Fourth Report of the CA Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities

I'm reading a series of books on communism and, in my research on the House Committee on Un-American Activities, I ran across a similar committee convened by the Senate in California. Their 1948 report is a real eye-opener regarding the amount of communist activity in the state, especially in unions, schools, and Hollywood. We've all seen the degree of degradation of our institutions by virulent leftists in the last couple decades, but it is interesting to see the extent to which communists had infiltrated US life in the 30s and 40s, just a few short decades after communism really got rolling.

One part of the Senate Committee report really caught my attention because it spells out in detail the Alinsky tactics we've seen the leftists use against us. Remember, this was laid out in this 1948 report. As you read this excerpt below, you can't help be be reminded of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachman, et al and their tormenters Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Tina Faye, et al.

We desperately need similar committees today, but unfortunately the successful subversion and take-over of the Democrat party by the communists makes this impossible.

This is from the affidavit of William D. Handelsman, a man who was 17 when he joined the Marine Cooks and Stewards Association which was a communist controlled union. His affidavit starts on page 282 in the report and documents how he was recruited into the communist party. The excerpts below pick up after he has been issued a party membership card and he is a dues-paying member. Note the techniques mentioned: union violence, ridicule, and rigged elections by letting the communists count the votes (Josef Stalin -"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.")

Boyles and Cayton proposed that I be sent to party headquarters, then located at 121 Haight Street, San Francisco, for special training. Three days later, about December, 1936, I reported at headquarters where there were some 25 other students from various unions. We were taught parliamentary procedure, public speaking, agitation and propaganda techniques and what the party called character assassination. This last course was, by our instructor, exposure of union disruptors and labor spies. We were taught how to undermine American institutions and praise the Soviet Government; how to tear down the morals of troops; how a small group of Communists can dominate a union; how to heckle and intimidate non-Communist speakers; how to address public meetings. These courses of instruction lasted for ten weeks

At these classes we were told that the Soviet "Union was struggling for the working masses of the world, and that in the event of war with the United States the maritime unions would be of great importance. The longshoremen would refuse to load the ships, warehousemen would strike, the seamen would not operate the vessels, the party members in the galley would sabotage the food. Any such war, it was explained, would be caused by the United States never by the Soviet Union.

We were taught that discipline in the party was absolute; that it was the secret of all successful party strategy. That a good Communist never said no to his top fraction and obeyed all party orders, decisions, assignments and directives without hesitation. We were actually told not once, but many times that even if the party decided that a member's father and mother should be liquidated as enemies of the working class, the order must be obeyed.

Three of us were selected for special training as character assassins Jack Sutcliffe and a man named Taylor, besides me. In this class we were told to pick out men in the unions who opposed the party program, and to spread rumors and whispering campaigns among the other union members calling him a labor spy, and F. B. I. stooge, a pervert, a labor disruptor, a stool pigeon and anything else we could use to tear him down. We not only did this, but we were told to ridicule him and heckle him at meetings. Anything we could do to blacken and smear the character of all who resisted the Communists' program in the unions was done. We were also taught that the general technique was useful against anyone who obstructed the Communists in public life, in professions and even in government positions.

Sutcliffe and Taylor were also from the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union, and the three of us operated in our union as a team. We never disclosed our Communist affiliation, and when one of us would start to tear down someone 's character, the two others would spread the word among street corner groups, in waterfront cafes and bars and in the union hall. During meetings we separated from each other so we could influence three groups of people. After the character assassinators had laid the groundwork, the victim would be brought up on phoney charges and suspended or expelled from the union. This method of attack was highly effective, and widely used in the waterfront unions.

I then distributed what we called our Progressive Slate, which consisted of printed slips carrying the names of the Communist Party's candidates for each elective office in the union not only in San Francisco, but also Honolulu, San Pedro, Portland, and Seattle. The campaign was now under way, and we were told to resort to any sort of tactics necessary to elect the entire Progressive Slate. We even intimidated the weaker non-Communist union members by telling them we would take care of them if they voted the wrong way.

The balloting committee consisted of one member from San Pedro, two from headquarters in Sail Francisco, one from Portland and me from Seattle. A trusted and forceful party member went from San Francisco to San Pedro a week ahead of time, and was easily elected on the committee from that branch; the two from San Francisco were both Communists elected at a packed meeting ; the Portland man was a Communist. The Seattle man was a non-Communist, but when the actual balloting occurred, he was out on a drunk with some undercover party members.

The voting took place in San Francisco. According to the actual vote the old officers were reelected despite the character assassination campaign. But the ballots were counted and the votes were tallied by the balloting committee, all of whom were party members, and when the results were announced, every single incumbent was defeated and was replaced by a Communist. The whole Progressive Slate was fraudulently elected in this manner. Boston Hunt, leader of the non-Communist faction, was replaced as Dispatcher by Paul Boyles who was not even eligible for that position because he hadn't been a full book member of the union for the two-year period as the Constitution then required.

Thanks for posting this report as well as its source.

The California hearings are invaluable in that they focused largely on Communism in California eventhough the fronts they covered were nationwide.

Do you know if the first 3 reports are also available at Archives? What is the direct link to “Archives”?

The last Calif. UAC Report came out in 1970 before the liberals crippled its work by literally defunding it. It’s work was then put into a subcommittee on Crime and this spelled the end of it.

These reports are of tremendous value to students of American communism, esp. the tactics the CPUSA used to set up front organizations.

Note: In converting the original report text to the Archive’s format, numerous words were distorted, had letters dropped, and had letters moved into other names.

Also: Some of those whose names appeared on CP front lists later broke with the Party and became active anti-communists, including Max Yergin, J.B. Matthews, and others.

I have most of the Red Books--so called because of the red panels and spine in which they are bound--as well as Red Fascism: Boring From Within by the Subversive Forces of Communism by Jack Tenney (Los Angeles: Federal, 1947), a 700-page hard-bound tome which also has a red cover and is compiled from material gathered by the California Legislature's Committee on Un-American Activities and other such groups.

Tenney, the state senator who chaired the legislature's Joint Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1940's was a colorful character. Early in his life, he wrote the music to Mexicali Rose, a hit in 1938 for Vera Lynn as well as Bing Crosby. He began his career as a leftish Democrat but by 1940 was a Republican. Although he gained fame as a Redhunter in the 1940's, he quickly drifted into obscurity in the 1950's and became active in anti-Semitic groups including ones he had previously denounced in the Red Books. However, the committee lived on, chaired in its later years by Sen. Hugh Burns (D-Fresno).

In 1970, I wrote my state assemblyman asking for a copy of that year's report, and he sent me one. They were also sold that year at Republican headquarters in various districts.

Richardson was the one who tried to save the Calif. Committee.

If you look hard enough, you’ll find me in this report. I was an undercover operative in CPUSA fronts from New Mobe to NCAHUAC/HISC. It was wall-to-wall reds, from Kunstler to Kinoy, the California (Chernin) and Chicago (Cunningham) and NYC members, etc.

Kunstler provided us with the news that Charles R. Gary, the CPUSA member/attorney for the Oakland 7 trial, was going to use tactics there that could be used at the Chicago 7 trial later that year if they were successful. They were.

Gary was the attorney Hillary Clinton worked under (also Treuhaft/Burstein) at the Black Panther Rackley murder trial in New Haven, Conn. I’m will to bet that Hillary got her Party contacts thru her law professors at Yale, including Id. CPUSA member Thomas I. Emerson (who was used by Rep. Bella Abzug, a covert CPUSA member, and Rep. Robert Drinan, a leftist nutcase), to file lawsuits against the government from abortion rights to stopping the US bombing missions in Cambodia, and later, aid to So. Vietnam (All of this is in the Congressional Records from the 1970s).

Thanks to all the FR commentators who have have made the Calif./Tenney reports available to its readers.

If you were hanging out with California's Reds in those days, you probably knew Frank Wilkinson, who ran NCAHUAC. In 1993, I had a telephone conversation with him. I knew his group had a copy of the documentary film Operation Abolition, and I thought I might like to borrow it and use it for the high school history class in which I was student teaching.

He expressed an interest in presenting the film, but then I said, "I need to ask you if you are affiliated with the CP"--I said "CP," not "Communist Party." Instead of saying "what do you mean by the CP," "come again?" etc., he got defensive, saying how he served time at Lewisburg for refusing to tell HUAC whether or not he was a Communist Party member. I then politely told him I would think about his offer to present the movie before ending the conversation, but decided against it--I wasn't about to subject the kids to a Communist spin on the movie and get myself in trouble. I mentioned my encounter with an acquaintance who was a former Communist, and he said that NCAHUAC was definitely run either by the CP or Dorothy Healey's dissident group.

By the way, Operation Abolition is now available on Youtube.

Such a book could address the reasons why the “Red Scare” faded away from public consciousness. Our collective amnesia for the past 50 years and our national refusal to see the real enemy inside the walls is destroying our nation.

The web that the communists wove is so enormous and complex that most people probably simply wouldn’t believe it. The ongoing “Discover the Networks” project by David Horowitz does an incredible job exposing the network, but it is mind-numbing to keep track of it all. And, as you say, what do we do? So many of the enemy don’t work and commit their lives to their cause. Conservatives are the people who go to work every day, earn a living, play by the rules, and raise families — they simply don’t have the time to go to committee meetings or camp out for weeks on end for some cause. Besides, our cause is the intellectual concept of personal freedom and liberty, not fighting for some new giveaway by the feds or fighting to stop a specific project like Keystone or trees being cut down on a campus.

I agree such a book would be an eye-opener and, written by the right author, could be a huge winner. Just look at the success of conservative books in general compared to liberal / commie books that go straight to the overstock bin.

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