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81st Congress Lawyer Guild

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Report on the National Lawyer Guild, 1950

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THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 5 

The committee does not dispute the right of witnesses appearing before it to have the benefit of counsel. However, the committee believes that the attorneys mentioned above knowingly or unknowingly function under a directive issued by the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party which prohibits its members from cooperating with the committee when subpoenaed before it. Cases are known where persons subpoenaed before the committee indicated a willingness to cooperate with the committee, but when these persons consulted certain of the attorneys listed above they refused to answer questions put to them by the committee.

CONTEMPT FOR AMERICAN COURTS
The real nature of the guThe real nature of the guild's philosophy comes into sharp focus during court procedures. Almost without exception, its leading members, despite their oath as lawyers to uphold the dignity of the court and respect the constitutional mores of jurisprudence, seek to bring the courts and its procedures into disrepute. They substitute insult for argument, resort to intimidation of judges by picket lines, parades,, and personal abuse. In other words, these leaders of the National Lawyers Guild have followed standard Communist practice which provides that — A Communist must utilize a political trial to help on the revolutionary struggle. Our tactics in the public proceedings of the law courts are not tactics of defense but of attack. Without clinging to legal formalities, the Communist must use the trial as a means of bringing his indictments against the dominant capitalist regime and of courageously voicing the views of his party (Johannes Buchner, The Agent Provocateur in the Labour Movement, Workers Library Publishers, New York, pp. 51-52). 

Federal Judge Harold Medina, in citing for contempt the attorneys who defended the 1 1 Communists convicted in New York of advocating the overthrow of the United States Government by force and violence, noted the frequent, and deliberate efforts on the part of the guild attorneys to inject Communist propaganda into the trial. Medina handed down sentences of contempt of court to the following attorneys for the Communists, all of whom are members of the National Lawyers 
Guild: Richard Gladstein, 6 months; George Crockett, 4 months; Maurice Sugar, 30 days; Louis McCabe, 4 months ; Abraham Isserman, 4 months; Harry Sacher, 6 months. 

Abraham L. Pomerantz, a member of the guild, appeared as defense attorney for Valentin Gubitchev, a Russian charged with spying against the United States. Pomerantz based most of his questions on 
notes passed to him by a representative of the Soviet Embassy, seated at his side during the trial. The Russian official, an agent of the NKVD (Soviet secret police) named Novikoff, Hterally stage-managed 
the Gubitchev defense, a procedure without precedent in United States court history. 

Not only has the behavior of guild attorneys been noted officially by several Federal judges, but the American Bar Association in 1949 received from its board of governors a recommendation that the American Bar Association bar from membership any person holding 
membership in the National Lawyers Guild. The action was based on the grounds that guild lawyers held behefs "mcompatible with membership in the American Bar Association." 

6 THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 

ATTACKS ON THE FBI 

Any action on legislative or executive levels of the Government which tends to interfere with the Communist fifth-column operations in this country is guaranteed to evoke a vicious campaign of opposition 
from the National Lawyers Guild. 

A striking example is the present attack by the guild on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, echoing the current line of the Daily Worker 
and Moscow. The guild today is crying for an investigation of the FBI, the vigilant guardian of our national security, on the ridiculous 
grounds that it is a "Gestapo" or "political police" whose — practices and policies * * * violate our laws, infringe our liberties, and threaten our democracy. 

This attack was timed simultaneously with the tactics employed by the defense in the espionage case involving Judith Coplon. 

This campaign is simply an intensification of a long-standing guild effort to discredit and vitiate the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At its fifth annual convention in 1941, the guild also took action opposing 
"the Gestapo activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." At that time, the guild called for removal of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, demanded that Congress reduce the FBI appropriation, and registered opposition to a — pending appropriation bill to allot that Bureau $100,000 for the investigation of so-called subversive activities of Government employees (Lawyers Guild Review, June 1941, p. 66). 

J. Edgar Hoover, testifying on February 7, 1950 before a Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations, noted that the National Lawyers Guild has vociferously denounced the FBI since 1940. Mr. Hoover quoted a guild member as having stated the following at a meeting of 
this front organization in 1940: 

If we keep up the constant criticism of the FBI and of Hoover, and if this criticism is systematically kept up and followed all the time, particularly by organizations, it can and it will weaken the power of the FBI and hamper them very effectively. 

There is no doubt in the opinion of the committee that the National Lawyers Guild attacks on the Federal Bureau of Investigation are part of an over-all Communist strategy aimed at weakening our 
Nation's defenses against the international Communist conspiracy. 

The propaganda disseminated by the guild regarding the FBI is a duplicate of the line put out by Moscow, as demonstrated by the following broadcast by the Soviet Home Service short-wave network, dated February 7, 1950: 

FBI Center of Activities 

The center of the police terror organization of the United States is the notorious FBI. This institution was founded in 1908. From the day of its foundation 
the FBI became the jailer of the population. The head of this organization is responsible to the United States President and keeps him informed of future plans 
and results of past activity. The true bosses of the FBI, however, are the 60 families of American millionaires. All of the activities of the FBI as well as the rest of the United States Government are directed toward the defense of the interests of these actual rulers of modern America. 

The FBI has been turned into an organization for intimidating the United States man in the street by means of all forms of violence, blackmail, terror, and 
other police measures. The monopoly press knows no limit to its praise of the FBI, which was some time ago pronounced by the UP to be "the greatest national 

THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GTHLD 7 

Institution of the United States." The FBI budget grows yearly. In 1949 it was almost * * * dollars. To this must be added the so-called special funds allocated by the President and the Government and the generous and certainly not insignificant presents from the monopolies who wish to develop still further the regime of police terror with a view to the final subjugation of the American people. 

SUPPRESSION OF PROGRESSIVES 

At a time when the United States is the mainstay of the greatest imperialist offensive, the FBI has openly become the tool of hysterical, imperialist reaction 
determined to suppress all progressive thought in the country. The kings of Wall Street, the FBI, and the United States Department of Justice act in close 
contact with the ultra reactionary Committee for the Investigation of Un-American Activities. 

The attitude of the National Lawyers Guild and the Moscow- broadcasts bears a striking resemblance to the following editorial of the Daily Worker of June 13, 1950, page 7: Alibi for Stool Pigeons 

America's No. 1 lawbreaker, J. Edgar Hoover, wants more stool pigeons. His private police machine gets bigger and bigger every year. This govern- ment within the government taps phones illegally, opens private mail illegally, and infests American life with criminal perjurers. As it grows, it devours what is left of the United States Constitution. No secret political police can ever be justified on the basis of the American Constitution. This police makes its own laws and its own rules and operates with its own definitions of "disloyalty" and "subversion." ****** 4> 

The boss of this imitation-Gestapo now wants more money from Congress for more secret stoolies. Naturally, he can only get his dough if he drums up a 
picture of the terrible menace we face from the "Communists." The FBI's "thought control" boss hints that there are 540,000 Americans he would like to 
put in jail. He says they are "operatives" who are just crawling all over J. Edgar Hoover looking for our "secrets." * * * 

AGAINST LOYALTY PROGRAM 

The National Lawyers Guild has also conducted a malicious campaign against the loyalty program, which was inaugurated under Executive Order 9835, on March 21, 1947, in the executive branch of the Government, to rid the Government of subversive and disloyal 
employees. Resolutions attacking the loyalty program as illegal and demanding that the courts declare it unconstitutional were adopted at the national convention of the guild held in New York City in May 1950. At a public forum held under guild auspices on February 11, 1948, the loyalty program was attacked as a thought-control measure. The guild's opposition to the loyalty program was compiled into a 
23-page report entitled "The Constitutional Right to Advocate Political, Social, and Economic Changes — An Essential of Democracy," which was sent to Government officials. Members of Congress, the judiciary, the bar, labor and civic organizations. The conclusion of this report charged that "our citizens are denied the right to advocate fundamental social, economic, and political change." The guild has denounced the Attorney Generals listing of subversive organizations to be used in the Federal loyalty program as a menace to the liberty of the American people. The Guild's committee on constitutional rights and liberties has issued a report on the legality of the action of the Attorney General of the United States in issuing 
H. Kept. 3123, 81-2 2 

8 THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 

a listing of organizations as subversive pursuant to the President's loyalty order, in which it urged revocation and cancellation of the list. 
OPPOSES LEGISLATIVE ACTION ON COMMUNISM 

Any legislation which would curb the activities of Communists, regardless of the importance of such legislation to our national security, 
is faced with bitter opposition from the National Lawyers Guild. At its first convention, the guild opposed statutes providing that teachers take a loyalty oath or those "making criminal advocacy of or 
membership in any political party" (Daily Worker, February 23, 1937, p. 5). The latter was directed against pending legislation against criminal syndicalism, affecting the legal status of the Communist Party in various States. 

It has opposed legislation directed against the Communist Party, Voorhis registration bill, H. R. 1054; the Tenney law in California barring the Communist Party from the ballot (Lawyers Guild Review, 
June 1941, p. 66; Daily Worker, May 18, 1942, p. 5). 

The National Lawyers Guild denounced the anti-Communist pro- visions of the Taft-Hartley law on the ground that it was unconstitutional. Leonard B. Boudin, chairman of the labor law committee of the National Lawyers Guild, testified before a labor subcommittee of 
the House of Representatives concerning the non-Communist affidavit of the Taft-Hartley bill. At that time, Mr. Boudin stated that the non-Communist affidavit was an insult to the American worker 
because Congress thereby told the workers they were not wise enough to manage their own affairs. 

On May 7, 1948, the National Lawyers Guild denounced the Mundt- Nixon bill to control subversive activities. In commenting on the Mundt-Nixon bill, the Lawyers Guild Review, bimonthly publication of the National Lawyers Guild, made the following statement: 

It would be a costly error to treat this measure as merely another unwise legislative proposal to be analyzed and then routinely disapproved. We believe it is far more than that. Its concepts are so hostile to our democratic way of life that its enactment into law would amount to nothing less than a coup d'etat in constitutional guise. 

The parallel between the above opinion and that of Simon W. Ger- son, who represented the Communist Party, U. S. A., before the Committee on Un-American Activities on May 2, 1950, is striking. We 
quote his comment in part: 

Any bill which seeks such objectives will necessarily do force and violence to the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Let us therefore understand the 
issue clearly: The United States can have the Constitution or it can have the Mundt-Nixon bill. It can't have both. On May 2, 1950, Harry C. Lamberton, representing the National Lawyers Guild, testified before the Committee on Un-American Activities against the Nixon bill (H. R. 7595). 

In the July 14, 1949, .issue>f j the Daily Worker, the National Lawyers Guild was reported as urging the defeat of the Government's bill to fix heavier penalties for unlawful possession of secret 
documents, as referred to in the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and to lengthen the statute of limitations’ on prosecution of peacetime 
spies. 

THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 9 

The autumn 1949 issue of The Guild Lawyer listed the following-^ as highlights of the guild's activities: 

(a) Opposition to S. 595 and H. R 4703 finternal security bill) as written, and urging drastic revisions to conform to constitutional guaranties; 

(b) Opposition to S. 1694 and S 1832 giving Attorney General authority to deport aliens associated with or aiding groups which he finds (without standards or 
hearings) are "subversive of 'Communist' controlled";