Jenner Brings Obliging Witness Before Public

In a return engagement which opened yesterday at Boston's Federal Court Building the Jenner Senate Internal Security Subcommittee broke one of its supposedly iron-clad rules by calling a witness who cooperated in executive session into public session.

The committee brought Dr. Phillip Morrison, a Cornell physics professor, now a visiting professor at M.I.T., before a barrage of television cameras and press photographers after he had, by Jenner's own admission, given full information in the previous closed session.

Morrison's lawyer was Arthur E. Sutherland, professor of Law.

In a statement before the committee's original appearance here last month, Jenner said that witnesses would be called into open session only if they refused to talk in closed session.

As far as is known, this outlined procedure was the one followed at the original hearings when eight professors and students from Harvard were subpoenaed and only four appeared in open session.

Unpredecented Move

After yesterday's hearing, Jenner said, "Why shouldn't we call him for public hearing? He did talk in private session, but we called him to public session also."

Morrison was extremely cooperative in the open session, admitting he had been a member of the Communist party before he went to work on this country's atomic bomb project during the war.

In answer to a question, he said he joined the Communist party in the late '30's at the age of 21. The committee did not, however, ask him whether he was now a member.

Questioned later by reporters, Morrison said, "I think that omission was deliberate. I have not been a Communist since I was a very young man. I was prepared to go in there and to say that I was not a Communist now, but they did not ask me. I think the omission was deliberate on their part."

Morrison was one of two witnesses who appeared at the open session. The other was Angus Cameron, former editor-in-chief on Little, Brown and Company who refused to answer most questions, citing both the First and Fifth Amendments.