COMMUNIST YOUTH PROGRAM

INTRODUCTION

This report is the product of hearings held by the subcommittee on May 17 and 18, 1965, and of investigation and research attendant thereto. Initially intending to study the general youth program of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), the subcommittee sharpened the focus of its inquiry as demonstrations, rallies, and riots broke out on numerous campuses across the country.

These demonstrations seemed spontaneous at first. But a pattern emerged, on campus after campus, which made it unmistakably clear that the CPUSA and its front organizations were playing a key role in organizing them. It became increasingly evident that the Communist Party in both fomenting and exploiting campus unrest was laying the groundwork for a concerted drive to recruit youth to its

cause.

As the Vice Chairman, Senator Thomas J. Dodd, declared in presiding over the first of the open sessions:

the subcommittee has been reminded time and again of the Communist accent upon youth.

The international Communist movement has in every country capitalized upon the energies, the resourcefulness, and the inexperience of those eager to follow leaders who profess they hold the key to utopia.

It has also shown itself exceedingly skillful in the craft of infiltrating and frequently taking over youth organizations, forums, and rallies, and student organizations set up for legitimate purposes and under non-Communist auspices.

For those who are prepared to more or less swallow the complete Communist ideology, or who have come very close to the Communist Party in their thinking, they have organizations like the DuBois Clubs of America, named after a Communist and described by J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, as "a new Communistoriented youth organization dominated and controlled by the Communists."

But to strike up contact with the great masses of youth who are not yet prepared to embrace the Communist doctrine, the Communists employ the technique of infiltration.

The Vice Chairman then gravely cautioned that—

It can be stated as a certainty that wherever youth meets, the followers of the Communist Party will be present, seeking to direct the meeting along channels that serve the ends of the party, seeking office where officers are elected, seeking to make themselves the spokesmen for the movement. *** It is the Communists who constitute the chief danger to the idealism of American youth because of the utterly amoral manner in which they seek to pervert and exploit it.'

As this report will show, the Communists did not miss an opportunity to exploit and pervert. The CPUSA brand may be found upon every phase of the rallies, from planning to the final effort to proselytize young people.

Similarly branded have been attacks upon this subcommittee by some of the leaders and participants in some of the campus demon

Communist Youth Program, pt. 1, SISS hearings, May 17, 1965, pp. 1, 2.

strations. These individuals had been named in testimony before the subcommittee. Thereupon, the subcommittee, in the American spirit of judicial fairness, brought this testimony to their attention and offered them an opportunity to respond.

Note the cleverness of these individuals:

1. The invitations were made public in consistent form by a number of the addressees. (The subcommittee had carefully preserved the privacy of those named.)

2. Selective sentences were culled from the invitations, for propaganda purposes.

3. Regardless of the explicit wording of the invitations, which did not brand or characterize the testimony taken, the party "line" adopted was to fasten upon the subcommittee the onus of having itself`employed the language.2

4. The demonstrators, leaders, and participants adopted the stereotyped and obviously agreed-upon tactic of refusing to respond in terms of relevance or to admit or deny the truthfulness of the allegations received under oath; argumentativeness, challenges to the subcommittee's jurisdiction (to even entertain testimony on the subject of internal security), a cross-examining attempt to learn sources, demands for legal papers and for public hearing (regardless of absence of issue), requests for legal citations, and a demand for the framing of the legislative purpose *** despite its obviousness. The notion that these young people, in responding to the subcommittee's offer of an opportunity to rebut the testimony about them, were innocently and unwittingly following the Communist line is unacceptable.

5. Release by these individuals of the invitations in slanted manner for propaganda purposes and to arouse disrespect for the work of a legitimately constituted subcommittee of the Congress. of the United States.

2 The individual whose name was mentioned was informed "* * opportunity is extended to determine for himself if the testimony is adverse and to make response if he so desires before the committee considers whether that testimony should be made public." See Appendix B re (Aptheker). Although the subcommittee did not character ize the witnesses' testimony, examples of reactions from some of the recipients follow: Donald Bluestone made no formal response, but wrote in his column in the University of Wisconsin newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, that the invitation led him "to believe that the subcommittee considers the charges against me to be rather serious." Bluestone continued: "But am I to assume, Mr. Senator, that criticism of the United States Government and its policies is now subversive? Surely this cannot be the meaning of your letter, can it?"

Fred Blair, a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party (vide: p. 16). was described in a news story in the Milwaukee Sentinel of July 22, 1965. as having been "summoned but not subpenaed by the committee to answer charges that he solicited subscriptions for a Communist newspaper * * *. The charge was contained in a letter from J. G. Sourwine, chief counsel for the Internal Security Subcommittee, who offered to pay Blair's expenses for the trip to Washington. Blair, who operates Mary's Bookshop, 318 West Juneau Avenue, said the charge resulted from ads he inserted in Madison newspapers last March 15. The advertisements announced a 'special student offer' for the Worker, a Communist publication."

The subcommittee's letter to John Coatsworth was printed in facsimile in the Daily Cardinal of July 27, 1965, with a boldface caption that he had been invited to Washington "to clear his name of adverse testimony concerning his political activities on campus." An accompanying story said: "Coatsworth interprets the invitations as an attack on students and faculty members that stated their opposition to the war in Viet

nam.

An article in the September-October 1965 edition of Insurgent, published every month by the W. E. B. DuBois Clubs of America, asserts that the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee is "trying to develop a new demonology to show that the DuBois Clubs are manipulating all the puppet strings of protest-guilt-by-association once removed." Again the word "attack" was used: "* * many of the persons mentioned in the secret hearings were attacked strictly for what they said." The article also said: "Several of the people who received letters are in vulnerable jobs; if the report is released, they will likely lose them."

None of the persons involved was "attacked" or "charged." The subcommittee's invitations left the issue clearly to the individual as to whether the testimony was to be regarded as inaccurate or derogatory, and gave him full opportunity to give any appropriate comment or clarification.

6. An attempt was made by the means recited to prolong the issue in extenso for whatever values of propaganda and anti-American irritation it might produce.

7. Not one instance of an expression suggestive of cooperation with a duly constituted U.S. Senate committee appeared in any of the replies with the possible exception of Professor Rice.

A direct product of the Communist planning is organization: By learning the names of exhibitionists, "heroes," leaders (though misled) and frenetic exponents of all and anything stimulating or exciting, the CPUSA is able to bring into its fold a valuable nucleus for present and future operations. That which started as a product of ostensible spontaneity becomes a solid organization for Leninist purposes and programing.

The subcommittee believes, in accord with long-established policy, that any Member of the Senate should be in position to check the subcommittee's conclusions for himself. Therefore, the testimony on which this report is based and which has not already been made public is being released along with this report. Further, in accordance with its custom, the subcommittee is releasing in its entirety the testimony taken in executive session. In that aspect correspondence, including invitations and responses within the area defined, also is being released.

AMERICAN SENTIMENT STEADFAST

It is heartening to note that the American people are alert to the Communist strategy of deception. The demonstrations have not persuaded or convinced Americans that our basic position in Vietnam is wrong. Over one-half (58 percent) of those questioned last October in a published Gallup poll approved it; 20 percent had no opinion and only 22 percent disapproved. The highest approval was given by the age group most subject to the draft.

Perhaps even more significant is the "Backgrounder on Communism" issued in January 1966 by the U.S. Information Agency: "Vietnamese Students Find Majority of U.S. Collegians Support American Policy."

The Vietnamese students' survey found that a large majority of American college students firmly supports the U.S. policy of full aid to South Vietnam, while only a small minority questions the action. This was the conclusion reached by 5 South Vietnamese students after they toured 25 American university campuses.

It was significant that attempts by the Vietnamese to talk with the Communist and radical opponents of our policy were rebuffed with "too busy" and "not interested."

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWED

The inquiries as outlined by the Vice Chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Thomas J. Dodd, at the outset of hearings May 17, 1965,3 resulted in testimony establishing the following points:

(1) The Communist Party capitalizes upon youth and its enthusiasm and inexperience.

(2) A characteristic of the CPUSA activity in this area is its diversification, "frequently so subtle and difficult to pin down."

'SISS Communist Youth Program hearings, pt. 1, May 17, 1965, p. 1.

(3) A traditional tool of the Communists is infiltration, and it was used to the hilt on campus after campus.

(4) Student-body grievances were either fraudulent, created, stimulated, or exaggerated as a catalytic means of setting off mob explosions. (5) Once aroused, students' energies were channeled and directed by professionals and their disciples into forums, rallies, protests, resolutions, defiance of law, and out-and-out law violations.

(6) Communists (as always) have no compunction in employing amoral means to pervert and exploit the idealism of youth.

(7) The unwavering purposes of the Communist Party was accomplished in several respects, particularly in the gaining of forums and audiences for proselytizing young people as a prelude to widening audience-attention and, ultimately, enlarging its membership.*

CP CAPITALIZES UPON YOUTH

Three years ago the Communist Party launched a program to implement its never-varying objective to capture youth. First, the party wrote to all editors of college papers and student councils inviting them to (in turn) invite the "Lecture and Information Bureau of the Communist Party, U.S.A., Arnold Johnson, director." 5

On the side of the Communists was the obvious excitement of young people at the prospect of seeing and hearing "real live Communists. The party boasted that it had reached 75,000 students in more than 30 colleges and universities in 1961. The Communists concluded that because they had invaded campuses by their aggressiveness and exploitation of free speech, "It is clear from this that the students wish. to hear the Communist viewpoint from bona fide spokesmen." They also claimed that students everywhere "reject the widespread practice of denouncing communism without affording the Communists an opportunity to be heard."

That the Congress had taken reams of testimony, conducted months and months of investigation leading to the Internal Security Act of 1950 and its independent amendment of 1954, the Communist Control Act, was of no consequence in such verbal bait. The Congress has solemnly concluded in that act, based upon findings of fact: "Therefore, the Communist Party should be outlawed." 6

The Communist Party had characteristically bellowed its demands for "invitations" to speak on campuses. The penalty (if such were ignored) would be advertisement that the individual campus had failed to accord the party "free speech," or "right of assembly." The party never fails to exploit the very freedoms Leninism denies. As to failure to register under our laws, the party dismissed what the Congress had denounced as a crime because the requirement to register (sec. 7, Internal Security Act of 1950) is simply "a pretext used

These are

NOTE. AS Newsweek, November 1, 1965, put it: "The most articulate and energetic recruits in the antiwar and antidraft campaign are members of the 'new left, a loose network of undergraduates, graduate students, dropouts, and young marrieds who, united by suspicion of the adult 'establishment' think of themselves as 'the movement.' the young radicals who have made civil rights, university reform, and a decentralized ideal called 'participatory democracy' their catchwords. In truth, the movement' seems marked by an unwillingness-especially, where collaboration with the Communists concerned to absorb the doleful lessons of history, and a penchant for thinking the worst of their country and its leaders."

5 SISS hearings, pt. 2, May 18, 1965, Communist Youth Program, p. 122. Public Law 637-83d Cong., ch. 886, sec. 2.

is

to discriminate against Communists." This fallacy in reasoning is grounded upon the impudent assumption that the Communist Party is a political party, rather than a worldwide conspiracy to overthrow this Government by force and violence. Corollary to that assumption is the sophism that all American courts may be ignored by the party until the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. The disciples of Marx and Lenin thus persist in evading and dodging our laws until the very last step in the hare-and-hounds chase.

The great majority of American citizens and youth as reflected by the press have not been fooled by the ploys and gimmicks of the CPUSA and its inspired zealots.'

As Time, Oct. 29, 1965, put it: "The fact is that the Vietnicks, by encouraging the Communist hope and expectation that the United States does not have the stomach to fight it out in Vietnam, are probably achieving what they would least like: prolonging the war and adding to the casualty lists on both sides."

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