Skeletons in the City Room

When CBS Commentator Winston Burdett bared his past as a Communist spy to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (TIME, July 11), he named ten other newsmen as members of the pre-World War II Communist Party cell at the now defunct Brooklyn Eagle. Of the first five to be called as witnesses, only New York Timesman Charles Grutzner came clean. Last week the others accused by Burdett had their chance.

First witness was David A. Gordon, a balding, sad-faced reporter who went to the strongly anti-Communist New York Daily News six years ago. On the day that Burdett named him, Gordon scoffed (as reported in the News): "Preposterous . . . I don't know how in the world he mentioned me."

Under oath last week. Reporter Gordon changed his tune. When Committee Counsel Jay Sourwine asked if he had been one of the Eagle's Communists, Gordon quickly replied: "I am not a Communist and have not been in any way for the past twelve years." Had he ever been a Communist? Gordon balked at answering, claimed his right under the Fifth Amendment to refuse to testify against himself. When Sourwine tried to find out if he knew any Communists in the Eagle cell, Gordon again and again refused to answer. All told, he took refuge behind the Fifth Amendment 29 times.

For a full day the News was uncharacteristically silent on what it would do with Reporter Gordon. Then it fired him.

Principle Is Unacceptable. Next man to take the witness chair was Melvin L. Barnet, New York Times copyreader since 1953, who had also been named by CBS-man Burdett. Had he been a Communist while employed at the Eagle 14 years ago? Barnet said that "Since February or March of 1942, sir, I have not been a Communist." But he refused to testify about membership before that date, or answer any questions about other Communists at the Eagle.

Before he took the stand, Barnet had discussed his case with Times executives, told them he would plead the Fifth Amendment on some questions "as a matter of principle." But the Times plainly wanted him to make a clean breast of everything, warned him that refusing to testify about his Communist ties would be "unacceptable." Hardly had he left the stand when Times Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, moving more speedily than Daily News bigwigs, notified Committee Chairman James Eastland that Barnet had been fired. To Copyreader Barnet, Sulzberger wrote: "The course of conduct which you have followed . . . has caused the Times to lose confidence in you."

The Disillusioned. From Gordon and Barnet the committee turned to a more cooperative witness, Charles S. Lewis, now news director of WCAX radio and TV stations in Burlington, Vt. Lewis freely admitted that he had been a Communist for "several" months in 1937, said he joined while at the Eagle after Newspaper Guild organizers convinced him that "as an active member of the Guild, I should be a member of the Communist Party, which . . . was making the actual decisions in the Guild." He broke with the party during a 1937 strike at the Eagle, he said, because he was asked to take part in beating up a nonstriking fellow worker. His secret party record dogged him for 15 years, and three years ago he resigned as boss of the Government radio station in Germany, RIAS. rather than face a loyalty check. Said Lewis: "I'd been living with this dark secret and I was still trying not to divulge that secret ... I was scared . . ."

Next day the Senate committee called another Timesman, Ira Henry Freeman, a reporter for 25 years. Freeman told how in 1938 he and his wife (once a reporter herself) were persuaded by Milton Kaufman, then executive vice president of the American Newspaper Guild, that the Communist Party was the "leading influence" in the Guild. But at his first meeting of the New York Times unit of the Communist Party, he was shocked to find himself the only member of the editorial department, although there were half a dozen other Times employees there. A year later Freeman broke with the Communists, because party-line discussions proved "dull and fruitless," and activities "inept and futile." After his full and frank testimony, the Times kept Freeman on.

Unfriendly Rivalry. One of the final witnesses to come before the Security committee was the New York Herald Tribune's Military and Aviation Editor Ansel Talbert. He was called to testify on whether Timesman Grutzner had helped the enemy by prematurely writing a story about the first F-86 Sabre jets in action in Korea five years ago. Talbert told how he, Grutzner and other reporters had been told of the Sabre jets' first victory over the MIGs in North Korea, but had been directed by the Fifth Air Force not to release the news. Talbert said that all reporters present agreed to hold the story (Grutzner testified earlier that he, the A.P. and the U.P. agreed to use it).

But Grutzner sent his Sabre jet story on for clearance by Washington and the Times printed it, after Air, Force Chief Hoyt Vandenberg gave his O.K. Talbert argued that security was violated when Grutzner put the story on commercial wires out of Seoul, i.e., they were thought to be tapped. Talbert quoted General George Stratemeyer as calling Grutzner's story "one of the greatest security breaches of the war."

Soon the committee found that it was probing not security but a squabble between newsmen. Talbert had been scooped on the story, and after five years it still rankled. In the middle of the argument, Glenn Stackhouse, U.P.'s San Francisco bureau chief, wired the Times that Talbert's charges were "ridiculous. Said Stackhouse: He "grudgingly admired" the Times for prying the story out of the Pentagon while the opposition was sitting on its hands. Since the Communists already knew about the Sabre jets from dogfighting with them, he said, "whole security thing so much hogwash."

At week's end Senator Eastland recessed his hearings, with words of praise for the "cooperation" of the newsmen. The New York Newspaper Guild then got into the act, announced that it will fight for the reinstatement of Gordon and Barnet. The-Guild will go along with newspapers that fire staffers who are--or have been--Communists within six months of being questioned by a legislative committee. But it contended that the Times and News could not, under their contracts with the Guild, discharge staffers for pleading the Fifth Amendment, thus "exercising a constitutional right."

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