Nobody Here but Us Reds

For an organization dedicated to the overthrow of U.S. democracy, the Communist Party of the U.S. has taken abundant advantage of the legal protection that democracy provides. Ever since 1950, when the Internal Security Act went into effect, the Government has been trying to compel the party to register as a "Communist action organization" and furnish lists of its members, income sources and expenditures. During all that time, invoking its rights under the U.S. Constitution, the Communist Party has successfully fended off wave after wave of Justice Department lawyers.

Last year in the U.S. District Court in Washington, a jury finally found the Communist Party guilty of failing to register, and Judge Alexander Holtzoff imposed a $120,000 fine. When a newsman asked one of the Communist Party's lawyers, Joseph Forer, whether he regarded the trial as the "culmination" of the long battle, the answer was indignant: "Culmination? Are you out of your mind? This is the beginning of a new round." Right he was. In Washington last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the 1962 conviction.

What the Court of Appeals decided was that the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against self-incrimination protected the Communist Party against prosecution for failure to register. Any member who came forward to register for the party, the court reasoned, would automatically incriminate himself. Present statutes, said the opinion written by Chief Judge David L. Bazelon, brand the Communist Party as a criminal conspiracy. "Mere association with the party incriminates." Rejecting the Government's argument that the party could have found a volunteer to register for it, the court said that it could not "assume without proof that anyone is willing to submit data the possession of which implies an intimate knowledge of the party's workings."

The Court of Appeals decision now sends the case back to the district court "with instructions to grant a new trial if the government shall request it, or in the absence of such a request, to enter a judgment of acquittal."

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