Ferman, the Washington representative, whose job it is to observe all the hearings here, brought out the point that the difficulty was not so much the mere one man being present and presiding, but the fact that one man would make observations on the course of the testimony. In other words, we are trying to find out what, precisely, is the nature of the abuse in a one-man hearing? Dr. MATTHEWS. I believe you covered that point with Congressman Clardy but may I give you an illustration of that? Twenty-five years ago this spring, a committee of the House was set up to investigate allegations made by Dr. William A. Wirt, a great and patriotic educator, since deceased. The chairman of that committee, on the floor of the House, made a statement, clothed with congressional immunity, about which nobody protested at the time, to the effect that Dr. Wirt had served a jail term as a German agent in World War I. It was a malicious falsehood made out of whole cloth. There wasn't a word to justify it. The whole committee got credit for the chairman's statement on the floor and I may say that as journalistic practices generally go, and I do not want to appear to single out the New York Times-the New York Times carried Chairman Bullwinkle's allegation of this prison term in a big, front-page story. Seven days later the chairman, Mr. Bullwinkle, of North Carolina, retracted and apologized, declaring himself that there had not been the slightest foundation for his statement. That was carried in a tiny little 12-inch space on page 14. Mr. MORRIS. Will you give us those dates, not necessarily now, but will you supply Mr. Berkovitch with them? Dr. MATTHEWS. I would be glad to. Mr. BERKOVITCH. Going back to the one-man hearing, was it the practice in your committee to hold these hearings without notice to other members of the committee, or was there a contrary practice? Dr. MATTHEWS. No, indeed; the practice on the committee was to keep all of the members fully apprized of the plans for hearings. There were never any exceptions to that, to the best of my recollection. Mr. BERKOVITCH. If a member wished to attend a hearing, he had notice of it and could do so? Dr. MATTHEWS. That's right. Mr. BERKOVITCH. His absence was his own decision rather than any fault on the part of the committee procedure, is that the point? Dr. MATTHEWs. They were always more than welcome. In fact, every effort was made, I think, to induce them to be present, and may I say that for the 18 days that I was executive director of the Senate committee last year I personally gave written notice over my own signature to every member of the committee if hearings were to be held, whether in Washington or out of Washington, and not only was that notice sent over my own signature, but a check was made to find out if the Senator had received it and whether or not he was going to be present. Mr. CLARDY. May I add that that is precisely the practice we are following today and have consistently in our committee; but we have the same trouble that you are talking about. Senator JENNER. Sometimes is there only one man there? Mr. CLARDY. I had an instance in Michigan where I was chairman of a subcommittee; this may illustrate the point. Three of us were designated as a subcommittee with me the chairman. Came the St. Lawrence Waterway. Three of us got on a plane and came to Washington to vote. It is important to a Michigan Member to be here on that bill. I went back and what happened? The other two did not show up. I was stymied because it was the understanding before I left that some of the witnesses might be cited for contempt and we wanted at least 2 out of the 3-man committee present. Because of that unofficial agreement we were tied up and we did not have a hearing for a day until I could get on the phone and get somebody out there to substitute for the missing members. Senator JENNER. Thank you, Congressman. Mr. BERKOVITCH. May I ask you this? With respect to the procedure in the Dies committee, while you were research director of that body, was there any policy as to consulting with other Government agencies when you came upon evidence that a crime had been committed, or evidence of that nature. Did you have a procedure you followed as to communicating with the Department of Justice or some other appropriate Government body? Dr. MATTHEWS. I can give you an illustration which will perhaps be a better answer than a generalized statement. For weeks-yes, for months-our committee staff worked at the State Department in the files of old passports to see if we could recognize from photographs fake passports. We had the assistance of Ray Murphy at the State Department, a veteran known to many of you. In the course of that searching we found a passport made out, I believe, in the name of Nicholas Dellant with a picture of Earl Browder. So, when Browder was on the witness stand we were ready for him. Browder was asked, "Have you ever traveled on a fake passport?" He had never heard of the fifth amendment, believe it or not. He answered, "Yes." And with the cooperation of the State Department, and the committee, Browder, as you know, went to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for traveling on that fake passport. That is one of many illustrations. The Government investigating agencies on the investigating level, not the policymaking level, gave us the fullest cooperation and in return got double cooperation from the committee. Mr. BERKOVITCH. Dr. Matthews, there has also been a claim here that the committee on which you served maintained files on very large numbers of Americans, and that the material in those files has been made available in an indiscriminate way, and that unsubstantiated derogatory material contained in such files has been made available to the public generally. We are very interested, I think, in finding out whether that is the case and if it is not the case, what procedure you follow. Dr. MATTHEWS. So far as any information that I have is concerned, it parallels exactly what Congressman Clardy said here. The committee at no time, so far as I know, divulged to private agencies or persons information in the committee files. The information there was available only to members, Members of Congress, or to Government investigating agencies. Mr. MORRIS. Don't you think the releasing of names of people on Communist-front organizations should be done with a great deal of care because very often you may even get 2 persons with the same name and 1 person might be prominent and the other person would not be prominent and presumably most people would come to the con clusion that the prominent person was a member of a certain organization. When Congressman Dies was testifying, we pointed out the difficulty we would run into that some person may be listed by a Communist-front organization even though that person had no intention of being so listed. Dr. MATTHEWs. I am always in favor of exercising the greatest care on behalf of fairness in these matters. I would like to make just this observation as to how most of these names are obtained by the Communists. I know something of that from firsthand experience. In fact, in my testimony before the Dies committee you will find quite a full account of it. The Communist-front organizations have a long list of names. If it wants 100 sponsors for a letterhead or a manifesto, a petition, an open letter, usually the telephone is used. There will never be any written record available. The secretary of the front organization calls the college professor, we will say: "May we use your name?" He says, "Yes." If 10 years later he wants to deny it or say he doesn't remember, of course that follows as a natural result. However, this is also a tactic, and I know from firsthand experience that where a man has been called 40 times for 40 different fronts and always said, "Yes," the 41st time they don't bother to call him; they just assume that the answer is "Yes," and down goes his name. Of course that puts him in the strategic position of saying he did not lend his name. He did not, as a matter of fact. I can tell you as I told the Dies committee 16 years ago, on at least 3 or 4 different occasions I found my name on the printed matter of these enterprises. I knew that I had never heard of them and I say that I had never authorized the use of my name. But I had done it so often that I was not entitled to a squawk. Mr. BERKOVITCH. Dr. Matthews, what was the practice in the committee when you were with it as to subpenaing witnesses? That is, from whom did the authority come to subpena a particular witness and have him appear at a hearing? Dr. MATTHEWS. The subpena was signed by the Speaker of the House. That would be the ultimate authority. I do not know how it is now but the subpenas we issued were signed by the Speaker and the presumptive authority for the issuing of the subpena was the chairman. We may have been a little lax in that respect at times. If we had a case, I don't think we always bothered to get the written or categorical authorization from the chairman to issue the subpena. We just asked one of our agents to issue the subpena; Steve Birmingham in New York, God bless his memory, must have issued hundreds of subpenas without discussing it thoroughly with the chairman. I think perhaps the regulations have been tightened up since then in practically all committees. Senator JENNER. But even at that, in the early days of issuing subpenas, did you just throw out a dragnet and bring in people pellmell? Dr. MATHEWS. No, sir. Senator JENNER. Did you always have some sound basis for issuing a subpena? Dr. MATTHEWS. I can give you two illustrations of the soundness. To date, there have been 99 indictments and in most cases convictions under the so-called Smith Act, the Alien Registration Act of 1940 which, by the way, was largely inspired in the mind of Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia by the work of Congressman Dies. There have been 99 indictments. In all, about 22 cases. The Dies committee named these people 15-16-maybe 14 years ago. They are just now in the last few years getting around to parading to jail. There have been 335 deportation orders issued for alien Communists, a majority of the 335 names appear in the records of the Dies committee which I think is a pretty good score. Mr. BERKOVITCH. Would you repeat those figures? Dr. MATTHEWS. Ninety-nine indictments have been handed down in Smith Act cases. Some of them are still awaiting trial. They have not all been convicted. All but 22 of these persons indicted under the Smith Act were named by the Dies committee as Communists. There have been 335 deportation orders issued against alien Communists. A majority of these were named by the old Dies committee. Senator JENNER. Dr. Matthews, as we go through the records of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the other committees, we want to know whether or not you would be available to help us explain points and gather information from time to time as we proceed? Dr. MATTHEWS. Yes, sir, Senator. Senator JENNER. I want to thank you for appearing here today. If there are no further questions, I want to announce that the next hearing of this committee will be Friday at 11:30. The witness will be former Senator Owen Brewster, who was ranking minority member for 4 years and chairman during the 80th Congress of the Special Senate Committee Investigating War Expenditures, a member of the joint committee investigating the Pearl Harbor attack, and a member of the Joint Armed Services-Foreign Relations Committee which investigated the removal of General MacArthur. We will recess at this time until 11:30 Friday morning. Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing. Whereupon, at 4:05 p. m. the committee adjourned until Friday, July 16, 1954, at 11:30 a. m.) INVESTIGATING COMMITTEES HEARINGS BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES OF THE COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION UNITED STATES SENATE EIGHTY-THIRD CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON S. Res. 65, S. Res. 146, S. Res. 223, S. Res. 249, RESOLUTIONS RELATING TO RULES OF PROCEDURE 49144 JULY 16 AND 20, 1954 PART 6 Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules and Administration UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1954 |