Professors Petition to Kill Subversive Control Board

Twelve Harvard professors of Law have signed a petition urging the U.S. Attorney General to let the Subversive Activities Control Board die.

The SACB--created by the McCarran Act in 1950--decides whether organizations are Communist-linked. Congress voted in January that unless the Attorney General brings at least one suspect organization before the SACB in 1968, the Board will have to dissolve permanently in mid-1969.

The petition, circulated by Vern Countryman, professor of Law, is part of a campaign by the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee. The campaign began in January, shortly after Congress passed the "Dirksen Amendments" to the McCarran Act. Countryman, who is vice-chairman of the Committee's New England Region, collected 214 signatures from law professors across the country.

The SACB has been largely inactive for the last five years, since the courts threw out most of the penalties which the McCarran Act holds for Communist organizations. But the "Dirksen Amendments" have given the Act a new set of teeth.

The petition says that the amendments have changed the purpose of the SACB. Instead of requiring Communist organizations to send the government a list of their members each year, as the McCarran Act did, the amendments empower the SACB to keep its own list, which will be open to the public. The petition says that the SCAB is no longer gathering information--it is now keeping a "blacklist."

Some penalties remain from the original Act. Members of Communist organizations are barred from federal jobs and from serving as labor union officials. Many of the investigated organizations have not even waited for punishment, Countryman explained. Faced with the legal expenses of defending themselves before the SACB, they have disbanded.

Countryman said yesterday that he is not certain whether the Attorney General will let the SACB die. He must either revive the SACB by June 30, or explain to Congress why he has not done so. Countryman said he expects "severe pressure" on the Attorney General from the supporters of the SACB, but expressed hope that the pressure will fail.