Harry's Day in Court

As his perjury case dragged through its third month in San Francisco's federal court, Harry Renton Bridges had begun to seem the forgotten man at his own trial. The spotlight had wavered for weeks between the Government's backslid-Red witnesses and Defense Attorney Vincent Hallinan, whose apoplectic conduct had brought him a six-month sentence (which was deferred) for contempt of court. But last week Harry Bridges finally had the full blaze of the limelight all to himself.

At 48, his wavy pompadour was flecked with grey and his bony face was pale and lined. But as he sat in the witness chair, he cocked his impressive beak at the prosecution's attorneys with a parakeet's assurance. His Australian snarl was as sardonic as ever, as he tried to refute the Government's charges--that he had been a Communist and had lied in denying it when he became a citizen in 1945.

"Utterly Ridiculous." Bridges had no apologies to offer. In repeating his life story and describing the evolution of his longshoremen's union, he described himself as an old-fashioned radical who took the help of Communists or anyone else if it meant helping the union. But he denied that the comrades had ever controlled him. "I don't want to boast," he said, "but I've forgotten more about the waterfront than [they] ever knew. It's utterly ridiculous . . ."

Why hadn't he signed up with the C.P. himself? "I was no fool," he said. "It wasn't a question of agreement or disagreement with the Communist Party so much except that it would subject me to deportation."

During Bridges' three days of direct testimony, spectators seemed fascinated, not only by his rasping assurance, but by his astringent and stinging humor. His audience roared with laughter when he happily recounted what happened after he discovered FBI men were searching his room in Manhattan's Edison Hotel in 1940. He typed a series of mysterious notes, tore them up, and planted them in his wastebasket; then he rented a room in a nearby hotel and nightly watched through binoculars as the G-men tried to put. the pieces together.

"Rats & Stool Pigeons." Bridges lost neither his poise nor his apparent fascination for his own voice during a long and repetitive cross-examination at the hands of soft-spoken Special Prosecutor F. Joseph ("Jiggs") Donohue.

He .talked volubly and on the party line when asked his opinions on foreign affairs. Of China: "The people have taken over as they did here in 1776--it's a people's revolution." On Britain: "If you dare to strike, troops come in and shoot you down." Of the occupation of Poland: "The country had collapsed and Russia figured she was going to be invaded." But he seldom missed a chance to throw in a scornful gibe: "These days, people trying to find out where you stand on the U.S. don't ask you that, but where you stand on Russia or Greece." When the prosecutor cracked, "You use the word 'line' with facility, don't you?" Bridges said blandly, "I'm a sailor, Mr. Donohue."

Point by point, Bridges denied the Government's charges that he had attended secret meetings of the Communist Party's top brass. He assailed the Government witnesses with venom, as "liars, rats and stool pigeons," continually reminded the jury that the Government had tried unsuccessfully to prove him a Communist twice before. In talking of the Government's most convincing witness--Newsman George Wilson, who charged that he had seen Bridges at a Communist meeting in San Francisco--the longshore leader cried: "[They were] pointing a gun at him. He looked like a guy who was about to croak because he was telling a lie and it might land me in jail."

"This Is My Country." In seven days on the stand he steadfastly refused to speak a single harsh word against the Communists. But he insisted that he had never crossed the Red threshold. "This is my country," said Bridges. "I don't believe Russia wants to make war on us, but if she does . . . the people of the U.S. will fight and so will I ..."

By week's end it was. obvious that Harry Bridges had been his own best witness. Nobody--most of all Prosecutor Donohue --wanted to predict the trial's outcome. Said the prosecutor, wryly, to a group of law students: "Gentlemen, if you study hard ... you might eventually be given the honor of trying the sixth Bridges case."

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