Mr. ROBSION. Did you note any more wire tapping when those Negroes were arrested? Miss ADAMS. No more then than any other time. Mr. ROBSION. Did it happen then? Miss ADAMS. I do not remember it any more then than at other times. Mr. ROBSION. It was about the same? Miss ADAMS. That problem had started before that time. In other words, it was not the Negro incident that started it. Mr. ROBSION. But it did happen then; you got the same impression then? Miss ADAMS. The same impression; yes. Mr. ROBSION. I understand that when you were trying to help these Negroes in their trouble that your wire was being tapped. Have you had other times since then when it was tapped? Miss ADAMS. If they were suspicious of what you were after fundamentally, they would spy just because of that. Mr. TOLAN. What is your name, Miss Josephine Truslow Adams? Miss ADAMS. Yes. Mr. TOLAN. You are national vice president of the Defenders of the American Revolution? Miss ADAMS. Descendants of the American Revolution. Mr. TOLAN. Descendants? Miss ADAMS. Yes. Mr. TOLAN. And you asked for a hearing? Miss ADAMS. Yes. Mr. TOLAN. Thank you very much for your statement, Miss Adams. Miss ADAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. TOLAN. Now, we have three more witnesses, and I suppose we ought to go to the floor promptly. The committee will stand adJourned until 10 o'clock Wednesday. Mr. PRESSMAN. I saw something in the newspaper about another subcommittee of this committee holding hearings on the general labor practices for Wednesday morning, is that correct, Mr. Chairman? Mr. TOLAN. No; there is no hearing scheduled for Wednesday other than this one. The subcommittee will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock Wednesday morning. (Thereupon, at 12 o'clock noon, the subcommittee No. 1 adjourned until Wednesday, February 12, 1941, at 10 a. m.) WIRE TAPPING WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1941 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, (Subcommittee No. 1 met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a. m., for further consideration of H. R. 2266 and H. R. 3099, Hon. John H. Tolan presiding.) Mr. TOLAN. The subcommittee will please come to order. I understand, Mr. Jones, that you have an engagement and would like to get away. Mr. JONES. That is right, Mr. Chairman; I have to attend a vice presidents' meeting of the C. I. O. STATEMENT OF JOHN T. JONES, DIRECTOR OF LABOR'S NONPARTISAN LEAGUE, AND LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS, WASHINGTON, D. C. Mr. TOLAN. Proceed, Mr. Jones. Mr. JONES. I appear on behalf of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and Labor's Non-Partisan League in opposition to H. R. 2266. Mr. TOLAN. Would you repeat for whom you appear to these gentlemen who just came in? Mr. JONES. I appear as legislative representative of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and as the director of Labor's Non-Partisan League. I come before you gentlemen because the Congress of Industrial Organizations, at its third constitutional convention on November 20, 1940, adopted a resolution opposing "any legislation intended to sanction the use of wire tapping or other unreasonable investigation powers which destroy the freedom of the American people and subject them to regimentation by hidden and secret surveillance upon their daily lives." On January 9, 1941, the executive board of the Congress of Industrial Organizations unanimously approved the recommendations of the committee on legislation. One portion of that committee's report dealt with the danger to American rights and liberties that might follow if wire tapping should again be allowed to become common practice. The executive board of my organization stated: The spread of dictatorships abroad and hysterical fears at home must only serve to reaffirm the abiding faith of the American people in the great principles of civil rights and civil liberties embodied in the Bill of Rights and in the social legislation upholding the dignity of the common man. * * The Congress of Industrial Organizations pledges itself to the maintenance and extension of our democratic rights and liberties. In the last session of Congress a bill was introduced which may well have resulted in serious sup pression of civil liberties. The bill authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to make investigation by wire tapping and other means into what the Department of Justice deems to be interference with the national defense. While the Attorney General has attempted to safeguard the use of wire tapping by requiring a certificate justifying its use, there is no safeguard upon the broad authority to make other investigations. The bill is a dangerous invasion of civil liberties and constitutional guaranties against unlawful searches. A spokesman for the Congress of Industrial Organizations appeared before you gentlemen a little more than 6 months ago when you were considering another bill which would have legalized telephone eavesdropping. He said: Our organization stands second to none in the desire of our members to do all that we can in making our contribution for the complete and full effectuation of national defense. But we are also cognizant, as apparently the famous Justices of the Supreme Court have been, of the basic need at all times to maintain and protect our basic democratic institutions and principles upon which our republic is founded. We must not permit any form of tyranny or oppression to seep into our daily lives under the guise of protection of national defense. Such procedure, if unfortunately it were to occur, would mean the destruction of the very things for which the people of this Nation are now striving to protect and maintain. It is our judgment that unrestricted, uncontrolled, wire tapping in the hands of any one individual, regardless of how high his integrity may be, is a step in this direction. It will be seen from these comments that it is the principle, in addition to the language of the present bill and its predecessor, which labor views with alarm. Following the judgment of the most eminent jurists and legislators, we feel that wire tapping is something more than merely another device used by detectives in pursuit of criminals. Unlike the donning of false whiskers, or the shadowing of plain-clothes men-methods of detection which ordinarily do not harm the innocent-wire tapping is a method of espionage which ruthlessly lays bare the private lives and thoughts of citizens in the home, and in the business, government, or union offices. The innocent suffer with the guilty when the wire tappers are at work. Since persons with guilty consciences probably rarely use the telephone, the proportion of innocent victims to guilty victims would be overwhelming. Let me give you an example. In the Nardone case (302 U. S. 379) a Government wire tapper testified that he had been assigned to listen to all conversations emanating from pay telephones in the Astor Hotel in New York City. During this assignment, the Government agent said that he had listened to several thousands of conversations, but had deemed only 85 as being worth recording (Record on Appeal, p. 186). The Astor Hotel presumably enjoys the patronage of businessmen, of Government employees, and even the Members of Congress. During the period of espionage by the Government every word spoken over those wires by businessmen to their offices, by husbands to their wives, by Members of Congress to their secretaries, was laid bare to the prying ears of wire tappers. Most Government employees are fine and honorable men, as are most Government investigators. They are human beings, however, and it would be unreasonable to assume that all investigators would have the same high standards, or would uniformly be able to keep to themselves the secrets learned in the course of listening to the conversations of innocent persons not concerned in any crime. There is also the problem that, from time to time, Government investigators leave the Federal service. Would it be easy for a person schooled in wire tapping for the Government to forget the practice when in private service? Would there not be the strong temptation to use wire tapping against the Government, against labor unions, against persons active in public life? Perhaps it is not surprising that personages in the political world have had their wires tapped according to the press, in New York and Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, and California. In the latter State the speaker of the State assembly was said to have been the victim, and in both the California and Rhode Island cases the wire tappers were said to have been former Government investigators who had been taught the art of telephone espionage by the Government itself. To name just two more cases of the spread of this contagion, may I point to the fact that in 1938 the New York State Adjutant General of the American Legion charged that the wires of the Legion had been tapped, while in Tulsa, Okla., the wire of the president of the Oil Workers International Union, a C. I. O. organization, was tapped by a man who testified that he had learned to tap wires in a school maintained by a Government police bureau here in the city of Washington. It was the danger that official secrets might be revealed which led Congress to outlaw the practice of wire tapping during the first World War. Apparently, Congress had become worried lest persons listening in on telephone conversations should learn and reveal secret communications in regard to the national defense of the prosecution of the war. While we were at the height of our war effort in 1918, a way was found to help keep secret the telephone conversations of Members of Congress, heads of Government departments, businessmen, and citizens engaged in the defense and war program, as well as all other users of the telephone. Congress then passed an act "providing for the protection of the users of the telephone and telegraph service * * (40 Stat. 1017), which flatly prohibited wire tapping by anyone. Some may urge that world conditions now may make it necessary to relax the present protection against the interception of communications. In considering this point of view you may wish to keep before you the thought that this runs directly counter to our past experience. Since the first Federal safeguard for the privacy of business, official, and other telephone conversations was enacted as a result of needs developed during the war years 1917 and 1918, it would be more consistent with our past experience if an appeal were now being made to strengthen, rather than loosen, the requirement that unknown ears even the ears of investigators-be barred from carrying on this form of espionage. When the war demonstrated the need for legislation to get the snoopers off the Nation's telephone wires, some 20 or more of the individual States had also passed laws on the subject. Among these States were California, which I am sure the chairman of the committee, Mr. Tolan, is familiar with; Nebraska, which I am 299863-41-ser. 1- -6 |