The collection is comprised mainly of legal documents and drafts and research materials pertaining to the landmark lawsuits prosecuted or defended by Jeremiah Stamler, Yolanda Hall, and Milton M. Cohen. These documents were created, photocopied, and collected for use by attorneys Jenner, Sullivan, and Kamin. They have been arranged in the following series: General Papers, Stamler vs. Willis Files, U.S. vs. Stamler Files, and Stamler vs. Mitchell Files. A great deal of near-print and printed material has been discarded from the collection.
The GENERAL PAPERS contain professional vitae, articles, and personal clippings about both Dr. Stamler and Mrs. Hall. One folder of general correspondence mainly consists of routine letters from the lawyers to others. Also included are statements of Albert E. Jenner Jr. to HUAC, 1965; a speech by Jenner, November 4, 1965; and articles by Sullivan, Kamin, and Arthur M. Sussman; and Hans Zeisel and Rose Stamler (Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, vol. 11, no. 2, Spring 1976). There are small files of letters and near-print material collected from and about the Fund For the Republic, National Committee to Abolish the House Committee on Un-American Activities (NCAHUAC), and National Council of Churches, all pertaining to government interference with their activities. Supporters of Stamler and Hall, in particular Dr. Paul Dudley White, organized the Jeremiah Stamler, M.D. Legal Aid Fund, the activities of which were coordinated with the Jenner and Block law firm. Included in those files are correspondence, lists of supporters, and planning materials for a concert by Harry Belafonte and an art exhibition, both fund-raising events. Also included are attorneys' mailing lists and miscellaneous materials.
The records of STAMLER vs. WILLIS form the bulk of the collection and include a chronology of the case and lists of documents filed with the court, a few printed briefs, and several notes and drafts of briefs on specific and general issues. Similar materials are located with miscellaneous notes and papers. Other legal documents have been arranged alphabetically by topic or type of record, and in some cases, chronologically as best it could be determined, including the first and second (revised) complaints, interoffice legal memoranda, and general legal papers. This latter file contains copies of motions, memoranda, and documents filed in court by both sides, and orders of the judges. Separate files of drafts and copies of finished documents have been established for other legal papers, including memos and notes regarding discovery and Congressional privilege, the oral argument, motion and memos for summary judgment, motions to dismiss, memos and notes concerning proof, drafts and an outline of the appendix to the briefs, transcripts, and trial preparation memos, notes, and papers.
In preparation for the trial phase of Stamler vs. Willis, the attorneys conducted several major research projects. Research and trial preparation materials consist of raw data and summary reports of subjects investigated for possible use at trial.
With the assistance of students of the University of Chicago Law School, attorney Kamin and Professor Harry Kalven conducted a review of books, magazines, and periodicals for admissions, quotations, statistics, and information about HUAC. Similarly, attorneys sought to obtain television films and radio recordings of the hearings held in Chicago in May 1965. They did succeed in obtaining some footage, from which prints of the Committee hearing were made for use in illustrating the publicity given to a witness who testified. (These prints are now PH 3670, part of this collection.) Law review articles concerning HUAC were collected, to assist in proving HUAC's lack of legislative purpose. Political science periodicals, doctoral theses, HUAC annual and other reports were also researched, the latter to show “HUAC's concern with the impact of foreign communist parties on foreign nations, having no relationship to its mandate, HUAC's sensationalism and in general HUAC's attempts to set itself up, ... as a governmental mechanism for promotion of a political orthodoxy.” (From a memo on “Present Status of Trial Preparation,” by Chester T. Kamin, April 29, 1968.) The book reviews and notes are present in the collection, while general articles from widely available newspapers and magazines were discarded.
A review of the Congressional Record, 1940-1968, located speeches concerning the activities and purposes of HUAC, particularly those with admissions by members of the Committee. This research was undertaken to reveal “that the purpose of the Committee is to expose and harass rather than to advance proper legislative purposes,” to locate legislation that the Committee took credit for and other examples of aggrandizement, and to investigate Committee expenditures, particularly in regard to paid witnesses. (From a memoranda from Thomas P. Sullivan summarizing a conference held January 19, 1968; Box 2, Folder 14.) Summary reports of this Congressional Record research are filed in the collection. (The Congressional Record is available in the Historical Library, so unmarked excerpts, 1940-1968, were discarded from the collection.) Legislative bills on which the Committee held public or private hearings or executive sessions since January 1957, were also reviewed, but are not present in the collection.
As another trial objective the lawyers tried to establish that HUAC had over the years chilled the free exercise by citizens of their First Amendment rights, and that the Committee “has been engaged in a deliberate course of pillorying witnesses and exposing them to public obloquy rather than devoting itself to its sole and proper legislative purpose of objectively gathering facts upon which to base recommended legislation.” (Letter of December 5, 1956, from Albert E. Jenner Jr. to Robert M. Hutchins, President, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.) The attorneys attempted to find social science documentation of the chilling effect of HUAC through expert witnesses who could testify in regard to business and academic communities, government personnel practices, and the public. The collection documents these efforts in files of correspondence, memos, notes, affidavits, and draft testimony of several potential expert witnesses, among them Alan Barth, Henry Steele Commager, Edward U. Condon, Robert Dahl, Herbert Kelmen, Paul Lazarsfeld, Theodore M. Newcomb, David Truman, and Adam Yarmolinsky.
A wide array of legal opinions, briefs, and articles from lawsuits similar to the Stamler-Hall-Cohen suit were also collected for research and are present in the collection. Some of these bear annotations, and were clearly cited in or used while writing briefs in this case. Unannotated final U.S. Supreme Court opinions (which are available in any major law library) have been discarded, while briefs and lower court opinions (which are not readily available) have been retained. These are filed alphabetically by case name.
The legal staff reviewed major U.S. newspapers from cities where HUAC and its predecessor, the Dies Committee, held hearings from 1938 to 1970, to demonstrate that the Committee regularly leaked names of those subpoenaed to testify before the Committee, for the purpose of discrediting the witnesses, damaging their reputations, and inducing community reaction against the witnesses. Clippings were also collected to document “the most horrible examples of Committee practice and procedure,” for example, the suicide of subpoenaed scientist William Sherwood prior to the 1957 San Francisco HUAC hearings, and the later threats by the Committee chairman against Mrs. Sherwood, and the 1956 Los Angeles hearings where a number of lawyers were physically ejected, leading to the censure of HUAC by the American Bar Association. (From a memo on trial preparation and assignments, March 14, 1968.) Files of many of these clippings, 1938, 1947-1969, some of them annotated and numbered for use as trial exhibits, are present in the collection. Unannotated general clippings about HUAC from the New York Times were discarded but an index to them was retained.
HUAC press releases were collected and their contents analyzed for evidence of the Committee's overly-broad construction of its mandate, and statements of purpose that would indicate illegal or unethical motives. Some press releases were numbered for use as exhibits, while others were merely for informational purposes. There is a separate file of press releases on the world Communist movement.
Rose Stamler helped coordinate a questionnaire survey of lawyers for those whose clients were subpoenaed by HUAC and who were themselves subpoenaed, to determine whether the subpoena was issued as a result of representing clients before the Committee. Copies of completed questionnaires, with occasional letters and other information, are available in the collection.
Testimony of “friendly” HUAC witnesses (i.e., those who answered questions and named others) was studied “to show their so-called circuit riding, i.e., their repeated appearances on different dates and in different cities in which either the names of individuals were repeated or similar statements about the nature of Communism, etc. were repeated.” “Unfriendly” witnesses (i.e. those who named no names) subpoenaed by HUAC were also located in cities where hearings had been held since 1946, to interview them for possible testimony at trial concerning economic and social injury suffered. The lawyers sought to locate offers by HUAC
“to rescind blacklisting upon the recantation of Communism in order to shows [sic] HUAC's lack of legislative purpose and its operation as a governmental mechanism to establish a political orthodoxy. Such offers also establish HUAC's awareness of blacklists and other adverse effects HUAC has on employment, etc. Such offers also show that Communist activity is often not the cause of the firing but rather the failure of the employee to cooperate with HUAC and indirectly the fear of the employer of maintaining in his employ the person who had not cooperated with HUAC.” (From a memo on “Present Status of Trial Preparation,” by Chester T. Kamin, April 29, 1968.)
Among the cities surveyed were Albany, New York; Baltimore; Boston; Buffalo, New York; Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, and Youngstown, Ohio; Denver; Detroit, Flint, and Lansing, Michigan; Gary; Honolulu; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Newark, New Jersey; New Haven, Connecticut; New York; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; St. Louis; San Francisco; Seattle; and Washington, D.C. to demonstrate the damage done as a result of the subpoena. Particular care was taken to locate individuals who successfully defended contempt of Congress charges, but suffered injury nevertheless.
Other transcripts were analyzed to locate evidence of “the practice of Committee counsel with respect to putting leading and defamatory questions to witnesses who continually refuse to answer[,] … call[ing] friendly witnesses to repeat in public what the Committee has already heard in Executive Session[,] … [and] inquiring about activities which took place many years before the hearings.”
Copies of this testimony were analyzed and arranged by topic by the legal staff. Topics include exposure (i.e. committee statements, release of names prior to hearings, denial of executive sessions, presence of news media at hearings, and indiscriminate listing of names), inquiry into First Amendment rights (disclaimer by the Committee, inquiry into opinions, political activity, Committee attacks on critics), legal counsel before HUAC (attorney-client relationship abuse and limitation, denial of procedural rights), and questioning of witnesses (questions regarding state subjects).
Following a compilation of the location of HUAC hearings from 1948 through 1967, a random sample of friendly and unfriendly witnesses was chosen. Transcripts of their testimony were reviewed by the National Opinion Research Center, Chicago, and a statistical survey made by Dr. Hans Zeisel, of the University of Chicago. The objective of the survey was to test “allegations” about the procedures used by HUAC, and to study “in precise qualitative terms a series of questions of which the following are examples: 'How often did the Committee ask questions about alleged misdeeds that occurred 5 years or more prior to the hearing?' 'How frequently did the Committee ask leading questions?” How many questions concerning alleged misdeeds were asked after the witness had refused to answer one, claiming constitutional immunity?'” (From Dr. Zeisel's Preliminary Report, August 1968, also printed as an appendix to plaintiff's brief.)
The sampling plan and selection of witnesses were designed by Dr. Zeisel and Prof. Paul Meier, former Chairman of the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago. The survey drew a sample of 100 witnesses who testified at 174 hearings from a total of 3125 witnesses who appeared before HUAC between January 1946 and December 1967. The witnesses were divided into two groups, to permit greater emphasis to be placed on testimony taken after January 1, 1957.
The researchers then analyzed each question asked of the witnesses by the Committee, coded the questions and answers, and completed a witness summary sheet. The coded information was transferred to punch cards and the data tabulated for study. The researchers then compared the 1965 Chicago hearing to others in the sample.
The survey found that two-thirds of the witnesses sampled refused to answer questions, that about one-third of the questions concerned actions of the witnesses viewed as “misdeeds” by the Committee, and that most of the “misdeeds” concerned political activities, rather than criminal acts. Over forty percent of the “misdeed” questions asked about misdeeds of specified other persons, and 23 percent of the “misdeed” questions related to a period five or more years prior to the hearing. At the 1965 Chicago hearing, nearly half of the questions concerned events 5 or more years old. The Committee obtained a response to only 29 percent of the “misdeed” questions.
The files on the Zeisel survey include lists of all HUAC hearings and of most witnesses; including an appendix, apparently prepared elsewhere, of friendly witnesses and those whom they identified as communists; and lists of those witnesses considered and selected to study. Files concerning the coding of HUAC testimony contain Dr. Zeisel's instructions for coding testimony; drafts and analyses of the witness summary sheets, codes, and instructions; a sample coding check; and lists of coding errors. The referral sheets indicate questions or problems encountered while coding answers, and referred to Dr. Zeisel for answers. There are also several data processing output sheets, giving preliminary statistical results. Other statistical results are given in the tabulations, tables, and charts summarizing the data in a graphic format. Accompanying the final charts for use by Dr. Zeisel while testifying are preliminary tabulations and tables, draft and revised tables, and the explanatory text. The goals and findings of the survey are summarized in Dr. Zeisel's preliminary and supplementary reports, 1968 and 1969, which were prepared for use at trial. The bulk of this portion of the collection is comprised of witness summary sheets, which are arranged numerically by witness (or sample) number. A separate sheet was prepared for each question asked. Also included is a copy of the witness's testimony, with each question numbered to correspond to the summary sheet.
A special transcript search subsequently was conducted to analyze selected HUAC hearings from January 1957 through January 1968. The researchers sought examples of Committee members' misbehavior and unusual Committee procedure for use in evidence, and a tally of witnesses called to testify more than once and of attorneys called as witnesses themselves following their representation of witnesses. These files are similar to the statistical survey described above, and include instructions, copies of testimony, and notes of examples located for review by attorneys Jenner and Sullivan.
There are also small files of briefs and legal papers concerning appeals of court orders and decisions taken to the Court of Appeals, and similar materials concerning an unsuccessful petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The files of U.S. vs. STAMLER contain a chronology of the events of May 1965, background materials, a listing of HUAC contempt citations, and Congressional responses to the contempt citations in this case. Also present are the lawyers' notes for briefs, legal memoranda and drafts, general legal documents, and incomplete transcripts.
Files from the case STAMLER vs. MITCHELL(U.S. District Court) contain briefs, drafts, legal memoranda, general legal papers, motions, an outline for oral argument, notes, transcripts, and lengthy depositions of Stamler, Hall, Cohen, and HUAC lawyers and staff. Included among the latter are Anniel Cunningham, Francis J. McNamara, Alfred M. Nittle, Donald G. Sanders, Donald I. Sweany, and Neil E. Wetterman. Indexes and plaintiffs' exhibits are also included. There are also a few legal documents that post-date the resignation of U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell; with Mitchell's resignation the title of the case changed to Stamler vs. Kleindienst, and later to Stamler vs. Bork.
In 1971, Stamler, Hall, and Cohen petitioned for a writ of mandamus, in an attempt to compel Judge Hoffman grant their motion for discovery sanctions. Included with the files of Stamler vs. Hoffman and Mitchell are drafts and notes for the petition for the writ, and an appendix to the petition.
