CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - HOUSE

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CIA-RDP75-00149R000100170010-5
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RIPPUB
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K
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2
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November 11, 2016
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November 23, 1998
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10
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Publication Date: 
April 3, 1967
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April 3, FOIAb3b Sanitized - Approved For Release: 1967 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD HOUS terview ?,".tb. the Soviet youth publication Komsornonsi,:aya Pravda: "Our pnrty is the main force in the left- wing movement, it is the most influential among the left-wing groups and among the yoyi, -if,. Naturally, the closest ties we have are with the DuBois Clubs, since they occupy Marxist positions. Many of the DuBois Clubs members have joined our party." Many of them didn't have to join, since they were already in. Its founders, after all, included what the FBI wryly calls "Red Diaper Babies" meaning the sons and daugh- ters of old line party members. They in- clude: The zealous Miss Aptheker, whose father Herbert, is a leading Communist theoretician, Once described her occasionally confusing philosophy by insisting on "destroying or eliminating corporate monopolies and na- tionalizing control of the industries into the hands of the people." Eugene Dennis Jr., son of the former U.S. Communist Party chairman, who has in- sisted, since he left the Wisconsin University club for the San Francisco office, that he isn't a Communist though he believes in the teachings of Karl Marx. Michael Eisenscher, who replaced Dennis In Wisconsin, the son of Sigmund Eisenscher, a member of the Wisconsin State Committee of the Communist Party. niargarat Lima, onetime Berkeley student and daughter of Chairman Albert J. Lima, a write: a,na leader of the Northern Cali- fornia 'iiristrict of the Communist Party. Another leader, Mike Myerson, a delegate to the Eighth World Communist Youth Fes- tival in Helsinki, Finland, popped up in Hanoi two years ago, sporting a Viet Cong cap and a ring he said had been made from the wreckage of a downed American plane. For his efforts in several Hanoi demon- strations, re was made an honorary nephew of President, Ho Chi Minh. His philsophy is almost an echo of Miss Aptfleker: "If it were up to me, I would like to see 'passer.. a 25th amendment to the Constitu- tion to abolish private ownership of property; just as the 14th amendment abolished pri- vate ownership of people," he has said more than ance, although he seems to have con- fused his amendments: the 13th abolished slavery, the 14th deals with due process of law. With this sort of position being loudly ex- pressed by members of domewhat dubious backgrounds and purposes, the DuBois Clubs quickly ran afoul of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and such political figures as Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and former At- torney General Nicholas Katzenbach, not to mention a number of Congressional investi- gating units. As early as 1964, Hoover warned that the DuBois Clubs were the patty's "newest fa- cade on the nation's campuses-to draw young blood for the vampire that is' international COMMUni.97 71." In 1086, Katzenbach moved to have the or- ganization registered as a Communist front with the Subversive Activities Control Board, a move that DuBois attorney Patrick Hallinan greeted with the crude observation, "He can stick his registration in his ear." Byrd and Nixon have both been roundly criticized for their views on the club, Byrd after Senate hearings at which he said that they were "the illegitimate spawn of the Communist Party," and Nixon when he ac- cuseci the club of deliberately trying to mis- lead the public into confusing DuBois Clubs with the Boys Clubs of America. That controversy arose when some radio announcers, instead of correctly pronouncing DuBois' name "dew-boys," slurred it into the Brook:ynese "duh-boys." The Boys Club. horrified at the violent phone calls and bomb threats that resulted, was so worried about protecting the millions of dollars a year it needs in donations, ? pleaded with announcers to be ,more care- ful and Nixon called the DuDois Clubs' choice of a name "an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity." Probably more than anything else, the up- roar over this first catapulted the clubs onto front pages across the country. But it was almost nothing compared to what Katzen- bach's move did last year. BROOKLYN RIOT On March 7, in New York, the Brooklyn DuBois Club on Vanderbilt Ave. in the Park Slope section was the scene of a small riot when 150 infuriated neighbors bombarded the young left wingers with eggs, beer cans and ' fists. Thirty club members, mostly Negro and Puerto Rican, were injured and six were arrested. it r On March 8, 40 or 50 pounds of dynamite blew apart the Negro ghetto headquarters of the club in San Francisco and damaged several neighboring houses. The club was empty at the time. The Attorney General's attempt to have the clubs register as a Red front is still pend- ing, largely because DuBois lawyers enjoined him from acting on the grounds that the McCarran Act is unconstitutional. The move also backfired, in a sense. The club's membership mushroomed after the government's action, climbing from 3,000 to 4,500 in a few weeks. As Hallinan put it, (it would seem _cor- rectly) : "He (Katzenbach) doesn't understand young people today?you try to intimidate them and keep them from speaking out about the Vietnam war and they just become determined to be heard. "These kids who are in our group have been steeled by the civil rights movement. The 'Communists' label just doesn't scare them," he said. And the DuBois Clubs, instead of getting weaker, have grown stronger. Basing their appeal to new members on attacks on the House Unamerican Activities Committee, the draft, civil rights, and an occasional strike such as the one by grape workers in California's San Fernando Valley, they offer something for everyone in the left-wing movement toward "social justice." Possibly because it will help them to retain members during the traditional summer doldrums when loyal workers leave the cam- puses for vacation, they are now focused on - the Vietnam issue. Even when next month's demonstrations are over, thelnotoriety DuBois leaders know they will attract can be used next fall to recruit new students to the movement. AMERICA'S "RED GUARD"?PART 2 (Mr. ASHBROOK (at the request of ?Mr. HAMMERSCHMIDT) was granted per- mission to extend his remarks at this point in the RECORD and to include ex- traneous matter.) Mr. ASHBROOK. Mr. Speaker, the following article completes the two-part series recently featured by the New York Daily 'News on the "new left" and its corning participation in the Vietnam Week program. As previously stated, the House Committee on Un-American Ac- tivities in its report of March 31 entitled "Communist Origin and Manipulation of Vietnam Week," stated that Commu- nists are the principal organizing force behind the Vietnam Week demonstra- ' tions slated for April 8 through 15. Readers of the News are indebted to this publication and to the author of the se- ries, Mr. George 1.cobbe, for providing much needed information on this up- coming program. To disseminate more widely some of FOIAb3b th and its participants, I insert the article, "America's 'Red Guard'," from the News of March 26, in the RECORD at this point: AMERICA'S "RED Gusrts"-200,000 FROM "NEW LEFT" EXPECTED FOR BIG RALLY HERE (By George Nobbe) ? The dozens of overlapping "New Left" or- ganizations which plan a series of massive, disruptive anti-Vietnam demonstrations starting here on April 8 have mobilized so many militant out-of-town peaceniks that a critical housing shortage has been their most pressing problem. Trains and buses, many of them chartered, are due from Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Ithaca, Washington and Minneapolis, with more expected from other cities in time for a protest march on the United Nations on April 15. Leaders of the march, which will climax a week draft-board sit-ins, campus teach- ins, peace fairs and art exhibits, expect close to 200,000 young radicals to congregate here. But they are also fearful that the faithful, long on zeal if short on cash, may wind up with no place to stay. It all adds up to a big headache for New York police; and this doesn't at all disturb the leaders of the so-called Spring Mobiliza- tion to End the War in Vietnam. The more uproar the better. The idea, according to a stormy organiza- tional meeting of the committee in Green- wich Village last week, is to put on the most militant display their funds and zeal can promote. They've already spent plenty. The eastern section of the Spring Mobilization is $2,500 in the hole by its own admission and is fran- tically peddling literature and throwing dances to come up with more cash. Some of it went for printing and mailing, some on rent for such groups as the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee and the Fort Hood Three Committee, which seeks. the release of three GIs jailed for refusing to go to Vietnam. But most of the money goes to finance the harangues of such peace pitchmen as James Bevel, a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on leave to organize the New York end of Spring Mobilization. His wanderings have taken hint to Ithaca, where the Cornell branch of the far-left Stu- dents for a Democratic Society hope to have 500 students burn their draft cards April 15; ' Washington, where he will help complete ar- rangements for a "peace and freedom" train to carry demonstrators to New York; and Boston, where he organized yet another office of Spring Mobilization. Even Bevel's poise almost deserted him at the Greenwich Village meeting when a group of farther-left youngsters screamed for what they called "more radical speakers" to ad- dress the peace march when it ends at UN Plaza. Asked what he meant by "more radical", a bearded zealot who introduced himself as "Michael Lasky, Communist Party, Marxist- ' Leninist," yelled, "anti-imperialists!" His demand was voted down by a 2 to 1 margin, but it points up a basic division in the movement, which includes scores of paci- fist organizations that have accepted the support of the far left only to find out that peace isn't necessarily their only motive. The extreme left-wingers consider Vietnam a racist war against a colored people,'typical of the "imperialistic" system under which they reluctantly live. As one member of the New York Spring Mobilization office put it: "We'll take anyone who's against the war. We have people from left-wing groups'like the DuBois Clubs, but we also have people from college fraternities. campus leaders and religious organizations, too." Two such moderates are Susan Cloke, an import from San Francisco State College, and 4 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000100170010-5 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000100170010-5 ItO 1-1 I 11 11 tlt I II 1 AI It I'd IIOUSE April 3, 1967 I_I II 1i104.1C i.a I is. 411?11,1k it ill I iielr thflUI.Ifl I/I how many will turn out out, litTe during "protest week," they have planned a series of "peace happen- ings," including photo exhibits and folk sing- ers, when the marchers assemble at 11 AM. on April 15 at the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, near 66th St. BIGGEST YET "All we know Is that this will be the big- gest peace demonstration New York has ever seen," Susan said. ."We've had inquiries about buses and trains from towns you'd never think would be interested in some- thing like this. I don't know where we're going to put them all . . maybeln armories or gymnasiums." Tho pacifist organizers here may have some TOR!;011 to be apprehensive about the activist lefi,-wingerts in their midst, but those in cAtror.lilt, yawn" lian Francisco la the prime targeI,, )1ILVO lot, more to be worried about. urasisy alliance of professed Commu- nista, avowed Trotskyites and sincere though possibly naive pacifists is spearheading the West Coast end of Spring Mobilization, along with a motley assortment of leftist splinter groups. They have planned an explosive program that calls, sometimes ungrammatically, for such things as: A "construct fully disorder/u demonstra- tion" April 15 at the San Francisco Internal Revenue office, aimed at disrupting business on the last day tax returns can be filed. A mass demonstration to jam a narrow road that leads to a napalm plant outside of Redwood City on April 14. A "peace fair" in the civic auditorium fea- turing such noted peace-lovers as child care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock and folk singer Joan Baez, coupled with a pictorial display illustrating the effects of alleged American use of napalm, gas and defoliation chemicals in Vietnam. A protest march to Kezar Stadium for a I P.M. rally. Public burning of draft cards despite the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal last week to hear an appeal from a 5-year prison term given a draft-card burner. A series of kangaroo court "war crimes -aibunals" along the lines of one planned in Europe by British philosopher Bertrand Rus- sell, with guilty verdicts reportedly already decided upon by students at the University of California and San Francisco State. The defendants in the mock trials will be faculty members and school administrators charged with "complicity" in the Vietnam war because they permitted CIA and FBI recruiters on their campuses and have not spoken out against government research grants. Among the leaders in the San Francisco area are Bettina Aptheker, DuBois Club founder and admitted Communist, who has been a thorn in the side of Berkeley officials ever since her role in the ill-starred free speech movement that turned into "dirty word" riots two years ago. TROTSKYITE TOURS The executive director is Kipp Dawson, a former San Francisco State College DuBois leader, who, with her husband, is a militant Trotskyite. The Dawsons have spent months touring western college campuses four or five days ahead of their featured speaker and chairman of the West Coast Spring Mobiliza- tion, Edward Keating. , Keating is publisher of the left-of-center y monthly, "Ram arts," the c_lar,Ung,of the rad'. eals for its recen a tr-ic-ks on the CIA, and Sifyrlie?fra-nOst-Th?e?reas-t?Ceincerns 41.4e......yOlenIly_fillti-1.1.67?ifalru?de of the ..PAIPP..,1sers? "The demonstration committee is open to anyone and everyone?even conservative Re- publicans, provided they are opposed to the war in Vietnam." ' 14.1 yI,IJI1,0111.1,?111 1,,111.4,"?I Crii,141111(.(1. Ili non-exclusionary. We are gettiog a great response, no l, BO much for what, we are doing but for what the Ad- ministration is doing in Washington." At the high school level, Kathie Harer, teen-aged daughter of Asher Harer (long active in such causes as the now defunct Fair Play for Cuba Committee and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party), claims she has organized anti-war groups at eight schools in the San Francisco area. Like a great many youngsters in the peace movement, she seems privy to a lot of infor- mation normal Americans have had to mud- dle along without. - In one recent report she wrote: "The hos- tility or lust the indifferencd that you find among many high school students in relation to the war is clue to the basic ignorance of the real facts behind the war." She didn't bother to divulge the "real facts." What bewilders many observers of the Nelv Left 16 where all the money comes from, since organizing 200,000-man rallies for any cause should cost far more than Spring Mobiliza- tion has chosen to report. For instance, the West Coast office, in a fi- nancial report for the threo weeks ending Feb. 2, listed income of $1,136, some of which is known to have come from-Albert (Mickey) Lima, Communist party chairman for north- ? ern California. LIST LONG In addition to Lima's donation, it is public knowledge on the West Coast that the list of local sponsors on the Spring Mobilization Committee includes the names of 23 known Communists, affiliated with everything from the American Communist Party to the Prog- ressive Laborites and the Young Socialist Alliance. (Like many militant organizations, Spring Mobilization lists sponsors rather loosely. One it names is "Herbert Hoover," without identifying him either as the ex-President, who died in. 1964 or some other Herbert Hoover. On Feb. 19, the Ad Hoe Faculty Committee on Vietnam, many of whose mem- bers are in sympathy with Spring Mobiliza- ticrn, took out an ad in the New York Times carrying 1,200-plus names, 200 of which, it turned out, appeared without authorization. One listed was that of a New York doctor who earlier had protested that such anti-war as were a "disservice to the country.") There is no evidence that Spring Mobiliza- tion is supported financially in some clan- degtine fashion by the Kremlin, but some wonder where the money comes from. They feel that there is simply too much spent on such things as sound systems, print- ing, organization, speakers and travel for the whole April protest to have been financed solely by the dues of idealistic college stu- dents and a few anonymous donors. Very few would quarrel with the New Left's right to seek an end of the Vietnam War, even if it does involve a series of poten- tially explosive demonstrations that the law is powerless to halt because there is nothing illegal about them. What they do quarrel with is that the more militant radicals see peace in Southeast Asia as the beginning of the end of the American system. One such is Bettina Aptheker, who advo- cates an end to private ownership of property, has called Secretary of Defense McNamara "insane" and Secretary of State Rusk "maniacal," and derisively refers to most of the nation's newspapers as "the cap [capitalist] press." Earlier this year she told "Dimensions," elf-styled "discussion journal of the WEB. DuBois Club": RADICAL'S ROLE "This commitment to the building of a radical movement is healthy and important. The problem is to see that radicals do emerge from the struggle. Radicals do not emerge I rotol a [Jell tient VrifIll UM: they emerge froni pe I Iilea] programs lu i iflrthfl movemen tf3. radicallem is a slow process and a difficult one. It will be strengthened by a growing peace movement involving hundreds of thou- sands of Americans. Radicalism will be tre- mendously enhanced when the movement succeeds in ending the war. "When the U.S. is forced to get out, and it will be, it will represent a tremendous triumph for the forces of peace, socialism and national liberation?and a tremendous ? blow far imperialism." Bettina, a history major who often writes and talks with a magnificent disdain for his- torical accuracy, can speak for hours about "the evils of the system." These sho blames for wars, slums, segrega- tion, police brutality, inadequate housing and educational shortcomings. All of them, she insists, will magically vanish once the war ends and democracy gives way to radical socialism. Many of her opinions are echoed by two other DuBois Club activities, Matthew and Terrance Hallinan. The Hallinans, though not Communists, nonetheless agree that the peace effort has drawn leftists together. But splits have developed all along the New Left front. The first came in Chicago when moderates in Spring Mobilization refused to go along with the West Coast DuRoisers on a proposal for a nationwide student strike. The reason given was that they did not want to run the risk that such a grandoise project might flop. They chose to concen- trate on New York and San Francisco demonstrations instead. Then the militant Youth Against War and Fascism, claiming it had "no confidence in the liberal line of [sen.] Robert Kennedy," chose to participate in the April demonstra- tions with its own slogans. They include such as "Big Firms Get Rich?GIs Die" and "Johnson Speaks Phony Peace?Widens War." Then the California section of Students for a Democratic Society dealt the peaceniks ? the stiffest blow of all by voting not to en- dorse the April 15 mobilization. An SDS position paper argued that parades no longer attracted either new members or sufficient press coverage, that the protest should be held in Washington, and that the timing of Spring Mobilization was politically Irrelevant. "We in SDS," the paper continued, ". . . view the wax as an oppressive action on the part of the government similar to many other oppressive actions which form a part and ? parcel of the lives of many Americans. "Thus we feel that the suffering of the Vietnamese people is akin to the suffering of the people of the United States, that the draft and the war are manifestations of the same kind of thinking on the part of the government, that poverty and racism are as much a result of deceptive government action as the Vietnam War." And to make matters worse, DuBois Club membership on the West Coast has dropped steadily since former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach's attempt, unsuccess- ful, to list the clubs as a Red front. Even so, the peace marches next month could well be the most disruptive yet, if only because the chances are excellent that they will be the biggest. That, at least, is the opinion of two New York DuBois Club officials, Jose Stevens, a one-time Hunter College student, and Jose Ristorucci, a Brooklyn College dropout. COST CUTTERS Both of them work fulitime for the or- ganization, both live with their parents to cut their living costs, and both vehemently deny the Communist party has anything to do with their organization or Spring Mobili- zation. "Communist is a dirty word, a smear word used by people who don't agree with our Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000100170010-5