in appearances
before congressional committees :

"^PEOPLE'S&SwOBL D

•«tM^ m Wiwn M»w Nmmv Mik ■•.

■V ««»

ftict Fi«« CtmH

Un'Amerkans
face rout in LA

tf CHA«l« aiNN $mi fMILI^ Jit -^"J
tOS ANCftSS Oct » — Aim ^^t"- " Z--' '""

Jrit*

^^^ -:<:-:

^"/rJk

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

14 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

In an appearance before this committee in Washington, D. C, on
June 12, 1956, Paul Robeson bombarded its members with contemptu-
ous speeches which contrasted strangely with his adamant refusal to
answer any committee questions regarding his Communist Party activ-
ities. The Communist Daily Worker thereafter gave Robeson front-
page publicity for what it called his protest against this committee's
"attempt to shut up every Negro who wants to talk for his people."
As the Daily Worker reported it :

During the tumultuous hour that the hearing lasted, Robeson
condemned the witchhunting by the committee, contrasted Presi-
dent Eisenhower's moves for peace with the committee's activities
and declared emphatically his intention of continuing to fight for
equal rights for Negro people.

Although the committee chairman and other members repeat-
edly tried to restrict him to the rigged question routine, Robeson's
voice, sometimes angry, sometimes somber, sometimes chuckling,
overwhelmed their heckling * * *.'''
Robeson's actions and expressions in behalf of international com-
munism are always extolled by the Communist press as representing
the true position of all American Negroes. At the World Peace Con-
ference held 4n Paris in April of 1949, Robeson again presumed to
speak for all Negroes. Thomas W. Young, a prominent Negro

" Daily Worker, June 13, 1956, pp. 1 and 8.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 15

leader of Norfolk, Virginia, and general manager of the Guide Pub-
lishing Company, Inc., had the following to say about Robeson's state-
ment in Paris :

What basis, if any, is there for believing Paul Robeson when
he says that in the event of a war with Russia the Negro would
not tight for his country against the Soviets? * * *

Two things can be pointed out to discredit that statement. In
the first place, Mr. Robeson is now so far out of touch with the
Negro's thinking and his everyday emotions that he can no longer
speak authoritatively about or for the race. His distant travels
and his latterday preoccupations with the affaire of the Soviets
have broken the bond he once held with the Negro mind. He
has so completely removed himself from the intimate affairs of
the Negro group in America that he no longer has the opportu-
nity to know nor the authority to speak about the aims and aspira-
tions and resolutions of this group.

The plain truth about the matter is that in his Paris declara-
tion Mr. Robeson has done a great disservice to his race — far
. greater .than that done to his country. And if Mr. Robeson does
not i-ecognize the injury he has done to tlie cause of the Negro
in this country, then that underscores his disqualification as a
representative of the race. And if he does not recognize the
injury he has done, he must also be cognizant of the extent of his
betrayal of his race in the interest of the new cause to which he
now devotes himself. * * * i^

^' Hearings before Committee on Un-American Activities Regarding Communist Infiltra-
tion of Minority Groups — Pt. 1, pp. 453 and 454, testimony of Thomas W. Young, July 13,
1949.

16 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD

An important focal point in the Communist campaign of legal
subversion is the National Lawyers Guild, which has been operating
on the American scene for more than 20 years as an alleged nation-
wide organization for "liberal" lawyers concerned with human rights
in general and civil liberties in particular.

This committee, in a special 50-page report on the guild in 1950,
found the organization was in fact an "appendage to the Communist
Party." Its proclaimed "benevolent" purposes were designed to lure
non-Communist lawyers into the organization, where they would be-
come subject to Communist influence and would wittingly or un-
wittingly serve Communist objectives. In its day-to-day operations,
the guild served as a "legal" bulwark of the Communist Party, inter-
vening in legal proceedings in behalf of Communist defendants and
lobbying against executive and legislative programs which would curb
the etrectiveness of the Communist conspiracy in this country.^*

The first executive secretary of the guild, Mortimer Riemer, who
was also a member of the Communist Party at the time, has described
in sworn testimony before this committee how he and other Com-
munist lawyers worked to organize the guild in 1936. Not only were
the organizational details arranged by Communist lawyers, but the
first national convention of the guild in 1937 elected a slate of officers
and followed a program prearranged in secret caucuses of Com-
munist lawyers."

Other lawyers who were formerly active in both the Communist
Party and the National Lawyers Guild have informed the committee
that it was a Communist Party requirement, that Communist
lawyers become members of the guild because, as one witness
said, "The guild was supposed to be made into the legal organ, the
legal instrument which would speak for and in behalf of the Com-
munist Party." ^°

In the course of its present study of the problem of legal subversion,
the committee found that most of the lawyers who have been identi-
fied before it as members of the Communist Party, and whose ac-
tivities are discussed in more detail later in this report, have played
prominent roles in the National Lawyers Guild. These lawyei*s have
held key offices in the national guild organization such as those of
executive secretary and members of the executive board and have
functioned as president, executive secretary, treasurer, or board mem-
bers in local chapters of the guild in such major cities as New York,
Washington, D. C, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

A number of lawyers have been identified as having been members
of the Communist Party as far back as their law-scliool days, when
they were also active in "student" chapters of the National Lawyers
Guild. For example, lawyer Mortin Leitson served as president of
the guild's student chapter at the University of Michigan while also
active in a secret Communist Party organization on the campus.

" See report on the National Lawyers Guild, Committee on Un-American Activities, H. R.
3123. September 21, 1950.

'* See testimony of Mortimer Riemer before this committee on December 14. 1955.
"" See testimony of David Aaron before this committee, January 23, 1952, p. 2522.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 17

The National Lawyers Guild held a banquet in New York City on
October 25, 1957, at which it paid tribute to 125 lawyers who were
members of the guild. The guild's "guest of honor" roll for this aflfair
included H() attorneys who liave been publicly identified as Communist
Party members in testimony before the committee-
Activities of the guild in recent years continue to be directed toward
the weakening of the security programs of Federal and local govern-
ments. The guild, for example, has been campaigning for:

1. Abolition of congressional committees assigned to the task of cop-
ing with subversion in the I"'^nited States ;

2. Curbing of the investigative powers of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation;

3. Emasculation of the recent statute which grants immunity to
any witness called before a committee or a Federal grand jury if the
witness furnishes information regarding subversive activities;

4. Repeal of the Smith Act prohibiting teaching or advocacy of
forceful overthrow of the Ignited States Government;

5. Discontinuance of the Attorney General's listings of subversive
organizations;

6. Repeal of the Internal Security Act and the Walter-McCarran
Immigration Act ;

7. Unrestricted issuance of passports to subversive individuals ;

8. Repeal of the Federal employees loyalty-security program;

9. Limitations on the right of the Defense Department to discharge
subversives from the Armed Forces.

SERVICES TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY BY IDENTIFIED

COMMUNIST LAWYERS

When David Aaron, a former member of a Communist Party
lawyers' group in Los Angeles, appeared as a witness before this com-
mittee, he was asked what part Communist Party lawyers were ex-
pected to play in the promotion of the plans and purposes of the Com-
munist Party. Mr. Aaron replied that "* * * the function of the
lawyer was to not actively go out on the street and promote, but to act
in an advisory capacity, to give aid and counsel to the people who are
active in it [the party] ."

In an effort to obtain a picture of some of the special services which
can be performed for the Communist Party by members operating
from the vantage point of the legal profession, the committee has
reviewed the public record of a number of lawyers who have been
identified as party members in sworn testimony. This record, which
represents only publicly available information contained in the files
of the committee, shows that such lawyers have :

1. Capitalized on their membership in the legal profession to recruit
fellow laAvyers into the Communist Party.

2. Misapplied their legal training by assisting Communist opera-
tives in circumventing the law in order to carry out party objectives.

3. Served in secret Communist cells aimed at espionage and in-
fluencing Ignited States policy toward Communist objectives, while
holding responsible legal positions in the Ignited States Government.

4. Carried out important duties as a functionary of the Communist
Party organization itself,

36911 0—58 4

18 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

5. Served as attorneys for both Communist-dominated trade unions
and those not under Communist control.

6. Acted as legal advisers to, and accepted leadership roles in, organ-
izations which posed as legitimate non-Communist enterprises al-
though they were, in fact, operated under Communist control for party
purposes — for example, the party front organizations built around
"civil rights" and other popular themes.

7. Exploited the prestige of their profession in the course of run-
ning for public office.

Tlie Communist Party has reaped inestimable benefits as a result of
these extralegal activities of identified Communist lawyers. While
the activities involve the promotion of Communist objectives in fields
far removed from the atmosphere of courts or administrative and con-
gressional hearing rooms, nevertheless, a basic element in all of them
is a deliberate Communist exploitation of the lawyer's special status
as a member of the bar.

Specific illustrations of each of these activities, selected from
numerous examples available in the public records of identified Com-
munist lawyers, follow :

RECRUITMENT OF FELLOW LAWYERS INTO THE COMMUNIST PARTY

One of the extralegal activities in which Communist lawyers engage
is the recruitment of fellow lawyers into the Communist Party.

Attorney A. Marburg Yerkes testified before this committee that he
had accepted the invitation of Ben Margolis ^^ to join the latter's Los
Angeles law firm because he was impressed with Mr. Margolis' reputa-
tion in a certain prominently publicized legal case. Shortly after join-
ing the firm, Mr. Yerkes was invited by his employer to attend an
informal "legal" discussion at a lawyer's home. Because Mr. Margolis
"expected" it of him, Mr. Yerkes became a regular attendant at such
sessions, which he found were actually Marxist discussions aimed at
the gradual indoctrination of non-Communist lawyers with Commu-
nist views. The sessions led Mr. Yerkes and other lawyers into formal
membership in the Communist Party, where Mr. Yerkes discovered
Mr. Margolis in a leadership role.

CIRCUMVENTING THE LAW

This committee's hearings have also revealed instances in which
identified Communist lawyers have misapplied their legal training by
helping Communist agents evade our laws.

In the course of the committee's investigation into the operations of
the international Communist agent, Gerhart Eisler, evidence was ob-
tained that Leon Josephson, an openly admitted Communist and a
member of the bar in New Jersey since 1921, had in 1931: prepared a
false passport application for Eisler's travels in the service of the
Communist conspiracy. A passport was subsequently issued to Eisler,
a German citizen, through the use of the naturalization papers of a
third Communist Party member, because Eisler, an alien, was tech-
nically unable to obtain a passport. When Josephson was called as

21 For further details of the activities of Ben Margolis and many of the other attorneys
subsequently referred to, see separate sections devoted to each attorney on pages 26
through 75 of this report.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 19

a witness in Eisler's trial for contempt of Congress in 1947, he not
only confessed on the witness stand that he had sworn falsely on
Eisler's passport application but also boasted that he would "do
so again." The statute of limitations prevented any prosecution of
Josephson at that date.

A more recent example was provided in the testimony of Anita
Schneider, who joined the Communist Party in California in 1951 as
an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mrs.
Schneider said the Communist Party considered sending her as a dele-
gate to an international Communist-sponsored "'peace'' conference in
Stockholm. Sweden, from which it was also planned she would journey
on to the Soviet Union. Mrs. Schneider said she had a discussion with
a Communist lawyer of Los Angeles, Richard Rykoff, on the problem
of applying for a passport in view of State Department restrictions on
travel behind the Iron Curtain. Attorney Rykoff advised Mrs.
Schneider to conceal her real destination from the State Department
in filling out a passport application, even though he knew that, in
filling out the application, she would have to swear to the truthfulness
of the information contained in it.

ESPIONAGE AND SUBVERSION IN GOVERNMENT

This committee's investigations and hearings over the years have
disclosed that a sizable group of individuals who obtained positions
of trust within the United States Government due to their legal
training joined underground Communist cells aimed at subversion
in the Government.

New York lawyers John J. Abt and Nathan Witt, for example, held
legal posts with the Agriculture Department and the National Labor
Relations Board, respectively, while serving as leaders of secret Com-
munist cells composed of Government employees. Testimony has dis-
closed that such cells were formed as part of the Communist Party's
strategy to get its members into high policymaking posts in our Gov-
ernment and to open up chamiels through which the Soviet Union
could obtain classified Government information.

A notorious illustration of subversion in Government by an identi-
fied Communist lawyer was provided by the ca^e of Alger Hiss. Hiss'
15 years of Federal employment encompassed all three branches of
the Government — judicial, legislative, and executive. After serving
as a law clerk for a justice of the United States Supreme Court, Hiss
held such posts as counsel in the Agriculture and Justice Departments
and as chief counsel with a special Senate committee. L'pon entering
the State Department, where he attained his highest policymaking
position, Hiss' first assignment was assistant to an Assistant Secre-
tary of State. He, himself, described his job as involving years of
"legal and other research.''

LAWYERS AS COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS

Among the members of the bar who have at the same time held
important functionary posts within the Communist Party organiza-
tion are San Francisco lawyer Aubrey Grossman and New York lawyer
Abraham Unger.

20 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Aubrey Grossman in 1945 was publicly advertised by the Communist
Party as its new educational director for the city and county of San
Francisco. In that year, he was also an alternate delegate to the im-
portant Communist Party national convention in New York City, at
which party leader Earl Browder was deposed and the temporary
name of the Communist Political Association was abandoned in
response to dictates from Moscow.

Abraham Unger not only served as official legal representative for
the Communist Party but also held the status of a "functionary''
within the party organization, according to a former Communist
associate who left the party in 1950. Mr. Unger had been a member
of the constitution committee at the aforementioned 1945 convention
of the Communist Party.

In 1956, at the height of the internal controversy within the United
States Communist Party which resulted from Soviet disclosures of
Stalin's crimes, Abraham Unger discoursed authoritatively on internal
party problems in the party's official newspaper, the Daily Worker.
His pronouncements included severe condemnation of those Commu-
nists in the United States or abroad who were tempted to rebel against
complete subservience to the Soviet Union.

ACTIVITIES IN UNIONS

The Communist Party since the late 1920's has made concerted efforts
to infiltrate the organized labor movement in this country. Chief
targets of the party have been unions operating in basic industries —
the maritime, shipping, communications, radio and electrical fields.
The party actually controlled a number of the Nation's most impor-
tant labor unions. Identified Communist lawyers have contributed
to this party objective.

Sworn testimony has revealed that, while identified Communist
Richard Gladstein of San Francisco served as official attorney for
the Marine Cooks & Stewards Association of the Pacific in the 1940's,
he vigorously promoted Communist control over that union. Lawyer
Gladstein's efforts, under instructions from the Communist Party,
included drafting a constitution, subsequently adopted by the union,
which would give the party free access to the union's finances. The
union was expelled from the CIO in 1950 for its adherence to the
Communist Party line.

Another example is provided by lawyer Nathan Witt, who has
admittedly held the official post of "attorney or the general counsel"
for the Communist-controlled International Union of Mine, Mill and
Smelter Workers since early 1941, with the exception of a short period
during World War II. According to the testimony of a former Com-
munist Party official who also headed the' die-casting division of the
mine-mill union, Nathan Witt was one of the Communist Party's top
men who acted as liaison between the party and a number of unions
controlled by the party. Witt attended key party meetings where
important decisions affecting the mine-mill union were made. These
decisions, as party directives, were then put into effect by the union
after being transmitted to its leaders by Witt, the same testimony
revealed. The party's interest in maintaining control of the mine-
mill union stemmed from the union's strategic position in the non-
ferrous metals industry. This union was also expelled from the CIO
in 1950.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 21

In 1941 Xathan Witt was also counsel for the United Federal
Workers of America. A 1944 report of the Special Committee on
Un-American Activities found Communist leadership to be strongly
entrenched in this union which "was formed as a result of a Com-
munist-led split from the American Federation of Government Em-
ployees in 1937." It said the union had ''fought tenaciously against
all efforts to investigate and penalize civil-service employees for
subversive activities."

In the late 1940's Witt was chief counsel for the New York Teachers
Union, Local 555. This union was originally known as Local 5 of the
American Federation of Teachers, AFL, but was expelled from the
AFL in 1941 on charges of being Communist-dominated. The New
York Teachers Union later became Local 555 of the United Public
Workers of America, CIO, which the CIO in turn expelled in 1950 for
adhering to the Communist Party line.

Harriet Bouslog (Sawyer), another identified Communist lawyer,
has been legal representative for the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's I'nion since at least 1943. She served as its legal
representative in Washington, D. C, from 1943 until the middle of
1946. In that year Mrs. Bouslog became the legal representative in
the Territory of Hawaii for this international union, which was later
expelled from the CIO for adhering to the Communist Party line.

Frank Donner has be«n ideiitified as having been a Communist
Party member as far back as the early 1940's when he was a lawyer for
the National Labor Relations Board. Donner, who invoked the fifth
amendment when he appeared as a witness before this committee in
1956, was recently named general counsel for the United Electrical,
Radio and Machine Workers of America. This Communist-controlled
union, which was ousted by the CIO in 1950, is the recognized bargain-
ing agent for nuuiy thousands of workers in many of our vital defense
industries. The UE in a recent pamphlet described its new counsel
as being "recognized as one of the foremost authorities on NLRB
law." It failed to mention that Donner was publicly identified as
having been a member of a conspiratorial Communist cell while em-
ployed as an attorney at the National Labor Relations Board.

In addition, prior to their identification as Communists, certain
lawyers succeeded in obtaining positions as counsel for unions not
under the control of the Communist Party.

From 1988 to 1948, when he took a leave of absence to work for
the Progressive Party, John Abt served as general counsel to the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, CIO. At the same
time he left the Clothing Workei-s he also resigned as co-counsel to the
CIO Political Action Committee.

Frank Donner was assistant general counsel for both the National
CIO and tlie United Steelworkers of America, CIO, from 1943 to
1947.

Harry Sacher is an outstanding example of an identified Commu-
nist lawyer who represented both Connnunist-dominated unions and
unions which were not under Communist control, and made a hand-
some living by doing so. It is estimated that at one time he earned
over $50,000 per year from his legal work in the labor-union field.

Sacher was attorney for the AFL Painters Council District 9 in
New York City while I^uis Weinstock, a member of the Communist

22 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Party Politburo — and later a defendant in the first Smith Act trial —
held the office of secretary-treasurer, the highest post in the Council.
In the July 1947 Council election an anti-Communist slate headed by
Martin Rarback defeated Weinstock and the other Communists who
had controlled the Council for years. Sacher was then dropped as
attorney for the Council.

One union in which the Special Committee on Un-American Activ-
ities in 1944 found Communist leadership to be "strongly entrenched"
was the Transport Workers Union of America. The Committee on
Un-American Activities noted in 1950 that this union had "tried to
clean out the Communists." Harry Sacher was general counsel for
this union and for its large and powerful Local 100 in New York City
throughout most of the 1940''s.

Michael Quill, president of the Transport Workers, in 1948 de-
nounced Sacher as a "conniving member of the Communist Party,"
and succeeded in having him ousted, first by Local 100 and later in
the year by the international union, in what he (Quill) referred to
as a "purge" of the left-wing elements which would permit the union
"to operate as a natural trade union."

During the same year Sacher was dropped as counsel for Local 802
of the AFL Musicians Union.

In the following year, 1949, Sacher lost his post as attorney for
the United Shoe Workers of America. He managed, however, to
retain his position as attorney for the union's Joint Council 13 in
New York City which was headed by Isidore Rosenberg. Two years
later, in 1951, Rosenberg issued a statement saying, "I have abandoned
my association with Communist activities because I found that asso-
ciation entirely inconsisteYit with my work for my union." Sacher
was ^hen dropped as attorney for Joint Council 13. i , 1

In January 1951, the membership of Local 306 of the Motion Picture
Machine Operators Union, AFL, held a meeting at which literature
was passed out to the local members urging them to vote for the dis-
charge of Sacher because of his "many Communist affiliations," and in
June of that year it was officially announced that he had "resigned"
as the local's attorney.

The following exhibit, reproduced from The Worker, January 21,
1951, demonstrates the acclaim Harry Sacher received from workers
he represented even after he had been convicted of criminal contempt
of court :

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

■6 6

-s

_ >

o •§
a

I— > j:

a c

Z O

»3
13
V

J3 CO

■£ 2'

c *"

a. 2

« 15
o o

C to

A> V)

24 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

LEADERSHIP IN COMMUNIST FRONTS

Identified Communist lawyers who assume prominent roles in the
party's front organizations and special propaganda campaigns
furnish another important type of extralegal service to the Com-
munist Party.

West Coast lawyer Aubrey Grossman, who has been an official of
the Communist Party itself, served for years as West Coast director
and then national organizational secretary or director of the party's
legal front, the Civil Rights Congress. During this assignment,
the Civil Rights Congress went into high gear in a fund-raising
and propaganda campaign in behalf of the national Communist Party
officials prosecuted under the Smith Act. In speeches throughout the
country and in published articles, Mr. Grossman, billed as an attorney
and civil-rights expert, spread the Communist Party line regarding
alleged unjustified persecution of Communist leaders, attacked the
American jury system, and even advised Americans to refuse to coop-
erate or talk with representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation.

In behind-the-scenes operations of Communist-front organizations
such as the Civil Rights Congress, the identified Communist lawyer
has 'also been known to play roles in direct contravention of the ethical
standards required of a member of the bar.

A former undercover agent within the Communist Party, who was
assigned by the party to work with the Civil Rights Congress in San
Diego, described how the CRC was required to develop a propaganda
campaign in defense of a San Diego man involved in legal proceed-
ings, although the case involved no Communist issue. The wntness
testified that the Communist Party was not interested in the man's
innocence or guilt, but was concerned only with exploiting the case for
propaganda purposes to benefit the party. The witness and other San
Diego Communists who were required to conduct this CRC campaign
received personal instructions from Richard Rykoff, an identified
Communist lawyer of Los Angeles, on what steps to take to conceal
the real Communist purpose behind their campaign.

CANDIDATES FOR PUBLIC OFFICE

Political activity and the acquisition of political power are vital
to Communist success in taking over any country. For this reason
the party has always encouraged its members (both open and secret)
to run for public office. Their campaigns serve as sounding boards
for party propaganda in the party's efl'oi-ts to influence not only public
opinion but also legislation and governmental policy.

Communist attorneys are particularly valuable to tlie conspiracy
in this endeavor because lawyers are so widely accepted by the public
as especially qualified for public office.

The Communist Party today usually establishes "front" or cover
political parties as a means of getting its candidates into public
office. Even in cases in which the party feels certain that there is
little chance that any of its candidates will be elected through this
device, it still considers such activity vital. It has learned through
experience that a political campaign is the most effective means at its
disposal for reaching large numbers of people with the Communist
Party line on key national and local issues.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 25

The Independent Progressive Party, a political organization in the
State of C^ilifornia which the Communist Party secretly controlled
and directed in an effort to advance its influence in American political
life, frequently exploited the prestige of the legal profession by select-
ing identified Communist lawyers as candidates for political office.
Typical of such candidates- were Bertram Edises and Charles R.
Garry, of San Francisco. Mr. Edises was a candidate for district
attorney of Alameda County on an IPP ticket in 1950, and Mr. Garry
aspired to a seat in the United States Congress under IPP auspices
in two elections during the same period. Publicity surrounding their
campaigns, omitting any reference to their connections with the Com-
munist Party, emphasized the alleged prominence of these candidates
as ''labor" or "civil rights" lawyers.

The American Labor Party in New York, which has been cited
as another "political front organization" ^^ enabling the Communists
to present their candidates under other than a straight Communist
label, has also picked identified Communist lawyers as candidates for
important public office. For example, Morris Zuckman, who has been
engaged in law practice in Albany, N. Y., since the 1930's, was the
American Labor Party's candidate for mayor of Albany in 1949.
Mr. Zuckman was identified as a member of the Communist Party
by a number of witnesses before this committee, and he has refused to
answer this committee's questions regarding his party activity on the
grounds of possible self-incrimination.

PROPAGANDISTS FOR COMMUNIST CAUSES

Identified Communist lawyers have appeared time and time again
as featured speakers at public rallies held to promote Communist ob-
jectives, and as lecturei-s in Communist-operated institutions such as
the Jefferson School of Social Science in New York and the California
Labor School in San Francisco.

John J. Abt, the former leader of one Communist underground
espionage group of United States Government employees, was cleverly
publicized as a "noted constitutional authority" when appearing as
speaker against the Walter-McCarran Act at a rally sponsored by the
Communist front, the American Committee for Protection of Foreign
Born. The organization before which he appeared has as one of its
key aims destruction of our Government's security legislation.

Such exploitation of a lawyer's prestige and speaking ability un-
doubtedly has aided the Communist Party in its efforts to recruit
sympathizers within the vast non-Communist majority of our Nation.
Take, for example, the activities of Maurice Braverman, a Baltimore,
Md., lawyer who served on the top governing body of the Communist
Party organization for the State of Maryland and the District of
Columbia.

Mr. Braverman was indicted in 1951 under the Smith Act for
conspiracy to advocate violent overthrow of the United States Gov-
ernment. Prior to his trial, he spoke before Yale University law
students in their law-school auditorium through an "invitation" from
the student chapter of the Communist front, the National Lawyers

22 Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Handbook for
Americans, S. Doc. 117, April 23, 1956, p. 91.

36911 O— 58 5

26 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Guild. In a subsequent interview appearing in the Dailj Worker,
Mr. Braverman stated that many of the Yale law students showed
concern that the Government was prosecuting Communist leaders
under the Smith Act, and that he had impressed some students to
such an extent that they offered to help him in "legal research" for
his defense in the forthcoming trial.

It is evident from just the few examples of Communist exploitation
of the legal profession cited here that the Communist Party gains
tremendously by having its members admitted to the bar. The party
has obviously long been aware that a lawyer's special training and
prestige can lead to positions of prominence in our society where he
can wield substantial influence extending far beyond the limits of his
routine professional activities. The Communist Party has also taken
full advantage of the fact that non-Communists are not generally
ready to suspect that anyone with the attainments and unique privi-
leges of a lawyer would also serve as an agent of the Communist
conspiracy.

CASE HISTORIES OF SOME IDENTIFIED COMMUNIST

LAWYERS

This report hereafter presents a more detailed description of pub-
licly recorded activities engaged in by certain lawyers who have been
identified as members of the Cormnunist Party.

The lawyers referred to below represent only a small percentage
of the identified Communists wit)iin the legal profession. They have
been selected for inclusion in this report because they exemplify pat-
terns of activity which have aroused the concern of this committee.
It should also be noted that their records here are limited to that in-
formation which is available in public hearings or in public ma-
terial contained in this committee's files.

JOHN J. ABT, NEW YORK

Whittaker Chambers testified before this committee on August 3,
1948, that in the early 1930's John J. Abt was a member of the so-
called Ware- Abt- Witt group which was composed of Communist
Party members employed by various agencies of the United States
Government. Abt held legal posts with various United States Gov-
ernment agencies from 1933 until the summer of 1938 ; he was in the
Legal Division of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration of
the Agriculture Department when Chambers knew him. Chambers
stated that this underground Communist group to which Abt be-
longed was organized to carry out the Communist Party's plan to work
its members into high, policymaking positions in our Government,
with espionage as one of its eventual objectives.

Elizabeth Bentley, who served as courier between Soviet agents and
Communist employees of the Federal Government in the early 1940's,
described another so-called "Perlo group'' of Communists in the Gov-
ernment in sworn testimony before this committee on July 31, 1948.
The Perlo group, according to Miss Bentley, was an underground
group of Communists which had been operating since the early 1930's
in the Federal Government and which had been collecting informa-

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 27

tion for the benefit of the Soviet Union for some years. Miss Bentley
testified that John Abt was the leader of the Perlo group before she
herself took it over in March 1944, and that she met Mr. Abt twice for
the purpose of being introduced to the members of the group.

At a hearing by this committee on August 20, 1948, Abt was given
an opportunity to refute these charges, but declined to answer ques-
tions regarding them on the grounds of possible self-incrimination.
As a witness before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on
May 26, 1953, he again invoked the fifth amendment in refusing to
answer questions regarding Communist activities.

In 1948, John Abt became special counsel for the Progressive Party,
a Communist -controlled organization through which the Communists
were enabled to present their candidates for elective office under other
than a Communist label. Abt was a delegate to the second annual con-
vention of the Progressive Partv held in 1948 at the Knickerbocker
Hotel, Chicago. He was a member of the national committee in 1950
and a member of the committee on candidates' declaration in 1952.
The same year he was secretary of the platform committee of the
third national convention, held at the Ashland Auditorium in Chicago.
The Progressive Party held a dinner to celebrate his 50th birthday in
1954.

John Abt was active in the Civil Rights Congress, an organization
formed in 1946 as a merger of two other Communist-front organiza-
tions (International Labor Defense and the National Federation for
Constitutional Liberties) and dedicated to the defense of individual
Communists and the Communist Party. By making special appeals
in behalf of civil liberties, the Civil Rights Congress reached far be-
yond the confines of the Communist Party itself.

In 1953 the Civil Rights Congress held a "Peoples Conference To
Fight the McCarran Law Persecutions and McCarthyism." Abt de-
livered the keynote address in which he attacked the Internal Security
Act as an American kind of fascism aimed at paralyzing all opposi-
tion. "The act," he said, "is rooted in the Big Lie of our time -the
lie as to the nature of communism." He declared that the Communist
Party is "condemned for views which concededly may be true and
good."

This speech was later published by the Civil Rights Congress in
booklet form. In order to lend greater weight to his Communist
Party line analysis the booklet listed some of his former positions:
"Mr. Abt was formerly chief counsel to the La Follette Civil Liberties
Committee (Senate Committee on Education and Labor) ; special
assistant to the United States Attorney General; and general counsel
of the CIO Amalgamated Clothing Workers."

In 1937 John Abt was employed by the Department of Justice as an
assistant to the Attorney General in charge of the trial section of
the Antitrust Division. He was at the same time a member of the
committee on civil rights and liberties of the National Lawyers
Guild, cited as the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party,
which, since its inception, has never failed to rally to the legal defense
of the Communist Party and individual members thereof, including
known espionage agents.

The November-December 1945 issue of the Lawyers Guild Review,
organ of the National Lawyers Guild, contained an article by Abt

30774 O— 59 5

28 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

titled "Some Observations on Soviet Law and Lawyers." Mr. Abt's
article was based on his observations during a visit to the Soviet
Union in 1945. In spite of the notorious police state justice of the
Soviet Union, Abt reported how impressed he was with the stern but
fair attitude of prosecutors and judges and the scrupulous care given
to safeguard the rights of defendants and to assure them a full and
fair trial.

He attended a conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions
held in Paris in 1946, acting in the capacity of adviser. In 1947, Abt's
passport was again revalidated for travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia,
where he attended another conference of the World Federation of
Trade Unions, the Kremlin's worldwide labor organization.

After his return to this country, Abt wrote a series of articles for
Soviet Russia Today, a Communist-controlled magazine which his
wife, Jessica Smith, edited. Two of the articles gave an approba-
tory report of the methods used by the Russian labor unions to settle
grievances and the Russian health insurance plans.

The American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born is one
of the oldest auxiliaries of the Communist Party in the United States.
John Abt was one of the lawyers saluted at a dinner held under the
auspices of the ACPFB in October 1956.

He delivered an address on "What the New Laws Really Mean" at
the Arts, Sciences, and Professions Council, Sunday Night Forum in
New York, September 24, 1954. This Communist-front organization
was used by the Communist Party to appeal to special occupational
groups.

In November of 1954, John Abt was one of the teachers of a course
on the "Bill of Rights : Its Theory and Politics," offered at the Jeffer-
son School of Social Science, one of the Communist Party schools used
to indoctrinate Communists and outsiders in the theory and practice
of communism, and to recruit new party members and sympathizers.

In 1949 Abt issued a statement denouncing the conviction of the
11 Communist leaders under the Smith Act as an imposition of thought
control. He was one of the lawyers who signed a brief petitioning
the United States circuit court of appeals to void the contempt con-
victions of the lawyers who defended the Communist leaders.

Continuing his support of these party leaders, he was speaker at a
rally of the National Conference To Win Amnesty for Smith Act
Victims held in New York in June 1952, and was speaker and chair-
man of a rally of the National Committee To Win Amnesty for Smith
Act Victims held at Chateau Gardens, New York, on June 10, 1954.

GEORGE R. ANDERSEN, CALIFORNIA

George Andersen was identified as a member of the Communist
Party m San Francisco by Mrs. Dorothy Jeffers, former Federal
Bureau of Investigation undercover agent within the party, who testi-
fied before this committee on June 21, 1957.

Mr. Andersen has been prominent in Communist-controlled organi-
zations particularly designed to provide legal defense for the Com-
munst Party. In 1922, the Communist International established the
International Red Aid with the idea that it would have sections in
various countries of the world. The American section of the Inter-

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 29

national Red Aid was the International Labor Defense, which served
as the legal defense arm of the Communist Party in this country.
Andersen was a member of the national committee of this Communist-
controlled organization in the early 194:0's and was also on its legal
advisory board.

The International Red Aid held its second international conference
in Moscow. As a result of this conference a number of directives
were issued in connection with juridical questions then facing the
Communists.

Among the directives were : "The proletariat must gather and or-
ganize those lawyers and learned barristers in various countries who
sympathize with the liberation struggle and are prepared, together
with the legal bureau of the IRA, to assist and ^ive legal help to the
victims of the class domination of the bourgeoisie * * *

"To organize legal bureaus in every country where they do not yet
exist and where this is possible, in particular in England, the U. S. A.
and Japan * * *

"To strive to enlarge the number of lawyers who take part in this
work by attracting more and more new cadres of lawyers and jurists
who can be stimulated by their own interests and their sympathy with
the revolution to gather around the IRA legal bureau."

George Andersen helped to found a "legal bureau" established in
response to this directive in the United States in the early 1930's under
the name of the International Juridical Association. He served on
the national committee of this Communist-controlled offshoot of the
International Labor Defense in 1942. In the same year, he was legal
adviser for the Committee for Citizenship Rights, which was in-
tended to protect Communist subversion from any penalties under
the law.

In 1942 the IJA quietly disappeared from the scene, and its Bulletin
of December 1942 announced that hereafter "the Bulletin will be
published as an integral part of the Lawyers Guild Review. * * *"
One of the reasons given by the Bulletin for this merger was because
"the opportunity now offered for joining forces with the National
Lawyers Guild * * * we believe will more than repair our capacity
to produce and, also, greatly widen the area of our influence."

Andersen, an active member of the IJA, was also one of the leaders
of the National Lawyers Guild. In 1937, just a year after the forma-
tion of this foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party, Ander-
sen was serving as director of its San Francisco chapter. He served
on the guild's national executive board in 1956-57.

The American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born in 1947
named Mr. Andersen as one of its "local counsel" in San Francisco.
He has frequently appeared as speaker at affairs of the San Francisco
branch of the ACPFB, known as the Northern California Committee
for Protection of Foreign Born. In 1954, the Northern California
Committee tendered Mr. Andersen a testimonial dinner.

Mr. Andersen was a candidate for Congi-ess on the ticket of the
Communist-created Independent Progressive Party in 1954. State-
ments of ownership filed by the West Coast Communist organ, the
Daily People's World, showed that Mr. Andersen was a stockholder
in the newspaper's publishing company in the years 1947, 1949, and
1952-54. His services as a speaker have been utilized by such other

30 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Communist-controlled organizations as the San Francisco chapter of
the Civil Rights Congress.

SELMA MICKELS BACHELIS, CALIFORNIA

Selma Bachelis was identified as a member of the Communist Party
in Los Angeles by the following former party members in sworn testi-
mony before this committee : David Aaron, January 23, 1952 ; Albert
Herzig, January 23, 1952 ; A. Marburg Yerkes, January 24, 1952 ; Wil-
liam G. Israel, Januarv 25, 1952; Milton Tyre, Decembei 14, 1951;
and Charlotte Darling Adams, June 2, 1953.

Mrs. Bachelis was described in 1950 in the Communist organ. Daily
People's World, as a local Civil Rights Congress attorney. She was
then engaged by the CRC to represent three women arrested for pass-
ing out to Lockheed aircraft workers leaflets entitled "What Are
U. S. Troops Doing in Korea?" Mrs. Bachelis had signed an appeal
issued in 1948 by the Los Angeles chapter of the Civil Rights Congress
in behalf of individuals cited for contempt for refusing to answer ques-
tions before a grand jury investigating Communist activities in Los
Angeles. She was also one of the financial contributors to the publica-
tion of the Civil Rights Congress booklet entitled, "Civil Rights
Congress Tells the Story."

Mrs. Bachelis endorsed the candidacy of LaRue McCormick, candi-
date for the California State Senate on the Communist Party ticket in
1942. In the same year, she sponsored petitions for the release of
Earl Browder from a Federal penitentiary, and sent greetings to the
Second Soviet Anti-Fascist Youth Conference in Moscow.

In a letter to the editors of the West Coast Communist publication,
the Daily People's World, on February 29, 1962, Mrs. Bachelis. noted
that the editors were then defendants in Smith Act proceedings by the
Government and concluded that the paper "deserves support of all
vnnr countrymen who value the precious tradition of free press."

HARRIET BOUSLOG, HAWAII

Harriet Bouslog (Mrs. Harold Sawyer) was identified as a member
of the Communist Party in Hawaii by a former fellow party member.
Jack Kawano, who testified before this committee on July 6, 1951.
She was also identified as a Communist Party member by former.
Communist Dorothy Funn, who appeared as a witness before the
committee on May 4, 1953. Mrs. Bouslog appeared as a witness before
the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee at hearings held in
Hawaii on December 5, 1956, and invoked the fifth amendment in
refusing to answer questions regarding Communist affiliations.

Since the mid-1940's, Mrs. Bouslog has served as attorney for the
International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, which was
expelled from the CIO in 1950 for adhering to the Communist Party
line. Mrs. Bouslog was legal representative for the ILWU in Wash-
ington, D. C, from approximately 1943 until the middle of 1946. It
was during this period that Mrs. Funn testified she had associated
with Mrs. Bouslog in Communist Party activities in Washington. In
1946, Mrs. Bouslog returned to the Territory of Hawaii, where she has
since served as legal representative for the ILWU in the Territory.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 31

Mrs. Bouslog's activities in behalf of the Communist Party in
Hawaii were described by Mr. Kawano. In Communist discussions
prior to the emergence of the Communist Party of Hawaii as an open,
rather than underground, organization in 1948, Mrs. Bouslog argued
that an aboveground party apparatus would help both the party and
the ILWU, Kawano reported. Mrs. Bouslog, he said, observed that
the ILWU had been taking the brunt of opposition to Communist
activities and that some of this opposition could be diverted to an
open Communist Party.

The degree of influence among non-Communists that can be at-
tained by a Communist working as a member of the legal profession
was strikingly demonstrated by Mr. Kawano's testimony regarding
Mrs. Bouslog and another ILWU attorney in Hawaii, Myer C. Sym-
onds.^^ Mr. Kawano said :

* * * as far as the influence of the two lawyers, Harriet Bous-
log and Myer C. Symonds, is concerned, they have made quite a
reputation for themselves in the islands. There are a lot of inde-
pendent people outside of the labor movement today looking up
to them as good lawyers. I have heard a lot of rumors among
outsiders — because today I am one of the outsiders — and the talk
among outsiders today is that, if you have a case and you cannot
afford to lose the case, then the lawyer to get is either Bouslog
or Symonds, because they work for a cheap fee, and work like the
dickens, and usually win the case. * * *

Another thing. A lot of people who are not Republican and
not Democratic, but to some extent used to have personal friends,
some had Republican friends and some Democratic friends, and
whenever they had problems they used to run up to the Republi-
cans or to Democrats, today they are running to Bouslog and
. -Symonds. Those people are not the most influential people in
town, but they are influential and a lot ,of people are following
them. * * * The influence of Harriet Bouslog is growing * * *.^*
Harriet Bouslog acted as one of the defense attorneys for seven
defendants in Hawaii tried and convicted of conspiracy to advocate
violent overthrow of the United States Government. Mrs. Bouslog
was found guilty of "gross misconduct" during the course of her
appearance as counsel during this Smith Act trial, and the Territorial
supreme court, by unanimous action on April 6, 1956, ordered Mrs.
Bouslog suspended from the practice of law for 1 year.

Richard Kageyama, a former Communist Party member in Hawaii,
who testified frankly before the committee regarding his knowledge
of Communist activities in the Territory, described an attempt by
party officials to prevent him from giving information to the com-
mittee. Mr. Kageyama said that, prior to the arrival of the com-
mittee in the Territory, he had been visited by Charles Fujimoto,
chairman of the Territorial Communist Party, and warned not to be
a "stool pigeon." Mr. Kageyama was advised by Mr. Fujimoto to
take any subpena he might receive from this committee to lawyer

23 Myer C. Symonds appeared as a witness before the Senate Internal Security Subcom-
mittee on December 5, 1!>50, and invoked the fifth amendment rather than answer questions
regarding Communist Party membership or activities.

2* Hearings Regarding Communist Activities in the Territory of Hawaii, pt. 4, House
Committee on Un-American Activities, July 6, 1951, pp. 50 and 51.

32 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Bouslog. Easter J. Doyle, another former Communist Party mem-
ber who cooperated fully as a witness before the committee, also in-
formed the committee that he had disregarded instructions from
Ernest Arena, an identified Communist and local ILWU official, to
take any subpena from this committee to ILWU Lawyers Bouslog
and Symonds.

One of the Communist-front organizations in which Mrs. Bouslog
has been active is the Hawaii Civil Liberties Committee, an ostensible
civil-rights group which this committee found to be the "most effective
sounding board for communism in the Territory of Hawaii." HCLC
records in the possession of the committee show that the front organi-
zation has made a number of financial disbursements to Mrs. Bouslog
for "legal expenses," among them her work in connection with the
defense of two identified Communists dismissed from teaching posi-
tions in the Territory. Mrs. Bouslog has frequently been a featured
speaker at HCLC meetings. When the HCLC, in 1948, sponsored a
speaking tour of the islands by Celeste Strack, openly avowed edu-
cational director of the California Communist Party, Mrs. Bouslog
shared the speaking platform with Miss Strack at her Honolulu
lecture.

Mrs. Bouslog was elected a member-at-large of the executive board
of the National Lawyers Guild at the 1956 and 1957 conventions of the
guild.

MAURICE LOUIS BRAVERMAN, MARYLAND

Maurice Braverman was known to three witnesses who testified
before this committee as a member of the top-level district committee
which governed the Communist Party organization within the Dis-
trict of Columbia and the State of Maryland. Mr. Braverman's
activities within the Communist Party were described by Henry
Thomas, active in the District of Columbia Communist Party from
the late 1930's until 1949, who testified on December 6, 1950; by
Dorothy Funn, a party member in Washington, D. C, from 1943 to
1946, who testified on May 4, 1953 ; and by Mary Stalcup Markward,
a Federal Bureau of Investigation undercover agent within the party
from 1943 to 1950, who testified on July 11, 1951.

Mrs. Markward stated that Mr. Braverman did legal work for the
Communist Party. As an example, she said he handled the legal
action involved in a $1,500 legacy to the Communist Party in Wash-
ington, D. C, in the mid-1940's. The party, which had temporarily
changed its name to the Communist Political Association, had to
prove it was the same organization as that designated by the legacy.

Mr. Braverman appeared as attorney for William Rosen, when the
latter was subpenaed before this committee in August and September
1948 for the purpose of clarifying certain aspects of the Alger Hiss
case. Mr. Rosen on both occasions invoked the fifth amendment in
refusing to give any information to the committee relating to the
Hiss case or to his own current activities in the Communist Party.
Thereafter, the committee called Mr. Braverman as a witness on
September 9, 1948, explaining that it was interested in knowing if
the Communist Party had instructed him to prevent Rosen from testi-
fying frankly. Mr. Braverman, admitting to the committee that he
had provided legal representation for the Communist Party in the
past, refused on grounds of self-incrimination to state whether or not

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 33

he was a member of the Communist Party or whether or not the party
put him in touch with Rosen as a client. A member of the committee
then advised Mr. Braverman that: "The caliber of the answers of
Mr. Rosen, your client, raises grave suspicion in the minds of the com-
mittee that a conspiracy to commit contempt has been established.
This committee and all other committees of Congress will continue
to have all the respect for the efforts of the law and lawyers, attorneys,
but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that an attorney, too, is
a traitor to his country."

In 1951, he was arrested along with other Maryland Communist
Party leaders under provisions of the Smith Act ; during the follow-
ing year he was tried and convicted of violating the Smith Act by
conspiring to advocate forceful overthrow of the United States Gov-
ernment; his sentence was a $1,000 fine and a 3-year prison term,
completed in 1955. Subsequent to his conviction under the Smith Act,
Mr. Braverman was barred from practice in Maryland courts and
Federal courts.

Mr. Braverman's service to Communist-front organizations in-
cluded membership on a special committee of the Baltimore chapter
of the National Lawyers Guild in 1946. After his indictment under
the Smith Act in 1951, Mr. Braverman accepted an invitation of the
guild's student chapter at Yale University to address Yale law
students in the law school auditorium. In a subsequent interview
appearing in the Daily Worker, Mr. Braverman boasted that, as a
result of his speech at Yale University, many law students showed
concern that the Government was prosecuting Communists under the
Smith Act and that some law students were so impressed they offered
to help Mr. Braverman with "legal research" for his defense as a
Smith Act defendant. Mr. Braverman, although indicted on criminal
charges of conspiracy to advocate violent overthrow of our Govern-
ment, had given the students the usual party-line propaganda that
the Government was using the Smith Act "to stop the peace move-
ment and the fight for Negro rights."

Mr. Braverman has also signed his name to a Communist propa-
ganda statement issued by the Baltimore County Committee for
Peace, and has sent greetings to a national gathering of the Com-
munist-controlled American Committee for Protection of Foreign
Born.

JOHN CAUGHLAN, WASHINGTON STATE

John Caughlan was identified as a member of the Communist Party
in Seattle by two former party members, Elizabeth Boggs Cohen and
Barbara Hartle. These witnesses, testifying before this committee on
May 28, 1954, and June 16, 1954, respectively, both stated that Mr.
Caughlan handled the Communist Party's legal work. In addition to
handling law cases involving the party. Mrs. Hartle reported that Mr.
Caughlan's duties as party attorney included advising party func-
tionaries of procedures to be followed in regard to subpenas served
by the Washington State Committee on Un-American Activities dur-
ing that committee's investigation of local Communist activities.

Mr. Caughlan was subpenaed as a witness before this committee on
June 19, 1954, but refused to answer all questions regarding mem-
bership in the Communist Party on grounds of the fifth amendment.
Callea again as a witness on December 14, 1956, Mr. Caughlan denied

34 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

party membership at the time of his appearance but again invoked
the fifth amendment regarding previous party activities.

Mr. Caughlan was described by the Daily People's World, West
Coast Communist newspaper, as Washington State's "foremost
fighter" against the Washington State Committee on Un-American
Activities. It was noted that he had challenged the constitutionality
of the local investigating committee by filing a referendum petition
with the Secretary of State and, when this action was unsuccessful, he
had carried equally vain challenges of the committee as far as the
State supreme court.

The legal talents of Mr. Caughlan have benefited a number of front
organizations of the Communist Party. In the early 1940's, Mr.
Caughlan was retained by the International Labor Defense, then
"legal arm of the Communist Party," to institute legal proceedings
on behalf of certain dismissed WPA workers. Committee files record
him as a member of the executive board of the National Lawyers Guild
during the years 1949, 1950, 1956, and 1957.

He has served as attorney for the Washington Pension Union, a
Communist-controlled organization which helped the party achieve
great political influence in the Pacific Northwest area. He has also
acted as legal representative for unions whose adherence to the Com-
munist Party line resulted in their expulsion from the CIO, namely :
the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Na-
tional Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, International Union of
Fishermen and Allied Workers, and the Food, Tobacco, and Agricul-
tural Workers of America.

Mr. Caughlan has also been active in the affairs of the Washington
Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, usually in the capacity of
speaker at its meetings.

In 1948, Mr. Caughlan was a candidate for the Washington State
Legislature on the Progressive Party ticket. The Progressive Part}'
has been cited as one of the largest and most successful fronts ever
created by the Communists.

Committee files show that Mr. Caughlan has also been a member of
the Civil Rights Congress in Seattle, and a trustee of its bail trust
fund. Testimony of such former high-ranking Communists as Bella
Dodd and Barbara Hartle before the Subversive Activities Control
Board demonstrated that the Communist Party had organized the
Civil Rights Congress to take care of party members implicated with
the law and, from the beginning, had stressed the need for the Civil
Rights Congress to raise bail funds which the party in its own name
could not as successfully amass.

Testimony before the SACB showed that these bail fund drives
accelerated after the indictment of national party leaders under the
Smith Act in 1948, and that hundreds of thousands of dollars were
subsequently paid from the funds for bail for Smith Act defendants
or party leaders and members subject to deportation proceedings. In
Seattle, the Civil Rights Congress bail trust fund was established in
1948 with trustees, including Mr. Caughlan, who were all identified
Communist Party members.

Mr. Caughlan has also served on the executive committee of such
Communist fronts as the Washington Commonwealth Federation and
the Washington State Committee for Freedom for Earl Browder.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 35

FRANK J. DONNER, NEW YORK

Frank Donner was identified by a number of witnesses before this
committee as a member of a Communist cell comprised of lawyers em-
ployed by the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D. C.

Herbert Fuchs, a former Communist who had helped to organize
this cell in 1937 and actively participated in it until his transfer from
Washington in 1942, testified on December 13, 1955, that Frank Don-
ner was one of the NLEB lawyers who joined his conspiratorial Com-
munist group.

On December 14, 1955, Mortimer Riemer, another former member
of the Communist cell in the NLRB, confirmed Fuchs' testimony
regarding Frank Donner. Donner was again identified by ex-Com-
niunist Harry Cooper on March 1, 1956.

Frank Donner, on June 28, 1956, appeared as a witness before this
committee. Although admitting he was employed by the NLRB from
1940 until 1945 in the Litigation Section, he invoked the first and
fifth amendments when he was questioned concerning Communist
Party membership and affiliations. Mr. Donner was confronted with
a United States Civil Service Commission questionnaire he had
signed on June 2, 1943, while employed by the NLRB. On this of-
ficial form, he had replied "no" to a question as to whether or not
he held membership in a Communist organization. Conceding that
the signature was his, Mr. Donner nevertheless invoked the fifth
amendment when asked by the committee if he had been "truthful"
in this statement to the United States Government.

Frank Donner was recently named general counsel for the United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. This Com-
munist-controlled union, which was ousted by the CIO in 1950, is
a recognized bargaining agent in many of our vital defense in-
dustries. The L'E in a recent pamphlet described its new counsel as
being "recognized as one of the foremost authorities on NLRB law."
It failed to mention that Donner was publicly identified as being a
member of a conspiratorial Communist cell while employed as an
attorney at ths NLRB in the 1940's.

Frank Donner was one of the principal speakers at the Ninth
Annual Convention of the National Lawyers Guild held in February
1949. In 1953 he was elected a voting member of the board of di-
rectors at the annual meeting, and chairman of the conference work-
ing group of the national conference of the guild to be held in October
at the Barbizon Plaza. He was again elected to the board of directors
in 1954.

At a dinner sponsored by the American Committee for Protection
of Foreign Born on October 11, 1956, one of the lawyers saluted for
their work aiding this Communist-controlled organization was Frank
Donner.

Donner has on different occasions been engaged as a speaker for the
Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, an organization cited as Com-
munist controlled by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Speaking on such topics as "Informers
as a Means of Suppression," and "Informers as Tools," Donner has
excoriated all individuals who have been of assistance to congressional
committees.

36 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

BENJAMIN DREYFUS. CALIFORNIA

During this committee's hearings in San Francisco, Calif., in June
1957, Jack Patten, a former member of the Communist Party, identi-
fied Benjamin Dreyfus as a member of the Communist Party cell to
which Patten had belonged.

Benjamin Dreyfus was summoned to appear before the committee
on June 21, 1957, and asked to either confirm or deny the testimony
of Patten. Dreyfus refused to answer and invoked the fifth amend-
ment as one of the grounds.

A member of the National Lawyers Guild for many years, Mr.
Dreyfus was elected secretary of the San Francisco chapter in 1941,
treasurer in 1944, executive secretary in 1945, and secretary in 1947,
1949, and 1950. In 1954 he was a delegate from the Bay area to the
19th annual convention of the National Lawyers Guild in Chicago.
He was elected to the executive board at the 1956 convention and again
in 1957.

Dreyfus has been active in another standby of the Communist Party,
the Civil Rights Congress. In 1949 he was toastmaster at a Civil
Rights Congress dinner that was the kickoff in a campaign of protest
against Judge Harold R. Medina's refusal to grant bail to 11 Com-
munist leaders convicted under the Smith Act. He has endorsed the
CRC campaign against anti-Communist legislation and against the
deportation of Communists. Dreyfus has protested the conviction of
Communist leaders by signing statements in their behalf.

In 1957 Dreyfus was an instructor at the California Labor School,
one of the Communist Party schools operated for the purpose of
indoctrinating Communists and outsiders in the theory and practice
of communism and training Communist organizers and operatives.

BERTRAM EDISES, CALIFORNIA

This committee made an investigation of Communist activities in
the San Francisco, Calif., area in 1953. At the hearings held on
December 3, Bertram Edises was identified as a member of the political
affairs committee of the Communist Party by Charles D. Blodgett, a
former Communist and former reporter for the Daily People's World.
He was again identified on June 19, 1957, by Dr. Jack Patten, another
former Communist who recognized the ideological fallacies of the
Communist Party line.

Edises has served as a member of the legal staff of the East Bay Civil
Rights Congress since its inception. As a matter of fact, it was
brought out m sworn testimony that Edises was assigned by the Com-
munist Party to work with the Civil Rights Congress in the East Bay
area. In 1947 he was chairman of the organization, and he has also
held the positions of general counsel and chief counsel of this Com-
munist-front organization. The CRC retained Edises to represent
certain defendants in both State and Federal courts.

The activities of Bertram Edises on behalf of the Communist Party
have not been confined to the Civil Rights Congress. In 1944 he was
elected as an alternate member of the State committee of the Com-
munist Political Association. In 1950 he was a candidate of the Inde-
pendent Progressive Party for district attorney of Alameda County.

Edises was one of the Bay area lawyers who, in a 1949 statement.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 37

protested the action of Judge Medina when the judge sentenced a glx)up
of defense hiwyers for contempt as a result of their conduct in the
Smith Act trial of top Communist Party leaders in New York.

An article by Bertram Edises appeared in the summer 1958 edition
of the National lawyers Guild puolication, the Lawyers Guild Re-
view, in which Edises again attacked the contempt sentences against
the lawyers in the New York Smith Act trial. Entitled "Contempt of
Court and the Lawyer: the L^nequal Combat," the article classified
legal proceedings involving Communist leaders as "political trials" in
which "the courts are used for the State's attempted suppression of
unpopular opinion." Declaring that such trials "have been productive
of Dad law and bad tempers," Edises asserted that, "It is therefore no
accident that among the least defensible decisions in contempt cases
have been those arising directly or indirectly out of the anti-Com-
munist hysteria."

Some of the other Communist-front organizations supported by
Edises are the Washington Committee for Democratic Action, an
organization whose alleged purpose was defending civil liberties in
general but actually intended to protect Communist subversion from
any penalties under the law, and the American League for Peace and
Democracy, an organization which was nothing more nor less than a
bold advocate of treason. The California Labor School had Edises'
services as a teacher. He also supported the Committee for Peaceful
Alternatives to the Atlantic Pact, a Communist front which sought
to paralyze America's will to resist Communist aggression by idealiz-
ing Russia's aims and methods. The Daily People's World, a Com-
munist propaganda organ which, according to the sworn testimony
of one of its former reporters, was used for directing the Communist
movement and giving instruction to the fringe of the Communist
movement, has had the support and praise of Bertram Edises for
many years.

PAULINE EPSTEIN, CALIFORNIA

Pauline Epstein was identified as a member of the Communist
Party by three fellow lawyers who had participated in party activities
with her. The former Communist lawyers, David Aaron, A. Mar-
burg Yerkes, and William G. Israel, te,stified before this committee on
January 23, January 24, and January 25, 1952, respectively.

Miss Epstein was subpenaed as a witness before the committee on
September 30, 1952. She stated she had been engaged in the practice
of law in Los Angeles since December 1933 but refused to answer all
questions relating to Comm.unist Party membership on the grounds of
possible self-incrimination.

When Henry Steinberg, legislative director of the Los Angeles
County Communist Party, was arrested in 1951 under the provisions
of the Smith Act, Miss Epstein appeared as speaker at a meeting to
organize a defense committee for Steinberg and raise funds for his
benefit.

As an attorney retained by the Communist-controlled Los Angeles
Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, Miss Epstein was as-
signed to represent several individuals facing deportation proceedings
in the early 1950's based on membership in the Communist Party.
Miss Epstem presided over a legal panel at the annual conference of
the Los Angeles committee in February 1953.

36911 0—58 6

38 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

In 1951 and 1952, Miss Epstein served as treasurer of the Los
Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. She was elected to
the executive board of the national guild organization at the guild's
1956 and 1957 conventions.

Miss Epstein was one of the signers of a motion asking the United
States Supreme Court for permission to file a brief for a rehearing in
the case of six Baltimore, Md., Communists subject to Smith Act
proceedings.

Committee files show that Pauline Epstein was scheduled as speaker
at an American Russian Institute program on November 6, 1953, to
commemorate the 36th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet
Union. The Civil Rights Congress listed her as one of the financial
contributors to its publication, Civil Rights Congress Tells the Story.

J. ALLAN FRANKEL, CALIFORNIA

J. Allan Frankel, who has practiced law in Los Angeles since 1911,
was named as a member of a special lawyers' group of the Communist
Party in Los Angeles by three former associates in the party, Lawyers
David Aaron, A, Marburg Yerkes, and William G. Israel. The for-
mer Communists testified before this committee on January 23, 24,
and 25, 1952, respectively. Mr. Frankel was also identified as a Com-
munist by Dr. Louise Light Silver, who testified regarding her past
activities in the Communist Party in Los Angeles in a January 21,
1952, appearance before this committee.

Subpenaed as a witness before the committee on October 1, 1952,
Mr. Frankel invoked the fifth amendment rather than answer ques-
tions regarding Communist Party membership.

Mt. Frankel's legal training has been put at the service of such
Communist-controlled organizations as the American Cpnimittee for
Protection of Foreign Born. In 1947 the ACPFB announced that
Mr. Frankel had accepted a designation as its counsel for the Los
Angeles area. As such, Mr. Frankel was required to represent this
Communist front in his community and to serve in any local legal
cases the organization chose to initiate. Mr. Frankel's role with the
organization was not limited to legal w^ork. The committee has in its
files a canceled check in the sum of $100 which was issued to Mr.
Frankel on November 25, 1953, by the Los Angeles Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born. A notation on the check stated the Los
Angeles branch of the ACPFB was repaying Mr. Frankel for a loan
on March 27, 1951.

Mr. Frankel's name and professional status appear on a number of
propaganda petitions issued by the Civil Rights Congress — for ex-
ample, a 1948 petition in behalf of Communists indicted for con-
tempt for failure to answer questions before a IjOS Angeles grand
jury, and a 1951 appeal to the United States Attorney General in
behalf of four jailed trustees of the bail fund of the New York Civil
Rights Congress. In the latter period a CRC booklet. Civil Rights
Congress Tells the Story, carried Mr. Frankel's name as one of the
financial contributors to the publication.

Mr. Frankel served on the legal advisory committee of the Inter-
national Labor Defense in the 1930's. In more recent years he has
been active in the National Lawyers Guild. He was listed as a mem-
ber of the civil rights committee of the Los Angeles chapter of the

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 39

^iiild in 1949. He was one of the advertisers in the anniversary pro-
gram issued by the national o:uild organization for its convention in
February 1957.

Protesting against a local Communist registration ordinance, Mr.
Frankel submitted a brief to an El Monte, Calif., justice of the peace in
1950. His name has also appeared on numerous statements in behalf
of top national Communist Party leaders convicted under the Smith
Act, as well as California and Maryland Communists convicted under
the same legislation.

The West Coast Communist newspaper, the Daily People's World,
in 1952 printed May Day greetings it had received from Lawyer
Frankel.

DAVID M. FREEDMAN, NEW YORK

Mortimer Riemer knew David Freedman as a fellow member of a
special lawyer's group of the Communist Party in New York in
1936.^^ Mr. Freedman was still an active party member in 1949,
according to former party functionary John Lautner.^^

David M. Freedman was called as a witness before the Senate Per-
manent Subcommittee on Investigations on September 18, 1953, and
personally confronted by Mr. Lautner. Mr. Freedman invoked the
fifth amendment rather than affirm or deny Mr. Lautner's identifica-
tion of him as an active Communist.

Mr. Freedman and his partners in the firm of Unger, Freedman &
Fleischer were known as the Communist Party's lawyers, Mr. Lautner
had also testified.

As a witness in Queens Surrogate's Court in May 1950, Mr. Freed-
man identified himself as a "dummy" incorporator and attorney for
the Delcro Realty Corp. Testimony before the court indicated that
the assets of this corporation involved property purchased as resi-
dences for Communist Party officials in New York State.

The Daily Worker publicized Mr. Freedman as being an attorney for
the subversive Civil Rights Congress in 1949. Mr. Freedman had
been active in the 1930's as attorney for the now defunct International
Labor Defense. In that period, he was also frequently advertised as
speaker at the official Communist Party school, the New York Workers
School.

He has long been active in the affairs of the National Lawyers Guild.
In 1937, he served on the guild's connnittee on economic welfare of
the legal profession. In 1954, as a member of a special committee of
the guild's New York City chapter, he presented the results of the
committee study at a guild conference in New York City.

In 1947 and 1948, he sponsored the annual May Day parades organ-
ized by the Communist Party.

CHARLES R. GARRY, CALIFORNIA

Charles R. (xarry, a practicing attorney in the city of San Francisco
since 1938, was identified as a member of the (Communist Party by Dr.
Jack Patten, former party member in that city who testified before
this committee on June 19, 1957.

* Testimony before House Committee on Un-American Activities. December 13, 1955.
"Testimony before House Conimitte on In-American Activities, November 12, 1956; see
also testimony before Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, September 18,

40 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Mr. Garry was siibpenaed as a witness by the committee on June 21,
1957, but refused to ansAver questions regarding activities in the Com-
munist Party on the grounds of possible self-incrimination.

Communist-run organizations and campaigns in the Northern Cali-
fornia area liave been able to rely on Mr. Garry both for legal services
and for leadership roles.

The subversive Civil Rights Congress retained Mr. Garry in 1949
and 1952 to represent a number of defendants involved in legal pro-
ceedings in San Francisco. In 1949, he also served as spokesman for
a delegation — organized by the Civil Rights Congress — which ap-
peared before a local United States attorney to protest contempt sen-
tences meted out to various identified Communists in Los Angeles for
failing to answer Federal grand jury questions. He was featured as
a speaker at local Civil Rights Congress propaganda rallies, such as an
October 1949 mass meeting in San Francisco which raised $5,000 for a
bail fund for Communist Party defendants in legal proceedings, and
an October 1953 mass meeting exploiting the "Wesley Wells case. His
name appeared on the San Francisco Civil Rights Congress petition
to halt deportation proceedings against identified Communist aliens
John Santo, Michael Obermeier, Alex Bittelman and Claudia Jones.

A member of the National Lawyers Guild since he was admitted to
the bar in 1938, Mr. Garry represented the San Francisco chapter of
the guild in submitting a brief against a local Communist registration
ordinance in 1950. In that year, he was listed as a member of the
executive board of the San Francisco chapter. Mr. Garry served as
president of the chapter from 1951 through 1954. As chapter presi-
dent, he signed a National Lawyers Guild friend of the court brief
in 1954 in behalf of Mrs. Edith Brooks, who had been denied admis-
sion to the bar of California after refusing to tell a bar examining
committee whether or not she had ever been a member of the Com-
munist Party.

Mr. Garry was a delegate from the Bay area to the guild's national
convention in 1954. At the 1956 national convention, he appeared as
a panel speaker and was elected by the convention to the guild's na-
tional executive board. He was reelected to the executive board at the
1957 national convention, where he also served as chairman of the
nominating committee.

In 1948, as a candidate of the Independent Progressive Party, Mr.
Garry unsuccessfully sought election to the United States House of
Representatives from California's Fifth Congressional District. He
again attempted to gain a House seat with the same Communist-
controlled political backing in a special election held in 1949.

As a political candidate in 1948, Mr. Garry announced his opposi-
tion to the Mundt-Nixon anti-Communist bill, the provisions of
which became part of the Internal Security Act of 1950. At a series
of public meetnigs during the same year, he was billed as a speaker
against this so-called "police state'' legislation and on one occasion
personally joined a delegation to the San Francisco Board of Super-
visors urging a board resolution to Congress against the bill. In his
1949 campaign for Congress, Mr. Garry's speeches continued to em-
phasize his opposition to official action against the Communist con-
spiracy. Typical was his radio speech in October 1949 in which he
branded the Taft-Hartley Act, loyalty checks, deportations, and the

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 41

Smith Act trial of 11 national Communist Party leaders in New York
as ''part of the curtain of fear being drawn about our liberties.''

In 1951, Charles Garry was publicized as being one of the signers
of a number of statements pi*otesting the United States Supreme
Court's action in upholding the conviction of top Communist Party
leaders under the Smith Act? the statements called for outright repeal
of the anti-Communist legislation. Mr. Garry in 1953 was one of the
signers of a motion asking the United States Supreme Court for per-
mission to file a brief for a rehearing for Baltimore, Md., Communist
Party leaders convicted under the Smith Act.

Other Communist fronts in which Mr. Garry played a leading role
include the California Labor School and the International Workers
Order, which scheduled him as featured speaker. The IWO has been
cited as one of the most effective and closely knit organizations among
Communist- front movements. Mr. Garry has also acted as an official
sponsor and meeting chairman for the San Francisco Committee To
Save the Rosenbergs.

RICHARD GLADSTEIN, CALIFORNIA

Richard Gladstein, who has spent a large part of his time in the
defense of Communist causes, was identified as a member of the Com-
munist Party by Dr. Jack Patten in sworn testimony before this
committee on June 19, 1957.

Mr. Gladstein was admitted to the bar in 1931. With Aubrey
Grossman, another identified Communist, he opened a law firm in
San Francisco in 1936. They were credited in the Daily People's
World with training the staffs for the Los Angeles law firm of Mar-
golis & McTenian, the Honolulu firm of Bouslog & Symonds and the
Oakland firm of Edises and Treuhaft. It is interesting to note that
all of these lawyers except Symonds ^^ have been publicly identified
as members of the Communist Party in sworn testimony before this
committee.

In 1949 Gladstein was one of the panel of attorneys defending the
11 national (^ommunist leaders tried under the Smith Act. His
abusive treatment of the court in this instance led Judge Medina to
cite him for contempt of court and impose upon him a sentence of 6
months in jail. This report has already made reference to the fre-
quent and deliberate efforts on the part of the defense attorneys to
inject Communist propaganda into the record of this trial.

Mr. Gladstein served as official attorney for the Marine Cooks and
Stewards Association of the Pacific, which was expelled from the
CIO in 1950 for adhering to the Communist Party line. While serv-
ing as attorney, he worked vigorously to promote Communist control
not only over the Marine Cooks union but other waterfront unions.
This was documented in an affidavit submitted to the California Com-
mittee on Un-American Activities in December 1946 by William P. M.
Brandhove. Brandhove, who had been in the merchant marine for
15 years, stated he had become increasingly aware of the influence
of Communists in the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union and he
determined to gain membership in the Communist Party in order to

" Mjer C. Symonds appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subconunitte on De-
cember 5. 195-6. and invoked the fifth amendment in response to questions regarding Com-
munist Party membership and activities.

42 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

see what methods the Communists were using. He cultivated the
friendship of one of the leading Communists in the maritime union
field. After a 4-month indoctrination period, Brandhove became a
member of the Communist Party in February 1945 under the sponsor-
ship of Hugh Bryson, president of the union.

As a member of the party Brandhove discovered that Communists
controlled the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union through the installa-
tion of Communists in official union positions and through rigged
union meetings.

Brandhove related that in April 1945, a top Communist fraction
meeting was held at the home of Bryson, with Richard Gladstein,
official union lawyer, acting as chairman. According to Brandhove,
Gladstein announced that there would be a convention of the Marine
Cooks and Stewards Union in July to adopt a new constitution. Glad-
stein allegedly boasted that the Communist Party had managed to get
complete control of the finances and policy of the National Maritime
Union, after the union adopted a Communist-rigged constitution.
Gladstein then stated that the party had difficulty in getting "funds for
furthering its program" from the Marine Cooks treasury under the
existing constitution and that he had instructions from the party to
prepare a new constitution for the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union
for presentation and passage at the July convention. It was agreed at
the fraction meeting that the best method of controlling the Marine
Cooks convention would be to have party members assigned through the
dispatchers' office to different ships, preferably coastwise, and notify
only those ships where comrades were presently assigned that a
convention was to take place.

Just prior to the convention, a meeting was held of all party mem-
bers and fellow travelers. Brandhove reported that Richard Glad-
stein told them that a well organized, harmonious convention could
best be achieved by advance agreement on strategy and committee
arrangements.

Despite the fact that Brandhove, by exposing the Communist plot,
made a desperate attempt to stop passage of Gladstein's constitution
at the convention, he was unable to muster more than seven supporters
who were delegates to the Communist-packed convention.

In 1947 the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born
appointed Gladstein to be its local counsel in San Francisco. His work
for the ACPFB was sufficient to win from the organization public
praise for "contributing unselfishly" of his time.

Gladstein was among those who signed a letter sponsored by the
Civil Rights Congress in 1948 protesting the deportation of Commu-
nists. A member of the National Lawyers Guild, he was elected vice
president of the organization in 1950. When the guild held its 19th
annual convention m November 1954, Gladstein was a delegate to the
convention from the Bay area. He was associate editor of the Lawyers
Guild Review in 1948.

Richard Gladstein has frequently used his legal training and speak-
ing ability to serve Communist-controlled organizations as a public
speaker and law analyst. In 1947 he was asked to analyze the Taft-
Hartley law for the leaders of the United Office and Professional
Workers of America at a conference called to develop a fighting pro-
gram to protect members against what the UOPWA called "this

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 43

vicious" legislation. The UOPWA was expelled from the CIO in
1950 for its adherence to the Communist Party line.

After the Smith Act conviction of the national Communist leaders,
(jladstein made a speaking tour of major West Coast cities, addressing
lawyers and reading to them excerpts from the trial. The National
Guardian, a publication which has manifested itself from the begin-
ning as a virtual official propaganda arm of Soviet Russia, in com-
menting on the tour, reported that people to whom the excerpts were
read were astounded at the lack of justice and fair play on the part
of Judge Medina.

In 1951, the California Labor School scheduled Gladstein as head of
a panel of attorneys who would discuss the recent California Commit-
tee on Un-American Activities hearings and would explain how people
might "protect their rights" against "these un-American activities
committees."

When the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born used
his services as a speaker on one occasion in 1951, Gladstein was adver-
tised as a noted constitutional authority who would analyze "the
Walter-McCarran Act ; Death to American Liberty."

AUBREY W. GROSSMAN, CALIFORNIA

Aubrey Grossman was identified as a Communist in sworn testimony
before this committee on six different occasions. The Communist
Party itself has publicized Mr. Grossman's role as one of its leaders
and functionaries.

Grossman appeared as a witness before this committee on December
1 1, 1956, and refused to answer all questions concerning the Commu-
nist Party, basing his refusal on the protection of the fifth amendment.

With Richard Gladstein, he bpened a law firm in San Francisco
in 1936.

Grossman was defense attorney for Earl King in the King-Ramsay-
Conner murder trial in the late 1930's. Sworn testimony before this
committee showed that although King was an identified Communist,
the principal reason for the Communist Party's interest in the case
was that it gave the party an opportunity to ridicule and discredit the
prosecuting attorney. A publicity campaign was launched which cost
the party over $16,000, raised by assessing members of the various
trade-union movements. Despite this effort, the campaign failed.

By 1945 Lawyer Aubrey Grossman had achieved such stature within
the party that he was given the position of educational director of the
Communist Party for the city and county of San Francisco, and was
appointed alternate delegate to the (^ommunist Party convention in
New York. This was a convention of 93 handpicked delegates who
were obligated in advance to insist on the reconstitution of the Com-
munist Party, previously known as the Communist Political Associa-
tion, and the ouster of Earl Browder in conformity with the Duclos
letter.

The (^ivil Riglits Congress was founded in Detroit, in April 1946,
under the direction of the Communist Party. It was created because
the party's national committee felt there would be a need for a vital
and strong "civil rights" organization to take care of party members
w^ho were likely to be implicated with the law as a result of the party's

44 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

new program, and which would have a large bail fund.^^ In 1948
a number of the Communist Party leaders were arrested and indicted.
After they were released on bail posted by the Civil Rights Congress
bail fund, they met at party headquarters and placed the responsibility
upon the Civil Rights Congress to be the party's defense agency, to
carry on the legal campaign and a mass campaign to mobilize public
opinion in behalf of the indicted leaders.

Aubrey Grossman was appointed West Coast director of the Civil
Rights Congress, and one of his first assignments was to coordinate
the campaign to defend the 12 Communist leaders indicted on Smith
Act violations.

In addition to coordinating the defense campaign for these Com-
munist leaders who were dedicated to the overthrow of our Govern-
ment, Lawyer Grossman was active in the propaganda campaign.
Through the Communist press, he asked trade unions to adopt a reso-
lution supporting the position of the Communist Party leaders in
denouncing the witnesses for the Government, and to make the reso-
lution known to Judge Medina.

The Daily People's World of August 19, 1949, published an article
by Mr. Grossman in which he denounced the Government witnesses.
He charged :

* * * the common denominator of almost all important attacks
on civil rights is the stool pigeon. For example, the Un-Amer-
ican committees. Federal and State; the deportation cases, the
Christoifel and Bridges cases, the stream of witnesses who call
the fight for Negro rights "a Communist plot" ; the new phase of
the Los Angeles grand jury inquisition, and finally, the New York
trial of the Communist Party.
According to Mr. Grossman :

The Government is aiming at outlawing Marxism in this trial.
Everybody knows that Marxism is a body of ideas, principles
and a philosophy which has influenced world thought and world
thinkers for more than 100 years. * * * On what basis would
the LTnited States Government declare illegal this idea which is
now so influential in the world ? * * * On the testimony of stool-
pigeons.
Alter the Communist leaders were convicted and their attorneys
punished for contempt of court, Grossman wrote another article in
the Daily People's World praising the defense lawyers because they
"fought courageously to expose the real issues and the picture began
to emerge : the banker jury, the judge who was later to be rewarded
by the administration * * * and the bought-and-paid-for witnesses
who were used by the Government with full knowledge of their cor-
ruption and their lies." He then attacked Judge Medina's reason for
charging the lawyers with contempt: "This highfalutin language
refers simply to an exposure of the jury system, by which final judg-
ment as to the legality of the Communist Party and the ideas of
socialism was vested in a blue-ribbon jury made up in large part by
nominations from large corporations, from the social register, etc.,
and from which practically all workers were excluded. The jury
system which the Foley Square lawyers carefully laid bare, shows up

2* Subversive Activities Control Board v. Civil Rights Congress, Docket 106-53.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 45

the political frameup of the trial and its class essence." Lawyer
Grossman concluded nis article by saying, "The program of disbar-
ment and intimidation of lawyers has as its aim the denial of legal
representation to political, labor, and Negro victims. * * * The de-
fense against the thought -control Smith and McCarran Acts * * *
will be immeasurably weakened without the assistance of tested and
seasoned la^^'yer- veterans of the civil rights struggle."

These excerpts are just a small sample of the type of technical
deception used by Aubrey Grossman to mobilize puolic opinion in
behalf of the Communists.

Shortly after Grossman's appointment as Pacific Coast director of
the Civil Eights Congress, the Daily People's World published an
article entitled "If the Federal Bureau of Investigation Should
Bother You * * * Civil Eights Expert Tells What To Do." The
"expert" in question was Aubrey Grossman, who advised those ap-
proached by FBI agents to refuse to cooperate or have any discussion
with them. He concluded, "If you oppose witch hunting you should
do nothing to cooperate with it, such a course is in the interest of the
fight against witch hunts and in your own interest as well."

Mr. Grossman's work evidently pleased the party leaders and in
1950 he became the national organizational secretary of the Civil
Eights Congress and assumed the still higher position of organiza-
tional director in 1951.

In testimony before the Subversive Activities Control Board,^^ a
witness told of a secret Communist Party meeting in St. Louis, Mo.,
in 1951 which he attended and at which Aubrey Grossman, national
Civil Eights Congress official and party functionary was present.
According to the witness, Aubrey Grossman stated that he had come
to St. Louis to guarantee the continued operation of the Civil Eights
Congress because the party might not be able to continue operating
as the Communist Party and planned, therefore, to function through
the Civil Eights Congress. Mr. Grossman was also reported as
stating that he and William Patterson were covering key cities to
insure that the party would have a channel through which its opera-
tions could continue if, for security reasons, it could not operate in
its own name.

In 1952 Julius and Ethel Eosenberg who had supplied Eussia Avith
our atomic secrets, were convicted of espionage and Nvere awaiting
execution in Sing Sing prison. Grossman went to the prison with a
Civil Eights Congress delegation demanding clemency for the traitors.

In 1953 Grossman returned from New York to California. A
month after his return he delivered a series of lectures concerning
"McCarthyism" and recent "Supreme Court decisions" at the Com-
munist California Labor School.

He reentered private law practice and became associated with the
Edises and Treuhaft law firm ; both of these law partners have been
identified as (^ommunists.

Aubrey Grossman's efforts in behalf of the Communist conspiracy
and his defense of Communist ideology have been voluminous. He
has supported such other phases of the movement as the Lawyers
Committee To Keep the United States Out of War, an organization

» Ibid.

46 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

set up by the Communist Party after the Stalin-Hitler pact in order
to agitate to keep America out of the "imperialistic war" ; the National
Lawyers Guild; the Northern California Committee for Protection
of Foreign Bom ; and the United May Day Committee.

ABRAHAM J. ISSERMAN. NEW JERSEY

Abraham J. Isserman was identified as a Communist and an attor-
ney for the Communist Party in New Jersey in testimony before this
committee. The identification was made on September 11, 1939, by
Benjamin Gitlow, who had helped to organize the Communist Party
in the United States and had served as its secretary general. In 1929
Gitlow was expelled from the party because he refused to accept
Stalin's order to put William Z. Foster at the head of the American
Communist Party.

During the Smith Act trial of the 11 United States Communist
leaders in 1949, Abraham J. Isserman served as attorney for two of
the party's top men, John Williamson, national trade union secretary,
and Benjamin J. Davis.

Lawyer Isserman 's actions at the trial showed a complete abandon-
ment of all respect for the dignity of the court. His insults and
mockery earned for him a conviction of contempt on 7 counts and
a sentence of 4 months in jail.

After the trial, in a lecture to law students at Yale, this identified
Communist and lawyer ridiculed the Government witnesses, lashing
out at the role played by the "stool pigeons."

Abraham Isserman for many years has been a leading figure in
Commuaist- front organizations.

He was counsel for the, International Labor Defense. He was also
a member of the resolutions committee <)f this organization^ w^hich \yas
created by the Communist Party to act as the party's legal arm, and
to furnish bail and legal representation to party members who became
involved with legal authorities.

He was one of the founders of the International Juridical Asso-
ciation, the Communist-controlled offshoot of the International Labor
Defense.

In June 1940, Mr. Isserman sponsored a "Conference on Constitu-
tional Liberties in America." From this conference there emerged
the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. A. J. Isserman
was appointed a member of the executive committee of this new
Communist front. In September of the same year, as attorney for
the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, he filed suit
against the Commissioners of the District of Columbia because of
police action in dispersing a mob gathered on the steps of the Supreme
Court to protest against the conscription bill.

This gathering had been instigated by the American Peace Mobili-
zation, another Communist-front organization formed in 1940 under
the auspices of the Communist Party and the Young Communist
League. It was designed to mold American public opinion against
participation in the war against Germany. Its existence terminated
within a month after the German invasion of Russia, when it became
American People's Mobilization and adopted a program favoring com-
plete assistance to Britain, Russia, and China.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 47

From its very beginning, the National Federation for Constitu-
tional Liberties vigorously opposed congressional committees investi-
fating communism. In 1941, it published a pamphlet prepared by Mr.
sserman entitled "Investigation Committees and Civil Rights," in
■which the author voiced his opposition to such committees of Congress,
in particular the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He
advised his readers against any cooperation with the committees.

Mr. Isserman was still on the executive committee of the National
Federation for Constitutional Liberties in 1946 when it was merged
into the Civil Rights Congress. He was a member of the organization
committee of this latter Communist front at the time of its formation,
and also diligently served the Civil Rights Congress both as an at-
torney and in its all-important bail-fund drives.

While Lawyer Isserman was busily engaged in the foundation and
development of the legal fronts being established to protect Com-
munist comrades, he was active in Communist propaganda fronts as
well. Mr. Isserman was New Jersey State chairman of the American
League Against War and Fascism, a Communist front established in
an effort to create public sentiment .on behalf of a foreign policy
adapted to the interests of the Soviet Union. The name of this front
was changed in 1937 to the American League for I^eace and De-
mocracy.

Mr. Isserman also held several offices in the latter Communist-front
organization : member of the national committee, a member of the
executive committee of the New York City division, and a member of
the civil rights commission. The ALPD has also had the advantage
of his services as a speaker.

He was a member of the executive committee of the ^Council for
Pan American Democracy, a Communist front which defended Luis
Carlos Prestes, a Brazilian Communist leader and former member of
the executive committee of the Communist International.

This lawyer has delivered speeches at many social functions of the
National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, a Communist-
front organization used to appeal to special occupational groups.
In 1951, the organization held meetings to mobilize resistance against
the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearings, scheduled
on September 17 in Hollywood. In a speech before the ASP, Isser-
man stressed the need for activity in opposition to the Committee on
Un-American Activities and in the movement for reversal of the Su-
preme Court decision upholding the Smith Act convictions of Com-
munist leaders. He called for all-out support of an ASP mass meet-
ing to be staged later in September, at which those questioned by the
Committee on Un-American Activities would "fight back."

Abraham Isserman was disbarred from the practice of law in New
Jersey by the supreme court of that State in 1951. He was also sus-
pended from practice for 2 years in the Federal court in the southern
district of New York. In 1952, the United States Supreme Court
disbarred Isserman from practice before it. This decision was later
reversed after the Court reasoned that Mr. Isserman had been pun-
ished sufficiently for his unprofessional conduct at the 1949 trial of
the Communist leaders.

On January 29, 1958, Abraham Isserman was disbarred from prac-
tice in the Federal court in the southern district of New York. The
disbarment was ordered on the petition of the Association of the Bar

48 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

of the City of Xew York and the Xew York County Lawyers Asso-
ciation because, in applying for admission to the bar, he had concealed
a conviction for moral turpitude. The judge said in his ruling:
"It can truthfully be said that he [Isserman] has perpetrated a fraud
on every court to which we know he was admitted and his career
shows an impudent disdain for all courts and an habitual disregard
of the truth and of his professional duty of candor in his dealings
with them."

LEON JOSEPHSON, NEW JERSEY

Leon Josephson was identified as having been a Communist and
agent of Soviet Eussia as far back as the late 192'0's by Fred E. Beal,
a former Communist, who testified before the committee on October
18, 1939, and again on March 21, 1947. Josephson was again identi-
fied on March 21, 1947, by Liston M. Oak, a former Communist who
had served on the editorial staff of the Daily Worker.

The testimony before this committee disclosed that Leon Joseph-
son, a native of Latvia, now a part of the Soviet Union, was educated
in the United States and became a citizen in 1921. In the same year
he was admitted to the bar in the State of New Jersey. Josephson
began to practice law in Trenton, N. J. in 1926.

An attorney for the International Labor Defense, Josephson was
one of the Communists sent by the party to Charlotte, N. C, in 1929
to try to guide the "defense'' of seven men who were tried and con-
victed by the State of North Carolina for the murder of the chief of
police at Gastonia. The death of the chief occurred during a strike
of the Communist inspired and controlled union called the National
Textile Workers.

Fred Beal, who was one of the seven defendants, informed this
committee that Leon Josephson, although he did not take i^art in the
trial itself, instructed each of the defendants on what they should
say if they took the stand and emphasized that when they were being
sworn they should refuse to say "So help me God." Josephson rea-
soned that it was "time now for the Southern workers to wake up and
become educated," according to Mr. Beal.

The men were convicted and released on bail pending an appeal.
Leon Josephson was then instrumental in securing money and false
passports which enabled all seven defendants to jump bail and flee
from the United States to Russia. Mr. Beal decided to face justice
and returned to the United States. He testified that upon his return,
Josephson tried to persuade him to go back to Russia. When Mr.
Beal refused, he overheard Mr. Josephson say to Communist Party
chairman William Z. Foster : "What we should have done to him was
to have knocked him out over there in Soviet Russia, got rid of him
once and for all, instead of having him over here." Mr. Beal further
testified: "They [the Communist leaders] said it would be very bad
for Soviet Russia if the people in this country found out that I re-
turned to this country and was willing to go to prison."

Liston Oak testified that Josephson's job at the Gastonia trial was
to induce the defense counsel to follow a "class struggle line," and
to utilize the trial for Communist propaganda rather than merely
to get the defendants acquitted. Testimony of Mr. Oak also revealed
that while Josephson was practicing law in Trenton, N. J., he boasted
that he was in a position to get valuable information from clients,
including a railroad, to forward to the Kremlin,

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 49

In 1932 Josephson became an employee of Amtorg, the official
Soviet purchasing agency here. He made frequent trips to Europe —
during 1927, 1930, and 1931 — and in 1935 he again embarked for
Europe accompanied by George Mink, a particularly infamous Com-
munist spy. On this trip he was arrested in Denmark and charged
with espionage. Two of Josephson's companions, Mink and a man
who had an American passport in the name of Nicholas Sherman, were
also arrested. The 3 were brought to trial and Josephson was ac-
quitted, the other 2 convicted. Mink later told Liston Oak that
Josephson was acquitted because he was a lawyer. After he was
released Josephson visited the American consulate and had an inter-
view with Mr. Ivester Maynard, the American consul general. A let-
ter from Mr. Maynard concerning the interview states : "He [Joseph-
son] stated that to him communism is more than a political theory
or belief and is a religion. He stated that he is an atheist and a mem-
ber of the active Communist Party in America and in its inner
circles. * * * He then explained to me his personal views in regard
to the Communist movement, the pertinent part of which was that
he considered the orders of his committee superior to the laws of the
United States and that he would do anything 'short of murder' to
carry out the committee's orders."

In 1937 an article written by Leon Josephson appeared in The
Communist, a publication which was the official theoretical organ of
the Communist Party of the United States. There, Leon Josephson
openly proclaimed his dedication to the Communist conspiracy :

On this occasion of the celebration.of 20 years of Soviet power,
the magnificent constitution of the U. S. S. R. lights up for the
American working masses the road that they, too, under the lead-
ership of the Communist Party, must follow to defeat and end
for all time crises, unemployment, reaction, and war — ^the road
to Soviet America and its Socialist constitution.

Leon Josephson was subpenaed by the Un-American Activities Com-
mittee to appear as a witness at hearings regarding Gerhart Eisler,
chief international Communist representative in the United States.
During the hearings considerable documentary evidence was presented
to the committee which indicated that Leon Josephson wrote a pass-
port application in the name of one Samuel Liptzen, but which bore
the photograph of Gerhart Eisler and was subsequently used by Eisler
in his travels in the service of the international Communist conspiracy.

Josephson appeared before the committee on March 5, 1947, refused
to be sworn, and refused to give testimony.

The following day the Daily Worker issued a statement by Joseph-
son in which he declared: "I am a Communist. * * * I am not
ashamed of what I did ; on the contrary, I am proud of it." On July
17, 1947, Josephson appeared as a witness at Gerhart Eisler's trial
for contempt of Congress and admitted that he helped Eisler get an '
American passport to enable him to travel to Germany. Wlien asked
by the prosecuting attorney if he had sworn falsely on the 1934 pass-
port application for Eisler's use, Josephson said, "I swore falsely and
I would do so again." Josephson himself was subsequently convicted
of contempt of Congress and served a prison sentence as a result.

Upon his release from prison January 16, 1949, the Daily Worker
reported that Josephson said, "I have a greater will to fight than ever

50 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

before." Josephson told John Williamson, John Gates, Henir
Winston, Jack Stachel, and other Communist leaders under Smith
Act indictments, who had come to LaGuardia Airport to greet him,
"I'll be with you in court in the morning to help your fight for
freedom."

One of Josephson's first commitments after his release from prison
was to speak at a rally sponsored by the New Jersey Communist Party.
In April the Worker and People's World published an article by him
entitled "Legal Fact — and Fiction." The caption read : "Is there such
a thing as an impartial jury? An impartial judge? Here is an at-
torney's answer * * *." Josephson in the article attempted to prove
that it was impossible for a judge or jurors to be unbiased, and there-
fore impossible for the 11 Communist leaders to have a fair triaL
Josephson further charged that "Judge Medina's resort to the use of
legal fictions in the trial of the 11 Communists has infected that trial
with the 'principles of rottenness'."

In July 1949 Josephson wrote an article in the Daily Worker titled
"True Justice Is Weeping," in which he discussed the trial of Carl
Marzani, for lying about his Communist affiliations when he applied
for a Government position. Josephson claimed Marzani was being
tried because of Marzani's opposition to "big business."

Lawyer Leon Josephson was scheduled to analyze the McCarran
Act at a conference of the New York State Civil Rights Congress in
October 1950. The conference was held to plan a nationwide cam-
paign to demand the repeal of the McCarran Act, coinciding with the
reconvening of Congress. Josephson, through a letter in the Daily
Worker, made an appeal for volunteers to help "get out the mail" in
the "McCarran law fight."

Josephson gave a series of lectures on Marxism and the Law at the
Jefferson School in 1949 and 1950. In October 1949, he also wrote
an article in the Daily Worker on the subject, "Justice Is Dollar
Made — Marxism-Leninism on Trial,'' in which he said:

The democratic principle, the greatest good for the greatest

number, is the very essence of the ethics of Marxism-Leninism.

This principle can only flourish when — the individual liberty of

the capitalist is denied * * *

The idea that our Government impartially represents all of the

people is pure fiction * * *
Prejudice and bias sit alongside of almost every robed figure

on the bench. Impartiality of the law is pure fiction.
In 1954 Josephson taught a Jefferson School course on "Soviet
Life," in which he "evaluated" current anti-Soviet propaganda in
the light of actual developments in the U. S. S. R. He also gave a
course on Soviet law for laymen in which he interpreted Soviet law
regarding the family, housing, labor, crime, and punishment.

In October 1953 Josephson invoked the fifth amendment as a witness
before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

In the May 1957 issue of Mainstream, a Communist publication,
Leon Josephson wrote an article on "The Individual in Soviet Law,"
in which he set out to show the superiority of Soviet justice with a
series of quotations from the Soviet Criminal Code. He interpreted
the terror of the Stalin era as being necessary because of the threat
"from a foreign power which ringed the Soviet Union with military

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 51

bases and threatened to annihilate her with the atom bomb." After a
comparison of American laws with those of the Soviet he wrote : "In
brier, the average Soviet citizen has all the protection our law affords,
and then some.' Josephson concluded his article with, "Certainly the
Soviet Union has made mistakes, but whatever the mistakes, however
it may lag behind our original hopes or our personal opinions as to
how things should be done, the Russian Socialist Revolution proved to
be the greatest step forward in the evolution of mankind."

A letter to the editor in the September 1957 issue of Mainstream
asked Mr. Josephson about the justice of Soviet law concerning polit-
ical offenses, to which Mr. Josephson replied, "If I attempted to under-
mine or overthrow the Soviet state, I would deserve the merited fate
of all enemies of the people. * * * Political activity against an ex-
ploiter state in the interest of the vast majority of the people is both
democratic and moral ; action against a Socialist state * * * is anti-
democratic and immoral."

Such is the philosophy of Leon Josephson, LL. B., member of the
bar of the State of New Jersey.

HARRY M. JUSTIZ, NEW YORK

Harry M. Justiz was identified as a member of the Communist Party
on February 21, 1950, by Matthew Cvetic, former undercover agent
for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Justiz had appeared as a witness before this committee in 1946. As
a member of the executive board of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee
Committee, he was served with a subpena duces tecum and ordered to
produce certain records of this Communist- front organization engaged
in the defense, transportation, and support of foreign Communist
agents. Lawyer Justiz refused to honor the subpena; therefore, he
was cited for, and convicted of, contempt of Congress, fined $500, and
sentenced to 3 months in jail.

Mr. Justiz has supported many Communist-front organizations
specializing in the defense of Communist cases, including the National
Federation for Constitutional Liberties and the National Emergency
Conference for Democratic Rights, a protective organization built by
the Communists during the days of the Soviet-Nazi pact.

He was also a supporter of the Lawyers Committee To Keep the
United States Out of "War and the Emergency Peace Mobilization
during this same Hitler-Stalin pact period. He was a member of the
International Workers Order; on the executive board of the Joint
Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee and the American Slav Congress of
Greater New York, a Moscow-inspired and directed federation of
Communist-dominated organizations seeking by methods of propa-
ganda and pressure to subvert the 10 million people in this country of
Slavic birth or descent. Justiz was a member of the auditing com-
mittee of the American x4.ssociation for Reconstruction in Yugoslavia,
Inc. This organization was a Communist front whose functions were
designed to victimize Slavic Americans for Communist purposes.
Harry Justiz was also a member of the subversive and Communist-
controlled United Committee of South Slavic Americans, and on the
board of directors of the American Committee for Protection of
Foreign Born. He served as counsel for the New York chapter of the
Yugoslav Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.

52 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

CHARLES J. KATZ, CALIFORNIA

Charles Katz was identified as a member of a Communist lawyers'
group in Los Angeles by former Communists A. Marburg Yerkes on
January 24, 1952; Milton S. Tyre on December 14, 1951 ; and William
G. Israel on January 25, 1952, in testimony before the Committee on
Un-American Activities. Mr. Katz was also identified as a member
of the Communist Party by Martin Berkeley in testimony before this
committee on September 19, 1951.

Charles J. Katz appeared before this committee on October 1, 1952,
and stated that he had been a member of the legal profession for a
quarter of a century in Los Angeles. However, he refused to state
whether he was then, or ever had been, a member of the Communist
Party, invoking the first and fifth amendments.

Mr. Katz was one of 11 Los Angeles lawyers who signed a brief as
friend of the court in asking a judge to throw out charges against
Henry Steinberg, legislative director of the Los Angeles County
Communist Party, after he was arrested in 1950 for failure to comply
with a Los Angeles County ordinance requiring the registration of
Communists.

Mr. Katz was a member, in 1937, of the committee on civil rights
and liberties of the National Lawyers Guild. Mr. Katz was also on
the convention resolutions committee and a participant in the dis-
cussion of "The Eight to Strike and Compulsory Arbitration" at the
fifth annual convention of the National Lawyers Guild in 1941.

Charles Katz was a member of the executive council of the Holly-
wood Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Pro-
fessions, a Communist front. .

Mr. Katz was a scheduled speaker at a concert in 1946 celebrating
the opening of the Los Angeles convention of the Jewish Peoples
Fraternal Order and reception for Albert E. Kahn, national presi-
dent of JPFO. The JPFO has been cited as Commmiist and among
the "national group societies of International Workers Order," Mr.
Katz was a member of the California sponsoring committee, southern
division, of the Harry Bridges Defense Committee. The Bridges
Defense Committee was cited as a Communist front formed to oppose
deportation of Harry Bridges, Communist Party member and leader
of the disastrous San Francisco general strike of 1934 which was
planned by the Communist Party.

SEYMOUR MANDEL, CALIFORNIA

Seymour Mandel was identified as a member of the Communist
Party by former Communist Party members, Milton S. Tyre on De-
cember 14, 1951; David Aaron on January 23, 1952; A. Marburg
Yerkes on January 24, 1952, and William G. Israel on January 25,
1952, when they testified before the Committee on LTn- American Ac-
tivities. David Aaron also testified that at one time Seymour Mandel
was executive secretary of the National Lawyers Guild chapter in
Los Angeles.

Mr. Mandel appeared as a witness before this committee on October
1, 1952, at which time he invoked the fifth amendment when ques-
tioned concerning his Communist Party membership and affiliations.

Seymour Mandel, as an attorney for the Los Angeles Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born, represented several individuals sub-

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 53

ject to deportation proceedings on the grounds that they were aliens
Avlio had become members of the Communist Party after their entry
into the country. An emergency mass meeting was held on May 28,
1953, to protest the Innnigration Service's detention of these and five
other deportees on Terminal Island. Seymour Mandel was the princi-
pal speaker at this meeting, sponsored by the Los Angeles Committee
tor Protection of Foreign Born.

The West Coast Communist newspaper, the Daily People's World,
on July 17, 1950, described Seymour Mandel as a Civil Rights Con-
gress panel lawyer.

BEN MARGOLIS, CALIFORNIA

The following former Communists appeared before this committee
and identified Ben Margolis as a member of the Communist Party:
Edward Dmytryk, April 25, 1951 ; David Aaron, January 23, 1952 ;
A. Marburg Yerkes, January 24, 1952 ; William G. Israel, January 25,
1952: and Paul Marion on 'October 2, 1952. The law firm of Katz,
Gallagher & Margolis served as legal representative of the Communist
Party according to the testimony of Yerkes. Mr. Margolis testified
before this committee in Los Angeles, Calif., on September 30, 1952,
at which time he invoked the fifth amendment when questioned about
his past and present membership in the Communist Party.

Ben Margolis offers an example of the subtle way in which a Com-
munist lawyer can prevail upon fellow members of the bar to become
a part of the Communist conspiracy. Because he was impressed with
Ben Margolis' reputation in connection with a certain legal case, Mr.
Yerkes testified that at the invitation of Margolis he joined the latters
law firm. Yerkes said it wasn't long before Margolis invited Yerkes
to a Marxist discussion meeting attended by lawyers, and that he con-
tinued to attend these meetings of lawyers because Margolis wanted
him to. These so-called study groups inevitably led Yerkes into
actually joining the Communist Party.

Ben Margolis was the keynote speaker at a conference on anti-
Semitism in the United State", held in 1951 and sponsored by the
Communist front, the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order.

Mr. Margolis, as the attorney for Local 26 of the International
Ix)ngshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, was introduced at the
seventh convention of Local 26 held in Los Angeles- in 1956. The
longshoremen's union was expelled from the CIO in 1950 for its
adherence to the Communist Party line.

Ben Margolis was also a sponsor of the Los Angeles chapter of the
Civil Rights Congress in 1947; a participant in a reception spon-
sored by the CRC in November of 1947; and chairman of a
Labor Day meeting in 1950 sponsored by the CRC at which national
Communist official Elizabeth Guiiey Flynn was a speaker. Margolis,
along with Mrs. Oleta O'Connor Yates, Communist Party State com-
mitteewoman, was a scheduled speaker at a meeting sponsored by the
CRC in 1951, and he was chief speaker in defense of arrested Com-
munist leaders at another meeting sponsored by the CRC in 1951. He
was scheduled to speak at a meeting sponsored by the CRC in March
of 1954, on "harboring case victims" and Californians convicted of
violating the Smith Act. He was also scheduled to be a main speaker

54 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

at a reception honoring Shirley Kremen, a defendant in the California
Smith Act harboring case, sponsored by the CRC in July of 1954.

As a member of the National Lawyers Guild, Margolis was the
treasurer of its San Francisco chapter in 1937. He was a reporter on
"Effect of Conscription on Economic Status of Lawyers" at a discus-
sion entitled "The Economic Welfare of the Legal Profession," at the
fifth annual national convention of the NLG in 1941 and he was a
member of the resolutions committee of the 20th anniversary national
convention of the NLG in 1957.

Ben Margolis was a faculty member of the People's Educational
Center in 1944 and 1946.

Mr. Margolis was a member- at- large candidate for the executive
board of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions,
Southern California Chapter, and in 1955, he was a speaker at a
"Cultural 'Salute' " honoring the 61st birthday of John Howard Law-
son sponsored by the same organization.

Ben Margolis was to speak at a testimonial dinner on October 5,
1952, sponsored by the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of For-
eign Born; in 1954, Mr. Margolis was a sponsor of a party honoring
the 50th birthday of Mrs. Rose Chernin, director of the Los Angeles
Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.

Ben Margolis was a speaker at a meeting in 1952 sponsored by the
Trade Union Committee for Repeal of the Smith Act and Other Anti-
labor Legislation. The Trade Union Committee for the Repeal of the
Smith Act was cited as a front "to defend the cases of Communist
lawbreakers."

The Southern California Peace Crusade sponsored a testimonial
dinner honoring Dr. W. E. B. DuBois in Los Angeles in 1953. Mr.
Margolis was to speak kt^this dinner. -This committee has found that
these misnamed "peace" organizations have a common objective : The
dissemination of Communist propaganda aimed at discrediting the
United States and promoting a dangerous relaxation in the ideolog-
ical and military strength of our country.

Mr. Margolis was an endorser of the World Peace Appeal which
was launched 3 months before the outbreak of Communist armed
aggression against South Korea as a smokescreen for such aggression.

Ben Margolis signed a motion asking the United States Supreme
Court for permission to file an amicus curiae brief in support of a
rehearing for the six Baltimore Smith Act defendants; he also
signed the brief.

Mr. Margolis was one of 99 "prominent Americans" listed as "addi-
tional signers" of an appeal asking the Subversive Activities Control
Board to suspend hearings on the Communist nature of the California
Labor School. Delay was asked pending Supreme Court ruling on
the constitutionality of the Internal Security Act.

Mr. Margolis was scheduled to speak in December 1952 at a cam-
paign dinner sponsored by tlie Independent Progressive Party of
Los Angeles.

Ben Margolis sent greetings to the Daily People's World for the
period of 1950 through 1958. He was scheduled to share the plat-
form with Rockwell Kent at a testimonial to be given in Mr. Kent's
honor, September 15, 1957, in San Francisco. Proceeds from the
testimonial went to sustain the People's World.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 55

JOHN T. McTERNAN, CALIFORNIA

David Aaron appeared before this committee in Washington,
D. C, on January 23, 1952. and testified there was a hiwyers' group
of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, called the Engels Club, of
which John McTernan was a member. A. Marburg Yerkes and
William G. Israel also identified Mr. McTernan as a member of the
Communist Party lawyers* group in testimony before this committee
in 1952.

John T. McTernan invoked the fifth amendment regarding Com-
munist Party membership when he testified before this committee
in Los Angeles on April 21, 1956.

John T. McTernan was a member of the executive board- of the Na-
tional Lawyers Guild in 1949, 1950, and was again elected as a Los
Angeles member of the board at the 1956 and 1957 national conven-
tions. Mr. McTernan was among those scheduled to speak at panel
meetings during the National Lawyers Guild's 20th anniversary con-
vention in February 1957. At the same convention, he was also a
reporter for the afternoon session of the panel conference on civil
rights and liberties, and due process of law.

He was among the sponsors of a dinner held in Los Angeles in
1951 at which William L. Patterson, national executive secretary of
the Civil Rights Congress under indictment for contempt, was an
honored guest. The dinner was advertised as "part of a nationwide
drive to raise $60,000 for Civil Rights Congress to continue its defense
of the courageous people victimized by the Smith and McCarran
Acts." Mr. McTernan was scheduled to speak at a Civil Rights
Congress meeting in May 1951. He was also a speaker at a rally
held August 1955, at which action was taken to circulate a friend
of the court brief in behalf of Steve Nelson.

The lawyer was.4it the speakers table of a dinner held in September
1949, to raise funds for defense of 11 national Communist leaders
tried under the Smith Act. John McTernan submitted a brief signed
by various West Coast lawyers in 1949 to the circuit court of appeals
to void the contempt convictions of the lawyers who defended the
"11."

John T. McTernan annually sent greetings to the Daily People's
World from 1951 through 1957.

JOHN W. PORTER, CALIFORNIA

John W. Porter was identified as a member of the Communist Party
in Los Angeles in the 1940's by several witnesses testifying before
the Committee on l"n-American Activities during the committee's
investigation of Communist activities among professional groups in
Los Angeles in 1952. He was further identified in 1955 by Herbert
Fuchs, who testified that John Porter had also been a member of a
Communist cell of lawyers in Washington, D. C, while Mr. Porter was
employed by the National Labor Relations Board in the late thirties.
In 1956 Anita Schneider, former undercover agent for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, testified under oath that she knew Mr. Porter
to be a member of the Communist Party.

Mrs. Schneider, a resident of San Diego, recalled that John Porter
had telephoned her from Los Angeles in the fall of 1951 and asked

56 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

her to interview a Communist Party member in her area, Carmen Ed-
wards, who was facing deportation. Porter directed her to submit a
report to him through regular party channels.

Mr. Porter was a witness before the committee on two occasions.
In 1952 during questioning, he verified the fact that he had been a
lawyer since 1935, when he immediately obtained Government employ-
ment in Washington, D. C, in the Office of the Solicitor of the Depart-
ment of Labor. Later he worked for the National Labor Relations
Board; he left the board in 1938 and obtained employment as a lawyer
in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. He also
worked for the Office of Price Administration and the National War
Labor Board. He has not been in Government service since 1945.

When questioned about his Connnunist affiliations he invoked the
fifth amendment and charged the committee with using the "big lie
of the menace of communism as a smokescreen behind which and by
means of which to terrorize good Americans into closing their mouths
and failing to speak up on the crucial issues of the day."

John W. Porter was a witness before the committee again in 1956.
He once more invoked the fifth amendment concerning his Communist
activities, questioned the duty and the jurisdiction of the committee,
ancl the validity of the resolution under which the committee operates.

John Porter, the records show, headed the legal panel of the Com-
munist-front organization, the Los Angeles Committee for Protection
of Foreign Born. Outside the courts, Mr. Porter has also been ac-
tive for the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.
In 1952, with Rose Chernin, executive secretary of the committee, he
attended the National Conference To Defend the Rights of Foreign
Born Americans. It was sponsored by the American Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born and held in Detroit. The call announcing
the conference stated that the purpose of this conference was to mobi-
lize organizations "for the repeal of the Walter-McCarran law."
After their return to Los Angeles, Mr. Porter was scheduled to address
a meeting of the Los Angeles affiiliate and give a full report of the De-
troit conference.

Other Communist fronts which have had Mr. Porter's support
are the National Lawyers Guild, of which he has been a member since
at least 1940, when he was employed by the Federal Government in
Washington, D. C. The Civil Rights Congress has had his services
as a speaker. The records of this committee show that in 1954, John
W. Porter traveled to San Diego to speak at a Civil Rights Congress
meeting against anti-Communist legislation, primarily the Brownell-
Butler and Walter-McCarran laws.

In 1948 he urged dismissal of Smith Act charges against the top
national Communist leaders, and signed an appeal in their behalf.
In 1950 he was a member of a delegation which visited the Los
Angeles director of immigration and demanded the release on bail of
individuals facing deportation under the McCarran law as a result of
Communist activities. In 1953 he signed a motion asking the L^nited
States Supreme Court for permission to file a brief for a rehearing
for the Baltimore Smith Act defendants; he also signed the brief.
In 1954 he urged President Eisenhower to grant amnesty to the Com-
munist leaders convicted under the Smith Act.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 57

DAVID REIN, WASHINGTON, D. C.

David Rein was identified as a member of the Communist Party by
Herbert Fuchs and Mortimer Riemer, botli former Communists, in
testimony before this committee on December 13, 1955, and December
14, 1955, respectively.

Professor Fuchs testified t'hat Rein was a member of a Communist
cell of lawyers operating within the National Labor Relations Board
where both men were employed as lawyers in the late 30's and
early 40's.

Mortimer Riemer testified that he too knew David Rein in the cell
of lawyei-s at the National Labor Relations Board and further testified
that Rein in 1943 had tried to reenlist him in the Communist Party
after Riemer had decided that communism was not for him.

David Rein appeared as a witness before this committee on February
21, 1956. "When he was questioned by the committee concerning his
Communist Party membership he refused to answer, basing his refusal
on his constitutional privileges, including the fifth amendment.

After finishing law school in 1935, Mr. Rein held a series of jobs
with the New York City Charter Commission, the Puerto Rico Re-
construction Administration, and a Committee To Revise the Con-
stitution of New York State. In 1938 David Rein started to work
for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D. C, as an
attorney. In 1942 he transferred to the legal division of the Office
of Price Administration. In 1945, after service in the Marine Corps,
he returned to work at the National Labor Relations Board. In
1946 he went into private law practice. .

David Rein was retained by the American Committee for Protec-
tion of Foreign Born to defend various aliens facing deportation
because of their Communist activities. In 1956, prior to a Supreme
Court hearing on one of these deportation cases, the ACPFB gave a
testimonial dinner in honor of David Rein and his law partner. Alec
Jones, campaign and educational director of the ACPFB, gave the
testimonial speech in which he praised both attorneys and noted that
"without their knowledge, guidance, and devotion our cause may well
have been set back. * * * There is no way to truly assess the role they
have played in our work. * * * If it were not for [them] * * *, we
would be lost down there [in Washington]."

Rein has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild since 1938.
In 1940 he was a candidate for delegate to the national convention
of the guild. He was elected secretary of the Washington, D. C,
chapter in 1946 and in 1949 was elected to the guild's national execu-
tive board. He was still a member of the board in 1957.

Other Communist fronts in which David Rein has been active are
the Washington Book Shop, the Washington Committee for Demo-
cratic Action, and the American League for Peace and Democracy.
He was a sponsor of the National Nonpartisan Committee to Defend
the Rights of the Twelve Communist Traders.

In opposition to anti-Communist legislation, Mr. Rein has been
quite vocal. He was one of those who signed a statement against the
Mundt anti-Communist bill in 1948. In a speech before the Ameri-
can Committee for Protection of Foreign Born he condemned "the
notorious 'Smith Act' as a repressive measure against foreign
bom * * * which was passed by Congress * * * without any con-
sideration of really what it meant or what it implied."

58 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

ALLAN R. ROSENBERG, MASSACHUSETTS

Herbert Fuchs testified before this committee on December 13, 1955,
that Allan R. Rosenberg had assisted him in the organization of a
Communist cell comprised of employees of the National Labor Rela-
tions Board in 1937. Mr. Rosenberg was employed in the Review
Division of the National Labor Relations Board from 1937 until
1941 as a lawyer and as an assistant to the Secretary.

Allan R. Rosenberg was identified as a Communist before this com-
mittee on July 31, 1948, by Elizabeth T. Bentley. In her testimony
Miss Bentley, who served as courier between Soviet agents and Com-
munist employees of the Federal Government in the early 1940's,
accused Allan Rosenberg of having been a member of the so-called
"Perlo group" during the years 1941-45 while employed in the Gen-
eral Counsel's office of the Foreign Economic Admmistration, for-
merly the Board of Economic Warfare. The Victor Perlo group,
according to Miss Bentley, was a Communist underground group
operating in the Federal Government from the early thirties which
had been collecting information for the benefit of the Soviet Union
for some years.

Allan R. Rosenberg testified before this committee on June 23,
1952, and again on February 21, 1956. Although admitting he had
been employed by the National Labor Relations Board and the For-
eign Economic Administration, Allan Rosenberg invoked the fifth
amendment when he was questioned concerning Communist Party
membership. Mr. Rosenberg resigned his Government post in 1945
to enter private law" practice.

According to his testimony before this committee, Allan Rosenberg
joined the National Lawyers Guild in 1936. Mr. Rosenberg testified
that he was the treasurer of the District of Columbia chapter of the
National Lawyers Guild during the late thirties or the early forties.
Allan Rosenberg was elected a member-at-large of the executive board
of the National Lawyers Guild by the 1956 and 1957 guild conven-
tions.

ROSE S. ROSENBERG, CALIFORNIA

Rose S. Rosenberg was identified as a member of the Communist
Party by former Communist Party members, Milton S. Tyre on
December 14, 1951, and A. Marburg Yerkes on January 24, 1952,
when they testified before this committee on those dates. Both Mr.
Tyre and Mr. Yerkes testified that they had known Mrs. Rosenberg
as a member of a Communist lawyers' group in Los Angeles.

Rose S. Rosenberg testified before this committee on October 1,
1952, at which time she invoked the fifth amendment in refusing to
answer questions concerning her Communist Party memberehip.

Mrs. Rosenberg was retained by the I^s Angeles Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born as defense attorney for more than half
a dozen aliens subject to deportation proceedings between 1950 and
1954 under the Walter-McCarran Act as a result of Communist Party
activities.

In December 1955, Abner Green, executive secretary of the Ameri-
can Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, sought Mrs. Rosen-
berg's assistance in securing for him material which could be used in
connection with the appearance of a witness before the Subvei-sive

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 59

Activities Control Board in behalf of the American Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born. The witness in question was active in
the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.

Protesting a local Communist registration ordinance, Rose S. Rosen-
berg submitted a brief to a justice of the peace in El Monte, Calif.,
during October 1950.

During September 1951, Rose S. Rosenberg joined in signing an
appeal which appeared in the Los Angeles Times urging that reason-
able bail be' granted 15 California Smith Act defendants.

During February 1953, Rose S. Rosenberg was one of the signers
of the motion asking the United States Supreme Court for permis-
sion to file an amicus curiae brief in support of a rehearing for the
Baltimore Smith Act defendants.

Rose S. Rosenberg during January 1951 sponsored the National
Women's Appeal for the Rights of Foreign-Born Americans, an affili-
ate of the Communist-contixjlled American Committee for Protection
of Foreign Born. The National Women's Appeal had been organized
to defend 28 women who had been arrested in deportation pro-
ceedings.

Mrs. Rosenberg was 1 of 55 women who signed an open letter to Pres-
ident Truman requesting him to call a halt to McCarran Law deporta-
tion proceedings. A delegation of women presented the letter to the
President's secretary in May 1951. The women came to Washington
under the auspices of the National Women's Appeal for the Rights
of Foreign-Born Americans.

Rose S. Rosenberg spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Communist
front, the Ethel Linn Defense Committee for the Repeal of theMcCar-
ran-Walter Act, during November 1953. This meeting was to protest
the deportation of identified Communist Ethel Linn and to hear a
discussion of the McCarran-Walter Act under which she was arrested.

Mrs. Rosenberg addressed a meeting during March 1954 which
was sponsored by the I^s Angeles Rosenberg-Sobell Committee on the
legal implications of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg atomic espio-
nage case.

Rose S. Rosenberg was honored at a Mother's Day testimonial for
peace during May 1954, sponsored by the Southern California Peace
Crusade.

During the years 1951 and 1952, Mrs. Rosenberg sent Labor Day
and May Day greetings to the Daily People's World.

SAMUEL ROSENWEIN, CALIFORNIA

Samuel Rosenwein was identified as a member of the Communist
Party before this committee on January 24, 1952, by A. Marburg
Yerkes, a former member of the Communist Party. Mr. Yerkes
stated in his testimony that he knew Mr. Rosenwein as a member of a
Communist lawyers' group in Los Angeles.

Mr. Rosenwein was publicized as being chief counsel for the sub-
versive Civil Rights Congress during 1947 and 1948. As chief coun-
sel for this front organization, he prepared a lengthy legal analysis,
attacking the proposed Mundt anti-Communist bill, which was cir-
culated by the Civil Rights Congress to Members of Congress in May
1948. A Civil Rights Congress open letter accompanying Mr. Rosen-

60 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Weill's analysis urged Congressmen "to not only vote against, but to
speak against" the bill.

Mr. Rosenwein was one of the attorneys retained by the Civil
Rigiits Congress to defend an identified Communist convicted of con-
tempt of Congi-ess in 1947.

During May 1948, Mr. Rosenwein spoke at a rally for "peace"
which was sponsored by the National Council of American-Soviet
Friendship, a Communist front.

During 1949, Samuel Rosenwein was chairman of the civil liberties
committee of the National Lawyers Guild.

Mr. Rosenwein w^as the author of an article which appeared in the
spring, 1949 issue of the Lawyers Guild Review.

RICHARD L. RYKOFF, CALIFORNIA

Richard Rykoff, who has been engaged in private law practice in
Los Angeles for more than 10 years, joined a special lawyers' group
of the Communist Party in Los Angeles in 1948, according to a former
member of the party group, David Aaron, who testified before this
committee on January 23, 1952.

Anita Schneider, who entered tlie Communist Party in southern
California as an undercover agent in 1951, also had extensive contacts
with Lawyer Rykoff within the party, according to her testimony on
July 5 and 6, 1955.

The lawyer invoked the fifth amendment, however, rather than
answer questions regarding Communist Party membership when he
was subpenaed as a witness before the committee on October 1, 1952.

Mrs. Schneider, who was active in the party and its front organiza-
tions in the San Diego area, testified that the party had instructed its
Civil Rights Congress in the early 1950"s to develop a campaign in
defense of Emory Collier, a San Diego man involved with the law.
Mrs. Schneider said the Communist Party did not concern itself with
the innocence or guilt of the man, because the case was undertaken
only to propagandize for the party. She said that she and other
Communists in San Diego met with Los Angeles Lawyer Rykoff and
received instructions irom him on what steps to take in order to con-
ceal the real Communist purpose of the Collier campaign.

Party member Schneider was once considered as a possible delegate
to an international Communist "peace" conference in Stockholm from
which it was planned she would also make a trip to the Soviet Union.
In discussing with Mr. Rykoff the problem of applying for a passport
in the light of State Department restrictions on travel behind the Iron
Curtain, Mrs. Schneider testified that the lawyer advised her to conceal
her real destination from the State Department in filling out a pass-
port application even though she would be required to swear to the
truthfulness of the information.

Mrs. Schneider again contacted Mr. Rykoff' in 1953 for suggestions
for films to be shown by a Communist-operated film club in San Diego.
Her testimony and correspondence produced for the record disclosed
that the lawyer recommended the film "Salt of the Earth," then being
produced under the sponsorship of the Connnunist-dominated Mine,
Mill, and Smelter Workers Union and under the direction of identified
Communist Herbert Biberman. At Mr. Rykoff's suggestion, Biber-
man subsequently approached Mrs. Schneider with a proposal that she

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 61

lielp raise $20,000 in loans in Sun Diego for the purpose of completing
pi'odiK'tion of the Hlni.

The Tx)s Angeles Committee for Protection of P'oreign Born retained
Mr. Kykotf in 1955 for the purpose of defending an alien subject to
deportation proceedings on the basis of membership in the Communist
Party.

Richard Rykotf was one of the signers of a motion in 1958 asking the
United States Supreme (\)urt for permission to file a brief for a rehear-
ing for Baltimore, Md., Conuuunist leaders convicted under the Smith
Act.

The Civil Rights Congress listed Mr. Rykotf as one of the financial

contributors to its published booklet, "Civil Rights Congress Tells

the Storv."

HARRY SACHER, NEW YORK

Harry Sacher was first identified as a member of the Communist
Party by Thomas H. O'Shea, former Communist who was the first
president of the Transport Workers Union. O'Shea testified on April
23, 1940, before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities
that in the 1930's he was in frequent contact with Harry Sacher, vrho
was an attorney for the Transport "Workers Union.

Mortimer Riemer, in testimony before this committee on December
14, 1955, also identified Harry Sacher as a member of the Commu-
nist Party.

In 1953 in hearings before the Subversive Activities Control Board.
Louis Budenz testified that he knew Sacher to be a member of the
Communist Party in the 1940''s.

Harry Sacher appeared before the Senate Internal Security Sub-
committee on April 19, 1955, at which time he refused to answer ques-
tions concerning present or past membership in the Communist Party,
invoking the first amendment. He was subsequently convicted in the
courts for contempt of Congress as a result of his appearance before
the Senate subcommittee. The United States Supreme Court in

1957 reversed the conviction and referred the case back to a lower
court for reconsideration in the light of the Watkins decision. In

1958 the United States court of appeals in Washington, in reconsider-
ing the case, upheld the contempt of Congress conviction against him.

The records of the committee show that Mr. Sacher was not only
attorney for the Transport Workers Union in the 1930's but held the
post of general coimsel to the international union throughout most of
the 1940's. The Special Committee on Un-American Activities found
in 1944 that the Transport Workers Union was among those unions
having Communist leadei-ship "strongly entrenched."' In a 1951
report, the connnittee noted that the Transport Workers Union was
among unions which since "tried to clean out the Communists from
their unions.''

The executive board of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union
of America, CIO, voted in September 1948 to dismiss Harry Sacher,
its counsel for 14 years. Tlie international president of the union,
Michael J. Quill, who later that year succeeded in getting Mr. Sacher
ousted from his position as general counsel for the international
union, declared that the "purge*' of leftwing elements would offer
the Transport Workers Union its first opportunity "to operate as a
natural trade union." He also contended it was "plain" that Mr.

62 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Sacher was working with the Communistic bloc and that there was
little use in "trying to appease him.''

Mr. Sacher was defense counsel for John Gates, editor of the Daily
Worker, when Mr. Gates was tried with 10 other national Communist
Party leaders under the Smith Act in 1949 for advocating overthrow
of the Government by force and violence. In the course of this trial,
Sacher's insults and mockery of the court earned for him a conviction
of contempt of court for which he served a jail sentence. Because of
his conduct in the courtroom during this trial, two bar associations
brought motions to have Harry Sacher disbarred. The case went
before Federal Judge Harold G. Hincks of New Haven, Conn.
, One of the items in Sacher's conduct considered by Judge Hincks
was Sacher's assertion that United States Attorney Francis McGohey,
if he had been a prosecutor in the early Christian era "would have
Jesus in the dock."

In his decision disbarring Sacher, Judge Hincks ruled, "The asser-
tion * * * was so improper as to be atrocious. The incident * * *
is crowning proof of the fact that Mr. Sacher is skilled * * * in the
art of inflammation * * * he cannot safely be left as a member of
this bar."

Harry Sacher was disbarred for life from the practice of law in
1951. In 1954, the decision was reversed by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Sacher's talents were utilized by the Communist Party in many
of its fronts.

Mr. Sacher lectured at the Communist Workers School in New
York during March and April 1938.

Mr. Sacher was a member of the Lawyers (^ommittee on American
Relations with Spain and was a speaker, in March 1938, at its first
public meeting. The SpBoial Committee on ITn- American Activities
in 1944 said of this lawyers committee: "When it was the^ policy
of the Communist Party to organize much of its main propaganda
around the civil war in Spain," the above "Communist lawyers' front
organization" supported this movement.

Harry Sacher was one of 63 lawyers, members of the Lawj'ers' Com-
mittee To Keep the United States Out of War, who drew up a resolu-
tion against conscription sent by telegram to the House Military
Affairs Committee during September 1940.

Mr. Sacher was a member of the executive committee, New York
City division of the American league for Peace and Democracy in
the period 1939-40.

Mr. Sacher, in 1941, was one of the signers of a statement urging
the President and Congress to defend the rights of the Communist
Party.

Mr. Sacher was a guest lecturer in 1942 at the School for Democ-
racy, which later merged with the Workers School into the Jefferson
School of Social Science.

Mr. Sacher has held the following National Lawyers Guild offices :
member of committee on constitution and judicial review, 1937; mem-
ber, committee on labor law and social legislation, 1937 ; director ex of-
ficio, 1940 ; member, convention resolutions committee, fifth annual con-
vention, 1941, at which he also participated in a discussion entitled
"The Right to Strike and Compulsory Arbitration"; member of the
national executive board in 1949, 1950, 1956, and 1957. He was elected

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 63

voting ineniber of the board of directors for 1953-54 tit the aniuuil
meet in*; of tlie ouild's New York City chai)ter and again elected to the
board of directors for the New York City chapter for 1955, 1957,
and 1958.

Harry Sacher was one of the scheduled speakers on the subject of
"Labor and the Taft-Hartley Law" at a conference sponsored by the
Jeti'erson School of Social Science in 1947. Mr. Sacher, in 1948, was
again a speaker for the school when it sponsored a forum on "Civil
Rights in America." During the years 1944 through 1950, Mr. Sacher
was a member of the board of trustees of the Jett'erson School.

Mr. Sacher was a sponsor of a National Civil Rights Legislative
Conference of the Civil Rights Congress in 1949. He was also a speaker
for this organization on various other occasions. Harry Sacher and
Abraham Isserman, who faced prison for contempt of court as a result
of their conduct in the defense of the jailed Communist leaders, were
among the "distinguished guests" introduced at the sixth anniversary
dinner of the Civil Rights Congress in 1952.

The National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions honored
Harry Sacher at a reception in 1951. Mr. Sacher was scheduled to
speak at a mass meeting on civil liberties held in 1952 and sponsored
by the ASP. He was also scheduled to speak at a meeting sponsored
by the New York Council of the ASP in 1952.

Harry Sacher was a scheduled speaker at a rally to repeal the Smith
Act in 1951. In 1952, the Painters Committee To Defend Ix)uis Wein-
stock and To Repeal the Smith Act scheduled Mr. Sacher to speak at
one of its meetings. Harry Sacher spoke at a rally sponsored by
the American Labor Party in May 1954 arranged to urge Congress to
"stop McCarthyism."'

HYMAN SCHLESINGER, PENNSYLVANIA

Matthew Cv^etic, appearing before this committee on February 22,
1950, testified that Hyman Schlesinger was a lawyer in Pittsburgh
who was also a member of the Communist Party. Mr. Cvetic said that
while he was having dinner with Hyman Schlesinger and others on
one occasion in 1949, Mr. Schlesinger made the statement : ""\Miile we
have a strong Communist Party in New York City, I don't see how
we can wage a successful revolution unless we build the party in Pitts-
burgh. It stands to reason that we must get control of the basic indus-
tries and the industrial workers before we can even think of a revo-
lution."

Mr. Cvetic testified before the Subversive Activities Control Board
when the SACB held hearings in 1954 and 1955 on the Attorney Gen-
eral's petition that the (^ivil Rights Congress register as a Communist-
front organization. Mr. Cvetic then related how a Communist Party
organizer for the State of Pennsylvania directed Cvetic to contact
Hyman Schlesinger, a member of the party's legal commission in
Pittsburgh, to set up a Civil Rights Congress chapter in Pittsburgh.
Mr. Schlesinger then held an organizational meeting to set up the CRC
chapter but warned that "Trotskyites" and disruptionists should be
kept out of CRC, according to Cvetic.

Mr. Schlesinger appeared before this committee as a witness on
November 28, 1956, in Youngstown, Ohio, at which time he refused to

64 COMMXJNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

answer questions pertaining to Communist Party membership, under
the protection of the fifth amendment.

Hyman Schlesinger was a member of the executive board of the
National Lawyers Guild in 1949 and 1950. He was elected a member-
at-large of the National Lawyers Guild executive board at both the
1956 and 1957 conventions.

ESTHER SHANDLER, CALIFORNIA

Esther Shandler was identified as a member of a group of Com-
munist lawyers in the Los Angeles area in hearings held by the
Committee on Un-American Activities in January 1952. Former Com-
munist lawyers so identifying Miss Shandler were: David Aaron,
Marburg Yerkes, Milton Tyre, and William Israel.

Esther Shandler ap])eared as a witness at these same hearings and
again at hearings held in 1956. On both occasions she invoked the
fifth amendment when questioned concerning her Communist ac-
tivities.

Miss Shandler was admitted to the bar of the State of California
in December 1945 and started to practice law in April 1946.

Miss Shandler was listed as early as 1951 and as late as 1956 as a
member of a panel of attorneys retained by the Communist-controlled
Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born to represent
various defendants in legal proceedings.

Esther Shandler's services to the Los Angeles Committee for Pro-
tection of Foreign Born have not been limited to her appearances in
court in behalf of those being defended by the committee. In 1951
she was a panel reporter at a regional conference of the Los Angeles
Committee for Protection of Foreign Born which called for the repeal
of anti-Communist legislation, ''the Smith and McCarran Acts,"

In 1958 she was 1 of the 3 delegates sent by the Los Angeles com-
mittee to the National Conference To Repeal the Walter-McCarran
Law and Defend Its Victims. At the conference, held in Chicago
under the auspices of the American Committee for Protection of
Foreign Born, ACPFB chairman Abner Green noted in his report
that it would not have been possible for the ACPFB to carry on its
work "without the outstanding contributions that have been made and
continue to be made by our attorneys in every area of the country."

At the fifth annual conference of the Los Angeles committee
which was held in 1955 and which called for the outright repeal of
the Walter-McCarran law, Esther Shandler and John Porter headed
the legal panel discussion on technical questions regarding deporta-
tion and denaturalization aspects of the Walter-McCarran law.

The Los Angeles committee's sixth annual conference was held in
1956, at which time Miss Shandler reported on the status of cases
defended by the legal panel. She said tliere were 20 facing imminent
deportation, nearly 50 facing supervisory parole, and 8 denaturaliza-
tion proceedings. She also reported that every effort would be made
to keep all deportees here and to retain the citizenship of those whose
naturalization was under attack. At this conference. Miss Shandler
also chaired a session on the subject of deportation of Mexican
nationals and Mexican-Americans.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 65

ROBERT J. SILBERSTEIN, NEW YORK

Robert J. Silbei*stein was identified as a member of the Communist
Party in sworn testimony before the Committee on Un-American
Activities by three hiwyers who were former Communists. On Decem-
ber 14, 1955, Mortimer Riejner testified that he knew Silberstein as a
Connnunist and that he attended meetings of a Communist lawyers-
group in Silberstein's home in Xew York in the Late lOoO's. David
Aaron testified in 1952 that he met Silberstein in Ivos Angeles in the
194()'s at a secret Comnninist meeting in the home of John McTernan,
at which time Silberstein spoke on the function of a IjOS Angeles
Connnunist lawyers* group — what it was supposed to do and its rela-
tionship with the National Lawyers Guild.

At these same hearings Marburg Yerkes testified that he, too, met
Silberstein at the meeting about which Mr. Aaron testified.

Mr. Silberstein appeared as a witness before this committee on
April 9, 1952. He invoked the fifth amendment when questioned
about his connections with the Communist Party.

Robert Silberstein has been connected with the National Lawyers
(xuild since its earliest days. In 1940 he was executive secretary of
the New York branch of the National Lawyers Guild. In 1941 he
was elected to the national executive board. In 1947 he left private
law practice to become the national executive secretary of the guild
and carry out the policies adopted by the national convention and
by the national board, which is the governing body of the guild
between conventions. In 1949 he was sent by the guild as one of its
representatives to the convention of the- Moscow-controlled Interna-
tional Association of Democratic Lawyers in Rome, Italy. At the
conference he voted for the expulsion of the Yugoslav delegates, in
accord with the current line of the Kremlin, then disputing with
Marshal Tito. When questioned by this committee as to why he
voted for expulsion of the Yugoslav delegates, he said that he had
voted that way because the delegation did not answer certain charges
which were made against it, "not based on wrongdoing on its part but
based on its qualifications to continue as a member, and as they didn't
answer the question, and I simply felt the question ought to be
answered."'

Representative AValter of the committee asked, "How do you recon-
cile the position you are taking today with respect to refusing to
answer questions with the position you took in Rome when you voted
to exclude from a conference the Yugoslav delegates only because they
refused to answer questions?" Mr. Silberstein claimed he could not
see the parallel between the situations.

Lawyer Silberstein has been extremely active in opposition to anti-
Communist legislation and investigations of the Communist conspir-
acy. In 194<, speaking as executive secretary of the National
Lawyers Guild, Mr. Silberstein blasted the Federal Bureau of Inves-
tigation, accusing it of "outrageous action'' in setting itself up as "a
high priest of political orthodoxy."' He protested the issuance of
subversive lists, saying they tend to "intimidate" citizens in the exer-
cise of constitutional rights. In 1950, Silberstein was one of a com-
mittee of the guild which prepared a report to the President
recommending that the President constitute a committee of private
citizens to make a thorough investigation of tlie FBI.

66 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

In 1954, acting in his official capacity of executive secretary of the
National Lawyers Guildj Silberstein announced that he had sent a
letter to the House Judiciary Committee denouncing as legislative
verdicts of guilty, proposed IdHIs designed to outlaw the Communist
Party.

He was secretary of the National Committee To Defeat the Mundt
Bill. When this Communist-controlled lobby was working to defeat "
the anti-Communist bill, Mr. Silberstein, then executive secretary of
the National Lawyers Guild, placed at the disposal of Jerry O'Connell,
chairman of the lobbying committee, the entire facilities of the
Washington offices of the guild.

While testifying before this committee, Mr. Silberstein called the
Mundt-Nixon bill the "most reactionary and repressive measure ever
passed in the history of our country." In the course of his testimony
he also verified that he had, as executive secretary of the National
Lawyers Guild, protested to the Attorney General that the Smith
Act was "incompatible with the Bill of Rights."

LAURENCE R. SPERBER, CALIFORNIA

Laurence R. Sperber attended meetings of a special lawyers' group
of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, according to former Commu-
nist lawyer A. Marburg Yerkes, who testified before this committee
on January 24, 1952. Mr. Sperber invoked the fifth amendment, how-
ever, when summoned before the committee as a witness on October 1,
1952, and asked about his membership in the Community Party.

Mr. Sperber served for many years as secretary of the Los Angeles
chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Publicity issued in connec-
tion with various guild activities listed him as executive secretary of
the local chapter in 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954, and 1956.

He was a delegate to the guild's national conventions held in New
York in February 1953 and in Chicago in November 1954. At the
guild's 1956 national convention in Detroit, he acted as chairman of a
"build the guild" session. For the guild's 1957 convention in New
York, he served as chairman of a "revision of the constitution com-
mittee," member of the "convention program and arrangements com-
mittee" and member of the "nominating committee.'' He was elected
to the guild's national executive board at both the 1956 and 1957
conventions.

In his capacity as executive secretary of the Los Angeles guild
Mr. Sperber announced in 1950 both his and the guild's opposition to
local ordinances requiring registration of Communists.

In the same year, Laurence Sperber received publicity as a meml3er
of the local lawyers' guild who was questioned by police for soliciting
signatures to the Stockholm Peace Petition on a Beverly Hills street
corner. The international Communist movement had launched a
worldwide drive for signatures to the petition in 1950 as an obvious
smokescreen for subsequent armed Communist aggression against
South Korea.

In 1951, Law^yer Sperber signed his name to a number of paid ad-
vertisements in local newspapers urging repeal of such security legisla-
tion as the Smith, Taft-Hartley, and McCarran Acts ; calling for the
abolition of committees investigating Communist subversion; and
appealing for "reasonable bail" for California Communist Party

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 67

leaders subject to proceed! njis under the Smith Act. He was one of
tlie si^iers of a motion which asked the ITnited States Supreme Court
in 1953 for permission to file a brief for a rehearing for Maryland
Communist Party leadei-s convicted under the Smith Act.

Mr. Sperber was a signer of an amicus curiae brief which in 1952
urged dismissal of liquidation proceedings against the International
Workers Order, one of the Communist Party's strongest front organi-
zations. He was listed by the Communist-controlled Civil Rights
Congress aS one of the financial contributoi*s to its publication, "The
Civil Rights Congress Tells the Story."

FRED H. STEINMETZ, CALIFORNIA

Fred H. Steinmetz was one of the leaders of a secret Communist
Party group in IjOS Angeles composed exclusively of lawyers,
according to a former member of the group, A. Marburg Yerkes, who
testified before this committee on January 24, 1952. Mr. Steinmetz'
membership in this party organization was also confirmed in testimony
before the committee by other former Communist lawyers: David
Aaron and Albert Herzig, testifying on January 23, 1952; William
G. Israel, appearing on January 25, 1952 ; and Milton S. Tyre, who
testified December 14, 1951.

When confronted with this evidence as a witness before the commit-
tee on September 30, 1952, Fred H. Steinmetz invoked the fifth amend-
ment rather than affirm or deny past or present membership in the
Communist Party.

A lawyer practicing in the city of I^s Angeles since 1940, Mr.
Steinmetz has been a supporter of the local chapter of the subversive
Civil Rights Congress. His name apiDeared on a paid newspaper ad-
vertisement initiated in 1948 by the Civil Rig:hts Congress to protest
contempt charges against Communist functionaries who refused to
answer questions before a Federal grand jury sitting in Los Angeles.
He also signed a statement in that period which called for dismissal
of the grand jury itself and wide public attendance at a Civil Rights
Congress meeting to protest the proceedings.

In 1950, he served as sponsor of a conference and convention called
by the Civil Rights Congress in Los Angeles to devise a program to
halt legal proceedings against Communist conspirators. In the same
year his name appeared as signer on a propaganda statement against
denaturalization proceedings issued by the Communist-controlled
American Committee for Protection of Foi'eign Born.

A paid advertisement carried in a Los Angeles newspaper in 1951
advocated repeal of such security legislation as the Smith, Taft-
Hartley, and McCarran Acts and the abolition of committees investi-
gating Communist subversion. Fred Steinmetz' name appeared as
signer of this appeal. Meanwhile, in 1951, Mr. Steinmetz was adver-
tised in the Daily People's World as sending both May Day and Labor
Day greetings to this West Coast Communist newspaper.

Mr. Steinmetz was one of the signers of a motion in 1953 asking the
United States Supreme Court for permission to file an amicus curiae
brief in support of a rehearing for Maryland Communist Party
leaders convicted under the Smith Act.

68 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

JACK TENNER, CALIFORNIA

Jack Tenner was identified as a member of the Communist Party
in sworn testimony before this committee by three lawyers, David
Aaron, Marbur^ Yerkes, and Milton Tyre, who were former members
of the Communist Party. The hearings were conducted in 1952 dur-
ing the committee's investigation of communism in I^s Angeles pro-
fessional groups. Mr. Tenner was identified as a member of a group
of Communist lawyers in Los Angeles.

Mr. Tenner appeared as a witness on October 1, 1952, and refused
to answer questions pertaining to Communist Party membership, using
the fifth amendment as a basis for his refusal.

Jack Tenner was born in Russia and received his naturalization
through derivative citizenship. He has been practicing law since
1948. While he was being questioned by this committee about the
Communist conspiracy, he accused the committee of buying informers
and made similar scurrilous charges.

In 1948, Mr. Tenner was one of tlie lawyers who signed a statement
issued by the Civil Rights Congress, urging dismissal of contempt
charges against Communist functionaries who refused to answer ques-
tions before a Federal grand jury sitting in Los Angeles. He also
called for dismissal of the grand jury itself.

A member of the legal panel of the Ja)s Angeles Committee for
Protection of Foreign Born, Mr. Tenner was one of the spokesmen
for the panel at a dinner given by the Los Angeles committee in honor
of its attorneys in 1953.

In 1954, the Los Angeles Committee To Secure Justice for Morton
Sobell held a meeting called the "Scroll Call for Justice" in an effort
to obtain 10,000 signatures on n petition in the fight for freedom of
Morton Sobell. Jack Tenner was master of ceremonies at the meeting.

Mr. Tenner has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild
for several years. He was a member of the resolutions connnittee for
the 20th anniversary convention in 1956 and elected to the executive
board at that convention.

ROBERT E. TREUHAFT, CALIFORNIA

Robert Treuhaft was identified as a member of the Communist Party
in sworn testimony before tlie Committee on Un-American Activities
on December 2, 1953, by Dickson P. Hill and on December 3, 1953, by
Charles D. Blodgett. He was again identified in June 1957 by Dr.
Jack Patten.

Mr. Treuhaft appeared as a witness before this committee in 1953
and refused to answer questions concerning his Communist Party mem-
bership, basing his refusal on the protection of the fifth amendment.

Mr. Treuhaft has as his law partner another identified Communist,
Bertram Edises, whose record appears earlier in this report. The law
firm represents the East Bay Civil Rights Congress and, at a testimo-
nial dinner given by the Civil Rights Congress to honor these two
attorneys in 1951, it was noted that they had been members of the
legal staff of the East Bay (^ivil Rights Congress since its inception.

In 1948 Mr. Treuhaft was chosen to serve as vice chairman of the
Independent Progressive Party in Alameda County, (^alif. He was
also a sponsor of Edises' campaign when Edises ran for district attor-
ney on the Independent Progressive Party ticket.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 69

Mr. Treuhaft was pfeneral counsel for the East Bay Division of
Warehouse Ix)cal 0 of the International Tvon^shoremen's and Ware-
housemen's I'nion. This union has been cited as havin^r "Communist
leadership entrenched" and was expelled from the CIO by vote of the
executive board in 1950.

Another Connnunist-front organization which has had the benefit
of Mr. Treuhaft's legal training is the Minute Women for Peace.
This organization was formed by the Communists as an attempt to
du])e women in the United States into aiding their fraudulent "peace"
program. In 1950, the P2ast Bay Minute Women for Peace were cir-
culating petitions on outlawing the atom bomb. Robert Treuhaft was
the lawyer who explained the legal rights of petition circuhitors to the
organization.

In 1951, Mr. Treuhaft was a featured speaker at the California
Labor School when the school was presenting a "Defend Your Rights"
series of lectures.

In 1952, he was one of those who sponsored a national tour for
William Patterson, national executive secretary of the Civil Rights
(^ongress and an identified (^ommunist.

Lawyer Treuhaft in 1954 was a delegate from the Bay area to the
19th annual convention of the National Lawyers Guild in Chicago.
He was elected to the national executive board of the guild at its 1957
convention.

ABRAHAM UNGER, NEW YORK

Abraham L'nger, a lawyer in New York City, has played an im-
portant role in the Communist Party for many years. Mortimer
Riemer, lawyer and former Communist, knew Mr. Unger as a mem-
ber of a Communist Party lawyers' group in New York as far back as
1936.-^" John Lautner, onetime party official, has testified that his
contacts with Mr. Linger in Communist Party work extended from
1940 until 1949 and that the lawyer held the status of a party "func-
tionary." ^^

Mr. Lautner's first contact with Mr. I'nger occurred in 1940 when
the Communist Party sent Lautner to consult Avith the lawyer on cer-
tain i)arty ])roblems. Mr. Lautner knew Mr. Unger as a member of
the constitution committee at the Communist Party's national con-
vention in 1945. and also saw him at the party's 1948 national con-
vention. Mr. Lautner related that he met Mr. Unger again in 1949
at a party meeting held in the lawyer's offices at the call of the New-
York State secretariat of the Communist Party; according to Mr.
Lautner, the meeting was held to make final decisions regarding the
expulsion from the Communist Party of Bella Dodd.

In an appearance as a witness before the Senate Permanent Sub-
comniittee on Investigations on September 17, 1953, Mr. linger was
questioned regarding membership in the Communist Party but would
not affirm or deny membership.

The firm of linger, Freedman, and Fleischer served as the Com-
munist Party's lawyers, according to the testimony of John Lautner.

*> Testimony of Mortimer Riemer before House Committee on Un-American Activities.
December 14, 1!)55.

"Testimony of John Lautner before House Committee on Un-American Activities, No-
vember A. lUoii, and before Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, September

IS. 135.3

70 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

For a long period of years, Mr. I'lijrer has been appearino; in the
courts as legal representative of the C^onimunist Party, its front or-
ganizations, and top national officials of the Communist Party.

From 1985 throufjh 1940, Mr. Fn^er was jjublicized in various court
appearances as attorney for the International Labor Defense. This
now defunct leg:al defense arm of the (^ommunist Party also utilized
Mr. Unger as a speaker. In 1949, Mr. linger was retained as attorney
by a similar defense organization of the party, the Civil Rights
Congress.

In addition to his legal services, Mr. linger has been of repeated
use to the Communist cause in the capacities of writer, speaker, and
officer.

Articles and letters written by Mr, linger on important party issues
of the time have appeared in the Communist Party's official newspaper,
the Daily Worker, since 1949.

In lengthy letters to the editor of the Daily "Worker in April and
October 1956,^- Mr. Unger severely lectured the newspaper for a "de-
generation" in thinking "among those who speak for the Communist
Party in the United States." He criticized the newspaper, then under
the editorship of John Gates, for aiding anti-Communists by critical
editorial comments on admitted miscarriages of justice in Communist
Hungary and on Soviet suppression of a show of independence by
Communist Poland. Mr. Unger attacked both Yugoslavia and Poland
for daring to deviate from the path of complete subservience to the
Soviet Union; he described the previous relationship between the
U. S. S. R. and its Polish satellite as "a true example of democracy."
He lauded Communist totalitarianism as a system "dedicated to the
freedom and liberty of mankind" and warned that Communists in the
United States had "the -djiity" to shaw.any admitted miscarriage of
justice behind the Iron Curtain was a "mishap" foreign to Conimunist
ideals.

Abraham Unger's stand accorded with that of the head of the Com-
munist Party of the United States, who subsequently squelched Daily
Worker questioning of foreign Communist tactics by installing other
party members on the newspaper. Editor John Gates resigned from
the Communist Party as well as the newspaper in the course of this
controversy.

Mr. Unger was a frequent contributor of articles to the Communist
weekly magazine New Masses in the period from 1941 through 1947.
In the latter year, he was one of the sponsors of a plea for financial
support for the publication.

As speaker or officer, Mr. Unger has been prominent in front or-
ganizations of the Communist Party since the 1980*s.

In the 1980"s, he was featured as speaker at the Communist Workers
School in New York City, and in behalf of the American Friends of
the Soviet Union and the Yiddish Communist newspaper Morning
Freiheit. That period also saw him serving as treasurer of the Com-
munist front, the American Society for Technical Aid to Spanish
Democracy, and as a member of the Spain commission of the American
League for Peace and Democracy.

In recent years, lie has been extremely active in the affairs of the
National Lawyers Guild. In 1947 and 1948, he served as executive

32 Daily Worker, April 25, 1050, p. 4, and October 29, 1956, p. 4.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 71

secretary of the New York chapter of the <ruild. As a representative
of tlie cha])ter, he a])peared as speaker ajrainst a measure wliich Avould
prevent the Coninuinist Party and its youth orpinization, the American
Youth for Democracy, from usin": public schools for meeting purposes.
The board of directors of the New York City chapter of the guild
elected Mr. linger to nonvoting ex-officio membership on the board in
1953.

Mr. Unger participated in a discussion on "Status of Civil Liberties'"
at the National Lawyers Guild convention held in 1941 in Detroit. He
served on the national executive board of the guild in 1949 and 1950.
He was also elected to the executive board of the national guild organi-
zation at its 1956 convention. At the guild's 1957 national convention,
he served on the resolutions committee. In both 1956 and 1957, he was
a member of the editorial board of the Lawyers Guild Review, the
national guild publication. In 1957, he was also listed as being a
member of the editorial board of the New York Guild Lawyer, pub-
lished by the New York chapter of the guild.

Publicized as a speaker at the Jefferson School of Social Science
in 1947 and again in 1956, Mr. Unger in the latter year was a sched-
uled panelist at a Jefferson School round table on Leninism and
United States Marxists. He was also a scheduled speaker at a 1948
function of the International Workers Order. His name appeared
on an open letter to Members of Congress which the Conference on
Peaceful Alternatives to the Atlantic Pact sponsored in 1949 in an
attempt to defeat a Presidential arms program. In 1950, he joined
a delegation in behalf of the subversive Council on African Affairs.
He attended a banquet held by the American Committee for Protec-
tion of Foreign Born in New York City in 1956.

DORIS BRIN WALKER (MRS. MASON ROBERSON), CALIFORNIA

- Doris Brin Walker, also known as Doris Mjirasse and Mrs. Mason
Roberson, was identified as a member of the Communist Party before
this committee on December 2, 1953, by Dickson P. Hill, an under
cover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1945 until
1949. Dr. Jack Patten, a former Communist Party member, also
identified Doris Brin AValker as a member of the Communist Party
when he testified before this committee on June 19, 1957.

Mrs. Walker appeared as a witness before this committee on
December 4, 1953, at which time she invoked the fifth amendment in
refusing to answer questions concerning her Communist Party mem-
bership and activities.

Doris Brin Walker was admitted to the California State bar in
1942. She was employed as an enforcement attorney by the Federal
Office of Price Administration in San Francisco from 1942 until 1944.
From 1944 until late 1945 Doris Brin Walker was in private law prac-
tice in San Francisco with four identified Communists, Richard Glad-
stein, Aubrey Grossman, Bertram Edises, and the late Harold Sawyer.

Mrs. Walker then quit the practice of law and, concealing her pro-
fessional background, worked at minor jobs in packing plants and
other commercial firms in California. Between 1946 and 1949. JNIrs.
Walker was employed by the H. J. Heinz Co., where the lawyer was
a filling-machine operator, the Bercut-Richards Packing Co., and the
Cutter Laboratories (who employed the lawyer as a "label clerk.'')

72 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

While holding these low-level plant jobs, she was also active in the
Cannery Workers ITnion and the United Office and Professional
Workers Union.

Mrs. Walker was fired from a number of her plant jobs when her
employers were informed that she was a member of the party and was
concealing her true professional status as a lawyer. She then took
full-time employment as Los Angeles County director of the Com-
munist-operated political front, the Independent Progressive Party,
from 1949 to 1951. She finally resumed the active practice of law in
1951, this time in Alameda County, Calif.

The committee has found many instances in which Communist
Party members with professional backgrounds have concealed their
training in order to get jobs in basic industries; it was learned that
this was part of a carefully worked out Communist Party strategy
aimed at furthering the party's efforts to infiltrate and gain positions
of influence or control in strategic industry.

That Mrs. Walker's similarly strange career was directly motivated
by her efforts to serve the Communist Party was brought to light dur-
ing various hearings held as a result of her effort to get reinstated
in minor plant positions.

, When Mrs. Walker unsuccessfully contested her firing from Ciitter
Laboratories in 1949 for concealing facts regarding membership in
the Communist Party and her professional background, the firm's
lawyers noted that its business required "more than the usual pre-
caution against sabotage and subversion" because it was a defense
plant, manufacturing biological products for both civilian and mili-
tary use. The firm also noted that as soon as her six months' pro-
bationary period of work at Cutter had been completed, Mrs. Walker
had become chairman of the plant unit of the United Office and Pro-
fessional Workers (a union expelled from the CIO the next year for
its adherence to the Communist Party line) .

Also introduced in evidence was a handwritten letter from Mrs.
Walker to State headquarters of the Communist Party, dated July
10, 1946, and stating in part :

* * * I tried to evaluate my action, as I try to evaluate
whatever I do, from the point of view of the welfare of the
working class and the strengthening of the party * * *

It is interesting to note that Dickson P. Hill, former Federal
Bureau of Investigation undercover agent in the Communist Party,
who testified before this committee in 195:^, said that he had known
Mrs. Walker in the 194(Vs to be a member of a 'Vannery workers
club'' of the Connnunist Party.

Mrs. Walker, after her resumption of active law practice, was the
principal speaker at a rally protesting the Los Angeles Smith Act
convictions which was sponsored by the Oakland branch of the East
Bay Civil Rights Congress during August 1952. During March 1952,
Doris Walker had been retained as a defense attorney by the Civil
Rights Congress. During December 1953 she partici])ated in a round-
table discussion sponsored by the East Bay Civil Rights Congress
in Oakland, Calif. Mrs. Walker, along with the other panel speakers,
discussed the so-called threat of the House Un-American Activities
Committee.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 73

Doris Brill Walker, a member of the "San Francisco Committee
To Save the Rosenbergs," joined with the other members in an attempt
to obtain a meeting phice for a Rosenberg clemency rally in San
Francisco during November 1952. Mrs. Walker was the chairman of
a Bay area campaign meeting to win a new trial for Morton Sobell
during November 1953.

During February 1953, Doris Brin Walker was one of the signers
of a motion asking the United States Supreme Court for permission
to file an amicus curiae brief in support of a rehearing for the six
Baltimore Smith Act defendants.

Mrs. Walker was retained by the Northern California Committee
for Protection of Foreign Born as the defense attorney for an alien
charged in deportation proceedings with being a Communist Party
member after his entry into the United States in 1921.

Mrs. Walker spoke at a mass meeting during July 1953 protesting
the deportation on similar charges of William Heikkila. This rally
was sponsored by the Northern California Committee for Protection
of Foreign Born. Doris Brin Walker was honored as one of a group
of San Francisco lawyers who "have staunchly defended the civil
rights of the foreign born," at a testimonal dinner on April 30, 1954,
sponsored by the Northern California Committee for Protection of
Foreign Born in San Francisco, Calif.

During November 1953, Mrs. Walker was the chairman of a meet-
ing held at the California Labor School.

Doris Brin Walker was a delegate from the Bay area to the National
Lawyers Guild convention, held in Chicago during November 1954.

Mrs. Walker sent Labor Day greetings to the Daily People's World
on September 4, 1953.

NATHAN WITT, NEW YORK

Nathan Witt was identified as a member of the Communist Party
in sworn testimony before this committee on August 3, 1948, by Wliit-
taker Chambers, a former Communist Party official, who testified
that Nathan Witt was the head of a Communist underground group
operating in Washington, D. C, in the late thirties for the purpose
of infiltrating the United States Government.

On August 24, 1948, Nathan Witt was again identified as a member
of the Communist Party by Louis Budenz, a former Communist and
managing editor of the Daily Worker.

On October 2, 1952, another phase of the role played by Nathan
Witt in the Communist conspiracy was brought to light by Kenneth
Eckert, former Communist and union official, in testimony before the
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

Mr. Chambers testified that Nathan Witt was an attorney for the
National Labor Relations Board at the time Chambers knew him.
Witt first entered Government employment in 1933 when he was
attached to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration of the
Department of Agriculture, having been recommended by I^e
Pressman.

In 1934 he started to work for the National Labor Relations Board,
advancing to the post of Assistant General Counsel in 1935 and to
Secretary of the Board in 1937. During his tenure in Government
employment, Witt was closely associated with Alger Hiss, John Abt,

74 COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION

Lee Pressman, and Charles Kramer, members of the Commmiist
underground group wha were also employed by the Government.

In late 1940 Nathan Witt left the National Labor Relations Board
and entered private law practice.

Nathan Witt has held the official post of "the attorney or general
counsel" to the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Work-
ers since early 1941, with the exception of a short period during World
War 11.

Mr. Eckert testified that Nathan Witt in the 1940's was one of the
top party men and a liaison between the Communist Party ancl various
unions that were under Communist control, including the Mine, Mill
and Smelter Workers. The witness said Mr. Witt frequently trans-
mitted various party directives to the mine-mill union which were
then put into effect by the union. Mr. Eckert also testified that
Nathan Witt attended many party meetings at which important de-
cisions affecting mine-mill were to be made.

According to Mr. Eckert, mine-mill was regarded by the Commu-
nist Party "as one of the key unions in America because of its stra-
tegic position in the nonferrous metals industry'' and also because
it had locals in Alaska in "close proximity to the Soviet Union."
Mr. Eckert observed that mine-mill locals in Alaska, completely
dominated by the Communist Party, were only 40 miles from the
Soviet Union.

In 1941 Nathan Witt was counsel for the United Federal Workers
of America, a Communist-dominated union. He was chief counsel for
the infamous New York Teachers Union Local 555 in the late 1940's.

Mr. Witt appeared as a witness before the Committee on Un-Ameri-
can Activities in August 1948, September 1950, and for a third time
on March 1, 1956. On all three occasions he invoked the fifth amend-
ment and refused to answer questions pertaining to the Communist
Party and his membership in it.

In the course of the hearing in 1950, Witt was confronted with a
letter dated October 16, 1940, which he as Secretary of the National
Labor Relations Board sent to the chairman of a special committee
of the House of Representatives to investigate the National Labor
Relations Board. In this letter, Mr. Witt wrote : "I am not now, nor
have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party, a 'Communist
sympathizer' or one who 'hews to the Communist Party line.' "

Mr. Witt, when under oath before the committee, refused, on the
grounds of self-incrimination, to state that he had sent the letter or
that the statements contained therein were true or false.

Nathan Witt has been an active participant in many other Com-
munist-controlled organizations, serving several in an official capacity.

He was a member of the national committee of the International
Juridical Association, a Communist-front organization fully de-
scribed earlier in this report.

Mr. Witt was counsel for, and a member of, the executive committee
of the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. When this
Communist-front organization was absorbed into the Civil Rights
Congress at a 1946 conference, he was a member of the resolutions and
continuations committees at the conference. In 1949 he was listed as
an attorney for the Civil Rights Congress.

COMMUNIST LEGAL SUBVERSION 75

Mr. Witt was a member of the board of directors of the New York
Conference for Inalienable Rijrhts. This conference was called in
Februar}' 1041 to attack antisabotag:e le<;islation and the Rapp-
Coudert Connnittee investi<rating subversive activities in the New
York public-school system.

The Jefferson School of Social Science was cited as an adjunct of
the Communist Party. Mr. Witt in 1950 was on the board of trustees
of this front used to recruit new party members and sympathizers.

Other Communist-front oro^anizations which have had the support
of Nathan Witt are the Ne^rro Labor Victory Committee, the x\meri-
can Lea<i:ue for Peace and Democracy, the Citizens Victory Committee
for Harry Bridges, and the National Lawyers Guild.

CONCLUSION

This committee holds the legal profession of our Nation in the
highest esteem and considers the privilege of practicing law one of
the most cherished in our system of justice.

In issuing this report on legal subversion, the committee has sought
to focus attention upon a very small minority within the legal profes-
sion. The activities of this minority should not be permitted to cast
discredit upon the overwhelming majority of patriotic attorneys whose
work is vital to the very functioning of our democratic processes.

On the other hand, the paucity of lawyers publicly identified as
Communists must not be interpreted as meaning that their influence is
insignificant and without danger. In the legal as well as other fields,
the Communist Party emphasizes discipline and efficiency of members
over mere numbers. Any attempt to judge the influence of Com-
munists by their numbers, according to Dr. Frederick C. Schwarz,
executive director of the international Christian Anti-Communist
Crusade, is like —

trying to determine the validity of the hull of the boat by relating
the area of the holes to the area which is sound. One hole can
sink the ship. Communism is the theory of the disciplined few
controlling and directing the rest. One person in a sensitive posi-
tion can control, manipulate, and, if necessary, destroy thousands
of others.
The committee again emphasizes that it has never conducted an
investigation solely directed toward determining the nature and extent
of Communist subversion through the instrumentality of the legal
profession. The committee nevertheless believes that this report, even
though limited to evidence obtained incidentally in the course of other
investigations, offers more than ample grounds for prompt action by
those who would preserve the high standards of the American bar.

INDEX

Individuals

Page

Aaron, David 5, 16, 17, 30, 37, 38, 52, 53, 55, 60, 64, 65, 67 68

Abt, John J 19, 21, 25-28, 73

Adams, Charlotte Darling 30

Andersen, George R 28, 29

Arena, Ernest 32

Bachelis, Selma Mickels i 30

Beal. Fretl E 6, 7, 48

Bentley, Elizabeth T 26, 27, 58

Berkeley, Martin 52

Biberman, Herbert 60

Bittelman, Alexander 40

Blodgett. Charles D 36, 68

Bouslog, Harriet (Mrs. Harold Sawyer) 21,30-32,41

Brandhove. William P. M 41,42

Braverman. Maurice Louis 25, 26, 32, 33

Bridges, Harry 44, 52

Brooks, Edith 40

Browder, Earl 20, 30, 34, 43

Brownell, Herbert, Jr 9

Bryson, Hugh 42

Buchner, Johannes 6

Budenz, Louis 61, 73

Caughlan, John 33, 34

Chambers, Whittaker 26, 73

Chernin. Rose 54, 56

Christoffel, Harold 44

Cohen, Elizabeth Boggs 33

Collier. Emory 60

Connelly. Philip M 12

Conner, Frank J 43

Cooper, Harry 1 35

Copass. Michael K 4

Cvetic, Matthew , 9, 51, 63

Daniel, Hawthorne 8

Davis, Benjamin J 46

Dennis. Eugene 8

Dmytryk. Edward ,53

Dodd, Bella 34, 69

Donner, BYank J 21,35

Doyle, Easter J 32

Dreyfus, Benjamin 36

DuBois, W. E. B 54

Duclos, Jacques 43

ii INDEX

E Pa&e

Eckert, Kenneth . 73, 74

Edises, Bertram 25, 36, 37, 41, 45, 68, 71

Edwards, Carmen 56

Bisler, Gerhart 18, 19, 49

Epstein, Pauline 37, 38

Fiske, Mel 23

Fleisher, Louis 39, 69

Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley 53

Foster, William Z 46, 48

Frank, Jerome 8

Frankel, J. Allan 38, 39

Freedman, David M 39, 69

Fuchs, Herbert 35, 55, 57, 58

Fujimoto, Charles 31

Funn, Dorothy 30, 32

Gallagher, Leo 53

Garry, Charles R 25, 39-41

Gates, John 50, 62, 70

Gitlow, Benjamin 46

Gladstein, Richard 8, 20, 41-43, 71

Glenn, Charles 12

Green, Abner 58, 64

Grossman, Aubrey W 19,20,24,41,43^5,71

Hartle, Barbara 33, 34

Heikkila, William 73

Henriekson, Stanley William 4

Hersig, Albert M l_t.__^___ -_^^-^ 5,30,67

Hill, Dickson P -1 _i__,g8, 71, 72

Hincks, Harold G 62

Hiss, Alger 19, 32, 73

Hoover. J. Edgar 1

I
Israel, William G 5, 6, 30, 37, 38, 52, 53, 55, 64, 67

Isserman, Abraham J 8,46-48,63

J
Jeffers, Dorothy 28

Jones, Alec 57

Jones, Claudia 40

Josephson, Leon 7, 18, 19, 48-51

Justiz, Harry M 51

Kageyama, Richard 31

Kahn, Albert E 52

Katz, Charles J 52,53

Kawano, Jack 30. 31

Kent, Rockwell 54

King, Earl 43

Kramer, Charles 74

Kremen, Shirley 54

Lautner, John 39, 69

Lawson, John Howard 1__ 54

Leitson, Morton 16

INDEX iii

Pagp

Linn, Ethel 59

Liptzen, Samuel 49

Lyni, La Verne 11

M
Mandel, Seymour : 52, 53

Marasse, Doris. ( -See Walker, Doris Brin. )

Margolis. Ben 10, 13, 18, 41, 53, 54

Marion, Paul 53

Markward. Mary Stalcup 32

Marzani, Carl 50

Matthews, William 4

Maynard, Lester ^ 49

McCormick. LaRue 30

McGohey, Francis 62

McTernan, John T 41,55,65

Medina, Harold R 8, 23, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 50

Mink, George 49

Nelson, Steve 55

Oak, Liston M 6,48

Obermeier, Michael 40

O'Connell, Jeremiah (Jerry) 66

O'Shea. Thomas H 61

P
Patten, Jack 36, 39, 41, 68, 71

Patterson, William L 45, 55, 69

Perlo, Victor 26, 27, 58

Porter. John W -_— 55, 56, 64

Pressman, Lee 73, 74

■ Prestes, Luis Carlos___-,_; 47

Q
Quill, Michael J 22,61

Ramsay, Ernest G 43

Rarback, Martin 22

Rein. David 57

Riemer. Mortimer 16, 35, 39, 57, 61, 65, 69

Robers(m, Mrs. Mason. (See Walker, Doris Brin.)

Robeson, Paul 14, 15

Ro.sen. William 32, 33

Rosenberg, Allan R 5S

Ro.senberg, Ethel (Mrs. Julius Rosenberg) 45,59

Rosenberg, Isidore 22

Rosenberg, Julius 45, 59

Rosenberg, Rose S 58, 59

Rosenwein, Samuel 59, 60

Rykoff, Richard L 19, 24, 60, 61

Sacher, Harry 8, 21-2.3, 61-63

Santo, John 40

Sawyer, Harold 71

Schlesinger, Hyman 63, 64

Schneider, Anita 10, 11, 19, 5.5, 60

Schwarz, Frederick C 75

Shandler, Esther 64

Sherman, Nicholas 49

iv INDEX

Page

Silberstein, Robert J 65, 66

Silver, Louise Light 38

Sobell, Morton 68, 73

Sperber, Laurence R 66, 67

Stachel, Jack 50

Starcevic, David 10, 11

Starcevic, Miriam (Mrs. David Starcevic) 10,11

Steinberg, Henry 37, 52

Steinmetz, Fred H 67

Strack, Celeste 32

Symonds, Myer C 31, 41

Tenner, Jack 68

Thomas, Henry 32

Tito 65

Treuhaft, Robert E 41,45,68,69

Tyre, Milton S 30, 52, 58, 64, 67, 68

Unger, Abraham 19, 20, 39, 69-71

Usquiano, Phillip H

W
Walker, Doris Brin (also known as Doris Marasse and Mrs. Mason Rober-

son) - 71-73

Wallace, William A 9

Ware, Harold 26

Weinstock, Louis 21, 22, 63

Wells, Wesley 40

Williamson, John 46, 50

Winston, Henry 50

Witt, Nathan 19-21, 26, 73-75

X Y Z
Yates, Oleta O'Connor 53

Yerkes, A. Marburg 5, 8, 9, 18. 30, 37, 38. 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 64-68

Young, Thomas W 14,15

Zuckman, Morris 25

Organizations

American Bar Association, Special Committee on Communist Tactics,

Strategy, and Objectives 2,3,9

American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born 25

American Labor Party 25

CIO, Political Action Committee 21

Civil Rights Congress 24,43-45

San Diego 24

Clothing Workers of America, Amalgamated 21

Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, United 21

Independent Progressive Party 25

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture
Machine Operators of the United States and Canada (AFL), Local 306

(New York) 22

International Juridical Association 29

International Red Aid 29

Marine Cooks and Stewards, National Union of 20,41,42

Maritime Union of America, National 42

Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, International Union of 20

Motion Picture Machine Operators Union, AFL, Local 306. {See Inter-
national Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture
Machine Operators of the United States and Canada.)

Musicians, American Federation of, AFL, Local 802 (New York City) 22

INDEX V

Page

National Lawyers Guild 16, 17

University of Michigan Chapter 16

Yale University Chapter 25

Painters, Decorators, and Paperhangers of America, Brotherhood of,

AFL: Council District 9 21,22

Shoe Workers of America. United, CIO 22

Joint Council 13 (New York City) 22

Steelworkers of America. United, CIO 21

Transport Workers Union of America, CIO 22

Local 100 (New York City) 22

United States Government : National Labor Relations Board 35

Publications

Agent Provocateur in the Labour Movement, The (book) 6

Investigation Committees and Civil Rights (pamphlet) 47

Under Arrest! Self Defense in the Courts (pamphlet) 6

■aiat

Boston Public Library
Central Library, Copley Square

Division of
Reference and Research Services

Social Sciences
Department

The Date Due Card in the pocket indi-
cates the date on or before which this
book should be returned to the Library.

Please do not remove cards from this
pocket.

ll,V ■• " ^o

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Communist legal subversion : the role of the Communist lawyer : report"

See other formats