Political Flashback

The removal of 381 books from the US Naval Academy Nimitz library last week was flashback-inducing for your correspondent.

When Sen. Joseph McCarthy was at the peak of his power in March, 1953, Dashiell Hammett was subpoenaed to appear before his Subcommittee.  McCarthy's pretext for grilling Hammett and other writers alleged to have CP affiliations, was that libraries maintained overseas by the US State Department purchased their books.

I was 11 years old and wide awake. I knew who Dashiell Hammett was because in 1951 he and a man named Alpheus Hunton had been sent to prison for refusing to co-operate with federal investigators trying to find four Communist Party leaders who had jumped bail. (My mother knew Alpheus Hunton through the Teachers Union. One of my deepest memories is the sweet cherry smell of his pipe tobacco.) I remember a picture of Hunton in the New York Times, handcuffed to Hammett. I remember my parents discussing the story, but I was more interested in the National League pennant race, which the Dodgers were running away with.

Eleven CP leaders had been charged with advocating the violent overthrow of the US government in violation of the the Smith Act. They were prosecuted in Federal Court in Manhattan by a young US Attorney named Roy Cohn, with Judge Harold Medina presiding.  In late 1949 they were all found guilty, fined $10,000 and sentenced to five-year prison terms. Because the US Supreme Court had yet to rule on the Constitutionality of the Smith Act, the CPers were granted bail (on appeal, after being denied by Judge Medina). Money for this purpose had been raised by an entity called the Civil Rights Congress from more than 400 donors. Hammett and Hunton were trustees of the bail fund. In July, 1951, when the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of the Smith Act, four of the CP leaders jumped bail. The trustees were subpoenaed and ordered to produce their account books. They refused. They cited the Fifth Amendment, but the judge ruled that it didn't apply because the trustees would not be incriminated by revealing the donors' names. Hammett and Hutton were found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to six months in federal prison. (The system was still segregated and they would do time at separate prisons in Virginia.) The Treasury Department then put a $100,629.02 lien against Hammett for back taxes. Lillian Hellman would be his main source of support in the years ahead.

Hammett's confrontation with Joe McCarthy (and his second with Roy Cohn, who had become subcommittee's counsel) took place on March 26, 1953. Excepts follow.

Cohn: You are the author of a number of rather well-known detective stories. Is that correct?

Hammett: That is right.

Cohn: In adition to that you have written, I think in your earlier period, on some social issues. Is that correct?

Hammett: Well, I have written short stories that may have –you know, it is impossible to write anything without taking some sort of stand on social issues.

Cohn: I may state, Mr. Chairman, that some 300 of Mr. Hammett's books are in use in the Information Service today, located in, I believe, some 73 information centers. I am sorry, 300 copies, 18 books. You haven't written 300 books, is that right?

Hammett:  That is a lot of books.

Cohn: Now Mr. Hammett when did you write your first published book?

Hammett: The first book was Red Harvest. It was published in 1929. I think I wrote it in 1927, either 1927 or 1928.

Cohn: At the time you wrote that book, were you a member of the Communist Party?

Hammett: I decline to answer, on the grounds that an answer may tend to incriminate me, relying on my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States…

Cohn: Mr. Hammett, is it a fact that you recently served a term in prison for contempt of court?

Hammett: Yes.

Cohn: And from what did that arise?

Hammett: From declining to answer whether or not I was a trustee of the bail bond fund of the Civil Rights Congress…

Cohn: Now, you said it was for a refusal to answer. The fact is you were a trustee of the bail fund of the Civil Rights Congress. Is that right?

Hammett: That was the question that I went to jail for not answering, yes…

McCarthy: Have you ever engaged in espionage against the United States?

Hammett: No.

McCarthy: Have you ever engaged in sabotage.

Hammett: No.

.McCarthy: Would you think that American communism would be a good system to adopt in this country?

Hammett: I will have to decline to answer that, on the grounds that an answer may tend to incriminate me. Because, I mean, that can't be answered "yes" or "no."

McCarthy: You could not answer "yes" or "no," whether you think communism is superior to our form of government?

Hammett: You see, I don't understand. Theoretical communism is no form of government. You know, there is no government. And I actually don't know, and I couldn't without –even in the end, I doubt if I could give a definite answer.

McCarthy: Would you favor the adoption of communism in this country?

Hammett: You mean now?

McCarthy: Yes.

Hammett: No.

McCarthy: You would not?

Hammett: For one thing, it would seem to me impractical, if most people didn't want it.

McClellan (a rightwing Senator from Arkansas): Are you not voluntarily, now, by taking refuge in the fifth amendment to the constitution, committing an act of voluntary self incrimination before the bar of public opinion, and do you not know that?

Hammett: I do not think that is so, sir, and if it is so, unfortunately, or fortunately for me in those circumstances, the bar of public opinion did not did not send me to jail for six months…

McCarthy: Then we are free to judge according to our observations and conclusions based on your refusal to answer and your demeanor on the stand.

Hammett: Is that a question, sir?

McCarthy: Mr. Hammett if you were spending, as we are, over $100 million a year on an information program allegedly for the purpose of fighting communism, and if you were in charge of that program to fight communism, would you purchase the works of some 75 communist authors and distribute their works throughout the world, placing our official stamp of approval upon those works? Or would you rather not answer that question?

Hammett: Well, I think – of course I don't know– if I were fighting communism, I don't think I would do it by giving people any books at all.

McCarthy couldn't help but snicker for a split second, according to Lillian Hellman, who was in the hearing room. She said it was the first time anybody had ever really hit him with a counterpunch.

C.P. Trussel's account of the hearing in the NY Times noted another famous writer's capitulation to McCarthy: "Langston Hughes, poet and essayist of New York… said he would like to see his books found in the overseas libraries replaced by ones he had written since 1950."

Trussel also reported that "Roy M. Cohn, chief subcommittee counsel, and David Schine, principal consultant of the group, volunteered that copies of books by Owen Lattimore, Johns Hopkins University Professor and long a target of Mr. McCarthy in his claim of Communist infiltration of the State Department, were in overseas information centers." (Cohn and Schine, his boy toy, had visited Paris and Rome at taxpayer expense to confirm the offensive presence of Lattimore's "Ordeal by Slander.")

"Senator McCarthy directed the subcommittee staff to call on Scott McLeod, the State Department’s new head of loyalty and security-risk investigations and files, to determine who selected books by alleged Communist authors for these overseas libraries and why."

The same kind of witch hunts are going on today, and as an accusation, "DEI" casts a wider net than "Communist," which was specific. In many towns and cities, it will take courage for librarians to order a book like "James" by Percival Everett, masterpiece though it might be.