The recent debates over wire­tap­ping are not new, as this film “Are Wire­tap­ping Laws Help­ing Crim­i­nals?” demonstrates. Broadcast as an episode of All Amer­ica Wants to Know, this seg­ment fea­tures a debate about an issue that is as rel­e­vant to the ACLU today as it was dur­ing this 1962 broadcast.

All Amer­ica Wants to Know was a monthly debate show which focused on cur­rent events and legal issues. Pre­sented by The Reader’s Digest and the Free­doms Foun­da­tion, this pro­gram was cre­ated and mod­er­ated by Theodore Granik, best known for cre­at­ing sev­eral other radio and tele­vi­sion panel dis­cus­sion pro­grams includ­ing “Youth Wants to Know,” “Women Want to Know,” and per­haps most famously, “Amer­i­can Forum of the Air.”

The inspi­ra­tion for this episode was the March 1962 Reader’s Digest arti­cle by Sen­a­tor Ken­neth Keat­ing (R-NY), called “Change the Law that Fos­ters Crime.” Keat­ing, a long time advo­cate of expand­ing fed­eral sur­veil­lance pow­ers, was known for hav­ing intro­duced a 1954 bill that sought to allow the FBI and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vices to inter­cept tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions in national-security cases, as well as Sen­ate bill S. 3340 (86^th Con­gress, 1960), which aimed to make it eas­ier for state law enforce­ment to place taps.

In addi­tion to Sen­a­tor Keat­ing, this episode’s panel fea­tured Sen­a­tor John A. Car­roll (D-CO), Vir­gil W. Peter­son, the Oper­at­ing Direc­tor of the Chicago Crime Com­mis­sion; Frank O’Connor, Queens County Dis­trict Attor­ney; and Lawrence Speiser, Direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union’s Wash­ing­ton, D.C. office.

In 1962, the legal­ity of wire­tap­ping was unclear, and the issue’s pri­vacy issues were far from set­tled. Olm­stead vs. United States (1928) had declared wire­tap­ping did not amount to search and seizure, but por­tions of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act of 1934 had been inter­preted to mean that wire­tap­ping could be deemed ille­gal under var­i­ous cir­cum­stances (ACLU: Sub­ject Files Series, box 1096, folder 19). The issue was fur­ther com­pli­cated in states that had legal tele­phone sur­veil­lance (such as New York) because Benanti v. United States (1957) declared that evi­dence gath­ered by state offi­cials, in a state where wire­taps were legal, would not be admis­si­ble in fed­eral court. The ques­tion­able legal­ity of tap­ping, how­ever, did not stop the FBI from inter­cept­ing tele­phone calls of numer­ous indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, most notably Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

In “Are Wire­tap­ping Laws Help­ing Crim­i­nals,” Keat­ing argued that wire­tap­ping was a nec­es­sary tool to com­bat orga­nized crime and sub­ver­sive groups. O’Connor and Peter­son argued that the prac­tice was suc­cess­ful because there had never been a doc­u­mented com­plaint against pros­e­cu­tors or police who had legally inter­cepted tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions. The few com­plaints they knew of were gen­er­ated from ille­gal instances of wire­tap­ping or were filed against police who had used evi­dence obtained via tele­phone inter­cep­tion for black­mail purposes.

On the other side, Speiser and Carol argued that wire­tap­ping pre­sented a slip­pery slope, and that even with the lim­i­ta­tions of Keating’s bill, wide­spread wire­tap­ping would lead to abuses of power. Fur­ther­more, Carol noted that Keating’s leg­is­la­tion was too broad, poten­tially giv­ing both fed­eral agents and states that did not have laws specif­i­cally pro­hibit­ing wire­tap­ping the author­ity to do it legally. Speiser stated that even with a court order, the issue was still a pri­vacy vio­la­tion, because unlike with a search war­rant, the indi­vid­ual tapped is not informed of the tap, and thus any inter­cepted con­ver­sa­tion could lead to vio­la­tions of priv­i­leged speech, such as between a hus­band and wife, doc­tor and patient, or attor­ney and client.

Speiser’s argu­ments epit­o­mize the ACLU’s posi­tion of the early 1960s. While the Union had a long track record of oppos­ing wire­tap­ping, 1961 marked a turn­ing point. In April of that year, the Union adopted the rec­om­men­da­tions of their Due Process Com­mit­tee, which sug­gested a pol­icy of always oppos­ing pro-wiretapping leg­is­la­tion (ACLU: Orga­ni­za­tional Mat­ters Series, box 209 and ACLU: Sub­ject Files Series, box 1096), with the con­cern that wire­tap­ping was uncon­sti­tu­tional and a vio­la­tion of pri­vacy. This amended an ear­lier stance, where they believed it could be legal and per­mis­si­ble under cer­tain cir­cum­stances. Even today, the Union takes a strong inter­est in argu­ing against the inter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, most notably dur­ing their oppo­si­tion to the NSA’s posi­tion on elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion sur­veil­lance dur­ing the 2008 FISA reform.

The col­lec­tions of Mudd’s Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers have a vari­ety of sources related to wire­tap­ping and inter­cept­ing tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions. More infor­ma­tion can be found in:

Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records, The Roger Bald­win Years

Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records: Orga­ni­za­tional Mat­ters Series

Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records: Printed Mate­ri­als Series

Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records: Sub­ject Files Series

Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Office Records

David Lawrence Papers

George McGov­ern Papers

William Fitts Ryan

H. Alexan­der Smith Papers

Addi­tional Sources used in com­pil­ing this post:

“Theodore Granik of Forums Dead. ” New York Times 23 Sep. 1970. Accessed via Pro­Quest His­tor­i­cal Newspapers.

“National Affairs: The Debate on Wire­tap­ping.” Time, 4 Jan. 1954. Avail­able at: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,860190,00.html

“News.” The Tren­ton Evening Times 09 Sep­tem­ber 1961. Accessed via NewsBank/Readex, America’s His­tor­i­cal Newspapers.

Green­berg, David. “Civil Rights: Let ‘Em Wire­tap!.” His­tory News Net­work 22 Oct. 2001. Avail­able at: http://hnn.us/articles/366.html

Lau­rent, Lawrence.  “Edu­ca­tion Chan­nel Is ‘City Side’ Topic. ” The Wash­ing­ton Post, Times Her­ald (1959–1973)  13  Jul 1961, Pro­Quest His­tor­i­cal Newspapers.

Savarese, Anthony P. Jr. “Eaves­drop­ping and the Law.” ABA Jour­nal Vol. 46, No. 3 (1960): 263–266.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Robert Kennedy and His Times. New York: Mariner Books, 2002.

This film is part of the Audio­vi­sual Mate­ri­als Series of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union Records (Box 2060).

–John DeLooper