Aldrich Acquits Kamin On 2 Counts; 2 Remain

Judge Bailey Aldrich '28 yesterday acquitted Leon J. Kamin '48 on two counts of the contempt of Congress indictment against him and dismissed two others. Two counts remain.

These charge Kamin with refusing to answer two questions:

"Name the individuals known to you to have been members of the Communist party who are now working in defense plants."

"Do you know whether Emanuel Blum (who has been identified as a Communist party organizer in Boston) had connections with people handling classified government material?"

Aldrich said yesterday he would hear the defense case before ruling on the defense motion, presented Monday, to dismiss the entire indictment. The defense case, which will now concentrate on an effort to overthrow the remaining counts will therefore begin in the Federal Building at 10 a.m. today and proceed throughout the day.

Defense attorney Calvin P. Bartlett said yesterday that Kamin had arrived in Cambridge Tuesday night and that he intended to call him as a witness. He may take the stand today.

Kamin was acquitted of contempt in refusing to tell whether he knew "anyone at Harvard or connected with Harvard who was also a Communist." The two charges dismissed were judged to be too similar to other counts in the indictment.

Stating his views in a 14-page opinion, Aldrich declared the question's phrase, "anyone at Harvard" was too broad to fit what Senator Joseph R. McCarthy himself had defined as the subject matter of the inquiry for which Kamin was called as a witness. McCarthy had said he was studying Communist infiltration of classified defense projects.

Aldrich did not directly discuss in his opinion the issue of the subcommittee's authority to investigate the general area of subversion. The defense may ask him to consider the problem in its effort to overthrow the last two counts.

Outside Scope of Inquiry

"The question asked for the identity of every Communist member of the faculty . . . in any event, down to the fall of 1950, although Harvard had done no classified work since 1946," Aldrich said. The phrase, "anyone connected at Harvard" could be extended to include employees of the University or students, he added.

The question was "so manifestly outside the admitted scope of the inquiry," Aldrich said, "that I am surprised the government has required the defendant to stand trial on his refusal to answer."

Aldrich said, quoting a court decision of the 1930's, that McCarthy's subcommittee "had no right to engage in a general 'fishing expedition' . . . for the chance that something discreditable might turn up."

"The proper burden on the sub-committee," he added, "If it was going to prefer criminal charges, was to formulate questions so that they would fall, at least approximately, within the scope of the known limits of its authority."