Tag Archives: ACLU

Are Wiretapping Laws Helping Criminals?

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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 (86th 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.

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Traveling Hopefully, 1982

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Robert Louis Stephen­son once wrote that to travel hope­fully is bet­ter than to arrive. And the true reward is to labor. I have trav­elled hope­fully for all these years. So has the ACLU. Some day, some time, but the goal is clear, the road is hard, and progress painful. We are approach­ing — we are begin­ning to approach —  a tol­er­a­ble world of peace, order, and justice.

–Roger Bald­win, 95th Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion, 1979

Reel Mudd’s show­case of the audio­vi­sual mate­ri­als from the Records of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union con­tin­ues with Trav­el­ling Hope­fully. This 28 minute doc­u­men­tary tells the life story of Roger Bald­win, the ACLU direc­tor from 1920 to 1950. The film inter­sperses inter­views of Bald­win by Gail Sheehy and Nor­man Lear with praise for Baldwin’s actions by Ira Glasser, Andrew Young, Nor­man Dorsen, Ted Kennedy and oth­ers. Much of the praise for Bald­win comes from a 1979 din­ner hon­or­ing Baldwin’s 95th birthday.

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Operation Abolition and Operation Correction

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This week Reel Mudd brings you a dou­ble fea­ture with Oper­a­tion Abo­li­tion and Oper­a­tion Cor­rec­tion! Per­haps the term dou­ble fea­ture is inac­cu­rate — each film con­tains the same footage but tells a dif­fer­ent story. Oper­a­tion Abo­li­tion describes how Com­mu­nist infil­tra­tors led riots while the House Un-American Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee con­vened in San Fran­cisco. Oper­a­tion Cor­rec­tion, how­ever, talks of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion by a gov­ern­ment agency des­per­ate to remain rel­e­vant while its rai­son d’être faced pub­lic scrutiny.

Oper­a­tion Abo­li­tion, a 1960 doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by the House Com­mit­tee on Un-American Activ­i­ties (a.k.a House Un-American Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee or HUAC), focused on an inci­dent on May 13, 1960 when the Com­mit­tee con­vened in San Francisco’s City Hall. While the com­mit­tee met, stu­dents protested in the hall­ways and out­side the build­ing, lead­ing to clashes with the police and the arrest of 64 stu­dents. Oper­a­tion Abo­li­tion shows footage of the inci­dent taken from sub­poe­naed San Fran­cisco TV sta­tion news­reels, using that footage to allege that the stu­dents were Com­mu­nists and/or insti­gated by Com­mu­nist agents. The film’s nar­ra­tors, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Fran­cis E. Wal­ter, Chair­man of HUAC, and Ful­ton Lewis III, son of a promi­nent anti-communist radio com­men­ta­tor, sug­gest that the pro­test­ers were mem­bers of and/or “duped” by groups whose ulti­mate goal was to destroy the com­mit­tee, weaken the FBI, and reduce the enforce­ment pow­ers of the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Despite being a news­reel pro­duced by a gov­ern­ment agency, Oper­a­tion Abo­li­tion was sur­pris­ingly pop­u­lar. Accord­ing to Time Mag­a­zine, an esti­mated 15 mil­lion peo­ple saw this film.

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The Challenge

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This Reel Mudd high­lights a 1955 tele­vi­sion pilot known as The Chal­lenge. Intended to be the start of a weekly series high­light­ing con­tro­ver­sial social issues, this episode was co-produced by the Fund for the Repub­lic and noted TV pro­ducer Wor­thing­ton Miner. This pilot shows the story of a school bus dri­ver who is fired from his job and brought before the school board to jus­tify his refusal to sign a loy­alty oath.

The program’s co-producer, the Fund for the Repub­lic, was an orga­ni­za­tion spun-off from the Ford Foun­da­tion. The Fund issued grants, com­mis­sioned stud­ies, and cre­ated orig­i­nal works seek­ing to explore social issues such as racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, black­list­ing, aca­d­e­mic free­dom, and the legal­ity and effec­tive­ness of loy­alty oaths. As part of these activ­i­ties, the Fund cre­ated a vari­ety of doc­u­men­taries and shorts for radio and tele­vi­sion aimed at help­ing edu­cate the Amer­i­can pub­lic about these issues.

The Chal­lenge’s explo­ration of loy­alty oaths mir­rors the argu­ments raised in Fund for the Repub­lic stud­ies of the issue. It ques­tions whether loy­alty oaths were effec­tive in their efforts to pre­vent Com­mu­nists from sub­vert­ing Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions, whether they were con­sti­tu­tional, and if they led to addi­tional rights or ethics violations.

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