Canwell Committee

The Interim Committee on Un-American Activities or Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, most commonly known as the Canwell Committee, (1947-1949) was a special investigative committee of the Washington State Legislature which in 1948 investigated the influence of the Communist Party USA in Washington state. Named after its chairman, Albert F. Canwell, the committee concentrated upon communist influence in the Washington Commonwealth Federation and its relationship to the Democratic Party in Washington, as well alleged Communist Party membership of certain faculty members at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Rep. Albert F. Canwell as he appeared at the 1948 Canwell Committee hearings.

The Canwell Committee is remembered as one of a number of state-level investigative committees patterned after the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) of the United States Congress. The committee ultimately published two printed volumes collecting the testimony of witnesses before it. The committee was terminated by the Washington legislature in 1949, following the electoral defeat of its chairman and several of its members in the elections of 1948.

Background

The Seattle General Strike of 1919 shook up the rather progressive Seattle area (here, cover of the Union Record for Monday, February 3, 1919)

Becoming a state only in November 1889, Washington was a relative latecomer into the United States of America. As was the case in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Dakota Territory, an indigenous frontier radicalism was prevalent in the state, making the Socialist Party of Washington one of the largest state affiliates of the Socialist Party of America on a per capita basis of the pre-World War I progressive era. Seattle had been the site of a General Strike in February 1919 which had captivated the attention of the nation.

Although the Socialist Party of Washington was shattered organizationally by the Socialist-Communist split of 1919, strong radical sentiment remained among many in the state. Washington had proven hospitable to the Farmer-Labor Party in the election of 1920 and to the independent campaign of Robert M. La Follette Sr. in 1924 and this tendency only deepened with the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The state's continued left-of-center political climate provided fodder for Postmaster General James Farley to jest about the USA consisting of "forty-seven states and the Soviet of Washington."[1]

In 1935 there emerged an organization of liberals and social democratic supporters of the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Commonwealth Builders. Launched by up-and-coming radio political commentator Howard Costigan the group was expanded at a 1936 convention to form the Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF), attempting to replicate the growing success of the socialist Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of Canada.

Although initially opposed by the Communist Party USA, with the emergence of the Comintern's tactic of the Popular Front — mandating efforts by communists around the world to engage in common efforts with liberals and social democrats against the growing global menace of fascism — the WCF came to be seen as an ideal target for communist participation and control. Executive Secretary Costigan was won over as a secret member of the Communist Party late in 1936 and communists began dedicated activity in the organization.

In 1946, Albert F. Canwell, Republican from Spokane's Fifth District was elected to the Washington House of Representatives. Canwell had personally been concerned with the matter of communism in Washington since a prominent 1934 waterfront strike and he dove into his job with prosecutorial zeal, first obtaining files of people and groups of interest in the state from friendly members of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Washington, DC. His campaign promised to stop tax increases and to fight Communism. He drafted a concurrent resolution to establish a Washington State "Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities," modeled on the federal House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and a similar California State committee. The committee would comprise three House members and three Senate members plus Canwell as chairman.[2][3]

Members

Washington House Speaker Herbert M. Hamblen (1947) appointed Canwell as committee chair

The Interim Committee on Un-American Activities of the Washington State Legislature was established on the last day of the 1947 legislative session.[3] On March 8, 1947, Washington State's House Concurrent Resolution No. 10 established the Joint Legislative Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities. House Speaker Herbert M. Hamblen appointed Canwell as chairman. The committee becomes known as the "Canwell Committee."[2] The resolution directed the committee to "investigate the activities of groups and organizations whose membership includes persons who are Communists, or any other organization known or suspected to be dominated or controlled by a foreign power."[4]

Members came from:

Washington State House of Representatives:
- Albert F. Canwell (chairman)
- Sydney A. Stevens
- Grant C. Stisson
- George F. Yantis
Washington State Senate:
- R.L. Rutter Jr.
- Thomas H. Bienz
- Harold G. Kimball

In practice, five of the committee's seven members were Republicans and only two Democrats. One was a member of the conservative American Legion.[5] The one liberal Democrat, Representative George F. Yantis, was appointed by House Speaker Hamblen to counterbalance the Republicans, but Yantis died in December 1947 before the committee began to conduct its public hearings.[5]

Hearings

Howard Rushmore (here, in 1957) named Alger Hiss as a Soviet mole in mid-July 1948, less than three before Whittaker Chambers would testify before HUAC on 3 August 1948

The Canwell Committee held its hearings at the Seattle Armory.[2]

On January 27, 1948, the Canwell Committee convenes its first hearing. The subject was subversion within the Washington Pension Union.[2]

On July 19, 1948, the Canwell Committee held its second hearings. The subject was subversion within the University of Washington.[2] Witnesses included George Hewitt, who claimed he had taught University of Washington professor Melvin Rader at a "highly secret Communist school at Briehl's Farm, near Kingston, New York, for a period of about six weeks in the Summer of 1938 or 1939." Rader later pursued Hewitt for perjury.[6]

Canwell also invited anti-communists Howard Rushmore and J. B. Matthews to testify before the committee in Alger Hiss. "At this time, no one knew that Alger Hiss would later be accused of being paid by the Soviet government and tried as a traitor."[2][7] Canwell had come to knew of the September 1939 notes made by Undersecretary of State Adolf Berle during a secretive meeting with Whittaker Chambers shortly after the Hitler-Stalin Pact became public. Rushmore testified for three days through to July 21, during which he noted the arrest of a dozen top Communist Party leaders across the country (leading to the 1949 Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders). Rushmore also claimed that "moles" existed in the federal government. He named Harold Ware, Lee Pressman, Donald Hiss, John Abt, Charles Kramer, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and Joseph P. Lash. Fred Neindorff of the Seattle Post Intelligencer and Ashley Holden of the Spokesman-Review both covered the story; U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall personally called both newspapers to quash the story.[8][9]

During taping for an oral history in 1997, Canwell said, "We wished to put the Hiss case in the record, and there’s testimony by them about atomic scientists and others who were questionable characters." The only scientist whose name Canwell could remember was J. Robert Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project. "There were numerous others," Canwell said, but he would have to go back and read the record to call "all their names" accurately. Asked to "characterize" Oppenheimer, Canwell said he agreed with conservative journalist Westbrook Pegler: he paid dues in the Communist Party, he was married to a Communist, and sleeping with at least one other one. Of the two, Rushmore and Matthews, Canwell explained, "Rushmore was principally brought out to testify on Hiss and the atomic scientists," while Matthews helped on the subject of universities.[2]

Dissolution

In November 1948, Canwell lost his re-election; the committee issued its final report in January 1949.[2]

In 1997, during oral history interviews, Canwell explained:

One of the reasons that I tried over and over to be elected to Congress was that I needed the power base to do what I knew needed doing–what I wanted to do... Nobody paid my way, and that was what I was always confronted with. That’s more or less the total Canwell operation–it’s a one-man FBI with no funds.[2]

References

Jane Sanders, Cold War on Campus: Academic Freedom at the University of Washington, 1946-64. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1979; pg. 17.
Canwell, Albert F.; Frederick, Timothy (1997). "Albert F. Canwell: An Oral History" (PDF). Washington State Oral History Program. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
Sanders, Cold War on Campus, pg. 21.
Wick, Nancy (December 1997). "Seeing Red: Fifty Years Ago, a Hearing on "Un-American" Activities Tore the UW Campus Apart, Setting a Precedent for Faculty Firings across Academe". Columns. University of Washington. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
Sanders, Cold War on Campus, pp. 21-22.
Rader, Melvin (July 5, 1954). "The Profession of Perjury". Retrieved March 20, 2020. Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
"Politics: Senator McCarthy gets a break". Life. 28 August 1950. p. 103. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
Kienholz, M. (21 September 2012). The Canwell Files: Murder, Arson and Intrigue in the Evergreen State. iUniverse. pp. 85–86. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
Kershner, Jim (July 28, 2011). "Canwell, Albert F. (1907-2002)". HistoryLink.org. Retrieved 20 March 2020.

Publications

Albert F. Canwell, et al., First Report, Un-American Activities in Washington State, 1948. Olympia, WA: The committee, 1948.
Albert F. Canwell, et al., Second Report, Un-American Activities in Washington State, 1948. Olympia, WA: The committee, 1948.

External links

James Gregory (general editor), "Special Section: Canwell Hearings" Communism in Washington State: History and Memory, University of Washington, 2009–2012. Including complete, digitized transcripts of the hearings, historical photographs, documents and essays.
Susan Gilmore, "The Cold War And Albert Canwell: The 1948 Anti-Communist Hearings Earned The Freshman Legislator An Instant Reputation — And Shattered Lives," Seattle Times, Aug. 2, 1998.
Nancy Wick, "Seeing Red: Fifty Years Ago, a Hearing on "Un-American" Activities Tore the UW Campus Apart, Setting a Precedent for Faculty Firings across Academe," Columns, December 1997.