Canwell Committee
[5][6] The Farmer–Labor Party received significant support from Washington voters in the 1920 election,[7] as did progressive presidential candidate Robert M. La Follette's 1924 campaign.
[10] The organization endorsed Democratic and independent candidates in statewide and municipal elections, including Hugh De Lacy, a professor at the University of Washington.
Governor Clarence D. Martin also angered the WCF for his role in the 1939 dismissal of Charles H. Fisher, president of the Western Washington College of Education, for charges advanced by conservative reporter Frank Ira Sefrit that included allowing members of "subversive organizations" to speak on campus.
[13] In winter 1939, the University of Washington received similar criticisms to Fisher, particularly for inviting Harold Laski, a British Marxist, to speak on campus.
[14][15] The Democratic attorney general, Smith Troy, asked the secretary of state to refuse the nominations of Communist Party candidates, a decision which was only overturned by the Washington Supreme Court.
[19][20] The legislation – following the same structure as a 1945 California resolution establishing the Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities – was said to have been drafted by Canwell, although prosecuting attorney Charles O. Carroll later claimed that Post-Intelligencer reporter Fred Niendorff had told him that he was the author of the bill.
"[23][24] Drafted as a concurrent resolution, it granted the committee the power to hold public hearings between the adjournment of the 1947 legislative session, reporting to the 1949 legislature.
The committee kept a low profile during this time, with the exception of a comment by Canwell on the infiltration of communists in the national defence and public schools.
The WPU responded by bringing a claim in the King County Superior Court to prevent the hearings and filed a separate order to show cause on Stevens and Kimball, temporarily barring them from sitting on the committee.
On January 31, the court ruled that a legislative committee could not function when the legislature was adjourned but, as no officers of the WPU had been subpoenaed, it could not issue an injunction.
[36] The WPU brought separate legal proceedings, seeking to prevent the Washington State Auditor from issuing payroll warrants for the committee's expenses.
Russell Fluent, the state treasurer, agreed with the position and declared that his office would not pay the warrants, as the court had held that a legislative committee could not function during adjournment.
The first witness was the former editor of the Daily Worker, Louis Budenz, who testified that it had been reported within the Communist Party that they had successfully infiltrated the WPU and two WCF publications were communist-controlled.
Former representative Kathryn Fogg testified that Gundlach and fellow professors Joseph Butterworth, Harold Eby, and De Lacy had been members of the party.
[44] Other members of the WPU and the WCF testified similarly, with representative H. C. Armstrong naming fellow politicians Fogg, Rabbitt, Pennock, Ernest Olson, Ellsworth Wills and N. P.
[48][note 1] Following her testimony, Canwell stated that anyone could choose to testify, although he had refused requests from the American Youth for Democracy as he felt their communist origin was sufficiently obvious, and the hearings on the WPU would be recessed.
[54] Some faculty members doubted this, believing that some of the accused would be fired regardless of the university's stated position, and a group of nine professors announced on June 30 that they would not respond to the subpoenas.
[55] Apart from the faculty, subpoenas were also served on the Jameses, actor Albert Ottenheimer, university counselor Ted Astley, former fellow Philip Hunt Davis and city sanitation inspector Rachmiel Forschmiedt.
[56] The investigations encountered opposition from the newly formed Washington Committee for Academic Freedom, a group of roughly one hundred professors, members of the American Civil Liberties Union and prominent liberals including Stimson Bullitt, Max Savelle, Kenneth MacDonald and Benjamin H. Kizer.
[59] Witnesses included George Hewitt, who claimed he had taught University of Washington professor Melvin Rader at a "highly secret Communist school at Briehl's Farm,[60] near Kingston, New York, for a period of about six weeks in the Summer of 1938 or 1939."
[30][62] Rushmore testified for three days including testimony about more than a dozen members of the Communist Party arrested following the federal investigations).
He named Harold Ware, Lee Pressman, Donald Hiss, John Abt, Charles Kramer, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and Joseph P. Lash.
[63][64] During taping for an oral history in 1997, Canwell said, "We wished to put the Hiss case in the record, and there's testimony by them about atomic scientists and others who were questionable characters."
