Jewish Congress Urges Check on Abuses by Congressional Probes

The American Jewish Congress today urged the U.S. Senate to enact a code of fair procedure for legislative investigating committees in order to check abuses by Congressional investigators.

Testifying at hearings conducted by the Senate Rules Committee, Will Maslow, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress, said that no code of fair procedures for Congressional investigating committees will be effective unless it contains sanctions against violations. He urged that witnesses injured by violations of the code should be relieved from the obligation to testify and that in addition, members of Congress and the public be empowered to file complaints of violations with a special review committee of the Senate.

Mr. Ma slow told the Senate body that legislative investigating; committees, operating at present with few, if any, legal restraints, constitute “the one notorious exception to the principle that ours is a government of laws, not men.” Since in theory “they do not accuse, try or condemn individual organizations, they have not been restrained by the protections afforded by the Bill of Sights or the safeguards of our criminal courts. In practice, however, their actions are more drastic and punitive than those of a court.”

Because some committees have been “notable more for their devotion to the publicity interest than to the public interest, “Mr. Maslow declared, “public confidence in legislative investigations will be destroyed unless Congress enforces procedures that protect the rights of persons under investigation, insure majority rule in committee and prevent Congressional investigating agencies from usurping the powers of the FBI, the grand jury, and the criminal courts.”

DEFECTS OF INVESTIGATORS ANALYZED; RECOMMENDATIONS OFFERED

Mr. Maslow presented the committee with an extended analysis of the major defects of Congressional investigations and of the principal recommendations offered to correct their abuse. He stressed the need for protection of individual witnesses and for definite rules to insure fair and complete presentation of all sides to a controversy. The representative of the American Jewish Congress urged that any code should contain the following minimal provisions:

1. “No person or organization should be publicly charged with misconduct or otherwise held up to public scorn until he has had an opportunity in executive session to refute evidence against him.

2. “Any person who is the subject of adverse comment in any public hearing or any publication of an investigating committee should be given the opportunity to present his side of the case as soon as possible after the making-of the charge and under conditions as public as those in which the charge was made.

3. “A witness appearing before a committee in public or private hearing should have the right of counsel who should be entitled a) to advise his client of his legal rights; b) object to improper procedures; c) conduct direct examination of his client, and d) to cross-examine, for a reasonable time, witnesses who have testified publicly against his client.

4. “No committee should stigmatize or make any adverse comment upon a person or organization until the investigation is completed and a report thereon issued. Private hearings of committees should be kept confidential and the names of witnesses who appear at such hearings should not be disclosed until a duly authorized public hearing or report is issued.”

Urging support of Senate Resolutions 256 introduced on May 27 by 19 Senators headed by Senators Estes Kefauver, Herbert Lehman and “Wayne Morse, Mr. Maslow underscored the enforcement provisions of the Kefauver-Lehman-Morse proposal which would create a special committee of the Senate to receive complaints of violations of the code of fair procedures. The American Jewish Congress spokesman also endorsed the nine provisions in the Kefauver-Lehman-Morse measure which would prevent one-man domination of legislative investigations and would ensure majority rule within the committees.