munity Council, Toledo, Ohio; Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, D. C.; and Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Youngstown, Ohio.

As part of a democratic society whose security ultimately depends on the maintenance of a sound and healthy political structure, Jews must share the concern of all groups in America over encroachments upon individual liberties. Democracy is indivisible. No one of its fundamental features can be vitiated or destroyed without imperiling the whole. Neither the Jewish community nor any other segment of our population can afford to be complacent or aloof when confronted with consistent assaults upon individual freedoms.

The threat of communism to free institutions everywhere must be faced. A common and fundamental theme of both Judaism and democracy is the concern with the sanctity and dignity of the individual. Our Jewish history and tradition have inspired a devotion to the principle of individual liberty and have rendered us sensitive to any attacks on human freedom. Accordingly, Jewish organizations have consistently opposed communism and repudiated the limitations on freedom which inhere in it and in the methods it employs.

The large number of congressional investigations into virtually every aspect of our national life, especially into the acutely sensitive areas of loyalty and internal security, has emphasized anew the problem of reconciling competing public interests.

The proper exercise of the legislative function assumes that the legislature will be empowered to acquire information necessary to the intelligent and effective formulation of legislative recommendations. Indeed there is a legitimate need for wide public knowledge about the conduct of government and the administration of public office. Congressional committee investigations in the past unquestionably have made notable contributions leading to the enactment of significant legislation and the detection of corruption in government.

Public concern over the conduct of current investigations does not stem from hostility to legislative investigating committees as such but from the absence of controls over committee activities and from the excesses which some committee members have, therefore, been free to indulge in.

The need for Congress to be informed cannot justify or excuse abandoning the fair hearings that Americans traditionally have thought inseparable from any just system of laws. Recent events have underscored the importance of insuring that witnesses or other persons affected by proceedings before investigating committees will not be unjustly accused or degraded, and that they will not be forced to a public avowal and justification of wholly irrelevant private beliefs, and that all persons summoned to testify will receive opportunity for full and fair explanation of any acts called into question. We pride ourselves on having created a government of laws rather than of men. The legislative investigating committee, because it functions without statutory restraints, remains the outstanding exception to this general principle. It enables irresponsible individuals without check by a regulatory standard to exercise profound, often disastrous, influence over the lives of others. It denies those who have been pilloried any basis for defense or appeal.

We believe that the advantages of congressional investigations can be retained and yet made compatible with individual liberties if we

introduce in this area the orderly processes that characterize our other legal institutions. We do not undertake any detailed analysis of the measures pending before your committee, nor do we undertake to frame suggested legislation. We are concerned, rather, with putting before you some principles that we believe should govern the conduct of legislative investigating committees. Adoption of these principles by Congress will, we believe, insure fairness to the individual witness or person affected by the conduct of the hearing. They will aid the committees in discovering the facts involved in the inquiry and will strengthen and bolster public confidence in legislative investigations.

We believe that Congress should enact a code of fair procedures binding upon its investigating committees based upon the following principles:

1. Congressional investigations should be limited in scope to those matters in which Congress may legislate or exercise any other power specifically granted by the Constitution. The obtaining of evidence for use in criminal prosecutions or educating the public at best should be a byproduct but never the primary purpose of a congressional investigation.

The congressional power to investigate is not specifically stated in the Constitution. It is an implied one sanctioned by the courts to make effective the other powers of Congress. Lacking a general power to investigate, Congress can only conduct inquiries to gather information for legislative purposes and to check on the administration and enforcement of law and the economy and efficiency of government. A congressional committee therefore must not function as a grand jury. Nor should it exercise its powers for the purpose of exposing individuals or holding them up to public scorn.

2. One-man investigating committees should be prohibited. All phases of an investigation, including the authorization of subsidiary inquiries, the hiring of staff, the scheduling of hearings, the subpenaing of witnesses, and the releasing of public statements and reports, should represent the considered judgment of the majority of the committee. Sworn testimony should be taken only in the presence of at least two members of a committee.

When Congress authorizes a committee to conduct an investigation, it contemplates that all important decisions in its course will be taken after due deliberation by all members of the committee. A committee should not delegate its powers to one of its members and a committee chairman should not usurp the powers of other committee members. Full committee deliberation prevents abuse of power, arbitrary or capricious action, and partisan exploitation of a committee's function. It is particularly important that a witness who runs the risk of criminal prosecution for contempt of a committee that lacks the procedural safeguards afforded in other proceedings should not be compelled to testify before only one committee member. 3. To insure full deliberation, all members of investigating committees should receive due notice of meetings and other committee action. Adequate provision should be made for minority reports. 4. Material reflecting adversely upon persons living or dead should not be made public before an opportunity has been afforded such persons or their representatives to refute derogatory or defamatory

statements. Rebuttal testimony should be released simultaneously with publication of such material.

The practice of condemning individuals or organizations without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves is a serious abuse on the part of a congressional committee, particularly in releasing testimony given in executive session, in offering such testimony at public hearings or in releasing reports not based on any hearings. There are areas which are in particular need of regulation, for such practices, if allowed to continue unchecked, will destroy public confidence in all legislative investigations.

5. Persons or organizations against whom charges are made in public hearings should be afforded an opportunity to present their side of the case publicly as soon as possible after the making of the charge and in circumstances as public as those in which the charge was made. This opportunity should include the right to cross-examine witnesses for a reasonable time.

It is not sufficient to allow persons or organizations exposed to the glare of modern publicity media merely to file with a committee an affidavit containing their side of the case. To insure elementary fairness and a balanced presentation on both sides of a case, they should be given limited but reasonable facilities to testify before the committee and to cross-examine their accusers. It is no answer to reply that investigating committees are not courts or lack time to play fair. If they lack time to allow an adequate defense to be presented, they should not be permitted to make accusations.

6. Material in the files of an investigating committee, not previously released by the committee in the form of an official report, should be kept confidential and made available only to Federal investigative and intelligence agencies and State prosecution agencies for their official purposes.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities has compiled dossiers on at least a half-million American citizens. These dossiers are not balanced evaluations of a person's career but mere compilations of undigested material deemed derogatory, as the Bishop Oxnam hearing demonstrated. These dossiers, never authorized by Congress, have in the past been made available indiscriminately although they are able to ruin a person's career or blast his reputation. Such material should be confidential, as are similar materials in the files of the FBI, and should be similarly restricted.

7. Committee members or employees should not issue any public evaluation of a person under investigation until the inquiry relating to such person has been completed and a committee report thereon adopted.

The principle that this is a government of laws and not men requires that least that no person should be held up to public scorn by the offhand comments of a single committee member or staff employee. No public interest is lost or jeopardized by a requirement that no person be stigmatized except by the committee investigating him, and then only after it has completed its investigation and has heard his side of the case.

8. No hearings of a legislative investigating committee should be photographed, televised, broadcast, or recorded for radio over a witness' objection.

It is indeed anomalous that in our courtrooms where parties are protected by counsel and judges, radio, television, and cameras are forbidden but in congressional hearing rooms public exhibitions are often staged. Such exploitation should be forbidden whenever the witness objects, because of the tendency to distract, confuse, and often frighten a witness and because of the inevitable sensationalism that results, preventing a calm, decorous, and fair account of what is happening.

9. Investigating committees should be empowered to invoke the aid of the courts in compelling answers to questions. Constitutional objections and questions of privilege raised by a witness should be tested through summary judicial procedures rather than by defense in criminal prosecutions.

A witness who refuses to answer a pertinent question put to him by a congressional committee thereby commits a misdemeanor and may be jailed for 1 year. Moreover, a witness who refuses to answer does so at his peril, even if he is acting in good faith and on the advice of competent counsel and although he may have reasonable grounds upon which to refuse. This criminal sanction is not only too drastic and inflexible but also is cumbersome and long drawn out.

A congressional committee, like any administrative agency possessing the power to compel testimony, should be able to resort to the courts to compel answers in lieu of criminal prosecution that does not result in answers. Such judicial procedures should also provide a forum to test questions of privilege raised by a witness. Privileges or dilatory objections can be dealt with summarily by the courts.

10. The Rules Committee of each House of Congress should be empowered to receive and investigate complaints of abuses of congressional investigating committees and to report its findings and recommendations to the Congress.

To provide some way of enforcing these rules of procedure, complaints to the Rules Committee of each House should be authorized. These committees may in appropriate cases recommend to the full House censure of committee or committee members and, where abuses are more flagrant, even more drastic sanctions. The mere existence of such a remedy will induce fair procedures by investigating committees and promote public confidence in a power so important to the effective functioning of the Congress.

I have nothing further to say, Mr. Chairman. I concur with many of the pronouncements and utterances made by those who have gone before me.

I think some of the guiding principles which we set forth in our statement have to some extent been covered by all of the other witnesses, and I want to express to you my appreciation of the opportunity of coming here before you. I realize the hour is late and it would avail me very little if I said anything more.

Senator CARLSON. Mr. Cohen, I just want to say this: This committee is indebted to you and many other good people in this country who are concerned about this problem and very helpful to us in bringing us this information, and we do thank you so kindly.

Mr. COHEN. I feel my mission has been fulfilled if I observe nothing more than the remarkable patience you have observed in listening to these people.

Senator CARLSON. Thank you, Mr. Cohen.

Mr. BERKOVITCH. Mr. Chairman, may I interrupt at this point? We have a statement submitted by the Federal Bar Association, which the association requests be made a part of the record.

Senator CARLSON. Without objection it will be made a part of the

record.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF BETTIN STALLING, PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the subcommittee, I am presenting this statement to your subcommittee in my capacity as president of the Federal Bar Association, a professional association of attorneys who are members of the Federal judiciary and the Congress, attorneys who are employed by the Federal Government, and attorneys who have in the past, served in one of these capacities. One of the principal objects and purposes of the Federal Bar Association is to advance the science of jurisprudence. I welcome the opportunity of presenting this statement to the subcommittee since the present work of the committee in studying the rules to be adopted by the United States Senate governing investigations by its committees is in complete accord with the aims of our association to achieve an improved jurisprudence in all matters relating to the activities of the Federal Government.

In anticipation that the Congress would, at some time, desire to review the rules of procedure in connection with its investigative function, and with the sole desire of assisting in arriving at an improved procedure, this association has already taken action which it is hoped will be of assistance to the subcommittee making the study. The association publishes, quarterly, the Federal Bar Journal, which is received by all of its members, and is found in the law libraries maintained by our universities, by Federal agencies, and by many private prac titioners.

In order to provide background and perspective of investigative procedures for use by the subcommittee and Members of the Senate specifically, and by the legal profession generally, some months ago our association began to plan for an objective review of the legal questions which any committee making this study would encounter. A collection of papers dealing with the legal aspects of these questions and forming a symposium on congressional hearings and investigations was collected from authoritative sources. This symposium was published in the January-March 1954 and in the April-June 1954 issues of the Federal Bar Journal, volume XIV, No. 1, and volume XIV, No. 2, respectively.

It may be noted that the studies were so voluminous that it required two issues of the Federal Bar Journal to make all of them available.

It is our belief that these studies will be of great assistance to the members and staff of this subcommittee in its work. I should make it clear to this subcommittee that the views expressed by the writers of these papers are their own and not necessarily those of the association or of its individual members. We do believe, however, that background material and perspective of these problems can be obtained from this somewhat monumental and authoritative work. The association does not recommend that the committee should adopt any particular views of the writers, although it may be, of course, that members of the committee will concur with some of the recommendations and conclusions of some of the individual writers.

Due to the short period of time preceding these hearings, it was not possible to conduct any survey of the opinions of the members of the Federal Bar Association. The adoption of the rules governing committees of the United States Senate is, of course, essentially the function and duty of the Senate itself, and likewise the studies made by this committee should be the basis for the specific provisions of any rule.

As regards specific rules it is our view that the most that should be done by our association, and this we are most anxious to do, is to indicate to this subcommittee the subjects or specific problems which the Federal Bar Association, through its executive committee, recommends should be studied by the subcommittee, with the adoption of appropriate rules left to the committee as it may determine.

Therefore, without recommending any specific rule or the position that this committee should take with respect to any particular rule, it is our recommendation that the subcommittee study the following fields in connection with the