RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR SENATE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEES 16 E WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1954 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION, SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES, The subcommittee met at 2:05 p. m., pursuant to recess, in room 318 of the Senate Office Building, Senator William E. Jenner (chairman) presiding. Present: Senator Jenner (presiding). Also present: Boris S. Berkovitch, counsel to Subcommittee on Congressman Clardy is here. You were here yesterday; we didn't get to you. Would you desire to be the first witness this afternoon? Mr. CLARDY. I would be very happy to. The CHAIRMAN. Do you care to be sworn, Congressman? Mr. CLARDY. I think it is just as well. The CHAIRMAN. Do you swear the testimony given in this hearing will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Mr. CLARDY. I do. The CHAIRMAN. You did not submit a prepared statement, Congressman? Mr. CLARDY. No; I did not. Mine will be at least 99-percent extemporaneous, if you will bear with me. The CHAIRMAN. All right. Proceed in your own fashion. TESTIMONY OF HON. KIT CLARDY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN Mr. CLARDY. Having administered the oath to a great many other witnesses, I would feel rather odd if I did not submit myself to the same thing that the Communists call an indignity. Before I get down to the discussion for today though, Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of personal things I would like to say to you and to your counsel sitting beside you there as a member of the House committee investigating the same subject that you are doing on your other committee. I want you to know that I think you and your committee, with the help of your able counsel, have done an excellent job; I think you have done a great deal, and I have gotten a great deal particularly out of that report that you put together, a composite not only of material that the other committees had developed but what you developed, and you put it together in an intelligent shape; I think it is doing a very excellent job, and it is a good reference work. The CHAIRMAN. We appreciate that. Mr. CLARDY. There is at some time, as you know, some discussion in the press to the effect that there is jealousy between these committees. I haven't seen any evidence of it, and, on top of that, having had a little bit in the way of conferences with yourself and the others on your staff, I think the world ought to know that our committees have not been running head on into one another on any subject that I have heard of as yet. I would like to use a little different approach in my testimony. I have read all the testimony, or heard it, all that has been produced before you so far. I don't want to traverse that same ground again. I think it would be repetitious, and probably would not add very much to it. I do want to analyze it a little bit, if I might, and to go into some of the angles that I think all of us, not only on the Senate side but over on the House side, have got to be thinking about in this general field. To start with, I think I ought to make the comment that in speaking of rules and of course we have them over there on our side-there may be a little overemphasis on that. There is too much reliance upon something that is reduced to writing. Some people seem to think that if you can just get it down on paper you have solved everything. They forget the human equation. I think probably the best set of rules ever given to man are the Ten Commandments; yet look at what has happened to them. Look at what is happening every day. If we want to place our reliance on something of that sort I think we are leaning on a pretty thin and weak reed. I heard some comments yesterday-before I get into my general statement also that left an impression on me that I think I ought to mention. First, I want to say that anything in my comments must not be taken as any reflection on any Member of the Senate or any Member of the House, and I am not here to try to tell the Senate how they should fix their rules or what they should do, nor am I trying to say what should be done in the House. I think I should say, however, at the outset that I do not believe we need any legislative straitjacket by way of rules upon all of the committees of Congress. I don't believe it is possible to differentiate between the investigating committees and the other committees and do it in a sensible way that would mean anything. I think it would best be left to the separate individual committees and let each one adopt such rules as their own particular problems indicate are necessary and they think are necessary. In our own case, one fact was not mentioned yesterday that I think ought to have been emphasized, but because there is so much to be done it just did not occur to either Chairman Velde or Mr. Kunzig, and it is this: Our rules over there are not new at all except as they deal with the new subject of television. They are no more or less than the distilled wisdom, shall I say, of about 15 years of experience commencing with the time that my friend Martin Dies here started the predecessor of the committee of which I have the honor to be a member. I think we have merely reduced to writing in those rules the general practice that the committee has followed from the very beginning, despite all of the left-wing comment to the contrary notwithstanding. So yesterday when I heard somebody say something about television it occurred to me that a demagog would be a demagog whether he has a television camera in front of him or whether he is on the stump back in his district or whether he is speaking on the floor of either of the Houses. But I don't think there is any better way in the world to let the American public discover whether a man is or is not a demagog, whether he is a sincere, honest, hard-working, intelligent legislator, than to put him under the glare of the television lights and the camera and let the people see. He will betray himself in spite of all he may seek to do-oh, there may be a few exceptions; I should not generalize so much. And so, having sat under what the Communists call the kleig lights a little bit, I am afraid I will have to differ respectfully with one of the witnesses who appeared here when he discussed that subject, because I think it would be a step backward to say that our technical progress is to be stopped by a legislative rule or by a law which says. that new medium of communication is to be handicapped and prevented from getting into the race. And my experience-and mine does not equal yours, I am sorry to say; it has only been about a year and a half, as you know, on this committee-my experience has demonstrated to me that the use of television has profited the press and profited radio and television. It has inspired the press to give fuller, more complete reports than they otherwise would do. I say that is my experience. We have been all over the United States holding hearings, and inevitably it has developed into a case of where every medium has been competing with the other; they have supplemented one another, and the newspapermen have told me where they have television it has sold more newspapers. Now, I am not interested in the commercial angle of the thing at all, but I am interested in it from this standpoint: I think we committees owe a duty to the public, over and above the mere job of legislating, of letting them know what it is all about, how their Congress operates, what makes it tick, and the only way in the world that I think we can make them fully understand it is to let them see it with their own eyes. It is a shame, on my books, to think that only a handful are able to see what goes on in these hearing rooms, because I am thoroughly convinced-and now I want to get down to what I want to talk aboutI am thoroughly convinced that 99 percent of all the hullabaloo that has been raised about rules stems from a complete misunderstanding, in some instances deliberate, of what goes on in committee hearings. Now, I am differentiating right at the start between committees like your other committee and my committee that are investigating subversion and Communists and communism, and the other committees that are given other duties in many other fields. I think you have got to draw that distinction, because while a great many think the Army-McCarthy hearing is responsible for all of the noise that is being heard from the left side continually today, I don't think that at all. I know that from the very day Martin Dies became chairman of the committee that started this work over in the House 15 years ago there were leftwingers who started to the attack instantly and have been constantly on it ever since because they simply don't want investigations into that sensitive field. Some tender toes might be stepped on, in my humble opinion, and I think that accounts for a great deal of the reason why-oh, it is true that the Army-McCarthy hearings of late may have served to spur the leftists on to renewed assaults, but that comes late in the campaign. Well, now, it seems to me that all of us on both sides ought to be thinking, therefore, about a half a dozen things: First, how this question came up and who raised it and why. Next, is the problem a real or an imaginary one? In my humble opinion, 99 percent of it is imaginary, and I think the testimony given by Chairman Velde and Mr. Kunzig yesterday demonstrates, as far as we are concerned, I am justified in saying what I did. You asked a question yesterday that was most significant. You asked how many of the persons who had been identified had come forward and asked for an opportunity to clear their name, to use the Communists' phraseology, if that is what they desired. It may interest you to know that since I have been on the committee, a brief period of about 18 months or so, we have identified publicly approximately 2,500 members of the Communist Party. As many in number as were identified in all of the years up to the time that this present Congress started to work. Out of that entire group not a single one has come forward and asked for an opportunity to be heard, and yet the bleating bleedingheart leftwingers who are continually berating the committee and saying that we are destroying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all that sort of thing, that we are accusing innocent people, are 100 percent wrong and incorrect in what they say. They are building up a straw man in order to have something to knock down and to prevent us from doing the job that we are supposed to be doing. And third, I think we ought to begin to think about whether or not it isn't the real purpose of those who are the strongest in the leftwing quarters seeking these rules and seeking that they be put into a statute. I wonder if it isn't largely just as I said, because they do not want investigations into Communists or communism. And then the next is a most important thing that I think we ought to be thinking about, and I want to advert, if I may, to something that was published recently in the American Bar Journal by Judge Julius Hoffman. He was discussing the fifth amendment, but he said something so pertinent to what I want to say that I want to read a few quotes into the record. He is discussing the subject as to where our chief concern should lie, not only as individual citizens but as Members of the Congress and members of the committee, and he is making a point that I want to make, and that is that our chief concern should be for the welfare and the safety of the Nation, not just exclusively for the welfare of a few people-and very few at that, if there are any-whose rights some overzealous person may conceivably think are being trampled on in the investigative process. Now, the judge said something that strikes me very forcibly. He said: There are times perhaps when we are so intent on safeguarding the individual's constitutional rights that we forget that the Constitution also guarantees protection to the public. Mr. MORRIS. Who said that, Congressman? Mr. CLARDY. Judge Julius J. Hoffman, United States District Court Judge in Illinois; in the current issue of the American Bar magazine you will find that. He said something else a few sentences on: In essence the question is not so much a matter of whom we are protecting as of what we are protecting. To me, we are in this Congress and on these committees endeavoring to protect the 160 million people that make the Nation. We are trying to protect the Nation, and if by some mischance the rights of a few individuals may by inadvertence be harmed, that does not mean that we should lean so far over backward to protect that man that we should destroy the Nation and should destroy everything that makes the rights that that individual has worth having. The judge said something else. He said: Good and patriotic citizens— and this applies, certainly, to some of the witnesses who have appeared before you, but not to all who are so zealous for civil liberties and so alert to the evils of possible infringement that they are inclined to believe a man innocent not until he is proven guilty, but because he has been accused- And I think you recognize the fact that the leftwingers are continually rising up in public places, columnists such as the Alsops, Drew Pearson, and others of that ilk, continually making the assumption that the moment a man is subpenaed to appear before a committee such as yours and mine, he is innocent. They say it in substancethey don't admit it-but that is what they are getting at-that the public should assume that if the Congress of the United States calls a man he is not guilty of some high crime or misdemeanor but rather that the gentleman called is innocent. And then, lastly, the judge said this: Certainly we should never retreat from the humane and just administration of the law; but neither should we neglect the interests of society as a whole. In our very proper concern for the rights of an individual we must ask ourselves if we are also protecting the rights of the 160 million Americans who are this individual's fellow citizens. And it seems to me that we had better keep our eye on the ball and that that last statement should be the key to everything we think about, everything we do, and in deciding whether anything should be done along the lines suggested. That to me at least should be a guiding principle. I know it was when my committee attempted to gather together the threads of the things that had gone before and published that little blue book that was put into the record yesterday. And, incidentally, some time, I think it was at the close of last month, I put that into the Congressional Record; the rules are there entirely, so it will be in the bound volume of the Record. |