Mr. Tavenner. After your expulsion have you been identified with the Communist Party in any way?
Mr. Dennett. No, sir; I have not.
Mr. Tavenner. The committee had information indicating that you may possibly have become a member after your expulsion, or even prior to that, of the Socialist Workers Party. And the information that the committee had in that respect was a nominating petition of that group signed by you.
We would like to know whether you were at any time a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Mr. Dennett. The answer is very simple. I was not. I never have been a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
The occasion for that signature on that nominating petition is the result of a request from the Socialist Workers Party leader, Mr. Daniel Roberts, who was the leader at that time, that I sign a nominating petition to permit their candidates to get on the ballot.
In the State of Washington a provision is in the election laws allowing nominating petitions to be signed by a minimum of 25 people who are qualified voters who did not vote in the primary. In other words, it is equivalent to casting a vote.
Mr. Tavenner. Did the Socialist Workers Party endeavor to recruit you as a member?
Mr. Dennett. Yes. Mr. Daniel Roberts tried time and time again to recruit me, thinking that my vast experience in the Communist Party gave me plenty of background to qualify me if I would simply change my thinking with respect to certain fundamental ideas which were points of difference between the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party. However, I never was able to accept all of the ideas which Mr. Roberts and some of their national leaders to whom he introduced me—I could never resolve all of the policies which they advocated to my own thinking.
And the whole experience caused me to go back and question and challenge the validity of the theoretical basis upon which the Communist Party was organized and upon which it operated. And it caused me to reach the conclusion a long time ago that it is very inadvisable for anyone to commit his political fealty to anyone or any organization that he doesn’t understand in full. And I do not to this day completely understand the Socialist Workers Party.