Summer Madness

In the 28-year history of the House Un-American Activities Committee--more than a quarter-century filled with controversy, color and some pretty interesting characters--Washington had never seen anything quite like last week's hearing. It opened with the noisy appearance in a House caucus room of a young man named Jerry Clyde Rubin, who wore a Revolutionary War uniform and clutched 300 copies of the Declaration of Independence while his woman lawyer screamed, "The police are trying to take away my client's documents!" It never recovered from that tone-setter. From then until adjournment at week's end, the hearing was marked by insults to the committee, vain posturings, ejections by force, arrests and an often unholy din from the audience of 400, many of them hirsute Vietnik types. For sheer summer madness, it set a standard that, hopefully, Washington will be hard put to duplicate.

Quick Controversy. The hearing was called to gather information for a pending bill that would make it a crime, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, to give, solicit or advocate the giving of material aid to "any hostile foreign power"--North Viet Nam, for instance --or to impede the movements of U.S. military personnel and materiel. Some protest groups have collected funds to buy medical supplies for Vietnamese Communists, and on a few occasions have attempted to block troop trains--acts that would be treasonable in war time but are difficult to punish legally in peacetime. Chairman Joe Pool of Texas, sponsor of the bill, and his subcommittee colleagues summoned both the practitioners of these methods and friendly witnesses to appear before them.

The controversy began even before the hearing. The American Civil Liberties Union, which supplied a half-dozen lawyers to represent twelve hostile witnesses, brought suit in Federal Court to prevent the questioning of witnesses on constitutional grounds. The A.C.L.U. charged, even before the hearing opened, that it would exert "an immediate and irreparable chilling effect" on the witnesses' rights under the First Amendment. A longtime challenger of the committee, the A.C.L.U. did not really have much hope of stopping the hearing. But, to nearly everyone's astonishment, District Court Judge Howard Corcoran granted a temporary restraining order to allow a three-judge appeals panel to deal with the constitutional question. Corcoran's action was unprecedented--no judge had ever before enjoined a congressional committee hearing--and it brought a roar of protest from Congressmen. Just before the hearing was to open, a three-judge panel, including Corcoran himself, dissolved the injunction and put off the constitutional question for future deliberation.

No Persecuted Mien. When the witnesses and lawyers began showing up in the hearing room, it quickly became obvious that they had little resemblance to those accused in years past of subversive deeds and associations. Far from having a furtive or persecuted mien, the members of "the New Left," most of them in their 20s, aggressively badgered both the subcommittee and friendly witnesses. Rather than answer unpleasant questions with silence--or take the Fifth Amendment--they used them as springboards for more protest. Three of the witnesses, to the subcommittee's surprise, openly confessed that they were Communists or "Marxist-Leninist," and one declared that he was "proud" to say that he had collected money "for the victims of U.S. aggression in North Viet Nam." Some of the testimony concerned a far-out Manhattan school called the Free University of New York, whose arcane course titles include "The Search for Authentic Sexual Experience," "Hallucinogenic Drugs" and "AntiAuthoritarian Anthropology."

Rarely has a congressional committee been subjected to such abuse. One witness insisted on referring to Chairman Pool as "Joe-Joe," and another called the pending bill "the cesspool bill," declaring: "It seems to me that Mr. Pool is rather a fool." Phillip Luce, a friendly witness who last year deserted the Progressive Labor Party, was constantly called "a fink" by both the witnesses and the audience. One witness refused to answer a question on the ground that the committee was "a racist committee," and another stated: "I will not answer that question on grounds it nauseates me and I might vomit all over the table." Several witnesses referred to the hearing as "a farce," an "inquisition" and a "kangaroo court," and one went so far as to call its members "cowards" and "traitors."

Yelling & Screaming. Thus provoked, Chairman Pool and the subcommittee ran out of patience, and in the process further sacrificed decorum and good judgment. Pool pounded his gavel heatedly, ordered witnesses and spectators removed bodily. By week's end, more than 50 people had been shoved, carried and otherwise escorted out; 54 persons, including some who were outside the hearing chamber, were arrested. The eviction that caused the biggest storm was that of New York A.C.L.U. Lawyer Arthur Kinoy, who obstreperously protested testimony concerning one of his clients, ignored several requests to be seated and finally had to be carried out, yelling and screaming, by U.S. marshals. He was arrested and booked for disorderly conduct, and was later convicted in General Sessions Court and given a $50 suspended fine. After his eviction, the other lawyers walked out, deciding to boycott the hearings.

If both the witnesses and the committee contributed to the confusion, the lawyers certainly compounded it. From the outset they violated the committee's written rules, which state that a lawyer may only advise his client. Some of the lawyers referred to the committee session as a "court," seeming to assume that they had all the rights that they do in court, such as objection, questioning and crossexamination. Several challenged the committee loudly, tried to make speeches, outshouted the chairman and cut into testimony. In a court of law, most of them would have been evicted for their conduct.

No Laurels. Virtually no one came out of the hearings with enhanced reputation, and the week's sessions, by and large, produced very little that was new about the New Left. Chairman Pool recessed the hearings somewhat earlier than expected in hopes that the Vietnik witnesses and their claque would get into their chartered buses and leave Washington without further fuss. Just before adjournment, a voice from the audience began to cry: "I object! I object! I object!" It was Jerry Rubin, the man in Revolutionary War uniform, who, in all the furor, had never got a chance to testify. But, as he was hustled from the room by marshals, he once again had his picture taken.

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