TESTIMONY OF ABRAHAM ARTHUR COHEN, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS COUNSEL, EDWARD E. HENRY
Mr. Tavenner. What is your name, please, sir?
Mr. Cohen. Abraham Arthur Cohen.
(Whereupon a brief disturbance occurred in the corridor outside the door of the hearing room.)
Mr. Tavenner. Let’s proceed.
Mr. Moulder. Please be seated. We will have order in the hearing room, please.
Mr. Tavenner. Will everyone be seated, please.
Mr. Moulder. No pictures will be taken, please.
Mr. Tavenner. Will you seat those people at the door, and close the door, please.
I note you are accompanied by counsel. Will counsel please identify himself.
Mr. Henry. Edward Henry, of the Seattle bar.
Mr. Tavenner. I am not going to take the time to ask you various questions which I know the committee is interested in asking you because of the lateness of the hour. I will confine my questions to just 2 or 3 matters. Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. Cohen. I am not.
Mr. Tavenner. Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. Cohen. I have been.
Mr. Tavenner. Over what period of time were you a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. Cohen. From early in—well, I believe July 1937 until I left for the Armed Forces in March of 1942, and then upon returning from the war, oh, some time early in 1946, I would say, until January 1, 1951.
Mr. Tavenner. Have you been a member of the Communist Party since 1951?
Mr. Cohen. No, sir.
Mr. Tavenner. I believe you are one of the few, if not the only person in the United States, who registered as a member of the Communist Party upon the adoption of the Internal Security Act of 1950.
Mr. Cohen. It wasn’t a thing of which I was ashamed. I felt I was in the party. I felt that what I was doing was the right thing. I had no conscientious qualms about belonging to it. I felt what we were doing was right. And everything that I saw—nothing I saw led me to believe that it was subversive. I felt it was—what we were doing was in the interest of the workingman.
Mr. Tavenner. Our purpose in subpenaing you was to ask you certain facts we think are within your knowledge regarding Communist Party activities. You have indicated a full desire, a willingness to give the committee the facts that you have. You have given a a written statement to the staff.
Mr. Cohen. Yes, sir.
Mr. Tavenner. I am not going into any of those matters now because they are here available for us. But, out of fairness to you, I want to give you the opportunity to make any further statement you desire regarding your own attitude toward the Communist Party.
Mr. Cohen. Do you feel that I haven’t stated my position enough in that brief?
Mr. Tavenner. We would ask you additional questions if we had time to do it, and we may do that later. But for the present I want to be certain you have an opportunity to tell the committee anything further that is on your mind that might be of some benefit to yourself.
Mr. Cohen. Well, I felt that my desires on leaving the party were that I was in it primarily because of its connection with the trade-union movement. It helped the Guild in the early days to organize.
Mr. Tavenner. And you function within the American Newspaper Guild?
Mr. Cohen. That is right.
I felt it did a worthwhile job there. And a great many people—Communists and non-Communists—benefited thereby. After the war the situation changed.
Mr. Moulder. The witness is excused.
Mr. Tavenner. I am not sure that he is through.
Mr. Cohen. I am ready to quit talking at any time.
Mr. Tavenner. This is your time to talk if you want to.
Mr. Cohen. After the war I felt that we were in a—we were extending the neighborhood branches, and that the trade union, the time for trade union action was past. We didn’t function in trade union matters. My working hours were changed, and I no longer was—I rarely attended meetings. I really lost what contact I had.
And the act that finally culminated in my leaving was the fact that I wanted to take a trip abroad, and under one of the provisions of the McCarran Act it required that no Communist should be granted a passport.
And so I wanted to visit scenes of where I had been during the war, and I explained to the party that I wanted to leave. And it startled them, I admit, reasonably. But I succeeded in resigning. And there have been no repercussions since.
Mr. Velde. Do I understand you have been, and are willing at any time to make available any information you have relative to your activities in the Communist Party?
Mr. Cohen. Yes, I am. I will say—before anybody even talks to me—there weren’t very many. There were very few; there weren’t very many.
Mr. Velde. But are you willing to make those available to us?
Mr. Cohen. Yes.
Mr. Velde. And, of course, we would be willing to hear you at length if we had the opportunity to do so.
Mr. Tavenner. In light of the witness’ statements, I have no further questions.
Mr. Moulder. Do you have any further statement you wish to make, Mr. Witness?
Mr. Cohen. Nothing further to say.
Mr. Moulder. Then you are excused as a witness.
(Whereupon the witness was excused.)
Mr. Tavenner. May I call Mr. Dennett to the front of the rostrum for a moment?