Page 13 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GTHLD 7
institution of the United States." The FBI budget grows yearly. In 1949 it was almost * * * dollars. To this must be added the so-called special funds allocated by the President and the Government and the generous and certainly not insignificant presents from the monopolies who wish to develop still further the regime of police terror with a view to the final subjugation of the American people.
SUPPRESSION OF PROGRESSIVES
At a time when the United States is the mainstay of the greatest imperialist offensive, the FBI has openly become the tool of hysterical, imperialist reaction determined to suppress all progressive thought in the country. The kings of Wall Street, the FBI, and the United States Department of Justice act in close contact with the ultrareactionary Committee for the Investigation of Un-American Activities.
The attitude of the National Lawyers Guild and the Moscow- broadcasts bears a striking resemblance to the following editorial of the Daily Worker of June 13, 1950, page 7:
Alibi for Stool Pigeons
America's No. 1 lawbreaker, J. Edgar Hoover, wants more stool pigeons.
His private police machine gets bigger and bigger every year. This govern- ment within the government taps phones illegally, opens private mail illegally, and infests American life with criminal perjurors. As it grows, it devours what is left of the United States Constitution. No secret can ever be
"subversion." ******
political police
justified on the basis of the American Constitution. This police makes its own laws and its own rules and operates with its own definitions of "disloyalty" and
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The boss of this imitation-Gestapo now wants more money from Congress for more secret stoolies. Naturally, he can only get his dough if he drums up a picture of the terrible menace we face from the "Communists." The FBI's "thought control" boss hints that there are 540,000 Americans he would like to put in jail. He says they are "operatives" who are just crawling all over J.
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The National Lawyers Guild has also conducted a malicious cam-
paign against the loyalty program, which was inaugurated under Executive Order 9835, on March 21, 1947, in the executive branch of the Government, to rid the Government of subversive and disloyal employees.
Resolutions attacking the loyalty program as illegal and demanding that the courts declare it unconstitutional were adopted at the na- tional convention of the guild held in New York City in May 1950. At a pubhc forum held under guild auspices on February 11, 1948, the loyalty program was attacked as a thought-control measure.
The guild's opposition to the loyalty program was compiled into a 23-page report entitled "The Constitut—ional Right to Advocate Political, Social, and Economic Changes An Essential of Democ- racy," which was sent to Government officials. Members of Congress, thejudiciary,thebar,laborandcivicorganizations. Theconclusion of this report charged that "our citizens are denied the right to advo- cate fundamental social, economic, and political change."
The guild has denounced the Attorney Generals listing of sub- versive organizations to be used in the Federal loyalty program as a menace to the liberty of the American people. The Guild's committee on constitutional rights and liberties has issued a report on the legality of the action of the Attorney General of the United States in issuing
Edgar Hoover looking for our "secrets."
AGAINST LOYALTY PROGRAM
H. Kept. 3123, 81-2 2