Table Of Content
The most important of these investigations involved Edward Condon, director of the National Bureau of Standards, and Alger Hiss, a former State Department official. When Chairman J. Parnell Thomas, a New Jersey Republican, asked to see Condon's loyalty file, President Truman declined—citing both privacy and constitutional grounds, namely the separation of powers. That refusal not only allowed HUAC to charge the administration with covering up a sham of a loyalty program; it also broadened the debate.
Pacifica Vietnam 1968
Given a vague mandate to investigate "subversion" in America, HUAC had little power or prestige at its inception. This changed after World War II as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union began deteriorating in the late 1940's. Pressured by anticommunist members of Congress and public concern about the international spread of communism, President Harry S. Truman authorized a loyalty oath program for government employees in early 1947.
The End of HUAC
Constitution guaranteed the freedom to belong to any political organization they chose. Congress didn’t see it that way, and a month later the men were cited for contempt and ultimately sentenced to a year in prison each. I am prepared to fight this evil at every level, and I intend to ask the State bar to look into a situation which I think is truly disgraceful, where lawyers with real courage and standing are afraid to come forward and represent clients before this committee.
Truman Presidential Inquiries
In the conduct of foreign policy, Richard Nixon was one of the seminal presidents. He came into office when the forces of history were moving America from a position of dominance to one of leadership. And Richard Nixon earned that leadership role for his country with courage, dedication, and skill. In 1984, the American Legion collaborates with an independent Columbia University study conducted by Drs.
The summer of 1948: Whittaker Chambers, witness for the 'losing side' - Star Tribune
The summer of 1948: Whittaker Chambers, witness for the 'losing side'.
Posted: Thu, 13 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Tbilisi late on April 28 to voice their opposition to the so-called "foreign agents" law ahead of the Georgian parliament’s planned second reading of the controversial bill. Critics compare the bill to similar legislation that has been used to silence opposition groups in Russia. The proposed law requires organizations with foreign funding to register their activities with the government.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
The Senator made his most prominent headlines as chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) -- the chief investigative subcommittee of what was then the Senate Committee on Government Operations. In the 1960s, the committee kept at communist in-filtration while adding hearings on such new subjects as the Ku Klux Klan and Students for a Democratic Society. However, with the decline of McCarthyism and the gradual eroding of the Hollywood blacklist, HUAC's heyday had passed.
Socialist Workers Party
The HUAC investigations of members of Hollywood were viewed by many as a witch hunt. More than one hundred witnesses from the industry were called before HUAC during its existence. Eight screenwriters and two directors famously refused to answer the questions asked of them. Known as the Hollywood Ten, they depended on their Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination and their First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly. House of Representatives, established in 1938 under Martin Dies as chairman, that conducted investigations through the 1940s and ’50s into alleged communist activities. Those investigated during the Red Scare of 1947–54 included many artists and entertainers, including the Hollywood Ten, Elia Kazan, Pete Seeger, Bertolt Brecht, and Arthur Miller.
More From the Los Angeles Times
It became a standing (permanent) committee in 1946, and from 1969 onwards it was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975,[1] its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. The House Un-American Activities Committee was charged with investigating allegations of communist influence and subversion in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War. Committee members quickly settled their gaze on the Hollywood film industry, which was seen as a hotbed of communist activity. This reputation originated in the 1930s, when the economic difficulties of the Great Depression increased the appeal of leftist organizations for many struggling actors and studio workers. HUAC’s predecessor, the McCormack-Dickstein committee, named for its chair and vice chair, Reps. John W. McCormack, D-Mass., and Samuel Dickstein, D-N.Y., had been formed in 1934 to investigate Nazi propaganda.
During its 30-year history, HUAC conducted a continuous program of investigation covering a wide range of activities, organizations, and individuals suspected to subversive activities. The finding aid to the records of this committee is available online through the House of Representatives' collection of preliminary inventories. Un-American Activities Committee, House (HUAC) Committee of the US House of Representatives, established (1938) to investigate political subversion. Created to combat Nazi propaganda, it began by investigating extremist political organizations. After World War 2, encouraged by Senator Joseph McCarthy, it attacked alleged communists in Hollywood and in the federal government.
A booklet called Red Channels was published in 1950 which named 151 actors, screenwriters, and directors suspected of being communists. Other lists of suspected subversives circulated, and those who were named were routinely blacklisted. HUAC has one direct predecessor committee, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, created on May 26, 1938, pursuant to H. Res. 282, 75th Congress -- which authorized the Speaker to appoint a special committee to investigate un-American activities, domestic diffusion of propaganda, and all other questions relating thereto. This committee is commonly referred to as the Dies Committee, as it was chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-TX).
HUAC fed off the hysteria of the cold war and anti-communism, paving the way for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., to begin hearings in the Senate in 1953. Between HUAC and the McCarthy hearings, Congress held broad, roving investigations into the political activity of many Americans suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers. The hearings also investigated many who did not hold communist views, creating a climate of political intimidation that came to be called “red baiting” or McCarthyism. The impact of these hearings was to ruin the careers of many individuals and to foster a political paranoia toward anyone suspected of holding contrary political views or of joining suspected political organizations.
McCarthy, who also was once the most popular figure in the anti-communist campaign, lost support from the public. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a series of decisions, began to reaffirm the importance of First Amendment rights even in the face of national security concerns. Martin Dies Jr. first chaired HUAC when it was established in 1938 to continue the works of its predecessors. However, this time, the committee’s main focus was on communist activities only.
HUAC's broadly aimed and aggressive activities, however, made it controversial and memorable. Hiss’ conviction bolstered claims that HUAC was performing a valuable service to the nation by uncovering Communist espionage. The suggestion that Communist agents had infiltrated senior levels of the U.S. government also added to the widespread fear that “Reds” (a term derived from the red Soviet flag) posed a serious threat to the nation. McCarthy led an aggressive anticommunist campaign of his own that made him a powerful and feared figure in American politics. His reign of terror came to an end in 1954, when the news media revealed his unethical tactics and he was censured by his colleagues in Congress.
Facing trial on that charge in April 1948, each man was found guilty and sentenced to spend a year in prison and pay a $1,000 fine. After unsuccessfully appealing the verdicts, they began serving their terms in 1950. While in prison, one member of the group, Edward Dmytryk, decided to cooperate with the government. In 1951, he testified at a HUAC hearing and provided the names of more than 20 industry colleagues he claimed were communists. In the years following World War II ( ), the United States and Soviet Union engaged in a tense military and political rivalry that became known as the Cold War.
Richard Nixon was an active member in the late 1940s, and the committee’s most celebrated case was perhaps that of Alger Hiss. The film industry investigations reached their peak with the events surrounding the Hollywood Ten, a group of writers and directors who were called to testify in October 1947. All were cited for contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison terms, in addition to being blacklisted from working in Hollywood. As tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union intensified following World War II ( ), the committee took up its investigations of communist activities with new vigor. Particularly after 1947, HUAC assumed new heights of prominence and notoriety, and the committee conducted a series of high-profile hearings alleging that Communists disloyal to the U.S. had infiltrated government, schools, the entertainment industry and many other areas of American life.
No comments:
Post a Comment