Breaking the Silence Barrier: I

No one is happy about the role of the Fifth Amendment in recent investigations into Communist activity in the United States. Those who believe that the domestic Communist conspiracy is presently so dangerous that its exposure is America's greatest problem complain that the Amendment keeps them from extracting vital information. Those who think that controlling the investigations is the top problem in the country are just as discontented because people who use the Amendment often face social punishment as onerous as any jail sentence. The great bulk of American opinion lies between these two extremes. It is confused about the existence and extent of any Internal conspiracy, but sick and tired of hearing witnesses say: "I refuse to answer because my answer may tend to incriminate me."

As long as the actual extent of Communist Infiltration is unknown, it will be magnified by cheap politicians like Senator McCarthy. So long as investigating committees must pry information from unwilling witnesses, totalitarians of the right will be able to undermine the public's faith not only in America's churches and universities, but in the working of its democracy.

That is why there is so much merit in the plan to compel testimony before Congressional committees in return for immunity from prosecution. A bill of this type has passed the Senate, is before the House, and has been endorsed by the Attorney-General of the United States. Executive agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board and Interstate Commission have used the principles of this bill since the passage of the Compulsory Testimony Act in 1893. Such a law can be so worded as to end the practices that have brought the Fifth Amendment into discredit without forcing self-incrimination.

Organized Treason

To be drawn to the logic of such a bill, one needs only to assume this: within the last twenty years, some American citizens have consciously, and in an organized fashion, used positions of government and society to , at very least, transmit secret information to the Soviet union. Whether they were trying to overthrow the government is debatable, but unless one reads through a dense fog of prejudice, the Rosenberg and Hiss trials, the Congressional sub-committee reports and other recent history, he cannot avoid this conclusion. Since new facts have been turning up with the stale ones almost every week, the conspiracy may have gone even deeper than is now apparent. People who have been too long in a university community may not be fully aware of the virtual unanimity with which the American public supports the purpose of the committees--with votes, mail, and public meetings. The public is determined to know the full extent of Communist treason, and the story can either be told the slow, painful way, a now, on quickly and completely, as with a compulsory testimony law.

The second method is preferable. IF compulsory testimony brings to light a present conspiracy dangerous to national security, it will have been worth it. If, as is far more probable, it shows that collaboration with Communists was born of depression and the war against Nazism, and died with the Cold War, it will clear up the ignorance upon which much of the present hysteria is based. The American people are not going to ostracize men who, when questioned, admit they signed peace petitions and marched on picket lines for their own sake. Such actions are too much a part of the accepted political ethic. They only want to know whether he did these things as a Communist. When the man witholds this information by use of the Fifth amendment, the inference is inevitable. Compulsory testimony with immunity, then, will help to separate liberals from Communist in the public mind. By so doing, it will free advocates of social reform and alternative foreign policies from the deadening accusation that they are speaking from false motives.

(Tomorrow's editorial will sketch an immunity bill which could compel testimony without violating Constitutional liberties.)