Tooling up for Mass Repression: The Subversive Activities Control Board
1953-12-12 035-0019-004 construed to apply to such acts as selling the Daily Worker, campaigning for a Communist candidate, contributing to the legal defense of an accused Communist, or petitioning for the repeal of the Internal Security Act of 1950. The prosecutor, moreover, need not restrict himse...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
12 December 1953
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/5D5A3AB0-051F-4BA8-AADD-CE3405104FA1 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/95D55F52-C7FD-4306-BD3F-F91A9E31D64F |
| Summary: | 1953-12-12
035-0019-004
construed to apply to such acts as selling the Daily Worker, campaigning for a Communist candidate, contributing to the legal defense of an accused Communist, or petitioning for the repeal of the Internal Security Act of 1950. The prosecutor, moreover, need not restrict himself to past acts. He can select any organizational objective, however remote, as an "act" which all members have "combined, conspired, or agreed" to perform. Fearful that this section might cause the registration provisions to be held unconstitutional as involving compulsory self-incrimination, the drafters have provided that registration of any person under the act shall not be received in evidence against him in a Section 4(a) prosecution. Nothing, however, prevents the prosecutor from using the registration list as a source of leads and of possible defendants. Any such list would also have significance in connection with Title II of the act, which provides that in case of invasion, declaration of war, or insurrection in aid of a foreign enemy the President may proclaim an "internal-security emergency." When such proclamation is in effect, the Attorney General is "authorized to apprehend and by order detain" for the duration of the emergency "each person as to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that such person probably will engage in, or probably will conspire with others to engage in, acts of espionage or of sabotage." Although six camps have already been placed in readiness, this provision seems to be little known as yet, even to lawyers. A report on it produced a major sensation at a recent conference of the California state bar. Members or supporters of any organization which complied with a registration order would clearly form a handy check list of candidates for the concentration camp. Members of registered organizations would be under automatic disabilities with respect to the use of passports and eligibility for government or defense employment. But the most pervasive and coercive effect of registration would be to supply a government-sponsored black list of persons who, in the name of patriotism, could be systematically denied an opportunity to earn a living. If the organization survived at all after being compelled to subject its members and supporters to such reprisals, it would lead a branded existence, somewhat reminiscent of the time when Jews were compelled to wear the Star of David for easy identification. For example, anything sent through the mail and intended for two or more persons would have to be stamped "Disseminated by -, a Communist organization." Since this must appear both on the document and on the outside wrapper, it clearly is intended not only to warn the recipient of threatened ideological contamination but also, if possible, to frighten him into requesting that his name be removed from the mailing list. A "front" organization which existed for some limited objective like rent control, civil liberties, or aid to refugees from Franco could function only by constantly red-baiting its own program. It would thus lose whatever effectiveness it might have had, either to Communists or to non-Communists, as a vehicle for that program. THESE CONSEQUENCES of registration are not important in themselves, since there are unlikely to be any registrations. They are important because their total impact makes it a fairly safe bet that no organization will ever prefer registration to going out of existence— the drafters of the bill must have known this and taken it into account. If this is true, arguments that the act will "force Communist activities into the open" are either naive or dishonest. Efforts to justify the measure by reference to compulsory registration of lobbyists and reporting of political-campaign contributions rest on a false analogy The registration provisions are merely a "legislative device" for accomplishing one thing while pretending to do another. Non-compliance with a registration order, however, brings into view the act's real teeth, as distinguished from its numerous false ones. Failure to register makes the organization and each officer under a duty to register it subject to a $10,000 fine, plus five years' imprisonment. Members can be ordered to register personally and upon failure to do so are subject to the same penalties. Since each day of failure to register is a separate offense, fines sufficient to convert all the organization's assets into government property—and prison terms [PICTURE: Senator McCarran] sufficient to keep the individuals behind bars for life—can be accumulated in a few weeks. This last step in the "legislative device" is the application of an approach new in our law but being resorted to with increasing frequency. It may, until a better name is found, be called the go-hang-yourself technique. It consists in ordering someone, on the ground that he is an undesirable character, to take some action highly injurious to himself. You then punish him, not for being an undesirable character, but for disobeying the order. Another example, found elsewhere in this same McCarran Act, is a provision making it a felony for an alien under final order of deportation to fail to make timely and good-faith efforts to deport himself. The use of economic sanctions to punish persons unwilling to testify against themselves is an instance of the same tendency. Its effect, in the McCarran Act registration provisions, is that a voluntary association may be hounded out of existence, not for anything it has been or done, but for its refusal to commit suicide when so ordered. THE administration of this remarkable piece of legislation is in the hands, not of the Subversive Activities Control Board, but of the Attorney General. As the hearing tribunal and fact-finder, however, the board has important authority to determine the shape and limits of what the Attorney General will do. After its creation in October
292/946/35/20(iii) |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | TEXT |