We also believe that serious consideration should be given to permitting police chiefs and those persons designated by him directly to be permitted to make application direct to a State court for wiretapping orders without the necessity of proceeding through the district attorneys or the attorney general of the State.

I might add that this is now in our law. We cannot, as police officials, go directly to the court. We have to proceed through either our States attorneys, as they are called in our State, or the attorney general.

We are not asking Congress for the right to invade the privacy of law-abiding citizens. However, we are requesting that serious consideration be given to the enactment of legislation clearing up this issue and putting in the hands of police officials a most necessary tool for the suppression of crime, the apprehension of criminals dangerous to our citizens and, I might add, to the economy of this Nation.

We sincerely request of this committee that they take this into consideration and realize that we are sort of stuck at the present. We are in a state of status quo, because we cannot use the evidence that we can obtain legally through our State legislation because of section 605 of the Federal Communications Act.

Senator HART. Captain, thank you very much.

I rather fear that the chief of police of Cincinnati, Ohio, who was here during the day, may have had to leave, but if Chief Schrotel had a prepared statement that he desired to file, I am certain the record. will be kept open for that purpose.

May I inquire if there are others here who desire to testify and who have not been called?

STATEMENT OF RICHARD KUH, SECRETARY, NEW YORK STATE DISTRICT ATTORNEYS ASSOCIATION

Mr. KUн. Senator Hart, my name is Richard Kuh. I am secretary of the New York State District Attorneys Association.

I think at this late hour there are still three things to be said that have not been said before.

First and foremost, and most important, and most sincerely, is on behalf of all of the people in law enforcement who have been here, of all echelons of local law enforcement, I should like to not only thank the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, but particularly to thank its very able and very devoted counsel, Francis Rosenberger, for helping to arrange this meeting, and for patiently assisting the Senators in the conduct of the meeting.

Senator Hart, on behalf of all of us I would like to thank you and your colleagues who spent so much time with us here today.

Secondly, I should like to make one thing clear for the record. Questions were put to various witnesses about the practices that were followed in terms of divulgence, what use we made of tapes in the

courtroom.

Questions were particularly put along these lines by Senator Carroll, and several of the witnesses, in answering those questions, may not have made crystal clear, and I think the record should be clear, that we were talking of the practice that existed up until December 8, 1957, the date of the Benanti case, and that the practice which has existed

since that date, when recordings have been made with permission of one of the parties, a recording on a Minifon device, when one of the parties has it concealed, so that they are not then referring to wiretapping.

I want to make clear when witnesses spoke of our use of tapes in courtrooms today, they were talking of either Minifon tapes or tapes of telephone conversations when a party makes a call from a law enforcement office or lets us listen at his home and record there.

Since December 8, 1957, we have not been divulging tapes or their contents in the courtroom, and I think the record should be crystal clear about that.

Senator HART. I think the committee would assume that.

Mr. Kuн. Thank you, Senator Hart.

The third point I should like to make clear, in summing up, is that most of the people that you heard here today have been in this battle for legalized limited safeguarded wiretapping for some years.

Unfortunately, we did see the spectacle of early in 1958, I think it was January of 1958, within a month or so after the Benanti decision, Senator McClellan introduced a bill that would have restored to the States the right to intercept and divulge. That did not move.

Then, last year Senator Keating introduced the bill that has been referred to as Senate 1086 which, I believe, was reported out of the committee during the very last week of the session and, as a practical matter, was too late to have both Houses act upon it.

So that when several of the Senators have put the question, wouldn't we simply like the situation ante-Benanti, and we have said, yes, I think it should be clear that though we would have liked that and would still like it, we recognize that after 4 years of battling we have been unable to get it, after coming down-Mr. Silver, Mr. Hogan, and others have been down-to committees repeatedly.

So, as a practical matter, we, in local law enforcement, who are concerned with our problem, the problem of local law enforcement, recognize our need, if you will, and I am not here to discuss tactics, but our need for allies, and so we are here today fully and without any equivocation supporting the Attorney General's bill."

There are certain changes that various of the speakers have mentioned that we would like to see in that bill. But whether or not we can have those changes, we need a bill, and we need it immediately, and we would not like to see one bill being balanced against the other to the point that we ended this legislative session once again with no bill.

We, we are not here especially pleading for Senator Keating's bill or for the Attorney General's bill, as such.

We are pleading for whichever bill realistically will restore to us in local law enforcement the power to intercept and divulge that which we so desperately need and, as the speakers have said, that we cannot do without in many major investigations.

I thank you, Senator Hart and Mr. Rosenberger for your patience. Senator HART. I thank you and I thank all who have contributed to this record today.

Whatever tone the questions by some of us may have had, none of us doubt for an instance the deep conviction that each of these witnesses has held that one or the other of these bills is essential to law enforcement.

I sense also that all of the witnesses are conscious that there is a balancing of interests that is involved and, as they see it, prior claim goes to the maintenance of a safe community by means of this device and its use.

May I add for the record a statement filed with us by the managing director of the Baltimore Criminal Justice Commission, Ralph G. Murdy.

Mr. Murdy was present during most of the day, but was compelled to leave before we reached him on the witness stand.

(The statement of Mr. Murdy follows:)

STATEMENT OF RALPH G. MURDY, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BALTIMORE CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION, BALTIMORE, MD.

The State of Maryland has a strict control law revised on April 28, 1959, specifying that a States attorney, upon showing probable cause before a judge in one of our criminal courts, can secure an ex parte order to tap wires specified in the application for 30 days.

This revised law has not been operative lately due to the question of legality of our State law under Federal law.

As managing director of the Baltimore Criminal Justice Commission, a nonpublic agency incorporated in 1922 to promote the administration of justice, I feel the need for having our State law made operative through a positive Federal law if local police are to successfully combat gambling.

The widely quoted remark to the effect that wiretapping is a "dirty business" is a judgment, not a fact. I do not accept it as a general statement of fact. Wiretapping can be a "dirty business," just as a nightstick and revolver can be abused. The evil is not inherent but results from misuse.

Senator HART. Also I have a letter dated May 7, 1962, addressed to the chairman of the committee, Senator Eastland, from the Betts professor of law at Columbia, Walter Gellhorn.

(The letter referred to follows:)

Hon. JAMES O. EASTLAND,
U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.

MAY 7, 1962.

DEAR SENATOR EASTLAND: I strongly hope that the Judiciary Committee will reject the pending bills-in particular S. 1086 and S. 2813-that, if enacted, would allow wiretapping in stated circumstances.

The chief argument for these measures is that wiretapping is needed to achieve effective law enforcement in areas of great public importance. This need, it has been contended, offsets the danger that wiretapping will invade privacy and thus limit personal liberty. The argument loses force if the asserted need cannot be clearly established. In my opinion it has not been. Federal law enforcement has been strikingly effective in recent years without reliance on evidence obtained by wiretaps. Only a handful of States have allowed wiretapping as an instrument of law enforcement; the States that have renounced this device have not seemingly suffered. Only about a dozen attorneys general of the States have urged a change in Federal law in this respect. Apparently, the others have not felt the need for a weapon that lends itself so readily to abuse and that may generate more problems than it solves.

Without any reference at all to the serious constitutional questions related to this matter, I believe that wiretapping should be barred. To authorize it would be to place too high a value on police surveillance and too low a value on the American tradition of personal privacy.

Sincerely yours,

WALTER GELLHORN,
Betts Professor of Law.

Senator HART. As a last note, if I can testify for just half a minute it is just 6 o'clock in the evening-one of the things which, in a sense, is irrelevant to the consideration that we ought to give to this bill, but which nonetheless intrudes in the minds of some of us, is that

we wish we had a country where these nonpolice officials, private, whatever you call them, fellows who are tapping, and everybody knows it, we wish we had a society where this was just not going on.

All of us on the committee, I think, recognize in light of the Supreme Court decision in 1957 that there is great need for clarification of the law, and that it presents really an intolerable situation for local law enforcement officials. We know that.

The problem is to resolve in what fashion it shall be changed. Senator Carroll and others have indicated that each of us is doing his best with his conscience on this one.

If there is no further testimony, the committee will adjourn subject to the call of the Chair.

(Whereupon, at 6 p.m., the committee was adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair.)