The Truth About the Film "Operation Abolition"Report Supplemental to House Report No. 2228, Eighty-Sixth Congress, Second SessionCommitte on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-Seventh Congress, First SessionUnited States Government Printing OfficeWashington1961 |
Part I
Introduction
There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.Abraham Lincoln
On January 26, 1961, the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin referred to "Operation Abolition" as "the Nation's most-talked-about film."
The Livermore (Calif.) News of January 31, 1961, made the following editorial comment about "Operation Abolition":
Leading the motion picture field these days in both importance and controversy is a film that wasn't made in Hollywood, isn't shown in theatres, and doesn't have a single professional actor.
The Communist Party newspaper, The Worker, in its issue of July 9, 1961, admitted reluctantly:
"Operation Abolition" may break the year's movie going attendance records.
What Is the Film "Operation Abolition"?
"Operation Abolition" is a 45-minute documentary film portraying certain of the events which took place on May 12, 13, and 14, 1960, in the course of hearings held in San Francisco by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The film is also an integral part of an official report of the Committee on Un-American Activities to the House of Representatives.1 As such, it has the official endorsement of the committee, just as all other committee reports do.
The title of the film is derived from the name which the Communist Party itself has given to its current, greatly intensified drive to have the committee abolished.
It is estimated that, exclusive of television showings, some 15 million Americans in every State of the Union have seen the film in programs sponsored by church, PTA, civic, veterans, fraternal, women's, and political groups, and also by the Armed Forces, police units, and various Federal, State, and municipal agencies.
Why Was the Film Made?
On April 5, 1960, a meeting of the Committee on Un-American Activities was held in Washington. At this meeting, the committee unanimously decided that hearings would be held in San Francisco in the near future, on dates designated by the chairman, and that
- The extent, character, and objectives of Communist Party activity and Communist infiltration in Northern California for the purpose of assisting the committee in its surveillance of the administration and operation of the Internal Security Act, the Communist Control Act, and other security legislation.
- The past form, structure, organization, and activities of the Communist Party and its members in California or elsewhere for the purpose of enabling the committee to interpret the significance of the present form, structure, organization, and activities of the Communist Party; to obtain information for the committee's use in considering amendments to existing security laws relating to the phrases "member of the Communist Party" and "under Communist Party discipline," and also in considering amendments to the Communist Control Act of 1954 which would prescribe penalties for knowing and willful membership in the Communist Party.
- The dissemination of foreign Communist propaganda in the United States for the purpose of determining the advisability of amendments to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
- The techniques, strategy, tactics, and devices used by Communist Party members to evade the impact of existing security legislation, so that the committee might propose remedial measures.
On the following day, the committee chairman appointed a subcommittee to hold hearings in San Francisco, May 9-12. Subsequently, the hearings were postponed to May 12-14.
In the course of these hearings, which were held in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors in the San Francisco City Hall, there was mob rioting in the rotunda outside the hearing room, repeated disruption of committee proceedings within the hearing room, and mass picketing of the City Hall in which the hearings were held.
Legislative Purpose and Background of the Film
On January 12, 1959—16 months before the San Francisco hearings—the committee chairman, Mr. Francis E. Walter, had introduced in the House an Omnibus Security Bill (H.R. 2232), one section of which (302) dealt with the misbehavior of witnesses and spectators before congressional committees. The committee had pointed out the need for remedial legislation in this field in its Annual Report for 1956, and Mr. Walter had introduced such legislation in each subsequent Congress.
When the committee learned that extensive coverage of the rioting and generally disruptive and unruly behavior of witnesses and spectators at its San Francisco hearings had been filmed by local television cameramen, it decided that this film should be subpenaed. There were two reasons for this:
- It felt certain that the San Francisco police would be charged with brutality and decided that copies of the film should be made available to them as conclusive photographic evidence of the manner in which they had handled the rioters in the San Francisco City Hall.
- It believed that the film comprised important evidence pertinent to the above-mentioned legislation introduced by Mr. Walter and that it should be presented to the House of Representatives as such.
The committee, therefore, placed the film under subpena, contacted a film processing laboratory in San Francisco, and arranged to have
On May 24, 1960—10 days after the hearings ended—Mr. Walter introduced a separate bill (H.R. 12366) on misbehavior before congressional committees, the provisions of which were identical to section 302 of his previously introduced Omnibus Security Bill. The purpose of this was to expedite the passage of legislation which, in view of the San Francisco riots, he believed was vitally important.
The committee subsequently prepared a report on these two bills (House Report 2228) in which it stated:
Hitherto, committees of the Congress, over the years, have been faced, particularly in the case of investigation into Communist activities, with the defiance, vilification, and contemptuous attitude of witnesses whose testimony has been sought. The San Francisco riots now clearly show that congressional committees are faced with a bolder and even more serious program, especially designed and planned by the Communist Party, to foment actual riots and disturbances, both in the hearing room and in its vicinity. The misbehavior involved is so aggravated that unless measures are adopted to deal with it, the virus will spread and take hold and create such situations that lawful investigation by committees of the Congress can be totally frustrated. This spirit of lawlessness the Communists are attempting to communicate to large sections of the public. The eventual result, hoped for and planned by the Communists, could be the breakdown of the investigative processes, whether in committees of the Congress or even in the courts of the land.
Referring to the chairman's proposed legislation, the report said:
Such legislation is essential to forestall obstructive processes of witnesses and deliberately staged riots or other disorderly tactics employed and designed to frustrate proper inquiries.
Regarding the film "Operation Abolition" the report said:
The San Francisco riots are the case in point. Films of the proceedings were taken by various news services and have been prepared and composed into a movie short by Washington Video Productions, Inc. This film titled "Operation Abolition," graphically illustrates the problem involved. Bearing in mind the apt saying that "one picture is worth a thousand words," and that only the film can portray fully the actual occurrence, we have deemed it necessary to submit a print of the film herewith, which is made a part of this report.
[A transcript of the film narration was inserted in the report at this point.]
To the best of the committee's knowledge, this was the first time in history that a moving picture was made a part of an official report of any committee to the House of Representatives.
As previously indicated, the principal purpose of the film is to show the need for stricter laws governing the conduct of spectators and witnesses at congressional hearings. The committee believes the film does this effectively. After seeing the film, most viewers are shocked to learn that the rioting and the obviously planned and deliberately instigated yelling, agitation, and generally disruptive behavior on the part of spectators and witnesses in the San Francisco hearings violate no Federal law and cannot be prosecuted as contempt of Congress. They do not know that, in speaking of the conduct of witnesses before congressional committees, a Federal court, in a test case brought by this committee, has ruled that under existing law:
He [the witness] could have acted in the most objectionable manner possible, used profanity, vulgarisms, vilification of the committee or anything he wanted as long as he answered the questions or rightfully claimed privilege. Misconduct of the witness at the hearing, however outrageous, however shocking it may be to the sense of propriety or whatever, is not a violation of (Section) 192 in my judgment.
The court also stated—
there isn't any question about it but what additional legislation is needed in this field to clarify the situation. If the Congress feels that that kind of conduct should be made punishable, and I dare say they wouldn't get much objection from anybody on that, they had better legislate on it.
Additional Film Purposes
The film also accomplishes other things. As the narration states, it demonstrates for the Congress and the American people how a relatively few well-trained Communist agents can incite others who are neither Communists nor Communist sympathizers to do the work of the Communist Party.
It also demonstrates that, as part of its over-all campaign to subvert the United States, the Communist Party is attempting to promote contempt for law and order among the American people and to sabotage the operations of the Congress, particularly congressional inquiry into the activities of the Communist Party and its agents. In addition, the film portrays three of the principal weapons the Communist Party is using in the course of actual committee hearings in its efforts to destroy the Committee on Un-American Activities:
- mass challenges of authority and defiance of law and order inside a congressional hearing room;
- open rioting and physical resistance to law enforcement;
- defiance of the committee by individual witnesses and their attorneys.
Who Made the Film Controversial, and Why?
For some months after its release, "Operation Abolition" did not attract much publicity or, at least, not much controversy, though it attracted ever wider sympathetic attention and audiences and won the praise and endorsement of various organizations. In time, the film and J. Edgar Hoover's report on the San Francisco riots, "Communist Targets Youth,"1 became such potent instruments in alerting the American public to the dangers of Communist infiltration that a reaction from the enemies of the committee, both Communist and non-Communist, was inevitable. A massive, nationwide campaign to discredit the film, the committee, and Mr. Hoover's report on the riots was organized and is now in full swing.
As the California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities stated in its 1961 Report:
Motion pictures were taken of the demonstrations, and are now being shown throughout the state. These pictures speak for themselves and show the proceedings in all their ugly and stark realism; those few individuals who are concerned with counter-subversive activities can readily identify the leading Communist Party figures as they moved about performing their assigned tasks with a military precision, according to plan. In an effort to offset the profound effect this motion picture is having wherever it is viewed, the Communist Party is now starting a campaign of seeking to undermine the picture by charging that it was heavily edited in favor of the Committee. (p. 33)
It is this campaign which has made the film so controversial. In all parts of the country during recent months, at many showings of the film, critics have appeared armed with so-called "facts," arguments, and literature which they have used to create doubt about the authenticity of the film in the minds of its viewers.
Sources of the Attacks
Last summer, a new organization was set up to lead and direct the Communist Party's "Operation Abolition" campaign. This organization is the National Committee To Abolish the Un-American Activities Committee (NCAUAC). Seven of the national leaders of this group have been identified as Communists.2 Several months ago the NCAUAC released a program of action for the coming year entitled "National Abolition Campaign Program March, 1961-February, 1962." This 5-page program lists various actions the Communist Party, its agents, fronts, and fellow travelers should take in their efforts to bring about the abolition of the committee.3 It is the work of Frank Wilkinson, an identified member of the Communist Party who is now serving a term in Federal prison for contempt of Congress. This program recommends the distribution of a variety of attacks on, and so-called "analyses" of, the film "Operation Abolition" and the San Francisco riots. Some of these are Communist in origin. Others
Another major source of literature attacking the film is the Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (BASC), with offices in Berkeley, California. The executive committee of this group is made up of five students arrested for rioting during the committee hearings in San Francisco on "Black Friday," May 13, 1960.
The Bay Area Student Committee has produced an 8-page brochure entitled "In Search of Truth: An Analysis of the H.C.U.A. Propaganda Film, `Operation Abolition'."1 This piece of anti-film literature, packed with falsehoods and distortions, has been widely distributed throughout the country by the National Committee To Abolish the Committee on Un-American Activities and by other Communist fronts and individuals.
BASC also offers for sale over two dozen separate propaganda items attacking the film and the committee. Several of these items are the work of cited Communist-front organizations. At least one of them is written by an identified member of the Communist Party.
The widespread distribution of these items by party organizations and members, by Communist fronts, and by the usual innocents, has had its effect. The California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities points out in its previously-mentioned report that:
The boldness with which this propaganda campaign against the film mounted in fury and intensity eloquently revealed the lengths to which Communists and their supporters will go in order to achieve their objective by fair means or foul. (p. 80)
For months, the committee has been deluged with mail from members of the House asking for explanations of various points about the film which, it is alleged, distort the truth. The committee has also received thousands of letters of this type from sincere, loyal Americans who have seen the film, believe in it, but have been disturbed by the attacks and are anxious to obtain facts with which to refute them. It is for this reason that the committee decided to prepare and release this document, which lists the major criticisms which have been leveled against the film and presents the facts which show that they are completely false or unfounded.
Facts to Keep In Mind
The committee recommends that all viewers of the film and readers of this report keep certain facts in mind as they read or listen to charges of "distortion," "falsification," etc., in the film:
- Many of the individuals who have published attacks on the film were not present in San Francisco at the time of the hearings. Their stories are not eyewitness accounts.
- Many attacks on the film published in newspapers and magazines and made on radio and television programs have been written by persons who, at the time they wrote, had not even seen the film. Some of these persons went so far as to refuse to view the film when asked to do so before writing on it.
- Similarly, many critics of the film had not read the report of J. Edgar Hoover when they wrote their attacks.
- Most critical analyses of the film have been written by persons who made absolutely no attempt to contact the committee and get the facts in its possession, but who did interview, and have accepted without question, the version of the riots given by Communists and by student ringleaders who were arrested for their part in them.
- Finally, there is the question of the competency and objectivity of the critics. How many of them have ever demonstrated competence, or achieved any recognition, as authorities on the operations of the Communist Party in this country? How many of them have previously and consistently shown a strong bias against the committee or sympathy for Communist fronts and causes?
The Major Claim Against the Film
This report will be published in two parts. This, the first part, will consider only one of the many claims made against the film—the claim that, contrary to what the committee states in the film "Operation Abolition," the riots were not Communist-inspired.
This is unquestionably the most serious charge made against the film and the committee. It attacks the central theme, the main point of the film. If it is true, the film is fundamentally false and the committee is guilty of either a flagrant falsehood or a most serious error which, in view of the committee's function, is unpardonable, and for which it deserves the strongest censure.
Before quoting those persons who, by their training, experience, and positions, are competent to speak with authority on the matter (and all of whom, by the way, support the committee) and before citing the many facts which prove that this charge is false and that the riots were Communist-inspired, a few general observations are in order.
-
"It is easy to organize a riot, difficult to organize a viable economy." Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke these words in early February 1961, in the course of an address in which he outlined some of the problems faced by the United States in meeting the Communist challenge in foreign countries.
Students of mass psychology and law enforcement officials, and, in fact, most intelligent adults, can readily appreciate the truth in the first half of the above-quoted statement by Dean Rusk. When a crowd is in an emotional state, it can be incited to rioting by the act of one hotheaded individual, even though that individual has no intention of starting a riot. If, for a period of weeks, dozens or hundreds of individuals have been conspiring and working to assemble a crowd under conditions and in an atmosphere that is conducive to rioting and if, when the time for action comes, they have on the scene
― 8 ―many agents specially trained in provocation to violence, then touching off a riot is almost child's play. -
Youths and college students are, understandably, the easiest people to provoke to violence. This has been demonstrated time and time again within the United States, as well as in many other countries of the world where, within the past 2 years, student rioting (much of it Communist-instigated) has taken place on a large scale.
Since the San Francisco riots of May 1960, student riots have taken place in this country, for example, in Galveston, Tex.; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and at Harvard University. Gunfire was exchanged, fire hoses were brought into play, and over 500 students were arrested in the Galveston riots. At Harvard, the police used tear gas to dispel the student mob.1 For this reason, the committee is somewhat perturbed by the fact that certain professors, clergymen, reporters, editorial writers, and columnists, who will readily admit Communist inspiration in foreign rioting, somehow cannot bring themselves to face the reality that U.S. Communists are strong and clever enough to incite the same type of activity in this country and that American youth, like the youth of other lands, can be prodded into acts of violence by Communists.
- For the above-mentioned reasons, it was by no means a marvelous achievement if, as the committee and J. Edgar Hoover claim, the CPUSA instigated the mob rioting in San Francisco. In doing so, it merely did what Communists in many other countries have often done and what the party itself has frequently done in this country in the past.2
- It is little short of amazing that the students and their would-be defenders should claim that their rioting was not Communist-inspired. In making this claim, the students are, in effect, saying that completely on their own, without outside provocation or influence, they decided that they would interfere with the functioning of the courts of this land, even to the point of forcing the courts to adjourn; that they would similarly do everything in their power to force the cancellation of a duly authorized hearing of a committee of the United States Congress; that they would defy the orders of judges, members of the Congress, police, and other municipal officials; and, finally, that they would violently resist arrest when law enforcement officials, acting on a court order, attempted to take them into custody. In short, they decided, without outside provocation, to indulge in actions which are completely incompatible with American traditions and principles and which always will be deplored by all those who believe in law and order.
- The committee has been accused of smearing the students by saying in the film narration that they were duped by the Communist
Party into behaving as they did. In addition to the fact that the committee had to say this because it is true, the committee
feels that, even if there was doubt on this issue, it has been kinder to the students
― 9 ―in so classifying them than the students' "defenders" have been in claiming the riots were not Communist-inspired. That the Communists have duped many adults, and are still doing so, is an accepted fact. For this reason, most persons are willing to forgive young college students who are tricked by Communists. However, they are far less willing to find any excuse for students who, on their own, deliberately engage in action contrary to the very principles on which this Government is founded.
― 10 ―
Evidence of Communist Instigation of Rioting
Section I
Statements of Authorities Concerning Communist Inspiration of Riots
J. Edgar Hoover
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who is certainly in a better position than anyone else to know the truth about all Communist Party operations in this country, has prepared an official report on the riots entitled "Communist Targets— Youth." The report was released by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in July 1960. Five pages of this 10-page report are devoted to factual material on exactly how the Communist Party planned and carried out the San Francisco demonstrations and riots, including the dates and places of party meetings, decisions made at them, subsequent actions taken, and the names of Communist Party members and officials involved. This factual data is preceded by this statement:
it is vitally important to set the record straight on the extent to which Communists were responsible for the disgraceful and riotous conditions which prevailed during the HCUA hearings.
Toward the end of his report, Mr. Hoover summarized the Communists' role in the riots in these words:
The Communists demonstrated in San Francisco just how powerful a weapon Communist infiltration is. They revealed how it is possible for only a few Communist agitators, using mob psychology, to turn peaceful demonstrations into riots.
Months later, after certain sources had given nationwide circulation to the claim that the riots were not Communist-inspired, Mr. Hoover addressed the American Legion convention in Miami (October 18, 1960) and reiterated his statement concerning Communist responsibility for the riots:
The diabolical influence of Communism on youth was manifested in the anti-American student demonstrations in Tokyo. It further was in evidence this year in Communist-inspired riots in San Francisco, where students were duped into disgraceful demonstrations against a Congressional committee.
These students were stooges of a sinister technique stimulated by clever Communist propagandists who remained quietly concealed in the background. These master technicians of conspiracy had planned for some time to use California college students as a "front" for their nefarious operations. This outburst was typical of these cunning conspirators who constantly play active, behind-the-scenes
― 11 ―roles in fomenting civic unrest in every conceivable area of our society.
Still later, in his year-end report to the Attorney General of the United States, submitted on December 22, 1960, Mr. Hoover stated that in the future:
the Communists hope to repeat the success which they achieved on the West Coast last May in spearheading mob demonstrations by college students and other young people against a Committee of Congress.
Finally, on March 6, 1961, in an appearance before a House Appropriations Subcommittee, Mr. Hoover testified as follows concerning the San Francisco riots:
A most significant single factor surrounding the mob demonstration was the Communist infiltration of student and youth groups engaged in protest demonstrations against this congressional committee. Through this infiltration, Communists revealed how it is possible for only a few Communist agitators, using mob psychology, to convert peaceful demonstrations into riots.
The success of the party's strategy was vividly demonstrated by the violence which erupted at the San Francisco City Hall where the committee hearings were held. The San Francisco debacle was not an accident. It was the result of minute and skillful planning, direction, and exploitation by a handful of dedicated, fanatical, hardcore members of the Communist Party, U.S.A.
One of the targets of the Communist Party is to step up its infiltration of youth organizations and the demonstration at San Francisco which occurred last year was typical of their efforts.
California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities
The Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities of the California Legislature in its 1961 Report states:
We have made a careful investigation of the San Francisco riots... (p. 9)
precisely the same sort of campaign was announced several years ago [by the Communist Party] for the purpose of launching the Party campaign to recruit the youth of the nation. The occurrence in San Francisco was simply a part of this most ambitious program and we predict that the campuses of every major university in the State will be plagued with a revival of Communist activities, both overt and covert, in the immediate future. (p. 39)
[Communist Party] propaganda attacks against the FBI, police departments, university administrations, and the
― 12 ―draft, all were revived and accelerated [after Khrushchev's visit to the United States and the cancellation of President Eisenhower's intended visits to the Soviet Union and Japan]. Groups of radical students were organized on the major campuses in California and the first overt activity was seen in the infiltration of the Little Summit Conference at San Francisco, that was held a few days before the Big Summit Conference was scheduled to convene at Paris, and in the student riots that attended the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in San Francisco in May of last year.
We now have positive proof that adult leadership off the campuses of the State University resulted in the formation of some student groups of radicals who studied Marxism, recruited other students and, to all practical purposes, comprised an apparatus of young Communists. These were the students who placed their members in key positions on the publications, continually agitated about academic freedom and civil liberties, maintained the pressure against the House Committee and the FBI, and generally spread the Communist Party line. (p. 14)
The [Communist Party] plan was first to wage an intensive and prolonged propaganda campaign to make certain that large numbers of non-Communists, already conditioned against the Committee, would be present at the hearings, and then to provoke a carefully planned series of incidents that would turn the spectators into an enraged mob. Key Communists were to act openly: Saul Wachter, Archie Brown, Merle Brodsky, and Bertram Edises. Others were to operate inconspicuously: nudging, exhorting, prodding and otherwise inciting the crowd to violence. (p. 32) [Emphasis added in all quotations.]
Mayor George Christopher
The San Francisco Examiner of May 18, 1960, published the following statement concerning Mayor George Christopher of San Francisco:
The Mayor said that in his opinion last Friday's riot was Communist-directed and that for the most part, "unknowing and misguided students" were innocent pawns of trained Communist agitators skilled in crowd control tactics.
The San Francisco Chronicle of May 18, also referring to Mayor Christopher, reported:
Mayor Christopher agreed that a "great majority" of the student demonstrators were "dupes of the Communists."
On January 18, 1961, again, months after the charge had been made that "Operation Abolition" distorted the truth in claiming that the riots were Communist-inspired and led, Mayor Christopher made a statement which was tape recorded in his office by a representative of the St. Paul-Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. In the course
Known Communists, and I repeat this emphatically, known Communists were in the lead of this demonstration. The students were dupes who joined some of these causers of agitation believing it is an innocent and harmless expression of civil liberties.1
Dr. Charles A. Ertola, President of Board of Supervisors
The president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in whose chambers the committee hearings were held, denounced the demonstrations as "outrageous and uncalled for." Dr. Ertola also made it clear that he was convinced that they were Communist-inspired when he said:
This was probably planned by hard core undesirables. I believe the police and other authorities made a valiant effort to control mob rule.
It is surprising to me that students from our learning institutions could revert back to uncontrolled attitudes. Most of these students are law-abiding, under normal circumstances, and as individuals they would not condone mob rule.
The students probably fell into a trap.
(San Francisco Examiner, May 15, 1960)
Judge Albert A. Axelrod
The 64 persons arrested on Friday, May 13, 1960, the day of the San Francisco riots, were tried by Judge Albert A. Axelrod, presiding judge of the San Francisco municipal court. In dismissing charges against them on June 1, 1960, Judge Axelrod stated:
they chose the wrong means to accomplish their purpose and let themselves become victims of those who profit by creating unrest, riots, and the type of conduct which is outlawed by the penal code sections I have quoted.
Though Judge Axelrod did not mention the word "Communists" in his sentence, it is clear from the above statement that he was referring to them. When the rioters were first brought before Judge Axelrod on May 27, he told them they were "misguided."
On December 24, 1960, immediately after the release of J. Edgar Hoover's year-end report to the Attorney General, Judge Axelrod took the trouble of granting an interview to the press in which he emphasized that he "very definitely" agreed with J. Edgar Hoover that the riots were Communist-inspired.
On January 5, 1961, Judge Axelrod wrote to an Illinois State senator:
it was and still is my opinion that the riots were inspired by members of subversive groups.2
San Francisco Law Enforcement Officials
Thomas Cahill, chief of police for the city and county of San Francisco, testified before the Committee on Un-American Activities on May 14, 1960, the last day of its hearings in San Francisco. He stated that the security unit of the San Francisco Police Department had advised him that—
a number of those who seemed to whip those people in the group [outside the hearing room] into a mob frenzy, were individuals who had been hostile and who had testified at the hearing.1
Michael J. Maguire, the San Francisco police inspector in charge of the police unit assigned to maintain order at the hearings, testified on the same day and stated under oath that he had observed "agitational activities" among students attending the hearings by Communist Party members Merle Brodsky and Archie Brown.
Sheriff Matthew C. Carberry of San Francisco, who was also on duty at the City Hall and made repeated pleas for order to the demonstrators outside the hearing room, subsequently told M. Stanton Evans, editor of the Indianapolis News:
The people stirring the students up, and bringing them to an emotional pitch, were well-known Communists in the San Francisco area. ( National Review, May 6, 1961, p. 278.)
Senator Strom Thurmond
On July 31, 1961, in the course of a debate on the floor of the United States Senate, the following exchange took place:
Mr. Thurmond [Senator Strom Thurmond, D-SC].
I was there, and I saw it in person, with my own eyes; and after that I stated that I only wished that every American could have been in San Francisco and could have seen what I saw there. It reminded me of a bunch of howling wolves--to see these Communists and Communist-led people, with thwarted minds, and misled people--college professors, students, and others being led by Communists and being sucked into that movement, going along and committing the acts they did, in protest against the very fine and patriotic work of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Mr. Mundt [Senator Karl E. Mundt, R-SD].
I think it is interesting and highly informative to have this first-hand report by a distinguished U.S. Senator, whose integrity cannot be questioned, and who was an eyewitness to what occurred at San Francisco, because that gives additional validity to the news clips which have been put together to make the film "Operation Abolition." All of them were televised news clips, taken by the television stations in San Francisco, and reporting what actually occurred there; and everyone whom I have read or have heard about who was an eyewitness to the San Francisco riot, and I include the distinguished mayor of the great city of San Francisco, verifies
― 15 ―what the Senator from South Carolina has said. Of course it would be very natural for the mayor of that great city to have an impulse to protect the honor of his fair city; but he has stated over and over again that the news clips do not fully portray just how bad the situation was.
A similar incident occurred in Tokyo, when President Eisenhower was preparing to go there; and that disturbance was sponsored by the same people. In both riots, the Communists were the instigators.
It is incredible that good Americans would resist attempts to let the American people see what occurred at San Francisco.
Statements of Ex-Communists and FBI Undercover Operatives
Karl Prussion was a cooperative witness in the San Francisco hearings. Prior to the Summer of 1959, he had spent 26 years in the Communist Party, the last dozen of them as an undercover operative of the FBI. Because he had ceased this activity for the FBI about 9 months prior to the San Francisco hearings, Prussion was not in a position to give first-hand testimony on Communist inspiration of the San Francisco demonstrations and riots. When recalled to the witness stand the day after the riots, however, he made the following statement when asked if, as a Communist, he had received training in provocation to violence:
I had considerable training in provocation to violence. The Communist Party, being, of course, a party of Lenin, believes that it should use legal methods and illegal methods to conclude a certain situation. It uses violence and it uses peaceful methods, either one.
The purpose of the Communist Party is to raise what it calls the class-conscious level of the working class, and it is its purpose to educate the working class through incidents such as we had here yesterday, in methods and techniques of class struggle.
I believe that all of those present here yesterday witnessed a technique commonly used by the Communist Party. [Emphasis added.]
Committee Counsel:
Do the Communists in the attainment of their goals actually desire to see strife, actually desire to see bloodshed?
Mr. Prussion: In this particular situation, as we are experiencing it in the last few days, the Communist Party has tried every possible peaceful method, through petition, organization meetings, and so forth, to stop the hearings of the Committee on Un-American Activities.
In this they have failed and, as a result, they resorted to this spectacle that many witnessed here, of trying to close the hearings of a legally constituted body of our Government through force and violence, such as demonstrated by their leader yesterday, Archie Brown.
Committee Counsel:
Now, sir, during the course of your training and your experience in the Communist Party, did you receive any instructions, any pattern of activity, which
― 16 ―the comrades were to use with reference to the Committee on Un-American Activities, and what, in general, was and is the objective of the conspiracy toward this committee?
Mr. Prussion: Well, at all times one of the major targets, and at this time, of course, the major target of the Communist Party, is the Committee on Un-American Activities, because the committee, they feel, is the biggest stumbling block that they have at this time in their effort to break out in a fullfledged Communist operation of peaceful methods and violent methods in their efforts to overthrow our Government by force and violence.
Committee Counsel:
Is this just your conclusion as a student of communism, or is it your conclusion, based upon your experience in the operation, itself, and your directives which you have received from other comrades?
Mr. Prussion: It is a combination of all, from my training and education and experience and directives on situations pertaining to the Committee on Un-American Activities.1
Miss Adele Kronick Silva was an undercover agent for the FBI in the Communist Party during the years 1949-1950. Based on her experience within the Communist Party, she made the following statement concerning the San Francisco riots:
I would have been right in the middle of the excitement.
I would have jeered and chanted just like the rest. Then quietly submitted a report to other FBI agents.
When asked what Communist activity was in store for the next few years, Miss Silva stated that the Committee on Un-American Activities is obviously a prime target of the Communists, and:
They will always turn out en masse for hearings that show up their activities. And they'll always demand to be admitted even after the room is full. The committee probably should have held the San Francisco hearings in the Cow Palace, but the agitators still would have found something wrong. It would have been too cold, or something."
The public reaction to the committee will determine its fate.
If we continue to let the Communist front groups lead demonstrations at hearings, they will win and we will lose.
Miscellaneous
(Quotations from Hayward, Calif., Daily Review, March 12, 1961)
Numerous responsible individuals and organizations have made statements to the effect that the San Francisco riots were Communist-inspired. There is no need for extensive additional quotation on this score. The following brief statements are sufficient to prove that it is generally recognized that Communists were behind the riots.
Representative John F. Shelley (D-Cal.), who has himself been critical of the committee, agreed that the rioters were used by "certain known Communists in the Bay Area."
(San Francisco Examiner, May 17, 1960)
The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin of May 5, 1961, stated editorially:
To what degree they were manipulated by Communists in the crowd is in question, but that the manipulation was there is certain.
The Christian Science Monitor of May 23, 1960, reported:
Hardly any representative local group hesitates in concluding that Communist agitators helped to incite the students.
Section II
Communist Party Pre-Hearing Activity
Actions taken by the Communist Party, its fronts, individual members, and officials prior to the hearings prove conclusively the Communist role in instigating the San Francisco riots. The following information has been extracted from the official report of J. Edgar Hoover on the riots, from both the Communist and non-Communist press in the San Francisco area and other sources, including eye-witnesses to some of the developments.
Direct Party Operations
Guided by the main political resolution adopted at the Communist Party's 17th National Convention (New York City, December 1959) which called on all Communists to "abolish the witchhunting House Un-American Activities Committee," the party in the San Francisco Bay Area took the following actions when it learned of the committee's planned hearings:
Party officials held meetings to discuss plans for anti-committee action.
Douglas Wachter, a University of California sophomore who was a delegate to the 1959 National Convention of the Communist Party, was given the task of organizing student demonstrations against the committee at the University of California.
Roscoe Proctor, a member of the District Committee of the Communist Party, was also ordered by Mickey Lima, chairman of the party's Northern California District, to contact students at the University of California and enlist their support.
Certain party members assured Mickey Lima that the party would have the support of students at Santa Rosa Junior College in its anticommittee activity.
The son of a member of the Sonoma County Communist Party, a student at San Francisco State College, promised Lima support from students at that institution.
In early May 1960 the party distributed a "Memo on the Un-Americans" to all members in the San Francisco area. This memorandum outlined its general plan of attack on the committee and was a "call to action" to which party members immediately responded.
The San Jose Club of the Communist Party circulated petitions against the committee and arranged for the publication of anti-committee advertisements in San Jose newspapers.
The Santa Clara County Communist Party took similar action.
Communist Party members in Oakland arranged for both radio broadcasts and newspaper advertisements attacking the committee in their area.
Communist Party clubs initiated fund drives to provide the money needed to finance the party's many-sided agitation and propaganda attack on the committee.
Party leaders held a meeting on the evening of May 6th to review results of their activity to date and plan further action. At this meeting, Mickey Lima stated that the party's agitation at the University of California and on other campuses was beginning to pay off—that students were beginning to call for demonstrations against the committee and the picketing of its hearings.
Lima issued orders that every single Communist Party member in the San Francisco area be contacted to ensure a mass demonstration against the committee during its hearings.
The party initiated a telephone campaign designed to reach 1,000 persons and enlist their support against the committee.
Indirect or Concealed Party Activity
On April 13, 1960, the first meeting of the San Francisco chapter of the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms was held. This chapter had been organized on April 4 for the specific purpose of agitating against the committee hearings. Its parent organization was first cited as a Communist front by this committee in 1957. At the April 13 meeting, Ralph Tyler, a person known to the committee as a member of the Communist Party, was elected chairman of the group and plans were made for organizing demonstrations against the committee.
On the night of April 28, 1960, twenty-two of the subpenaed witnesses1 met for 3— hours in the headquarters of the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco to plan "mutual self-defense." They claimed that no Communist Party spokesmen or officers were present and issued a statement urging a public protest to force the committee to cancel its hearings.
On April 29, 1960, the Student Committee for Civil Liberties (also known as Students for Civil Liberties) was organized as a University of California campus action group to protest the hearings. Communist Party youth leader Douglas Wachter addressed this organizational meeting and suggested to the students "ideas for plans of action" against the committee. With Wachter's prodding, a decision was made to circulate petitions urging the abolition of the committee, and a combined march with students of other area colleges and universities was discussed.
Young Wachter's address and agitational activity paid off. The same group met again on May 2d and issued a release which demanded abolition of the committee as "unconstitutional" and also cancellation of the announced hearings.
On May 5, 1960, the Students for Civil Liberties distributed a throw-away which listed seven steps recipients should take to demonstrate their opposition to the committee. These included the signing of petitions, writing of letters to newspapers, attending the Union Square protest rally held during the committee hearings, assisting in
This throw-away urged students to register their cars for a pool that would be used to transport other students to the Union Square rally and suggested that they do so either at Stiles Hall or by calling Thornwall 8-1437. This was the telephone number of Marvin J. Sternsberg.
Those willing to help make posters, the throw-away said, should report the following Sunday at 1 p.m., to "2929 Hillegass." This was the residence of Aryay Lenske, Dan Greenson, Michael Myerson, and David Rynin—all key promoters of the student demonstrations against the committee hearings. Aryay Lenske is now the executive secretary of the National Lawyers Guild, which was cited by this committee in 1950 as "the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party."
Lenske, Greenson, Myerson, and Rynin—like the previously-mentioned Marvin J. Sternsberg—were all members of SLATE.
SLATE and Its Role
The California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee, in its 1961 Report, stated:
The student organization at the University of California through which much of the preparation for the picketing of the House Committee was made, is known as SLATE. (p. 15)
It also reported relative to this organization:
We have already seen how the SLATE organization was used as a transmission belt through which to reach the student body at large [with Communist propaganda]. We do not wish to imply that the members of SLATE were Communists or that the organization was a Communist front, since we are well aware that such was not the case. It is perfectly evident, however, that some of the most active leaders in the organization were strongly oriented toward Marxism and Communism, that many could be characterized as enthusiastic Fellow-Travelers, many others were simply willing to be led by their more articulate and energetic colleagues, and still more were imbued with unreasoning hatred toward the House Committee by a steady barrage of insidious and extremely clever propaganda. (p. 46)
The subcommittee also pointed out that Douglas Wachter "was most active in SLATE affairs," although he was not carried as a formal member of the organization. Other prominent members of this student group at the time of the committee hearings were:
Kayo and Tuffy Hallinan, sons of Vincent Hallinan, attorney for Harry Bridges and Progressive Party candidate for President of the United States in 1952, who has an extensive record of Communist-front affiliations extending over a period of many years (Hallinan recently gave a picnic at his home for the benefit of the West Coast Communist Party newspaper, the People's World).
Linda Jencks, daughter of Clinton Jencks, the former officer of the Communist-controlled Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union who
Carey McWilliams, Jr., son of the editor of the Communist-line "Nation" magazine. McWilliams, Sr., as the California Senate Subcommittee report points out, has participated "in the activities of the Communist Party itself" and also has an extensive record of activity in Communist-front organizations.
SLATE has featured known Communist Party members as speakers at meetings it has sponsored at the University of California. Its leaders, speaking at campus rallies, have criticized "acts of provocation" by the United States against the Soviet Union and have praised the Soviet Union's attitude toward disarmament, while claiming that the United States, by its attitude, was preventing an agreement to ban nuclear weapons testing.
SLATE has since been barred from the campus of the University of California, but was extremely active in the period prior to the committee's hearings. As the California Senate Subcommittee reported: "SLATE stepped up its high rate of abuse against both the University administration and the Committee" as the time of the hearings approached.
Working through its own organization and through its members who were active in other organizations such as the Students for Civil Liberties, SLATE played an important role in turning out students for the protest demonstrations and arousing in them resentment and even hatred of the committee.
Other Organizations and Individuals
On May 5, 1960, from 4 to 6 p.m., a meeting was held in a snack bar on the San Francisco State College campus. The purpose of this meeting was to organize action against the Committee on Un-American Activities. The leader of the meeting, too, was none other than Communist Party youth leader Douglas Wachter. Under his direction, demonstrations against the committee were planned and methods chosen to arouse and rally students against the committee. It was announced at this meeting that at noon the next day literature attacking the committee would be available at the office of a teaching assistant at the college. It was also stated that this literature was being produced on college stationery and with printing equipment belonging to the college.
During the next few days this anti-committee literature was distributed at San Francisco State College.
Literature of the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedomas was also imported to the San Francisco State College campus and distributed among the students.
On the evening of May 5, the East Bay Community Forum held a protest meeting in the Northbrae Community Church. According to J. Edgar Hoover, a Communist Party official has stated that this group is under party control. About 300 persons attended the meeting. Decca Treuhaft, a member of the Communist Party, sold anti-committee literature at the meeting. Nine of the subpenaed witnesses—all of them known to the committee as members of the
Douglas Wachter, one of the speakers at this meeting, announced that he was a member of SLATE, that he had been assured of its support in protesting the committee's hearings, and that students at the University of California and San Francisco State College were planning a mass protest rally against the committee.
A collection was taken up at this meeting to finance anti-committee activity. Entertainment was provided by singers who frequently appear at Communist-front rallies and who sang anti-committee songs, and all those in attendance were urged to take certain actions to protest the committee hearings.
On May 6, Charles Duarte, president of Local 6 of the Communist-controlled International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, issued a statement protesting the hearings. Duarte invoked the fifth amendment in an appearance before the Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953 when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party—after he had been so identified by a former member of the party.
On the same day, the San Francisco chapter of the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms picketed the City Hall in protest against the committee's forthcoming hearings and passed out throw-aways entitled "San Francisco Did It Before and San Francisco Can Do It Again." Mickey Lima, chairman of the Northern California District of the Communist Party, had given this organization $100.00 for the printing of this throw-away.
It is interesting to note that an earlier version of this flyer bore the name of the San Francisco Citizens Committee for Protection of American Freedoms and the return address of David Adrian. This is the man who gained nationwide publicity on September 21, 1959, when he exchanged hats with Soviet Premier Khrushchev on the occasion of the latter's visit to the ILWU hall in San Francisco. Adrian is a former member of the ultra-radical Trotskyite Communist group, the Socialist Workers Party.
The version of the throw-away passed out on May 6 gave the San Francisco chapter of the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms as its source. Both versions of the leaflet urged that contributions be sent to a teacher subpenaed to testify in San Francisco hearings planned by the committee in 1959, but later canceled.
Also on May 6, Frank Wilkinson, an identified member of the Communist Party and the executive secretary of the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms, addressed a meeting of about 100 persons at Kepler's Bookstore in Menlo Park, at which he stated that the committee should be abolished and the hearings canceled. The committee, he said, tried to smear anyone who opposed segregation and it also engaged in other reprehensible practices.
The Student Committee for Civil Liberties sponsored a meeting at Dwinelle Hall at the University of California on May 9. At this
A person known to the committee as a member of the Communist Party worked in the acquisition of signatures endorsing an ad which protested the committee hearings and was published in the San Jose Mercury of May 9 by the San Jose State College Federation of Teachers and Local 957, San Jose Federation of Teachers.
Also on May 9, from noon to 1 p.m., a rally was held under the auspices of the Social Work Club of San Francisco State College. Anti-committee literature prepared by a Communist front was passed out to the students attending this rally. The rally was addressed by a professor at the college, by a representative of the American Friends Service Committee, and by Joan Keller, 29-year-old daughter of Communists Vernon Bown and his wife, Ruth Keller Bown. Along with her parents, Joan Keller was arrested for rioting in the City Hall rotunda on Friday, May 13. Joan Keller used a pamphlet published by the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms, a cited Communist front, to attack the committee, quoting from it almost word by word in her speech. She also urged the students to attend the Union Square rally on May 12, the opening day of the hearings, to hear more attacks on the committee.
On May 10, the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild issued a statement protesting the hearings. The chapter was headed at the time by Benjamin Dreyfus, an identified member of the Communist Party who invoked the fifth amendment before the committee in June 1957 when asked questions concerning his party membership.1 The National Lawyers Guild, as previously mentioned, has been cited by this committee as "the foremost legal bulwark" of the Communist Party.
Bertram Edises, an identified member of the Communist Party,2 a subpenaed witness and the attorney for several other persons subpenaed as witnesses in the hearings, revealed to the press that he had filed a petition with the House of Representatives urging that the chairman of the subcommittee be disqualified.
The San Francisco Examiner of May 12 reported:
The propaganda campaign also included a telegram from Mrs. William Heikkila, widow of the San Francisco draftsman ordered deported as an alien Communist, urging cancellation of the hearing and abolition of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Other San Francisco newspapers published accounts of Mrs. Heikkila's action. Her telegram, dated May 10, charged that the committee's hearings in the past had caused "death from heart seizures and suicides" and that in view of its "known unfairness" the committee should be completely abolished.
On May 13, an organization called the Bay Area Defense Committee published an anti-committee ad, "Nobody wants you! Go Home!" in the San Francisco Chronicle. The address of this organization as given in the ad was that of the law firm of Gladstein, Andersen, Leonard, and Sibbett. George R. Andersen,1 a lawyer for several of the witnesses subpenaed in the hearings, is the attorney for the Northern California District of the Communist Party. He and his partners, Richard Gladstein2 and Ewing Sibbett, have been identified as members of the Communist Party.
Frank Wilkinson's Activities
Identified Communist Party member Frank Wilkinson arrived in San Francisco at least as early as May 6, a week before the hearings. As the Communist Party's chief field agent in its drive to abolish the committee, it has been Wilkinson's function to go to cities where the committee is holding hearings, arrange agitation rallies and meetings against the committee, and, if possible, obtain use of radio and TV time for the dissemination of anti-committee propaganda.
As the film reveals, Wilkinson, in an interview with a newsman at the San Francisco City Hall, admitted that this was his role. When he later appeared on "The Tom Duggan Show," KCOP-TV, Los Angeles, on September 10, 1960, he was asked if he had had a part in promoting the turnout of the students in the rotunda of the San Francisco City Hall, where the rioting took place. Wilkinson attempted to play down his role, but admitted:
I had a very, very minor part to that. I was working with the adult community primarily. I met with one group [of students] at Stanford, at a meeting.
Wilkinson was also asked on this program if the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms, the Communist front of which he is a leader, had liaison with the student demonstrators. Wilkinson confessed:
I believe that there was some liaison between some of them.
Wilkinson was also asked on this program:
And was Jimmy's address given out there?3 Wilkinson replied:
Jimmy Roosevelt's speech was handed out to everybody there and every one of the 5,000 [demonstrators].
Sometime prior to the San Francisco hearings, Communist Party member Ralph Izard had ordered 5,000 copies of this address to be sent to Los Angeles. The Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms had also ordered 5,000 copies to be delivered to its Los Angeles address. Just a few days before the San Francisco hearings, Izard and the CCPAF requested that the 10,000 copies they had ordered shipped to Los Angeles be sent air freight to San Francisco
― 24 ―instead, so that they could make use of them in their anti-committee agitation.
In his official report on the riot, J. Edgar Hoover states:
The Communist Party furnished funds to the CCPAF to defray the expense of mailing literature during the campaign, and, when the whole affair had ended, Mickey Lima praised the executive secretary of the CCPAF, Frank Wilkinson, for the role he had played in organizing the demonstrations.
In reference to this report, Tom Duggan asked Wilkinson, when he appeared on Duggan's September 9 show:
And why would he [Mickey Lima] be praising you?
Wilkinson: I only know what is said there, and I worked very hard on the San Francisco hearings.
Duggan: And did you speak before the CCPAF?
Wilkinson: I did several times.
The California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee, in referring to the formation of the San Francisco chapter of the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms for the express purpose of aiding the Communist Party strategy for discrediting this committee, reported:
Here, again, the ubiquitous Mr. Wilkinson displayed his organizational talents, going back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as maintaining constant liaison with the front organizations and the student groups. His experience in charge of security for the Communist Party in Los Angeles and his fanatic dedication to Communism made him peculiarly capable in this role, and it may be parenthetically stated that one of this Committee's informants who was in the Party with Wilkinson in Los Angeles declared that he was the only Party member the informant had ever known who would not hesitate to carry out an act of extreme violence without the slightest hesitation if ordered to do so by his Communist superior. (p. 27)
Role of the Daily Californian
The 1961 Report of the California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee makes it clear that the student newspaper of the University of California was used by Communist elements to promote the demonstrations against the committee. Excerpts from the report pertinent to this point follow:
We have already demonstrated that when a student newspaper at U.C.L.A. fell into the hands of student radicals, the propaganda commenced and continued until the strangle-hold was broken. Several of the students who had been staff members of that paper later became staff members of adult Communist publications and some of them eventually became officials in the Communist Party. We found precisely the same situation existing on the Berkeley campus of the state university immediately preceding the demonstrations against the House Committee. Communists, locally, globally, anywhere, will invariably take immediate advantage of the least opportunity to fill a vacuum or seize a
― 25 ―chance to inject themselves into student activities and to mold student opinion into conformity with the Communist Party line. This they do, of course, by carefully concealing the real Communist control and masquerading under the guise of liberal activity. (p. 83)
At Berkeley, the student paper [the Daily Californian] has for the past several years been used as a vehicle for propaganda in precisely the same manner as was the Bruin at U.C.L.A. Under this constant barrage of Left-wing material, the same sort of radical student organizations were encouraged and the same sort of Party line attitude began to befoul the atmosphere. Controversy was stirred up at every opportunity, and the academic atmosphere was disrupted continuously by mass meetings, circulation of petitions, street demonstrations, and the distribution of endless streams of mimeographed propaganda. At any educational institution, it is always an exceedingly difficult problem to balance freedom against license. Academic freedom must be maintained at all costs, for that is the basis of all institutions of learning. The right to criticize governmental institutions is one of our most precious heritages, and the right of free assemblage, the right to peacefully picket, the right to editorialize freely in publications—all these are vital parts of the American way of life. But when these privileges and freedoms become prostituted for subversive purposes, and the students at an institution of learning persist in using these privileges for their own ulterior purposes and exert a stranglehold on the student newspaper for the purpose of propagandizing, and when the paper encourages students to engage in demonstrations against committees of the United States Congress—it is obviously time some decisive steps were taken. (p. 55)
At other points in its report, the subcommittee refers to SLATE's "indirect control of the student newspaper" at the University of California and states that in the period following the San Francisco riots:
The influence of the SLATE organization and its adherents was reflected with increasing vigor in the student newspaper, which apparently cast all pretenses of editorial objectivity to the winds. (p. 59)
What was the theme of the news items and editorials on the committee that appeared frequently in the SLATE-influenced Daliy Californian prior to the hearings?
What was the theme of Wilkinson's propaganda activities on which he worked "very hard"; of Wachter's speeches and statements; and of all the other statements, newspaper advertisements, and other party-inspired declarations issued in the weeks immediately preceding the hearings?
It was that the Committee on Un-American Activities was itself "un-American"; that it harassed guiltless teachers and professors and was, therefore, a threat to academic freedom; that it was also a threat
There can be no question about the fact that these false, inflammatory charges against the committee, spread by the Communists and their fellow travelers, reached hundreds of thousands of persons in the San Francisco area—through press and radio coverage of the numerous statements issued, through the previously mentioned newspaper advertisements, and through all the other means the party had at its disposal for disseminating its propaganda.
According to the 1960 census, San Francisco has a population of about 745,000 persons. There are almost 19,000 students on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. San Francisco State College has an enrollment of over 11,000 students, San Jose State College almost 13,000. The overwhelming majority of the people of San Francisco and the great majority of the 50,000-or-so college students in the area who were reached by the party's anti-committee propaganda messages, of course, did not respond to them.
But a few thousand people, most of them students, did respond. These were the people who appeared at the San Francisco City Hall on May 12, 13, and 14, 1960, not merely to observe the hearings, but to express their hatred and/or their opposition to the committee by picketing and other forms of demonstration against it. A minority of these people were Communist Party members. A great majority were dupes who did not realize that they were on the scene only because they were responding to propaganda and agitation that had its ultimate origin in the inner circles of the Northern California District of the Communist Party.
Hoodwinking the Students
The following incidents are examples of how effectively one Communist, party youth leader Douglas Wachter, carried out his assignment of getting students at the University of California worked up against the committee prior to the hearing:
The lead page-one story in the Daily Californian of May 4, 1960, read, in part, as follows:
Subpoenaed Student Tells `Why'
The 18-year-old University sophomore who has been subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee told the Daily Californian yesterday why he thought he had been called to appear at the May 10th hearing.
"I think the Committee wanted to subpoena someone on campus in order to tag Cal's political movement as un-American. I don't know why they picked my name, people have been involved in actions similar to mine," he said.
"I think they pick people whose ideas are liberal, radical or in any way considered to be non-conformist," the student said. "I will not be intimidated by the subpoena; I am going
The student, who asked to remain unnamed, said he has been active in CORE, (the Congress on 1 Racial Equality), participated in the February march in San Francisco for Caryl Chessman and is a member of Stiles Hall and Slate.
"Students around the world are leading great popular movements for democratic goals. They are, in a real sense, leading and directing the aspirations of all the world for peace and freedom. To purge and discredit them is to call for a return to Rhee, to the pass books, to lunch-counter segregation, to authoritarian rule in Turkey and Chile," he said.
"The Committee has subpoenaed many Bay Area people active in national movements striving for racial equality by non-violent means," the student continued. "I feel that the members are afraid to go into their home states to attack the student movement. Their actions would be too patently an attempt to carry out their own bigoted purposes," he said.
This article also revealed that Wachter, in his statement to the Daily Californian, attacked and smeared as a racist Representative Edwin E. Willis, chairman of the subcommittee appointed to preside at the San Francisco hearings. In addition, it pointed out that a rally would be held in Dwinelle Plaza at noon of that day for the purpose of "discussing" the hearings and that another meeting would be held that night at Stiles Hall (of which Wachter was a member), where speakers would give "background" on the Committee on Un-American Activities.
Naturally, the students at the University of California and the editors of the Daily Californian would be reluctant to admit it —and might even deny it —but the fact is that the most prominently featured story in the May 4 issue of the largest circulation student newspaper on the University campus came straight from the Communist Party. It was contrived by Douglas Wachter, the unnamed student in the above-quoted article, acting on party orders.
Concealed from the thousands of students who read this page-one story was the fact that this "innocent" student, who had been subpenaed by the committee merely because he was "liberal," "radical," or "nonconformist," was a delegate to the 1959 National Convention of the Communist Party, attended conventions of the Northern California Communist Party in November 1959 and February 1960, and was the party's youth leader in the San Francisco area. To this day, the clever lies Wachter told in this article, designed to arouse student hatred of the committee, have never been corrected by the Daily Californian.
This is one example of how, in the days previous to the hearing, the Daily Californian was used as a vehicle for the dissemination of anti-committee agitation propaganda of Communist origin.
On the very next day, the Daily Californian published an account of a rally held by SLATE. The following two-paragraph excerpt from this account reveals how Wachter promoted the Communist
The subpoenaed University student spoke about the various groups in the Bay Area who are working against the Committee through petition campaigns. The East Bay Forum has been revitalized to work against the Committee and will sponsor a Forum at 8 p.m., Thursday, May 5, at Haber Hall in Berkeley.
The subpoenaed student said the Committee is "a public persecution of those people whom they dislike." He said that the Committee also encourages the firing of those people subpoenaed.
The Party Line
The following examples indicate the extent to which non-Communist students in the San Francisco area were influenced, unwittingly no doubt, by the Communist Party propaganda line.
1. On May 4, 1960, the Daily Californian published an editorial entitled "The Committee." The last two paragraphs in it read as follows:
It should be further noted that many of the persons subpoenaed are educators and intellectuals. We feel that this is an expression of a desire on the part of the committee to strike at free thought and academic freedom. We call for the University community to resist the threat to the precious freedom which is the basis for all intellectual advancement and which a handful of congressmen are threatening.
We urge students to participate in the various protests which will be held between now and next Tuesday; and, further, if the committee has not decamped before that time, to participate in the picketing at the hearings. It will be an education for as many students as can be present to sit in on the hearings, which are open, and to observe the tenor of what we feel to be in the truest sense "un-American Activities."
2. On May 2 the Daily Californian published a news item on the forthcoming hearings under the headline "Teachers Called By Committee." This article stated that the hearings would "supposedly" probe current Communist Party operations in Northern California. After referring to the meeting of the twenty-two subpenaed witnesses the previous Thursday night (held, it said, "to determine why they had been subpoenaed"), the Daily Californian reported:
The group, in talking among themselves, discovered that no officer or spokesman of the Communist Party had been called by the Committee, despite the stated purpose of the Committee.
This, of course, was completely false. Archie Brown, for one, had been an officer and spokesman of the Communist Party for years. But thousands of students who read the Daily Californian did not know this.
The paragraph in the article immediately following the one just quoted led the student readers further into misjudgment of the purposes and methods of the coming hearings and the committee's general operations:
The group did discover that many of them had been active in picketing stores refusing service to Negroes in the South, and in urging abolition of the Un-American Committee.
Referring to distortions and falsehoods such as these which were published repeatedly in the Daily Californian during the period immediately preceding the hearings, the California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee commented:
We wonder how many students and professors would have participated in these preliminary activities and in the demonstrations against the House Committee if the " Daily Californian", the student newspaper, had printed the truth and announced that Wachter, the Communist Party's delegate to the Seventeenth National Convention of the Communist Party of the United States, had been subpoenaed by the House Committee, not because his ideas were liberal or radical or non-conformist, but simply because he was a Communist Party functionary, an official delegate to a national convention, a student at the university, and the Committee might be interested under its congressional mandate to find out what he knew about this California arm of the world Communist conspiracy that had over and over again sworn to subvert and destroy us. (p. 78)
3. Communist influence was also apparent in the slogans used by the students who picketed the committee's hearings. The film "Operation Abolition" reveals that the student picketers carried signs with slogans such as the following printed on them:
"Protect Our Teachers From Intimidation."
"Fascism Is Not Our National Policy Yet."
"Down With The Police State In America."
These slogans are hallmarks of Communist anti-committee propaganda—a fact known to all persons who regularly read Communist literature, where they appear over and over again. They also expressed basic themes of the propaganda spread among students in the area by the party and its fronts in the period preceding the hearings.
The direct and indirect Communist Party, front, fellow-traveler, and Communist-influenced pre-hearing activity outlined in the preceding pages is more than adequate proof that it was the unquestioned aim of the conspiracy to have present at the hearings a mob of people—Communist Party members, former party members, fellow travelers, and dupes (primarily students)—emotionally worked up against the committee, desiring its abolition, deeply resentful of it and the fact that its hearings had not been canceled, eager to express their hatred of the committee and, if possible, force the cancellation of the hearings.
The film "Operation Abolition" does not portray any of this activity—for the obvious reason that none of it was filmed and, therefore, could not be shown. It is not described in the film in any detail
the chosen battlefield of the Communist Party's most organized and violent attack on the committee since the launching of the "Operation Abolition" campaign on September 20, 1957.
The facts outlined in the preceding pages are conclusive proof of the truth of this statement.
The California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee summarized the Communist Party's pre-hearing activities in the following words:
Thus the stage was set, the Communist Party had effected its strategy and provided for a mass demonstration of hostility against the Committee in complete conformity with its resolution adopted at the Seventeenth National Convention of the Communist Party of the United States, and for the obvious purpose of ridding itself of a highly effective instrumentality by which Congress could keep accurately and currently informed concerning nation-wide Communist activities, and which had harassed the Party until in desperation it was moved to make an all-out effort to attack the Committee by a mass demonstration. (p. 28)
Section III
Party Agitation During Hearings
The party's agitation did not cease with the opening of the hearings. As J. Edgar Hoover states in his report, the party had planned a two-stage attack on the committee:
The first objective of the party was to fill the scene of the hearings with demonstrators.
Once this had been accomplished—
The second was to incite them to action through the use of mob psychology.
The California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee outlined the party's strategy for the hearings in the following words:
The plan was first to wage an intensive and prolonged propaganda campaign to make certain that large numbers of non-Communists, already conditioned against the Committee, would be present at the hearings, and then to provoke a carefully planned series of incidents that would turn the spectators into an enraged mob. Key Communists were to act openly—Saul Wachter, Archie Brown, Merle Brodsky, and Bertram Edises. Others were to operate inconspicuously: nudging, exhorting, prodding and otherwise inciting the crowd to violence. (p. 32)
― 31 ―
As the critical day approached all Communist witnesses were carefully coached by Party lawyers and strategists. They were instructed to boldly defy the House Committee, to deliberately provoke incidents that would insure their forcible ejection from the hearing room, thereby adding propaganda fuel for the enlistment of sympathy from the crowd outside. Frank Wilkinson, Mickey Lima, Merle Brodsky, Archie Brown, and Saul Wachter—all veteran Communists—were to assume the leading roles. (p. 28)
The following facts illustrate the steps taken by the party in carrying out the second stage of its plan.
Inside the Hearing Room
Party leader Archie Brown played a key role in the party's instigation of the rioting activities. The film "Operation Abolition" and still pictures in the committee's possession show Archie Brown—
marching in the picket line outside City Hall carrying a sign: "Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee";
in the center of a crowd of protesting students outside the City Hall;
in the center of a crowd of demonstrating students in the rotunda of City Hall;
declaiming against the committee in the rotunda of the City Hall, with party member Merle Brodsky, after being evicted from the hearing room;
in the center of a group of students in the rotunda (with Ralph Izard close by him) who are listening to him attentively and with obvious sympathy as he talks to them;
leading the 40-minute demonstration in the hearing room at the opening of the afternoon session of May 12, the very first day of the hearings.
In this demonstration, Brown was assisted by party members Merle Brodsky, Ralph Izard, Saul Wachter, Morris Graham, Juanita Wheeler, a member of the party's National Committee,1 and Sally Attarian Sweet—all subpenaed witnesses. The actions of this group of Communists, prior to their eviction from the hearing room by a special squad of San Francisco riot police, revealed a deliberate, calculated attempt to create disorder, promote defiance of the committee, and incite violence. These Communists screamed and yelled at the committee members epithets such as: "Get out of town, you un-Americans! Pack up and go home"; "Open the doors or get out of town"; "What are you afraid of?".
In his opening statement, subcommittee chairman, Edwin E. Willis, had said, in part:
I would remind those present that a disturbance of any kind or an audible comment during the hearings will not be permitted, as it cannot be. This is a serious proceeding in which we are earnestly trying to discharge an important and arduous duty.
― 32 ―
Despite this, the Communists and their supporters in the hearing room refused to be orderly and quiet. When the committee counsel, in the course of the testimony of the first witness (Mr. Irving Fishman, deputy collector of customs for the port of New York) announced that there was a demonstration taking place outside the building, he was interrupted by a round of applause. Mr. Willis warned the audience that this would not be tolerated.
When the subcommittee was called to order following a brief recess after Mr. Fishman's testimony, Archie Brown initiated the partyplanned agitation within the hearing room by jumping up and calling out to the chairman:
Well, why did you send cards only to your friends? Why didn't you send cards to our friends? Why didn't I get some cards to send to my friends here? There isn't a Negro person in this hall. There are only white people. How come you didn't give me cards to give to my friends?
These charges were misleading and false. Brown and all the other subpenaed witnesses were permitted to bring members of their families into the hearing room. His statement that there wasn't a Negro in the hall was untrue. It was obviously designed to create in the minds of the spectators the impression that the committee was practicing racial discrimination in admitting persons to the hearing room and probably had some effect in arousing resentment against the committee on this score. A large card sticking out of Brown's pocket said: "The House Un-American Activities Subcommittee is paid by racists."
On Thursday, the 12th, Brown screamed "Help me! Help me!" as he was being ejected from the hearing room. His obvious hope was to provoke some unthinking spectator to rush to his aid and tangle with the police who were removing him from the hearing room.
Brown was ejected from the hearing room three times in as many days for disruption of the hearings and defiance of the chairman's orders when he was on the witness stand. Even after his third ejection on Saturday morning, May 14, Brown did not cease his efforts to agitate the crowd against the committee. The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin of May 14, in describing what happened after Brown's eviction from City Hall that day, reported:
Brown made a speech to a small throng while mounted police deployed to prevent a real crowd from gathering.
In his speech, Brown attacked and vilified Subcommittee Chairman Willis and the committee counsel as racists.
Attorneys for the Witnesses
Bertram Edises, an attorney for several of the witnesses, a subpenaed witness himself, and an identified member of the Communist Party, also had to be ejected from the hearing room. Edises told the committee members: "You are just a kangaroo court."
Other attorneys for various Communist witnesses called in the 3 days of hearings also played roles in the disruption efforts which characterized the proceedings.
Archie Brown was represented in his appearance before the committee by George R. Andersen, attorney for the Northern California
When Brown was called to the witness stand on the afternoon of May 12, Andersen rose to his feet and attempted to make a motion to disqualify the subcommittee. The San Francisco Examiner reported that as Subcommittee Chairman Willis and the committee counsel were talking to one another—
Andersen had kept talking, ignoring both Willis and Arens.
A voice from the audience shouted:
"Sit down, you Red."
Another voice, apparently directed at the first heckler, shouted:
"Shut up, you jackal."
Arens called his next witness and Andersen retired.
On the last day of the hearings, May 14, as Police Chief Cahill was completing his testimony on the rioting of the day before, the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Willis, commended him for the conduct of the San Francisco police during the hearings. At this point, Vincent Hallinan, attorney for two of the witnesses in the hearings, jumped up and shouted:
I was present at the outbreak of that, and the statement made by Chief Cahill is entirely untrue.
I would like to address the Committee and testify as to what occurred, that the provocation was not on the part of those children.
George Brunn, attorney for young Douglas Wachter, attempted to rise to make a point of personal privilege. He was overruled by the subcommittee chairman.
Norman Leonard appeared before the committee as counsel for Bertram Edises. Leonard is a law partner of identified Communist Party members George Andersen and Richard Gladstein. When the committee counsel asked Mr. Leonard to identify himself, he made the following completely false statement about the committee:
You address me as counsel, Mr. Arens, but the fact of the matter is that the rules of this committee do not permit me to function effectively as counsel. I will simply be here to advise Mr. Edises. Your own rules do not permit the attorney to function in the way that the Bar of America permits them to function and in the way that they function before other committees of the Congress.
Vituperation
Communist Party member William Mandel, in his appearance on the witness stand, did his best to instill hatred and contempt of the committee among those in the audience. He addressed the members of the committee as—
Honorable beaters of children and sadists, distinguished Dixiecrat wearing the clothing of a gentleman.
― 34 ―
He described the committee as a "kangaroo court"; said it is "improperly constituted"; that it did not have his respect, but his "utmost contempt"; and, at one point in his testimony, made the following statement:
If you think that I am going to cooperate with this collection of Judases, of men who sit there in violation of the United States Constitution, if you think I will cooperate with you in any way, you are insane.
Mandel's performance was not at all unusual. On the contrary, it was typical of the performances put on by one Communist witness after another during the 3 days of hearings.
The following are some of the epithets hurled at the committee by these witnesses during the hearings, with the obvious intent of whipping sympathizers in the hearing room into outbursts and action against the committee:
Vernon Bown [to Chairman Willis]: You sound like a madman.
This is another part of the attempt to smear a workingman and to deny them the right to make good wages, to get better conditions.
...purposes of this committee are to intimidate witnesses, to try to smear them...
[When a disorderly spectator is ejected from the hearing room]
Why is she being put out, Mr. Chairman? Are only the spectators allowed here that you want in here?
This is part of this whole vicious witch hunt. They don't want people here who oppose them.
Ann Deirup: You are dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy and to segregations and lynchings....
You are dedicated to the destruction of freedom of thought, freedom of the speech and assembly, and of association.
Joseph Figueiredo: I believe the committee has abused and fundamentally violates the Constitution....
...wherever you go or any other witch hunt committee goes I will be opposed to the witch hunts.
Martin Irving Marcus: ...one of the purposes of this committee is to bring people to public scorn and cause them to lose their jobs ....
Leibel Bergman: ...they [committee members] subvert the Constitution ....
― 35 ―
John Andrew Negro [to committee counsel]: You, sir, are a disgrace to the American people. You are responsible for the demonstrations that take place outside.
Tyler Brooke: Since its inception this committee has vilified and slandered, harassed and intimidated, assassinated character, and caused loss of employment...
Since its inception this committee has squandered millions of taxpayers' dollars,....
Merle Brodsky, a leading figure in the uproar that took place in the hearing room on the morning of Friday, the 13th, started shouting "Injustice, Injustice" during the interrogation of Vernon Bown. Brodsky was ejected from the hearing room twice in the 3 days of hearings.
As the film "Operation Abolition" reveals, when young Douglas Wachter was on the witness stand, he would pause after making an attack on the committee—and then wait for the applause to break out and eventually subside before continuing with his statement. It is obvious that the applause did not surprise him, and there is good reason to believe that this had been prearranged.
What the Clergy Saw
The hearing record reveals that in the 3 days of hearings, there were a minimum of fourteen noisy disturbances within the hearing room, despite repeated admonitions and pleas for order by Mr. Willis, the chairman.
Seven clergymen who sat through the 3 days of hearings, described these disruptions in the following words:
We sat in the rear of the room on a raised platform where we could easily observe the proceedings, right in the midst of the student demonstrators. We studied the crowd carefully for hours and could easily discern which were the masterminds of the mob riots. It is our certain conviction that this indefensible demonstration against law and order was conceived, planned, and directed by a few hard-core Communist agitators who were carrying out their textbook orders on insurrection with classic success. Leaders of the mob included faculty members and well-known leftist lawyers for the fifth-amendment Communists.
We were sitting where we were able to observe the giving of instructions by the riot leaders who had gained access to the room....These well-disciplined mobsters laughed on the dotted line and obeyed their masters to the last jeer. We watched a national committeeman for the Party line up a dozen Communists near the railing and throw every sneer, invective, abusive language, vile profanity, and fiendish charge at the Congressmen they could conceive.1
Despite their carefully contrived efforts and the professional manner in which they carried them out, the Communists did not succeed in
― 36 ―provoking outright violence in the hearing room. This was probably due to the fact that the committee, through the use of passes, had prevented the party from packing the room with an overwhelming majority of its supporters and also because, after the disruptive behavior which took place during the first morning, the committee refused to permit any standees. These factors enabled the police to maintain fair control of the anti-committee spectators.The Communists did succeed, however, in repeatedly evoking from their supporters in the hearing room cheers for themselves and boos, hisses, catcalls, and jeers for the committee. Moreover, as "Operation Abolition" reveals, Archie Brown and other key Communist leaders did succeed in staging a lengthy near-riotous demonstration at the opening of the afternoon session on the first day of the hearing.
The Situation Outside
Outside the hearing room, conditions were different and for obvious reasons the mob was more difficult to control. A description of the situation that developed there—as a result of the Communist Party's intensive pre-hearing agitation and the City Hall picket line of several hundred students that resulted from it—is contained in the 1961 Report of the California Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities:
Any large crowd milling about a public building attracts attention and when some carry signs and others hand out propaganda, up come the drunks, the bums, the pacifists, the do-gooders, the morbidly curious. These unsolicited but welcome recruits are usually not characterized by emotional stability and are easily aroused to a fever pitch either for or against almost anything.
Thus on the first day of the hearing the crowd was comprised of students, the uninvited host mentioned above, Fellow Travelers, and Communists. As witness after witness defied the Committee to an accompaniment of boos, sneers, and hisses, and invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify, and as the key Communists, Brown, Brodsky, Wachter, and Edises were forcibly ejected, their comrades outside played on the emotions of the crowd, depicting the witnesses as martyrs. Young Douglas Wachter hurled a brief case at the officer who was removing his struggling father from the hearing room. Each unruly and defiant witness continued to struggle even outside and it was simple to involve some of the spectators. (p. 32)
On the second day, May thirteenth, news of the excitement had spread and the crowd was swelled to at least double its original size. In our 1959 report we explained how many Communists had dropped out of Party activity because they believed the Party was not sufficiently militant. Now many of these former members appeared and enthusiastically participated in this class-struggle demonstration. They comprise a part of the deadly Communist Party "fall-out" we discussed at length in 1959—a reservoir of ex-Communists
― 37 ―that has been building up strength since the Party was born in September 1919.
As the tension mounted it soon became evident that this was far from a haphazard group of students and other haters of the Committee. Leaders appeared, and assumed positions of authority. The crowd grew constantly larger. (p. 32)
Supplies of slogans, leaflets and other propaganda materials were available, and the demonstrators were abundantly provided with picket signs and song sheets. The noise finally became so intense that court proceedings in the building were completely disrupted and one of the judges ordered the mob dispersed. (p. 33)
The committee does not claim to know exactly how many Communist and fellow travelers were in the rotunda of the City Hall just before the rioting broke out on the afternoon of Friday, May 13, but there is no question about the following facts:
Frank Wilkinson was observed—and photographed—in the rotunda as well as in the hearing room during the hearings.
At least eight of the subpenaed witnesses—Archie Brown, Ralph Izard, Saul and Douglas Wachter, Sally Attarian Sweet, Leibel Bergman, Elmer E. Johnson, and Ruben Venger—were observed milling about in the crowd in the rotunda of the City Hall in the course of the hearings.
In addition, over a dozen other persons known to the committee as Communist Party members were similarly observed, along with a number of inveterate fellow travelers and some radical Trotskyite Communists who have a record of collaborating with the Communist Party.
The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin of May 14, in describing what took place immediately before the rioting in the afternoon of the previous day, reported:
A shouting, turbulent crowd of at least 200 massed outside the hearing room...
Veteran detectives of the Police Dept. Red squad said they spotted half a dozen notorious agitators, often associated with Communist causes, circulating in the crowd.
When the students' enthusiasm seemed to be waning, police said, the agitators would spur them on. [Emphasis added.]
As the time arrived for the opening of the afternoon session on Friday, May 13, the crowd of about 200 demonstrators in the rotunda outside the hearing room was in an emotional, unruly mood—for reasons already explained. The committee had had a public address system set up in Union Square so that all persons honestly interested in merely attending the hearings could hear what went on, even though they could not be accommodated in the chambers of the Board of Supervisors. The mob in the rotunda, however, was not interested in listening to the hearing developments over a public address system.
When the hearing room had been filled and police officers on duty at the doors closed them and announced that no more would be let in, the belligerent, shouting mob refused to disperse or quiet down. Instead, it surged toward the doors to break its way in. The police held and managed to push it back. When it continued to press
Many of the students, including the women, fought back viciously.
Other San Francisco newspapers published accounts of violent resistance on the part of the demonstrators in the City Hall. They kicked, bit, and thrashed about, doing everything they could to prevent their removal by the police.
The film "Operation Abolition" portrays party youth leader Douglas Wachter in the rotunda of the City Hall on "Black Friday" afternoon after the police had used fire hoses to stop the demonstrators from crashing the hearing room doors. Wachter, soaking wet, is in the front line of the student rioters with his arms on the shoulders of other demonstrators. He is shouting defiance of the police, encouraging his fellow student demonstrators to defy authority and refuse to leave the hall.
The Arrestees
Young Wachter was one of those arrested for rioting that afternoon, but he was not the only person arrested who had a Communist background or who had obviously been subjected to Communist influence.
As the San Francisco Examiner of May 14, 1960, pointed out:
Some of the demonstrators arrested were familiar faces from past protest groups at various "cause" rallies.
The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, in a series of articles reviewing the demonstrations and riots published in that newspaper in late January 1961, reported:
Too, several of the arrested students were identified as the children of well-known Communists or Red sympathizers.
Of the 68 persons arrested Friday and Saturday, 39, according to police figures, have taken part in or attended other demonstrations or rallies in San Francisco—picketing the Federal Office Bldg. in August to protest J. Edgar Hoover's report on the City Hall riot; more recently at pro-Castro meetings in Union Square and a downtown hotel.
Among the persons arrested during the 3 days of the hearings, in addition to Douglas Wachter, were the following persons who are either known as Communists or who were obviously exposed to Communisty influence:
Vernon Bown and his wife Ruth (Keller) Bown (ages 42 and 48, respectively), both long-time members of the Communist Party.
Joan Keller, 29-year-old daughter of Mrs. Bown, stepdaughter of Vernon Bown, and student at San Francisco State College.
Judith (Mrs. Trent) Brady, 28-year-old housewife, also known as Judy Bloom and Judy Collins. Under the name Judy Collins, Judith Brady attended the Sixth World Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957 and then, with 40 other American delegates, took a 3-week tour of Communist China, despite State Department warnings that their passports might be revoked and they might make themselves liable for prosecution for trading with the enemy. Later, she urged American youths to attend the 1959 Communist-sponsored Seventh World Youth Festival in Vienna—and suggested that interested students contact her. Mrs. Brady was a member of the now defunct Labor Youth League, the youth section of the Communist Party.
Albert Francis Lannon, 22-year-old printer and son of Albert F. Lannon, Sr., who is a veteran of the Fifteenth International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, a graduate of the Lenin Institute in Moscow, and has served a prison term for conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the United States Government by force and violence. Young Lannon, in both 1960 and 1961, won honorable mention in "Peace" essay contests sponsored by the Communist magazine, New World Review.
Geoffrey Ethan Berne, 21-year-old University of California student and son of Lewis Alan Berne. A 1944 report of this committee stated that [Lewis Alan] "Berne has been identified as a Communist Party member by numerous witnesses and by other evidence in the possession of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities."
Caroline Pozos, 19-year-old University of California student and daughter of Torben and Ann Deirup. Her mother Ann, a member of the Alameda County Committee of the Communist Party according to evidence in the committee's possession, invoked the fifth amendment when questioned about party membership and activities on May 13, 1960, the day of the riots. Her father, Torben, also invoked constitutional privilege on the same matter when questioned by the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951.
Roger Wakefield Davis, 22-year-old University of California student, whose father, Philip Hunt Davis, has been identified as a member of the Communist Party and whose mother, Harriet, is a member of the Communist Party, according to committee information.
Kenneth David Spiker, 23-year-old University of California student, who was arrested and convicted in 1957 for illegally posting handbills advertising a function of a Communist-front organization. He was represented at the time by Bertram Edises, attorney and party member subpenaed to testify in the San Francisco hearings.
Bruce Benner,1 21-year-old ship's clerk, son of Helen (Benner) Bulcke and stepson of Germaine Bulcke, vice president of the Communist-controlled International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union. Bulcke, who has been active in Communist-front affairs for over 20 years, has served on the board of sponsors of the Tom Mooney Labor School, cited as "frankly and openly a school for instruction in Communism." The name of young Benner, obviously because of parental influence, has been used to promote Communist-serving activities since he was 10 years of age. In February 1960, just a few months before his arrest in the San Francisco riots, Bruce Benner—with
Aryay Lenske, 25-year-old University of California student, who is currently the national executive secretary of the National Lawyers Guild. Lenske, a leader of the student agitators against the committee, was chairman of SLATE, University of California student political organization which played a leading role in promoting the student demonstrations, and was also a member and recognized leader of the Student Committee for Civil Liberties, sponsor of the picket line outside the City Hall during the hearings.
Raymond F. Thompson, 55-year-old contractor, who has a criminal record and is known to the committee as a currently active Communist who has held minor positions of leadership in the party.
Albert Butler McPherson, 33-year-old scaler and painter, with an arrest record for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, who was placed on the Maritime exclusion list (barred as a security risk) by the Coast Guard during the Korean war under the Magnuson Act. McPherson is known to the committee as having attended Communist study classes and having been considered, but rejected, for party membership.
Rebecca Jenkins,1 23-year-old San Francisco State College student. In 1956, Miss Jenkins was a member of the San Francisco State College chapter of the Labor Youth League (successor to the Young Communist League). In 1953, she entertained at the "Festival of Nationalities," which was sponsored by the Northern California Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, and also contributed a message to the booklet "We Pledge Peace," published by the subversive American Russian Institute of San Francisco. Miss Jenkins is the daughter of David and Edith Jenkins. Her father was registered as a member of the Communist Party in New York City in 1944, has been identified as a party member by several witnesses in testimony before official investigative bodies, and is the former director of the Communist Party's California Labor School. In 1934, David Jenkins was found guilty of felonious assault, following his participation in a Communist-instigated riot in New York City. Rebecca Jenkins' mother, Edith Jenkins, has written for the West Coast Communist Party newspaper, the People's World. She has also served as a delegate to Communist-sponsored "peace" conferences abroad. In 1951, she invoked constitutional privilege when subpenaed to testify before the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities and asked many questions about her Communist activities.
Kenneth Kitch, 25-year-old University of California student who has been active in the East Bay Community Forum.
Erik Weber, 22-year-old student, whose mother is known to the committee as a former Communist Party member who is still active in front organizations.
Arthur Sherman Lipow, 26-year-old University of California student, who was a member of the National Executive Committee of the Young Socialist League in 1958. On January 6 of this year, Lipow was a featured speaker at a University of California Young
Robert Meisenbach, 22-year-old University of California student subsequently tried—and acquitted—on charges of felonious assault on a policeman during the rioting. Though Meisenbach had no known record of Communist affiliations at the time of the riots, he has since been featured as a speaker at a rally staged by the Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms in the headquarters of the Communist-controlled International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union. Harry Bridges, the Communist leader of the ILWU, was the main speaker at this rally.
Burton White,1 29-year-old "student" and teaching assistant at the University of California. White was one of the principal organizers of the protest demonstrations against the committee and, as the film "Operation Abolition" clearly reveals, a key agitator of the students who rioted in the rotunda of the San Francisco City Hall. In January 1961, he was a speaker at a rally in Washington sponsored by the National Committee To Abolish the Committee on Un-American Activities. When White traveled to Washington to speak at this rally and to take part in a Communist-promoted picketing demonstration against the committee, his Washington hotel bill was paid by Communist Party member Frank Wilkinson, and White shared his hotel room with William A. Price, who was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions, including those relating to Communist Party membership, in a 1956 appearance before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.
A 21-year-old University of California student, whose mother was a registered member of the now defunct Communist-controlled Independent Progressive Party.
An 18-year-old high school student who, at the age of 13, had tried to join the Socialist Workers (Trotskyite Communist) Party.
An 18-year-old San Francisco State College student who has been active in an organization cited as Communist and subversive by the U.S. Attorney General. Recently, the same young woman was one of 62 young people in the San Francisco Bay Area (including Vincent Hallinan's son, Patrick) who announced their intention of going to Cuba to help build a school for Castro. The invitation for them to undertake this project was withdrawn by the Cuban Government after the State Department announced that it would take steps to prevent their leaving this country for that purpose and that they would be making themselves liable to prosecution under powers granted the Government during the Korean war and still in effect.
Of the five juveniles arrested, one was the son of a witness in the San Francisco hearings who invoked the fifth amendment on Communist Party membership. Another was the son of parents known to the committee as having been functionaries in the Northern California Communist Party in the past.
Don Grossman, though not arrested, was treated at a hospital for injuries received in the rioting. He is the son of Aubrey Grossman, who invoked the fifth amendment on Communist Party membership when testifying before the committee in 1956.
Others On the Scene
The Communist Party's involvement in the demonstrations and riots against the committee is attested not only by the tremendous amount of pre-hearing agitational activity it carried out, by the conduct of known Communist Party members during the hearings, and by the backgrounds of a significant numbers of arrestees, but also by the fact that persons who for years have played important roles in Communist activities in this country made appearances at the City Hall in the course of the hearings to demonstrate their support of the demonstrators and rioters.
One of them was Mickey Lima, chairman of the Northern California District of the Communist Party. Lima, as a matter of fact, missed a meeting of the National Committee of the Communist Party in New York City because he was so busy directing the party campaign against the committee. He was photographed on the steps of the City Hall during the demonstrations against the committee.
Harry Bridges, identified Communist and leader of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, appeared on the scene on Friday afternoon, May 13, just after the rioting had ended, to do his bit for the cause.
The San Francisco Examiner had newsmen on the scene. It reported in its issue of May 14, 1960:
[Bridges] had been haranguing a group of people still in the rotunda, and crying, "I'm going to get a gang up and see the Mayor!"
The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin of May 13 gave the following account of Bridges' eviction:
[Bridges] was hustled out of the City Hall by police today after he started to address a group of demonstrators at the bottom of the main stairway inside the rotunda.
J. Edgar Hoover in his report on the riots, "Communist Target—Youth," stated:
Order had been restored when Harry Bridges, president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, suddenly appeared on the scene. Demanding to know what part firemen had played in the use of the fire hoses, Bridges commented that he would see if the firemen's pay could be cut. The day's activities closed with Archie Brown joining Bridges and shouting, "You tell them, Harry; they'll listen to you!"
Louis Goldblatt was also on hand on May 13. Goldblatt, for years, has been secretary-treasurer of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union and right-hand man of its Communist leader, Harry Bridges. Goldblatt, like Bridges, has been identified as a member of the Communist Party—and, like Bridges, has invoked the fifth amendment on Communist Party membership while testifying before this committee. Because of his long record of Communist activities, Goldblatt was refused a visa when he attempted to enter Japan in the Spring of 1959 to attend the organizing convention of the Communist-sponsored All Pacific and Asian Dock Workers' Trade Union Conference. He has also been denied entry to England.
As Goldblatt viewed the anti-committee demonstrators, he commented:
It's good to see students in motion again.
San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 1960)
Another person who turned out to give his support to the Communist-promoted demonstrations against the committee was the Nobel Prize chemist, Dr. Linus Pauling. His wife accompanied him. According to San Francisco press accounts, he and his wife joined in the march around the City Hall for a period of some 30 minutes.
"I hope these demonstrations mean the committee is on the way out," Dr. Pauling said. "Its actions are immoral.... The committee prevents people from exercising their Constitutional rights.
San Francisco Examiner, May 15, 1960)
Pauling said he was there to picket and "contribute to the effort to abolish the un-American Activities Committee, which I consider immoral because it subverts the constitution..."
Associated Press Dispatch, May 15, 1960)
Last year the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee issued a report based on the testimony of Dr. Pauling, who had appeared before it on June 21 and October 11, 1960, and also on an investigation of his background over a period of many years. This Senate subcommittee, in its report, drew the following conclusions regarding Dr. Pauling:
Dr. Pauling has figured as the No. 1 scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this country. He has participated in many international organizations and international conferences sponsored by the Communist peace offensive.
He has issued statements, or taken legal action, on behalf of the convicted atom bomb spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, the "Hollywood 10," the 12 Communist leaders convicted under the Smith Act, etc. He has, in these cases, invariably rejected the findings of the highest courts in the country, and expressed views in consonance with the positions of the Communist press and Communist-front organizations.
In his statements and his attitudes, Dr. Pauling has displayed a consistent pro-Soviet bias.
It is clear from his record and from his recent public statement...that Dr. Pauling believes that movements dedicated to peace and disarmament should collaborate with the Communists—or, as he put it, should be "open to all."
He has consistently opposed legislation and agencies set up by the American Government to safeguard itself against Communist subversion.
Dr. Pauling has, over the past decade, played a role of outstanding importance as organizer and spokesman in the United States for organizations recognized as part of the
― 44 ―Communist "peace" offensive. In recent years he has concentrated his efforts in the test ban field.1
The following quotation from the San Francisco Examiner of May 15, 1960, part of an article describing the demonstrations which took place on the last day of the hearings, also sheds light on the role played by the Communist Party in the events of May 12-14 in San Francisco:
While the crowd was milling about Polk Street and the Civic Center Plaza, hawkers were moving through them selling copies of The People's World, the Communist Party newspaper here.
Section IV
Communist Post-Hearing Action
The San Francisco Chronicle of May 15, 1960, published the following news item:
Attorney Puts Up Bail, Frees 50
Bail for 50 of 67 demonstrators arrested yesterday and Friday in protests at City Hall was provided by San Francisco attorney Charles Garry.
Garry was summoned to City Prison Friday to arrange bail for fellow attorney Marshall Krause, arrested as a "rioter."
On the scene, he said, "I saw how outrageous it was—they were herding those kids in there like cattle.... I decided to get everyone out."
Garry said he told bail bondsman Boyd Puccinneli to provide bail for any arrested demonstrators needing it.
Forty-seven took him up on it Friday, as did three who were arrested yesterday.
Garry estimated his cost at around $2,000, plus a "backing" of $18,000 if everyone should disappear.
An Old Hand at the Game
Who is Charles Garry?
On February 16, 1959, this committee released a report entitled "Communist Legal Subversion: The Role of the Communist Lawyer." This report, on pages 39-41, contained the following information concerning Attorney Charles Garry:
Charles R. Garry, 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.
― 45 ―
Mr. Garry was subpenaed as a witness by the committee on June 21, 1957, but refused to answer questions regarding activities in the Communist Party on the grounds of possible self-incrimination.
Communist-run organizations and campaigns in the Northern California area have 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 proceedings in San Francisco. In 1949, he also served as spokesman for a delegation—organized by the Civil Rights Congress—which appeared before a local United States attorney to protest contempt sentences 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 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 president, he signed a National Lawyers Guild friend of the court brief in 1954 in behalf of Mrs. Edith Brooks, who had been denied admission to the bar of California after refusing to tell a bar examining committee whether or not she had ever been a member of the Communist 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 national 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 opposition 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 meetings during the same year, he was billed as a speaker against this so-called "police
― 46 ―state" legislation and on one occasion personally joined a delegation to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors urging a board resolution to Congress against the bill. In his 1949 campaign for Congress, Mr. Garry's speeches continued to emphasize his opposition to official action against the Communist conspiracy. Typical was his radio speech in October 1949 in which he branded the Taft-Hartley Act, loyalty checks, deportations, and the 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 protesting 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 permission 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.
On page 25 of this same report, under the topical section "Candidates for Public Office," the following statement appeared:
The Independent Progressive Party, a political organization in the State of California 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 selecting 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 Communist Party, emphasized the alleged prominence of these candidates as "labor" or "civil rights" lawyers.
The Standard Party Line—"Police Brutality"
In his official report on the riots, J. Edgar Hoover makes the following statements which are evidence of Communist inspiration in the anti-committee demonstrations:
Immediately after the affair ended, the party's national leader, Gus Hall, congratulated the West Coast comrades for the initiative and leadership they displayed at all stages of the demonstrations.
― 47 ―
Particularly pleasing to party officials was the number of students involved in the demonstrations. They commented that there had not been that much "political activity" among student groups for years. Archie Brown, especially, was commended for the tremendous job he had done among the students, working with them in the corridors of City Hall and winning their sympathy.
Mickey Lima expressed his pleasure at the number of former party members the affair had brought back into the fold. He said that individual supporters the party had not seen or heard of in years seemed to "emerge from the woodwork" in response to the party's campaign.
At a party meeting on the night of May 20, 1960, Archie Brown disclosed how the party intended to use a followup campaign with campus students as the target. He stated that the party planned to emphasize "police brutality" as a rallying cry to attract the sympathy of student groups. He pointed out that he was particularly pleased with the fact that he had been invited to speak at Stanford University, adding that he had already spoken to students at the University of California in Berkeley. Brown said that the "People's World" had prepared a special supplement about the demonstrations for distribution to all the colleges and universities in the area, as well as for distribution to all waterfront workers.
The campaign is being carried out exactly as Brown outlined it. Not only Brown, but other Communists too, have been addressing student and youth groups in the area.
The party prepared 20,000 leaflets for distribution on campuses in the area. Captioned "From Blackmail to Blackjack," the leaflets stress the theme that, at the HCUA hearings, "students were peacefully defending the most cherished American freedoms," when "fire hoses, clubs and blackjacks" were used against them "without warning and without provocation" to "browbeat and smash the public opposition" to the HCUA. These leaflets were distributed by the party organization without cost for the sole purpose of exploiting the on-campus sympathies of students in the area. [Emphasis added.]
Although Archie Brown did not formally outline the Communist Party's police brutality campaign to party members until the party meeting of May 20th, it was actually instituted much earlier than this, in accordance with standard party operating procedures whenever it has been involved in a clash with police forces.
On May 18, Mickey Lima, the party chairman in the area, issued a formal statement on the hearings which opened with the following gloating comment:
The Un-American Activities Committee ended its hearings in San Francisco under the watchful and wrathful eyes of the greatest demonstration ever assembled against that body.
― 48 ―
His release went on to charge that—
The police used the method which is common to them—that of violence.
Lima charged the police with brutality, said that they had attacked the students, handled one of the witnesses "viciously," etc.
Communist Party influence on the student demonstrators was revealed on this score the very day after the riots took place. On Saturday, May 14, new slogans blossomed forth on signs carried by picketers outside the City Hall. Some of these slogans read as follows:
"Police Brutality—American?"
"Police Instigate `Riots' of the 13th"
On May 20, Attorney Vincent Hallinan accused the San Francisco police of using "excessive force and violence" in putting down the May 13 riots at the San Francisco City Hall. He demanded a special investigation of "police misconduct" and threatened that if the city refused to prosecute the officers responsible, he would bring formal court action. Hallinan also stated that any damage to the City Hall which resulted from the demonstrations should be assessed against the police officers involved.
Communists Everywhere Praise the Riots
Also significant is the fact that two columnists for the People's World, the West Coast Communist Party newspaper, subsequently tied the San Francisco riots in with the pattern of Communist-inspired violence and student rioting which had taken place in many other countries during the previous year or so.1
The Worker, Communist Party newspaper, in its issue of September 11, 1960, featured an interview with the late William Z. Foster, then honorary chairman of the U.S. Communist Party. One of the Worker's correspondents, Art Shields, wrote that he and Michael Gold had recently visited Foster at his country home to obtain the interview. The following excerpts from this interview provide further evidence that the Communists were behind the rioting in San Francisco.
And he [Foster] laughed gaily when he saw Mike. They had not met since Mike went West four years ago. And Mike was back with good news.
Mike's Good News
Mike's good news was about the youth in San Francisco....They seemed to have no political interests a year or two ago. But now they are active in every mass struggle.
And Mike told how San Francisco's youths overwhelmed the witchhunters of the Un-American Activities Committee in three days of stirring demonstrations this spring....
This was music to Bill. He always tried to get young folks around him as a ...Communist leader.
The San Francisco riots have also received favorable publicity in international Communist organs.
The September 1960 issue of Women of the Whole World, published in six languages by Moscow's international women's front, the Women's International Democratic Federation, featured an article entitled "Young America Marches for Peace." The opening words of the article were as follows:
San Francisco had not been in such a mood for many years. Those who had lamented, "What is the matter with American youth?" awoke one bright Saturday morning in May to find 5,000 of them massed at the City Hall where the Un-American Activities Committee was holding its public inquisition. They were there to demonstrate against the witchhunt....
The March 1961 issue of World Student News, published in Prague, Czechoslovakia, by the Moscow-controlled International Union of Students, featured an article, "Window on America." A picture of the rioters in the rotunda of the San Francisco City Hall was used to illustrate this article, which referred to—
the brilliant demonstration at San Francisco in May last when the House Un-American Committee came to hold a series of hearings ....
New Times, the Communist weekly published in Moscow in eight different languages, and other international Communist organs also featured similar accounts of the riots.
Point of the Trial?
Almost a year after the riots took place, University of California student Robert Meisenbach, the only person arrested for rioting against whom charges had not been dropped, was brought to trial. Meisenbach was accused of felonious assault—of beating a policeman on the head with the policeman's own club.1
Meisenbach's attorneys were Charles Garry and Jack Berman. Berman, a former assistant district attorney, had appeared before Judge Lenore D. Underwood in San Francisco on May 16, 1960, to request that the adults arrested for rioting be granted a delay to give them time to hire defense attorneys. San Francisco newspapers reported variously at the time that he represented 57, "some 57," and 59 of the arrestees and that he said he had been selected to represent these defendants as the spokesman for a group of ten lawyers, pending action by a defense committee made up of University of California and San Francisco State College faculty members, which was being formed to help the defendants hire attorneys. (On June 1, 1960, the charges against all defendants, except Meisenbach, were dismissed.)
The conduct of Meisenbach's defense by Attorneys Garry and Berman was revealing in view of the facts brought out by J. Edgar Hoover on the Communist Party's post-hearing "brutality" campaign against the San Francisco police—and in light of the Communist Party's widely recognized desire to discredit and, if possible, destroy J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and the Committee on Un-American Activities.
J. Edgar Hoover's report on the riots, released by this committee, did not even mention the name of Robert Meisenbach. It had no more to do with the question of Meisenbach's guilt or innocence than the numerous accounts of the rioting which appeared in major San Francisco newspapers, and in newspapers in all parts of the country which published accounts of the riots and how they had begun supplied by wire services which had reporters on the scene—and all of which agreed substantially with Hoover's report "Communist Target—Youth."
Yet, Attorney Jack Berman, who made the opening statement for Meisenbach and who cross-examined Patrolman Schaumleffel, the first prosecution witness and the policeman Meisenbach was charged with striking, immediately introduced Hoover's report into the trial and sought to discredit it by eliciting from Schaumleffel testimony to the effect that Meisenbach had not triggered the riots. Berman blamed the riots on the San Francisco police and particularly on Inspector Michael Maguire of the Intelligence (antisubversive) Unit who, he said, was "the sadistic man solely and singly responsible" for the rioting. He also claimed that Schaumleffel had told an unidentified police officer that he was not the victim of an assault by Meisenbach, but that he had injured his head when he had fallen and that Inspector Cecil Pharris of the Police Intelligence Unit and Schaumleffel had agreed between themselves that someone had to be arrested to explain "the brutality on Meisenbach." (When eventually identified and called to the witness stand to testify, this police officer flatly denied Berman's claim.)
Attorney Charles Garry, in his final argument to the jury, also pictured Inspector Maguire as the arch villain of the whole case, claimed that the police and other prosecution witnesses were perjurers, and that Meisenbach was the victim "of a horrendous and diabolical mistake made by one stupid cop."
When the trial ended in the acquittal of Meisenbach, Berman claimed that this was a "direct blow" to the Committee on Un-American Activities and that it completely discredited the film "Operation Abolition" and the police reports on which a few sentences in the film were based. "Both are filled with falsehoods," he said.
Summary
This report reveals not only that all responsible authorities completely support the Committee on Un-American Activities in its claim that the San Francisco riots were Communist-instigated, but also cites facts revealing that the following organizations, all either influenced or controlled outright by the Communist Party, were involved in the San Francisco demonstrations and riots:
- All Communist Party units in the San Francisco area;
- Citizens Committee To Preserve American Freedoms, San Francisco chapter;
- East Bay Community Forum;
- Bay Area Defense Committee;
- National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco chapter;
- International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union;
- SLATE;
- Student Committee for Civil Liberties;
- "The Daily Californian."
This report also reveals that Mickey Lima, Roscoe Proctor, and Juanita Wheeler, currently the three representatives of the Northern California District of the Communist Party on the party's National Committee, played important roles in the demonstrations and riots. It reveals that Archie Brown, second in command of the Communist Party in Northern California, a former member of the party's National Committee and political commissar of Company I, Battalion 58, of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, also played a vital part in both the pre-hearing activity and the agitation that took place while the committee was in session. The same is true of Frank Wilkinson, formerly the head of the security unit of the Communist Party in Los Angeles and, until he went to jail recently, the national leader of the party's "Abolish the committee" drive.
Several dozen other people, either party members, former party members, fellow travelers, or persons clearly under party influence, have also been named in this report as persons playing an active part in the San Francisco hearing agitation and rioting.
Despite these facts, there are those who claim that the riots were not Communist-instigated. The committee believes it will be apparent to all persons of average intelligence that, in making this claim, such persons are clearly flying in the face of all rules of evidence and common sense.
The committee has stated before that all the rioters were not Communists and that most of them were dupes who were tricked into violating the law by clever, well-trained Communist agitators. While this is true, the committee also feels that the following fact needs emphasis.
The great majority of the persons arrested in the course of the 3 days of the hearings in San Francisco are persons who would normally be considered adults and, therefore, fully responsible for their actions.
Many people have the mistaken impression that most of these people were extremely young. This is not true. Of the 70 persons arrested, 65 were non-juveniles. Their age breakdown is as follows:
- 4 were over 35 years of age;
- 4 were between 30-35 years of age;
― 52 ― - 13 were 25-29 years of age;
- 7 were 24 years old;
- 10 were 23 years old;
- 11 were 21 and 22 years of age;
- 16 between 18 and 20 years of age.
- In other words, 38 of the arrestees—more than half of them—were above normal college age, that is, 23 years of age or over.
It is worth noting, too, that after Judge Axelrod had dismissed charges against all of the arrestees except Meisenbach, 56 of them issued a statement (which had been prepared in advance) saying:
Nobody incited us, nobody misguided us. We were led only by our own convictions, and we still stand firmly by them.
There can be no doubt but that this statement was true as it applied to veteran Communist Vernon Bown, party youth leader Douglas Wachter, and a few other signers. The committee believes, however, that it is not true as far as other signers who are completely innocent of any Communist affiliation or sympathy are concerned.
On July 20, 1960, the San Francisco Examiner, in an editorial on J. Edgar Hoover's report on the riots, pinpointed the problem presented by the innocent signers of this statement and other persons in this country who are unwittingly used by agents of the Kremlin to do its work.:
The report by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on the Communist inspired City Hall riot of students May 13 is a typical case history of Communist methods in manipulating the innocent. Those familiar with Communist techniques won't find in the report a single new Communist device. The methods have been used thousands of times in this country and around the world.
Yet, old as they are, the methods worked again at City Hall—worked so successfully that even today, after Hoover's report, we imagine most of the student rioters are arguing, in all sincerity, that they were not duped, and that the FBI is mistaken.
Why do the old tactics still work in a country that is supposedly armed by knowledge against Communists' ways?
Answering the question posed above, we don't think that many citizens, particularly younger people, are armed with knowledge against Communist methods. A whole generation has passed since the depression days when the Communists tried to seize the labor movement and other groups, and fomented so much violence that most Americans came to recognize their spoor readily.
Perhaps we have forgotten that every generation must be taught anew the ways of this enemy. Not just taught the truth about Communism as an ideology and political force, but taught how to recognize Communist conspirators in action.
Footnotes
1 House Report No. 2228, 86th Congress, 2d Session.
1 Released by this committee in July, 1960.
2 See committee release Oct. 10, 1960.
3 See Congressional Record, May 3, 1961, pp. 6769-74, remarks of Rep. Donald Bruce, for text of this program.
1 Originally prepared by the Orange County (Calif.) chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
1 Because the Communist Party had no interest in these riots, they have not become the subject of heated controversy and the police involved in them have not been made the targets of campaigns charging them with brutality.
2 See "Mob Violence as a Communist Weapon," Chapter 1, Annual Report of the Committee on Un-American Activities for the Year 1960, and "Communist Anti-American Riots: Mob Violence as an Instrument of Red Diplomacy," Report of Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Aug. 26, 1960.
1 See Appendix C, Part 2 of this report, for complete text of Mayor Christopher's statement.
2 For further details of Judge Axelrod's stand on the riots, see Part 2 of this report.
1 All hostile witnesses in the hearing were subpenaed by the committee on the basis of evidence that they were, or had very recently been, members of the Communist Party.
1 Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, "The Northern California District of the Communist Party: Structure—Objectives—Leadership," Part 2, May 14 and June 10, 1960, pp. 2085, 2086.
1 All, according to evidence in the committee's possession, members of the Communist Party.
1 See "Communist Legal Subversion," House Report No. 41, Committee on Un-American Activities, Feb. 16, 1959, p. 36, for information on Dreyfus' Communist activities.
2 Ibid., pp. 36, 37.
1 Ibid., pp. 28-30.
2 Ibid., pp. 41-43.
3 This was a reference to an address delivered by Representative James Roosevelt on April 25, 1960, in which, among other things, he charged that "the Committee is closer to being dangerous to America in its conception than most of what it investigates."
1 Should be "of".
1 She escaped testifying by pleading a heart attack (after, as the film "Operation Abolition" reveals, beating one of the policemen summoned to evict her and her codemonstrators with her handbag).
1 See Appendix A, Part 2, of this report, for full text of this statement.
1 A member of the Executive Committee of the Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
1 A member of the Executive Committee of the Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the $$Word$$ Committee on Un-American Activities.
1 President of the Bay Area Student Committee for the Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
1Testifying before the Senate Investigating Committee on Education of the California Legislature in 1951, Dr. Pauling refused to say if he was then a dues-paying member of the Communist Party or if he had been a member of the party in the past. He subsequently submitted a statement to the president of the California Institute of Technology in which he declared: I am not a Communist. I have never been a Communist. I have never been involved with the Communist Party. When recalled before the committee, Dr. Pauling affirmed the truth of his statement but, when asked to tell the committee under oath that he was not a Communist, refused to do so. In his appearance before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1960, he denied that he had ever been a member of the Communist Party.
1 See Annual Report for the Year 1960, House Committee on Un-American Activities, pp. 13-16, for details and additional information regarding Communist Party reaction to riots.
1 See Part 2 of this report for an account of the major developments in the Meisenbach trial.
Title: The Truth about the Film Operation Abolition
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