Mr. Tavenner. Had you heard he was a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. O’Connell. I had not heard that he was.
Mr. Tavenner. Up until this present time you have not heard?
Mr. O’Connell. I have not heard that Bob Silberstein is a member of the Communist Party.
Mr. Tavenner. Mr. Chairman, this committee heard 2 witnesses from California in 1952, both of them attorneys at law, one of them a professor at a law university, who testified to the effect that Mr. Silberstein was a member of the Communist Party.
Mr. Silberstein was subpenaed before this committee and confronted with the testimony of those two lawyers and he refused to testify on the subject, claiming that to do so might tend to incriminate him.
Mr. O’Connell. Just for the record, Mr. Tavenner, I, of course, haven’t read all the proceedings of this committee; I have not had available to me the transcript of the hearings of the committee, what some lawyers in California may have testified about Bob Silberstein in 1952, I don’t know anything about.
Mr. Tavenner. Are you aware of the fact that the National Lawyers Guild has been cited by this committee as a Communist-front organization?
Mr. O’Connell. Yes; I am.
Mr. Tavenner. Were you a member of the National Lawyers Guild?