Newly Released State Papers Detail ‘Red Menace’ Era

More than 8,000 pages of documents detailing the work of a state committee that investigated the “subversive” activities of thousands of Californians were unsealed here Wednesday, stirring memories of a time when fear of the “Red Menace” made widespread government snooping acceptable.

For 30 years beginning in 1941, the legislative committee hunted Communists, investigated minority and student groups and interrogated a parade of witnesses ranging from shipyard workers to Hollywood stars--often destroying careers and ruining lives in the process.

Transcripts of the committee’s hearings reveal the diversity of its targets. One details accusations that Communists were behind a sex education program in Chico schools. Another explores charges that San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi was giving a fascist salute at rallies. Rossi insisted the “salute” was merely a gesture signaling crowds to quiet down.

A copycat version of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, the state panel was abolished in 1971, its files locked up by the Senate’s leader.

Wednesday’s action opens to public view just a fraction of those files--four cardboard boxes of public hearing transcripts. An additional 76 boxes that contain photographs and sensitive personal reports on 20,000 Californians remain sealed in the state archives.

Scholars say that even the limited release, prompted by a Sacramento Superior Court judge, will remind people of a not-so-distant time when everyone from doctors to poets, janitors to housewives, was scrutinized because of their thoughts and political affiliations.

“The [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy era represents one of the greatest challenges to the American tradition of civil liberties ever,” said David Kennedy, a Stanford University professor of American history who applauded release of the files.

Secretary of State Bill Jones, who presided over the unsealing, declined to pass judgment on the committee but paraphrased philosopher George Santayana, saying: “Those who are not quick students of history are doomed to repeat it.”

Jones spoke from the belly of the downtown Sacramento archives, where 75,000 boxes of documents on California’s past are housed in temperature-controlled rooms spread over six floors. Surrounding him were a bank of TV cameras and a gaggle of reporters, lured by potential gems buried in records that have been off limits for three decades.

For several hours, the journalists jousted good-naturedly over the files, bound in fraying covers and indexed under intriguing headings such as “22 witnesses questioned about . . . possible involvement of the Japanese American Citizens League in subversive activities prior to Pearl Harbor.”

Surveying the scene, senior archivist Laren Metzer quipped: “This is like Friday night at Blockbuster. Everybody wants the same movie.”

Most of Wednesday’s attention centered on transcripts featuring questioning of Hollywood figures, popular targets of both the state and federal quests for Communist influence. Among those interrogated were singer Paul Robeson and lyricist Ira Gershwin. Many other luminaries--from film director John Huston to entertainer Danny Kaye--were named in committee reports.

At one 1954 hearing, several directors and screenwriters told of losing deals--and reputations--because they had been mistakenly linked by the committee to “subversive” groups.

“I have already experienced several very heartbreaking situations where I was about to make a contact and at the last moment the deals were called off,” director Albert Lewis testified. Lewis said he had been confused with a scientist of the same name whom the committee’s informants had linked to “communist activities.”

Once, Lewis said, he sent a script for a TV series to “a very great executive in the radio and television field” and he “refused to read it because he saw my name [in a committee report].”

Jesse L. Lasky Jr., a writer employed by Paramount Studios, also was connected to a “communist-dominated front organization” in one of the committee’s published reports. His story illustrates what historians say was the often reckless conduct of the panel.

In sworn testimony, Lasky politely disputed a published accusation that he was seen on July 26, 1944, with members of a suspicious group:

Lasky: At that time I was with Gen. [Douglas] MacArthur preparing for the invasion of the Philippines.

Sen. Hugh Burns: You were not even in California at that time?

Lasky: No sir, I wasn’t even in this hemisphere.

Lasky added that he had written a play that he hoped had “played some little part in the anti-Communist fight.” The play, “The Sickle or the Cross,” was a study of communism versus church doctrine--in which religious views prevailed.

Another transcript features dramatic testimony from Mary McCall Jr., a president of the Screen Writers Guild in the 1940s. Repudiating committee reports linking her with communist groups, McCall echoed the feeling of many witnesses--that beyond damaging her professionally, the accusations were traumatic personally.

“I am not a Communist. I have never been a Communist and I say solemnly . . . that I would rather be dead than a Communist,” said McCall, a mother of four, including two sons then in the Army. She went on to dispense some prophetic advice:

“I think sometimes in revulsion from communism--and revolting they are--you find yourself tempted to go too far the other way. This impulse you must resist.”

The Legislature got into the “un-American activity” hunt in 1939, when Communists reportedly infiltrated the state welfare agency. Heading the probe was an enthusiastic, “Red-under-every-bed” assemblyman named Sam Yorty, who later became mayor of Los Angeles.

During World War II and into the 1950s, the committee’s main mission was tracking suspected Communists and Japanese and Nazi sympathizers. Later, it cast a much broader net--the medical profession, labor unions, San Francisco’s Italian community, the Black Panthers, student protesters at UC Berkeley.

Scholars say the committee’s work and tactics--including hidden microphones and other types of surveillance--were at times more aggressive than those of McCarthy and his Communist-hunting allies. State Librarian Kevin Starr, a California historian, said that especially under the chairmanship of Los Angeles songwriter-turned-legislator Jack Tenney, the committee sowed “paranoia and hysteria.”

“What might have been a possibly discreet and maybe even relevant investigation of communism in certain areas of society just became a witch hunt,” Starr said.

In 1971, the committee was abolished by then-Senate leader James R. Mills, a San Diego Democrat who found that the committee was snooping into his affairs. Outraged, Mills locked up the files, and they seemed destined to remain so.

But last week, a Superior Court judge granted a request by the California First Amendment Coalition to release the transcripts. So far, there has been no formal demand for access to the more sensitive dossier material still sealed up in the archives. Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) hopes it stays that way.

“It’s a lot of innuendo and hearsay and unsubstantiated junk that could hurt people,” said Burton, who figures that there’s a file on him but hasn’t checked. “To tell you the truth, I think we ought to burn it.”