FANFARE FOR THE COMMUN MAN

The dirty deeds of Joe McCarthy (William Rusher, May 15, 2003, WorldNetDaily)

As a stellar example of successful defiance [of Joe McCarthy], she cites the composer Aaron Copland, who "fiercely defended himself, declaring, 'I have not been a communist in the past and I am not now a communist,'" and was not compelled to testify in public.

As it happens, I have considerable personal knowledge of this general subject. In 1956 and 1957, I was associate counsel to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee – not McCarthy's committee (a subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, and thus confined to investigating the government), but the body charged by the Senate with oversight of the nation's internal security. Such committees hold hearings to inform the Congress and the American people of matters that may require legislative action.

In the case of committees seeking testimony from people who may have something to hide (and that, of course, includes secret communists), it is common practice to hear the witness first in "executive," or secret, session. And, curiously enough, the chief purpose in doing so is to protect witnesses who want to cooperate.

More than once we asked a witness, in executive session, if he had ever been a communist, only to have him sigh and reply, "Yes, and I've wanted to get this off my chest for a long time." Then he would tell us frankly the story of his involvement, including the names of the other communists with whom he worked. When the session was over, we would thank him for his cooperation and he would go home, without the media so much as learning his name.

If, on the other hand, he refused to answer all questions about his communist involvement by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, he would be required to do so in a public session, from which Congress and the American people could draw their own conclusions.

In the case of Copland, the composer forthrightly denied communist membership under oath, so the McCarthy committee saw no point in a public session. But its curiosity about him isn't hard to understand, for Copland was a world-class joiner of communist fronts, having belonged to more than 20 (including the Committee of Professional Groups for Browder and Ford, 1936, which supported Communist Party Secretary Earl Browder for president over FDR).

But the Times didn't mention that. Reasons of space, I guess.

In an interview conducted by Jayson Blair the composer denied those memberships. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2003 11:43 AM