Page 12 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

6 THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
ATTACKS ON THE FBI
Any action on legislative or executive levels of the Government
which tends to interfere with the Communist fifth-column operations
in this country is guaranteed to evoke a vicious campaign of opposition from the National Lawyers Guild.
A striking example is the present attack by the guild on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, echoing the current line of the Daily Worker
and Moscow. The guild today is crying for an investigation of the FBI, the vigilant guardian of our national security, on th—e ridiculous
grounds that it is a "gestapo" or "political police" whose
practices and policies * * * violate our laws, infringe our liberties, and threaten our democracy.
This attack was timed simultaneously with the tactics employed by the defense in the espionage case involving Judith Coplon.
This campaign is simply an intensification of a long-standing guild effort to discredit and vitiate the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At
its fifth annual convention in 1941, the guild also took action opposing "thegestapoactivitiesoftheFederalBureauofInvestigation." At that time, the guild called for removal of FBI Director J. Edgar
demanded that — reduce the FBI
Hoover, Congress appropriation,
registered opposition to a
and
pending appropriation bill to allot that Bureau $100,000 for the investigation of so-called subversive activities of Government employees (Lawyers Guild Re\'iew,
June 1941, p. 66).
J. Edgar Hoover, testifying on February 7, 1950 before a Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations, noted that the National Lawyers Guild has vociferously denounced the FBI since 1940. Mr. Hoover quoted a guild member as having stated the following at a meeting of this front organization in 1940:
If we keep up the constant criticism of the FBI and of Hoover, and if this
criticism is systematically kept up and followed all the time, particularly by organizations, it can and it will weaken the power of the FBI and hamper them
very effectively.
There is no doubt in the opinion of the committee that the National
Lawyers Guild attacks on the Federal Bureau of Investigation are part of an over-all Communist strategy aimed at weakening our Nation's defenses against the international Communist conspiracy.
The propaganda disseminated by the guild regarding the FBI is a duplicate of the line put out by Moscow, as demonstrated by the following broadcast by the Soviet Home Service short-wave network, dated February 7, 1950:
FBI Center of Activities
The center of the police terror organization of the United States is the notorious FBI. This institution was founded in 1908. From the day of its foundation the FBI became the jailer of the population. The head of this organization is responsible to the United States President and keeps him informed of future plans and results of past activity. The true bosses of the FBI, however, are the 60 families of American millionaires. All of the activities of the FBI as well as the rest of the United States Government are directed toward the defense of the interests of these actual rulers of modern America.
The FBI has been turned into an organization for intimidating the United States man in the street by means of all forms of violence, blackmail, terror, and otherpolicemeasures. Themonopolypressknowsnolimittoitspraiseofthe FBI, which was some time ago pronounced by the UP to be "the greatest national