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.

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