A Muddied Tradition

The Constitution protects a citizen's rights with the strength of law, but only weak tradition has guarded his privacy from undue congressional prying. Ostensibly, investigating groups intruded only on a citizen's private life or beliefs to gather testimony concerning specific problems. And the inquiry presumably would end in new legislation. Witnesses were deeply involved in the particular situation under investigation, and their testimony was so relevant that national welfare demanded the sacrifice of their anonymity.

Although strained, this tradition of purposive investigation has held until now. But the Senate Permanent Investigating Committee has broken it entirely. As its name implies, the Committee is neither checked by a specific mission nor by the necessity to produce suggestions for pertinent legislation. It may romp through any phase of domestic or foreign affairs at will, calling witnesses whose connection, even with the loosely defined area of investigation, is quite tenuous, and exposing them to a publicity hungry one-man tribunal.

This sort of license for a Congressional committee is dangerous. But when the group's guiding spirit is Joseph McCarthy, the situation becomes equally perilous for the rights of privacy and fair hearing. As part of his Committee correspondence, the supposedly objective chairman, McCarthy, addressed a telegram to witness James Wechler, editor of the N. Y. Post, in care of Howard Lawson--Wechler's alleged pseudonym during his Communist Party days. Since the point under exploration, while distant from any possibility of prospective legislation or other constructive result, is Wechler's present political convictions, such a move pressages a biased committee.

Also, McCarthy has set his own wierd rules of proof. Theodore Kaghan, Deputy Director of Public Affairs in Germany, gave, in evidence of his political purity, character references from former anti-Communist Chancellor of Austria, Leopold Figl, Berlin Mayor Ernst Reuter, and Geoffrey Keyes, ex-High Commissioner of Austria. Balancing against these references some lines in Kaghan's plays, written around 1930, and the fact that he roomed from 1935 to '40 with a suspected Communist, McCarthy has demanded more testimony.

But even without McCarthy's leadership, the Committee would be a poor investment for America's trust. Any group sent out to investigate at whim is bound to tread on the toes of privacy and decency, if only to find enough topics to justify its existence.