Friday, March 31. 1961 University Daily Kansan Page 3
FOCUS: -"Abolition"
- HCUA
Operation Movie Edited by HUAC
Reprinted from "the Reporter," Nov. 24, 1960.
With the active help of the House Un-American Activities Committee, a commercial film company in Washington, D.C., has sold five hundred prints of a movie called "Operation Abolition" during the past few months at $100 each. Although the committee has attempted to disguise its role, it is responsible for much of the production of the film, which presents a distorted version of demonstrations that were staged by a group of college students when the committee had hearings in San Francisco last May on the subject of alleged Communist activities in northern California.
The movie is made up almost entirely of newsreel shots, filmed by TV cameramen who covered the events for stations KRON and KPIX in San Francisco. After the hearings had been completed, two committee staff members — William Wheeler, chief West Coast investigator, and Fulton ("Buddy") Lewis III, went to the television stations with subpoenas for all the newsreel film that had been shot during the demonstrations. They then selected the footage they wanted and had prints made of it, telling the stations that the film was needed for "documentation." Neither the studios, the staff photographers, nor the reporters were paid for their film, although "Operation Abolition" is ostensibly a commercial venture.
The prints were sent to Washington, where the committee staff edited the film and wrote a commentary for it. After that had been done, film and commentary were turned over to a commercial film company, Washington Video Productions, to be made into a movie.
"Buddy" Lewis assisted the company with the technical work on the film, and the narrator's voice is his. Representatives Francis E. Walter (D., Pennsylvania), chairman of the committee, and Gordon Scherer (R., Ohio), a committee member, both appeared as commentators. The film was then made an official House document and advertised by the committee in a special publication, "The Communist-Led Riots Against the House Committee on Un-American Activities in San Francisco. May 12-14, 1960."
The film itself opens without any of the usual credits. Instead, Congressman Walter launches immediately into the main theme of the picture, which is to suggest that the demonstrations were Communist-inspired and Communist-led. In the attempt to prove this assertion, both the narration and the way the film clips were edited deliberately distort a number of facts.
For example, separate sequences have been run together in "Operation Abolition" to give the impression of mob action, and the film shows students displaying defiance after police warnings, although actually the demonstrations occurred at a completely different time. And the police use of fire hoses on the students is justified on the basis of the claim that the students attempted to rush police barricades inside the City Hall, where the committee was holding its hearings. But no film accompanies the commentary about this alleged attempt; in fact, photographs taken at the time show the students scaled on the floor and in the corridors when the hoses were turned on them. After the riots were over, the sheriff of San Francisco County said: "There was no act of physical aggression on the part of the students."
The film has received wide distribution. The Saturday Evening
Post recommends it, with the claim that "For once the facts are pictorially recorded for all* to see!" The National Review has plugged it, pointing out that it is "available from the HUAC." A retired admiral has written letters on behalf of it and some Republican candidates used it during their campaigns. Prints have been bought by a number of corporations, including the Schaefer Brewing Company of New York and the Standard Oil Company of California, which purchased ten prints to show to its employees. The staff of Washington Video Productions say that requests for prints of the film are coming in so fast they can hardly keep up with them.
In Arizona, the film is being handled by the Phoenix Anti-Communist Committee. According to officials of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, high-school social-studies teachers are being urged to show the movie, P.T.A. groups have been approached, and college libraries have been informed that prints are available to them. A Phoenix TV station has run the film, and an ad plugging the TV showing was run in a local paper, paid for by the Lions Club.
When the Arizona A.C.L.U. protested against the showing of the film at a P.T.A. meeting without any indication that a number of students who had participated in the demonstration disagreed with the film's presentation of the events, members of the group were warned of vague but dire consequences that might follow if they continued in their protests.
Students at the University of California in Berkeley have prepared a detailed answer to the movie which they are distributing wherever they can. William Wheeler of the House committee staff has admitted on a Los Angeles TV program that there were distortions in the film.
Some of the students may have misbehaved, but no evidence has been offered proving that their original demonstration was under the control of the Communist Party. Although "Operation Abolition" seems to be doing well at the box office, this unusual venture of the House Committee on Un-American Activities into movie-making is not apt to win any prizes for accuracy.
Hoover -
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front of the hearing room and demanded that all spectators outside be admitted. After refusing to obey orders to be seated, Brown, Brodsky, and several others were forcibly removed.
WITH THE tension growing, the inevitable happened. Violence flared that afternoon. One of the judges in a municipal courtroom in City Hall ordered the mob dispersed because the noise made it impossible for him to hold court. When an attempt was made to carry out the order, the crowd responded by throwing shoes and jostling the officers.
Despite these disruptive tactics, police were able to maintain a semblance of order that first day. It was a different story on the following day. As a result of mushrooming interest generated by the activities of the first day, the crowd on the second day was much larger
Archie Brown quickly resumed his tactics of the day before once the sessions started. The crowd outside the hearing room chanted and sang songs.
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One of the demonstrators pro-
San Francisco Area Students Report on Film
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not produced a single significant piece of legislation. Perhaps this should not surprise us since it has tried to investigate in those areas of free speech and peaceful association in which the Constitution prohibits legislation.
This has not, however, prevented the Committee from persistently and outrageously violating the Constitutional rights of citizens who have been forced to appear before it for interrogation and harassment. A steadily growing condemnation has finally become sufficiently widespread to have a major impact on American society. . . .
It is impossible to list all the inaccuracies and distortions in the film. We have already discussed some of the more flagrant misrepresentations, but there are many others. Let us examine a few: . . .
- The film asserts, "Among the Communist leaders who had an active part in the San Francisco demonstrations were Harry Bridges, who you see here being escorted out of City Hall by police officials moments before the rioting broke out." While we think that the report published under the auspices of the H.C.U.A. by J. Edgar Hoover contains as many distortions of the events as the film and is primarily a piece of propaganda, let us look at Mr. Hoover's report of this event: "Order had been restored when Harry Bridges, President of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, suddenly appeared on the scene" (Communist Target-Youth, page 8). The emphasis has been added, and the point is clear, both of these assertions cannot be true. In this matter of Harry Bridges, which is one of the few instances where the Hoover report is accurate, it is the report by Mr. Hoover which is correct. (A complete analysis of the Hoover report is available from our organization.) . . .
- The film asserts that on Friday 200 from the general public were admitted to the hearings. Mr. Wheeler had admitted that during the Thursday morning session when the percentage of the general public in the hearing room was highest, only one-fourth of the room was filled by people without passes. On Friday morning, all impartial observers agree, no more than 30 people were admitted without white passes. The same observers estimate the maximum admitted from the general public on Friday afternoon to be 15.
- The film asserts that one of the songs the demonstrators sang was "lifted from the old Communists' People's Song Book." The fact is that this song "We Shall Not Be Moved," was originally a religious spiritual and is well known to people acquainted with folk music. It is, in fact, the theme song of many of the sit-in demonstrators in the South. Certainly, contrary to the insinuations in the film, the mere use of a song does not characterize the policies of the singers. This is certainly true when the film deliberately misreports the source of the song for the purpose of innuendo.
- The sound track of the film asserts that the use of the fire hoses was prompted by a rush of the demonstrators over the police barricades during the time a policeman was beaten. It is significant that no film shots of this alleged event are shown in the
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Frisco Riots Core Of Anti-Red Move
By M. Stanton Evans
Reprinted from National Review Bulletin
The now famous San Francisco riots against the House Committee on Un-American Activities were meant to discredit the internal security program of Congress; they have become instead the occasion for a vigorous offensive against Communism.
Thanks to a powerful documentary film entitled "Operation Abolition," thousands of Americans are now getting a chance to see the techniques employed in San Francisco last May, and to understand the reality of Communist power in America.
the success of the films has inflamed the Communists and the usual quota of collaborating Liberals. The anti-anti-Communist press is bristling with charges that the film is "distorted," saying it falsely represents the student demonstrations as Communist-inspired, "Diligent inquiry," says the Washington Post, "has led us to a conviction that this charge is wholly unjustified." As for the allegation that the students were violent, the Post concludes that "the San Francisco police acted with altogether needless brutality," turning fire hoses on students whose protests were not flagrantly unruly."
Who is distorting what in this controversy? In spite of the Post's "conviction," every relevant authority supports the film's assertion that the riots were Communist-directed. In a meticulous report prepared last summer, J. Edgar Hoover pinpointed the role of Archie Brown, Mickey Lima, Douglas Wachter and other known Communists in mobilizing demonstrators, disposing them about San Francisco's City Hall, and inciting them to action once there.
Mayor Christopher of San Francisco says: "Known Communists, and I repeat this emphatically, known Communists were in the lead of this demonstration." Matthew Carberry, Sheriff of San Francisco County told me: "The people stirring the students up, and bringing them to an emotional pitch, were well-known Communists in the San Francisco area."
What of the Post's assertion that the students were not "flagrantly unruly"? The San Francisco Examiner for May 14, 1960, reported that "the mob . . . climbed over the barricades and stormed the door, knocking (Patrolman Ralph) Schaumleffel down. Then, the officer said, while he was on his back, a student . . . grabbed the policeman's nightstick and hit him over the head with it." Hoover's report tells the same story, as, in substantial detail, does Mayor Christopher: The Daily Californian, the student newspaper which helped spark the demonstrations against the committee, reported: "Fights and violence erupted at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings yesterday . . . much of it sparked by University students."
In arriving at its bland "conviction" about what happened in San Francisco the Post chose to ignore all this evidence. Equally oblivious has been The Reporter magazine, which recently published an article by one Paul Jacobs, alleging a number of "distortions" in the film "After the riots were over," Jacobs wrote, "the sheriff of San Francisco County said: There was no act of physical aggression on the part of the students.'" On December 6, 1960, the sheriff in question issued the following comment: "I did not make that statement. I do not know the author of the article, Paul Jacobs, have never spoken to
him and have never been interviewed by him."*
The twisting of context seems to be a favored gambit with Jacobs. William Wheeler, West Coast investigator for the committee, appeared on a television show in Los Angeles, and acknowledged the presence of two minor inaccuracies in the film in the course of proving that it was not distorted. In Jacobs' article, this comes out as "William Wheeler of the House Committee staff has admitted on a Los Angeles TV program that there were distortions in the film."
A final sample will illustrate the sort of technique being used to discredit "Operation Abolition." Jacobs writes: "Separate sequences have been run together in 'Operation Abolition' to give the impression of mob action, and the film shows students displaying defiance after police warnings, although actually the demonstrations occurred at a completely different time."
It is of course true that "separate sequences" have been run together, as obviously they had to be to compress the film footage into manageable form, and that they "give the impression of mob action." But this would be a valid remonstrance only if there had not in fact BEEN mob action, which, on the testimony of the newspapers, the FBI, and every authority in San Francisco, we know there was.
Jacobs' next sentence reads:
"And the police use of fire hoses on the students is justified on the basis of the claim that the students attempted to rush police barricades inside City Hall, where the committee was holding its hearing; but no film accompanies the commentary about this alleged attempt; in fact, photographs taken at the time show the students seated on the floor and in the corridors when the hoses were turned on them."
This seeks to suggest that the turning on of the hoses was not caused by an attempt to rush the barricades. But the Examiner, J. Edgar Hoover and Mayor Christopher all say it was. Jacobs, be it noted, does not say otherwise. He simply sets up an irrelevant disjunction — "but no film accompanies the commentary" — implying that, if an event is not on the film, it must not have happened. In attacking the evidential value of the film, Jacobs here invokes it as arbiter of what did and did not happen — although it should be apparent that the newsreel photographers could not be in position to record every event that transpired.
So much for the charges of "distortion" against "Operation Abolition." The controversy, I think, not only tells us something about Communism. Through the twists and turns of those trying to discredit the film, it also tells us a great deal about the intellectual level of American Liberalism.
*Carberry states that he was not on the scene when the alleged violence took place, and so could not be cited as an authority on whether it occurred or not. In a subsequent exchange in the novel Carberry describes his original attempt to use Carberry in support of his thesis, and admitted as much.
Short Ones
Lying is a certain mark of cowardice.-Thomas Southern
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
Right alone is irrestible, permanent, eternal.—Mary Baker Eddy