The Goldmark Case by William L. Dwyer

Author:William L. Dwyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Q. You knew generally that Mr. Rader had resisted the charges against him and that there had been a controversy about it; you knew that, didn’t you?

A. I didn’t know it generally; I knew it specifically.

Q. One of the things you were to tell was people that you had attended closed meetings of the Communist Party with, isn’t that right?

A. Yes, I was to name persons whom I could recall having met in closed meetings with.

Q. Yes. And despite the fact that you named several faculty members at the University of Washington, you did not name Professor Rader did you?

A. I don’t think that I did.

I handed her a thick printed volume which contained all of her committee testimony, and asked her to search the index for Rader’s name. It was not there. She had not mentioned him although his name, if he had in fact been a communist, would have been important above all others.

I asked for details about the “closed Party meeting” she claimed to have attended with Rader. Mrs. Hartle was vague; it took place, she said, in 1937 or 1938 at a house in either the Interbay or Ballard district in Seattle.

At noon Judge Turner ruled on a legal question he had been considering for two days. The film Operation Abolition, offered by the defense, would be received in evidence. When court resumed, the room was darkened and the motion picture shown to the jury. It showed militant witnesses shouting abuse at the committee while demonstrators surged and rioted outside. All opposition to the Committee on Un-American Activities, the film asserted, stemmed directly or indirectly from the Communist Party. It closed with a shot of the committee chairman, standing before the capitol building, urging Americans to awaken to their peril.

The motion picture undoubtedly frightened and disturbed the jury. But when I started to question Mrs. Hartle about who the film’s critics were, I was cut off by a ruling from the bench: only the bare fact that it was “controversial” could be shown. Luckily the defendants had placed in evidence an ACLU pamphlet containing a Washington Post editorial on the film, which I now read:

“The movie presents a mendaciously distorted view of the demonstrations staged by a group of college students when the committee held hearings in San Francisco last May. This is a flagrant case of forgery by film. The film warps the truth in two important respects.

“First, it suggests as its main thesis that the demonstrations were communist inspired and communist led. Diligent inquiry has led us to a conviction that this charge is wholly unjustified.…”

The editorial went on to quote the sheriff of San Francisco County as saying: “There was no act of physical aggression on the part of the students.” The witness on the stand disputed the editorial; but it was now before the jury.

Mrs. Hartle would blandly admit contradictory testimony given in earlier cases. She had sometimes offered a much different version of the Party than the picture of unrelenting evil she painted in Okanogan.

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