House Un-American Activities Committee#Standing committee(1945–1975)

File:Lee salter overman.jpg headed the first congressional investigation of American communism back in 1919.]]

The Overman Committee was a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by North Carolina Democratic Senator Lee Slater Overman that operated from September 1918 to June 1919. The subcommittee investigated German as well as "Bolshevik elements" in the United States.Schmidt, p. 136

This subcommittee was initially concerned with investigating pro-German sentiments in the American liquor industry. After World War I ended in November 1918, and the German threat lessened, the subcommittee began investigating Bolshevism, which had appeared as a threat during the First Red Scare after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The subcommittee's hearing into Bolshevik propaganda, conducted from February 11 to March 10, 1919, played a decisive role in constructing an image of a radical threat to the United States during the first Red Scare.Schmidt, p. 144

U.S. Representative Hamilton Fish III (R-NY), who was a fervent anti-communist, introduced, on May 5, 1930, House Resolution 180, which proposed to establish a committee to investigate communist activities in the United States. The resulting committee, Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities in the United States commonly known as the Fish Committee, undertook extensive investigations of people and organizations suspected of being involved with or supporting communist activities in the United States.{{cite web|title=Complete Digitized Testimonies: The U.S. Congress Special Committee on Communist Activities in Washington State Hearings (1930)|url=http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/cpproject/fish-hearings.shtml|publisher=Communism in Washington State History and Memory Project|access-date=August 21, 2012}} Among the committee's targets were the American Civil Liberties Union and communist presidential candidate William Z. Foster.Memoirs, pp. 41–42 The committee recommended granting the United States Department of Justice more authority to investigate communists, and strengthening immigration and deportation laws to keep communists out of the United States.{{cite news |title=TO SEEK ADDED LAW FOR CURB ON REDS; Fish Committee Will Propose Strengthening Powers of Justice Department |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 18, 1930 |page=21 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1930/11/18/archives/to-seek-added-law-for-curb-on-reds-fish-committee-will-propose.html |url-access=subscription |access-date=March 4, 2021}}

From 1934 to 1937, the committee, now named the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities, chaired by John William McCormack (D-Mass.) and Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), held public and private hearings and collected testimony filling 4,300 pages. The Special Committee was widely known as the McCormack–Dickstein committee. Its mandate was to get "information on how foreign subversive propaganda entered the U.S. and the organizations that were spreading it." Its records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration as records related to HUAC.{{Cite web |title=House Un-American Activities Committee |url=https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm |access-date=2022-09-14 |website=www2.gwu.edu}}

In 1934, the Special Committee subpoenaed most of the leaders of the fascist movement in the United States.{{cite book|first1=Chip |last1= Berlet|first2=Matthew Nemiroff |last2 = Lyons |title=Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort|url=https://archive.org/details/rightwingpopulis00berlrich|url-access=registration|year=2000|publisher=Guilford Press|isbn=978-1-57230-562-5}} Beginning in November 1934, the committee investigated allegations of a fascist plot to seize the White House, known as the "Business Plot". Contemporary newspapers widely reported the plot as a hoax.{{cite news |title=Credulity Unlimited |date=November 22, 1934 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1934/11/22/archives/credulity-unlimited.html|access-date= 3 March 2009}} While historians have questioned whether a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed.{{cite book|last1=Fox|title=The Clarks of Cooperstown|publisher=Knopf|year=2007|isbn=978-0-307-26347-6|url=https://archive.org/details/clarksofcooperst00webe}}

It has been reported that while Dickstein served on this committee and the subsequent Special Investigation Committee, he was paid $1,250 a month by the Soviet NKVD, which hoped to get secret congressional information on anti-communists and pro-fascists. A 1939 NKVD report stated Dickstein handed over "materials on the war budget for 1940, records of conferences of the budget sub commission, reports of the war minister, chief of staff and etc." However the NKVD was dissatisfied with the amount of information provided by Dickstein, after he was not appointed to HUAC to "carry out measures planned by us together with him." Dickstein unsuccessfully attempted to expedite the deportation of Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky, while the Dies Committee kept him in the country. Dickstein stopped receiving NKVD payments in February 1940.{{cite book|last=Weinstein|first=Allen|title=The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era|author2=Vassiliev, Alexander|date=March 14, 2000|publisher=Modern Library|isbn=978-0-375-75536-1|location=New York|pages=140–150|author-link=Allen Weinstein}}

====Dies Committee (1938–1944)====

File:370403-Dies-Martin.jpg served as chair of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, predecessor to the permanent committee, for its entire seven-year duration.]]

On May 26, 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established as a special investigating committee, reorganized from its previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack–Dickstein Committee, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties; however, it concentrated its efforts on communists.{{cite book|last=Finkelman|first=Paul|title=Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YoI14vYA8r0C&pg=PA780|access-date=May 25, 2011|date=October 10, 2006|publisher=CRC Press|isbn=978-0-415-94342-0|page=780}}{{cite web|url=http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/huac.htm|title=House Un-American Activities Committee|work=Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site|publisher=National Park Service|access-date=May 25, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100529011543/http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/huac.htm|archive-date=May 29, 2010}} It was chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-Tex.), and therefore known as the Dies Committee. Its records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration as records related to HUAC.

In 1938, Hallie Flanagan, the head of the Federal Theatre Project, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee to answer the charge the project was overrun with communists. Flanagan was called to testify for only a part of one day, while an administrative clerk from the project was called in for two entire days. It was during this investigation that one of the committee members, Joe Starnes (D-Ala.), famously asked Flanagan whether the English Elizabethan era playwright Christopher Marlowe was a member of the Communist Party, and mused that ancient Greek tragedian "Mr. Euripides" preached class warfare.{{cite news| url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0DA153DF93BA2575AC0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2 | work=The New York Times | title=Mr. Euripides Goes To Washington | first1=Benedict | last1=Nightingale | date=September 18, 1988 | access-date=May 4, 2010}}

In 1939, the committee investigated people involved with pro-Nazi organizations such as Oscar C. Pfaus and George Van Horn Moseley.{{cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6sJGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA6204 |chapter=Saturday, October 21, 1939 |title=Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Hearings Before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-fifth Congress, Third Session-Seventy-eighth Congress, Second Session, on H. Res. 282, &c.|year=1939|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|location=Washington|page=6204}}{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tdn6FFZklkcC&pg=PA471 |chapter=Moseley, George Van Horn (1874–1960) |editor-first=Richard S. |editor-last=Levy |title=Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution |volume=1 A–K|year=2005|publisher=ABC-CLIO|location=Santa Barbara|isbn=978-1-85109-439-4|page=471}} Moseley testified before the committee for five hours about a "Jewish Communist conspiracy" to take control of the US government. Moseley was supported by Donald Shea of the American Gentile League, whose statement was deleted from the public record as the committee found it so objectionable.{{cite news |newspaper=New York Times |url=https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0710F83A58127A93C6A9178DD85F4D8385F9& |title=The News of the Week in Review |date=June 4, 1939 |access-date=March 4, 2021 |url-access=subscription}}

The committee also put together an argument for the internment of Japanese Americans known as the "Yellow Report".{{cite book |last=Myer |first=Dillon S. |title=Uprooted Americans |location=Tucson |publisher=University of Arizona Press |year=1971 |page=19}} Organized in response to rumors of Japanese Americans being coddled by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and news that some former inmates would be allowed to leave camp and Nisei soldiers to return to the West Coast, the committee investigated charges of fifth column activity in the camps. A number of anti-WRA arguments were presented in subsequent hearings, but Director Dillon Myer debunked the more inflammatory claims.{{cite web|last=Niiya |first=Brian |url=http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Dies%20Committee/ |title=Dies Committee |publisher=Densho Encyclopedia |access-date=August 21, 2014}} The investigation was presented to the 77th Congress, and alleged that certain cultural traits – Japanese loyalty to the Emperor, the number of Japanese fishermen in the US, and the Buddhist faith – were evidence for Japanese espionage. With the exception of Rep. Herman Eberharter (D-Pa.), the members of the committee seemed to support internment, and its recommendations to expedite the impending segregation of "troublemakers", establish a system to investigate applicants for leave clearance, and step up Americanization and assimilation efforts largely coincided with WRA goals.

In 1946, the committee considered opening investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, but decided against doing so, prompting white supremacist committee member John E. Rankin (D-Miss.) to remark, "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."{{cite book |last=Newton |first=Michael |title=The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi A History |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |publisher=McFarland & Co. |year=2010 |page=102}} Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project and the Federal Writers' Project. Twenty years later, in 1965–1966, however, the committee did conduct an investigation into Klan activities under chairman Edwin Willis (D-La.).Newton, p. 162.

File:3909-walter-francis-e.jpg of Pennsylvania was chair of HUAC from 1955 until his death in 1963.]]

The House Committee on Un-American Activities became a standing (permanent) committee on January 3, 1945.{{cite web|url=https://www.congress.gov/bound-congressional-record/1945/01/03/house-section |title=Congressional Record, January 3, 1945, page 10-15}} Democratic Representative Edward J. Hart of New Jersey became the committee's first chairman.{{cite book |first=Walter |last=Goodman |title=The Committee |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=1968}} Under the mandate of Public Law 600, passed by the 79th Congress, the committee of nine representatives investigated suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution".{{cite web|url=https://www.congress.gov/83/statute/STATUTE-68/STATUTE-68-Pg745.pdf}}

Under this mandate, the committee focused its investigations on real and suspected communists in positions of actual or supposed influence in the United States society. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion.Doug Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hiss.html The Alger Hiss Trials – 1949–50] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060830171725/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hiss.html |date=August 30, 2006 }}, 2003.

The chief investigator was Robert E. Stripling, senior investigator Louis J. Russell, and investigators Alvin Williams Stokes, Courtney E. Owens, and Donald T. Appell. The director of research was Benjamin Mandel.

{{Main|Hollywood blacklist}}

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, "The Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists – including directors, radio commentators, actors, and particularly screenwriters – were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, and Yip Harburg, left the U.S. or went underground to find work. Others like Dalton Trumbo wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry.{{Citation needed|date=February 2008}}

In 1947, studio executives told the committee that wartime films—such as Mission to Moscow, The North Star, and Song of Russia—could be considered pro-Soviet propaganda, but claimed that the films were valuable in the context of the Allied war effort, and that they were made (in the case of Mission to Moscow) at the request of White House officials. In response to the House investigations, most studios produced a number of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda films such as The Red Menace (August 1949), The Red Danube (October 1949), The Woman on Pier 13 (October 1949), Guilty of Treason (May 1950, about the ordeal and trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty), I Was a Communist for the FBI (May 1951, Academy Award nominated for best documentary 1951, also serialized for radio), Red Planet Mars (May 1952), and John Wayne's Big Jim McLain (August 1952).Dan Georgakas, "[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/blacklist.html Hollywood Blacklist]", in: Encyclopedia Of The American Left, 1992. Universal-International Pictures was the only major studio that did not purposefully produce such a film.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) has conducted many investigations into the Hollywood film industry. Some people within the industry gave names of people who were allegedly communists to HUAC .{{Cite journal |last=Pontikes |first=Elizabeth |last2=Negro |first2=Giacomo |last3=Rao |first3=Hayagreeva |date=2010-06-01 |title=Stained Red: A Study of Stigma by Association to Blacklisted Artists during the “Red Scare” in Hollywood, 1945 to 1960 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122410368929 |journal=American Sociological Review |language=EN |volume=75 |issue=3 |pages=456–478 |doi=10.1177/0003122410368929 |issn=0003-1224}} In total, 43 people were summoned to testify in front of the Washington hearing. Out of those subpoenaed, only 10 refused to testify, and they were cited for contempt in front of Congress. Those 10 ended up being sentenced; one of them being Albert Maltz. Maltz had parents who were Russian immigrants, leading people to believe he was a communist. Once his name was on the Blacklist, he refused to testify in front of the Washington hearings in October. He was then convicted and was sentenced with nine other people. The other nine people included Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo.

As a result of the strict anti-communist agenda of HUAC during the Red Scare, the Labor Movement was targeted by going after prominent union activists and leaders. HUAC found means to go after the unions by attaching a communist stigma to the many organizations and individuals. Harry Bridges, a notable union activist and eventual union president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), was a direct target of such attacks. A campaign led by the committee chairman, at the time Martin Dies, focused on deporting the Australian American union activist directly based on testimony from John Frey claiming his Communist Party associations, despite his multiple public denials of such claims. Harry Bridges did although share a close intimacy with the Communist Party by aligning himself with certain aspects and ideals commonly targeted by HUAC giving reason for the subpoena and deportations attempts.{{Cite book |last=Cherny |first=Robert W. |title=Harry Bridges : Labor Radical, Labor Legend |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=2023}}

File:Harry Bridges.png who was a labor union activist and founder of the ILWU was one target of HUAC.]]

Another target of the Dies Committee was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Flynn was a cofounder and a part of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She joined the Communist Party in 1937 and was even included in the party's Central Committee the following year. Because of her political associations, she was an easy individual for HUAC to target as they could also attack the ACLU. Martin Dies decided to publicly prosecute the organization in 1939 which forced a response form the ACLU. The response came in the form of shearing any connection with the Communist Party by ridding individuals with communist ties as an attempted plea to Martin Dies. This of course included Elizabeth Gurley Flynn who was expelled from the ACLU, even after being a part of the founding committee.{{Cite journal |last=Neuborne |first=Burt |date=2006 |title=Of Pragmatism and Principle: A Second Look at the Expulsion of

Elizabeth Gurle Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from the ACLU's Board of Directors |url=https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/tlr/vol41/iss4/11 |journal=The University of Tulsa |volume=41}}

File:Whittaker Chambers.jpg in 1948]]

File:Alger Hiss (1950).jpg in 1950]]

On July 31, 1948, the committee heard testimony from Elizabeth Bentley, an American who had been working as a Soviet agent in New York. Among those whom she named as communists was Harry Dexter White, a senior U.S. Treasury department official. The committee subpoenaed Whittaker Chambers on August 3, 1948. Chambers, too, was a former Soviet spy, by then a senior editor of Time magazine.{{Cite web |title=Alger Hiss |url=https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/alger-hiss |access-date=2023-04-27 |website=Federal Bureau of Investigation |language=en-us}}

Chambers named more than a half dozen government officials including White as well as Alger Hiss (and Hiss' brother Donald). Most of these former officials refused to answer committee questions, citing the Fifth Amendment. White denied the allegations, and died of a heart attack a few days later. Hiss also denied all charges; doubts about his testimony though, especially those expressed by freshman Congressman Richard Nixon, led to further investigation that strongly suggested Hiss had made a number of false statements.

Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat his charges outside a Congressional committee, which Chambers did. Hiss then sued for libel, leading Chambers to produce copies of State Department documents which he claimed Hiss had given him in 1938. Hiss denied this before a grand jury, was indicted for perjury, and subsequently convicted and imprisoned.{{Cite book

| last = Chambers

| first = Whittaker

| title = Witness

| publisher = Random House

| year = 1952

| isbn = 978-0-89526-571-5}}{{Cite book

| last = Weinstein

| first = Allen

| title = Perjury

| publisher = Hoover Institution Press

| year = 2013

| isbn = 978-0-8179-1225-3}}

The present-day House of Representatives website on HUAC states, "But in the 1990s, Soviet archives conclusively revealed that Hiss had been a spy on the Kremlin's payroll."{{cite web |url=http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=169 |title=Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives |access-date=July 15, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120916043311/http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=169 |archive-date=September 16, 2012}} However, in the 1990s, senior Soviet intelligence officials, after consulting their archive, stated they found nothing to support that theory.{{Cite book

| last = Hartshom

| first = Lewis

| title = Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the Case That Ignited McCarthyism

| publisher = Oxford University Press

| page = viii}} In 1995, the National Security Agency's Venona papers have been alleged to have provided overwhelming evidence that he was a spy, but the same evidence is also judged to be not only not overwhelming but entirely circumstantial.{{Cite journal| author1 =Bird, Kai| author2 =Chervonnaya, Svetlana| title =The Mystery of Ales| journal =American Scholar| date =Summer 2007| url =http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-mystery-of-ales-2}} As a result, and also given how many documents remain classified, it is unlikely that a truly conclusive answer will ever be reached.[https://books.google.com/books?id=8SvufU3WsisC&pg=PT113 Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (New York, London: Penguin-Putnam Inc, 2000), p. 77].

In 1965, Klan violence prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson and Georgia congressman Charles L. Weltner to call for a congressional probe of the Ku Klux Klan. The resulting investigation resulted in numerous Klansmen remaining silent and giving evasive answers. The House of Representatives voted to cite seven Klan leaders, including Robert Shelton, for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over Klan records. Shelton was found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison plus a $1,000 fine. Following his conviction, three other Klan leaders, Robert Scoggin, Bob Jones, and Calvin Craig, pleaded guilty.{{Cite news |date=1966-11-19 |title=Article clipped from Chicago Tribune |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/chicago-tribune/110046968/ |access-date=2024-02-24 |work=Chicago Tribune |pages=14}} Scoggin and Jones were each sentenced to one year in prison, while Craig was fined $1,000. The charges against Marshall Kornegay, Robert Hudgins, and George Dorsett, were later dropped.{{Cite book |last=Harold Weisberg |url=http://archive.org/details/nsia-KuKluxKlan |title=Ku Klux Klan |publisher=The Weisberg Archive, Beneficial-Hodson Library, Hood College |others=Michael Best}}

File:Ichord-Richard-1969.jpg of Missouri was chair of the renamed House Internal Security Committee from 1969 until its termination in January 1975.]]

Following the censure of Joseph McCarthy (who never served in the House, nor on HUAC; he was a U.S. Senator), the prestige of HUAC began a gradual decline in the late 1950s. By 1959, the committee was being denounced by former President Harry S. Truman as the "most un-American thing in the country today".{{cite book|first=Stephen J. |last=Whitfield |title=The Culture of the Cold War |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |year=1996}}{{cite web|title=Harry S. Truman Lecture at Columbia University on the Witch-Hunting and Hysteria |publisher=Harry S. Truman Library & Museum |date=April 29, 1959 |accessdate=April 2, 2021 |url=https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/soundrecording-records/sr75-3-harry-s-truman-lecture-columbia-university-witch-hunting-and-hysteria }}

In May 1960, the committee held hearings in San Francisco City Hall which led to a riot on May 13, when city police officers fire-hosed protesting students from the UC Berkeley, Stanford, and other local colleges, and dragged them down the marble steps beneath the rotunda, leaving some seriously injured.[https://www.pbs.org/opb/thesixties/topics/politics/newsmakers_4.html "The Sixties: House Un-American Activities Committee"] at PBS.org{{Cite journal | author = Carl Nolte | title = 'Black Friday', birth of U.S. protest movement | journal = San Francisco Chronicle | date = May 13, 2010 | url = https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Black-Friday-birth-of-U-S-protest-movement-3188770.php }} Soviet affairs expert William Mandel, who had been subpoenaed to testify, angrily denounced the committee and the police in a blistering statement which was aired repeatedly for years thereafter on Pacifica Radio station KPFA in Berkeley. An anti-communist propaganda film, Operation Abolition,{{YouTube|MeiW63M3bcI|"Operation Abolition", 1960}}{{cite magazine |url=https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894425,00.html |title=The Investigation: Operation Abolition |magazine=Time |year=1961 |url-access=subscription |access-date=March 4, 2021}}{{YouTube|DXsCfYYi2FE|Operation Abolition (1960)}}{{cite web |url=https://matiane.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/operation-abolition/ |title=Operation Abolition |author-link=Levan Ramishvili |first=Levan |last=Ramishvili |type=blog post |date=August 19, 2010 |access-date=March 4, 2021}} was produced by the committee from subpoenaed local news reports, and shown around the country during 1960 and 1961. In response, the Northern California ACLU produced a film called Operation Correction, which discussed falsehoods in the first film. Scenes from the hearings and protest were later featured in the Academy Award-nominated 1990 documentary Berkeley in the Sixties.{{citation needed|date = May 2020}} The Women Strike for Peace also protested against the HUAC at this time.{{Cite book|title=Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era|last=May|first=Elaine Tyler|publisher=BasicBook|year=1988|isbn=0-465-03055-6|url=https://archive.org/details/homewardboundame00maye_0|accessdate=August 28, 2024}}

The committee lost considerable prestige as the 1960s progressed, increasingly becoming the target of political satirists and the defiance of a new generation of political activists. HUAC subpoenaed Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies in 1967, and again in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Yippies used the media attention to make a mockery of the proceedings. Rubin came to one session dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier and passed out copies of the United States Declaration of Independence to those in attendance. Rubin then "blew giant gum bubbles, while his co-witnesses taunted the committee with Nazi salutes".[http://www.bookrags.com/Youth_International_Party Youth International Party], 1992. Rubin attended another session dressed as Santa Claus. On another occasion, police stopped Hoffman at the building entrance and arrested him for wearing the United States flag. Hoffman quipped to the press, "I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country", paraphrasing the last words of revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale; Rubin, who was wearing a matching Viet Cong flag, shouted that the police were communists for not arresting him as well.{{cite web |first=Jerry |last=Rubin |url=http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/hpolscrv/yippiemanifesto.html |title=A Yippie Manifesto |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716234903/http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/hpolscrv/yippiemanifesto.html |archive-date=July 16, 2011 }}

Hearings in August 1966 called to investigate anti-Vietnam War activities were disrupted by hundreds of protesters, many from the Progressive Labor Party. The committee faced witnesses who were openly defiant.{{cite news|author1=John Herbers|title=War Foes Clash With House Panel in Stormy Session After Judges Lift Hearing Ban|access-date=December 11, 2016|work=The New York Times|date=August 17, 1966|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980DE7DA163CE43BBC4F52DFBE66838D679EDE&legacy=true}}{{cite web|author1=Jim Dann and Hari Dillon|title=The Five Retreats: A History of the Failure of the Progressive Labor Party CHAPTER 1: PLP AT ITS PRIME 1963–1966|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/1960-1970/5retreats/chapter1.htm#bk05|website=Marxists.org|access-date=December 11, 2016|quote=PLP brought 800 people for 3 days of the sharpest struggle that Capital Hill had seen in 30 years. PL members shocked the inquisitors when they openly proclaimed their communist beliefs and then went on into long sharp detailed explanations, which didn't spare the HUAC Congressmen being called every name in the book.}}

According to The Harvard Crimson:

{{blockquote|In the fifties, the most effective sanction was terror. Almost any publicity from HUAC meant the 'blacklist'. Without a chance to clear his name, a witness would suddenly find himself without friends and without a job. But it is not easy to see how in 1969, a HUAC blacklist could terrorize an SDS activist. Witnesses like Jerry Rubin have openly boasted of their contempt for American institutions. A subpoena from HUAC would be unlikely to scandalize Abbie Hoffman or his friends.{{cite news |newspaper=The Harvard Crimson |url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/2/24/by-any-other-name-pthe-house/ |first=Thomas |last=Geogheghan |author-link=Thomas Geoghegan |title=By Any Other Name. Brass Tacks |date=February 24, 1969 |access-date=May 25, 2018}}}}

In an attempt to reinvent itself, the committee was renamed as the Internal Security Committee in 1969.{{sfn|Staples|2006|p=284}}

The House Committee on Internal Security was formally terminated on January 14, 1975, the day of the opening of the 94th Congress.Charles E. Schamel, [https://archive.org/details/RecordsOfTheHouseUn-americanActivitiesCommittee-NaraFindingAid Records of the US House of Representatives, Record Group 233: Records of the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1945–1969 (Renamed the) House Internal Security Committee, 1969–1976.] Washington, DC: Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records, July 1995; p. 4. The committee's files and staff were transferred on that day to the House Judiciary Committee.

Source:Eric Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968. New York: The Viking Press 1971; pp. 955–957.

{{Div col|colwidth=22em}}

• Martin Dies Jr., (D-Tex.), 1938–1944
• Edward J. Hart (D-N.J.), 1945–1946
• J. Parnell Thomas (R-N.J.), 1947–1948
• John Stephens Wood (D-Ga.), 1949–1953
• Harold H. Velde (R-Ill.), 1953–1955
• Francis E. Walter (D-Pa.), 1955–1963
• Edwin E. Willis (D-La.), 1963–1969
• Richard Howard Ichord Jr. (D-Mo.), 1969–1975

{{div col end}}

{{For|a complete list of members|List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee}}

{{Div col|colwidth=22em}}

• Felix Edward Hébert
• Donald L. Jackson
• Noah M. Mason
• Karl E. Mundt
• Richard Nixon
• John E. Rankin
• Gordon H. Scherer
• Richard B. Vail
• Jerry Voorhis

{{div col end}}

{{div col}}

• California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities
• Defending Dissent Foundation
• Edith Alice Macia
• Edward S. Montgomery
• J. Edgar Hoover
• Jack Moffitt (screenwriter)
• Loyalty oath
• Lusk Committee
• Manning Johnson
• McCarthyism and antisemitism
• McCarran Internal Security Act
• Mundt–Ferguson Communist Registration Bill
• Mundt–Nixon Bill
• Red-baiting
• Subversive Activities Control Board
• Wilkinson v. United States

{{div col end}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book|last=Staples|first=William G.|title=Encyclopedia of Privacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sFv1ZltBhR0C&pg=PA284|year=2006|publisher=Greenwood Press|isbn=978-0-313-08670-0}}

• [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=diescommittee Investigation of un-American propaganda activities in the United States. Hearings before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives (1938–1944), Volumes 1–17 with Appendices.] University of Pennsylvania online gateway to Internet Archive and Hathi Trust.
• [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=United%20States.%20Congress.%20House.%20Committee%20on%20Internal%20Security United States House Committee on Internal Security] University of Pennsylvania online gateway to Internet Archive and Hathi Trust.
• Schamel, Gharles E. Inventory of records of the Special Committee on Un-American activities, 1938–1944 (the Dies committee). Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Administration. Washington, D.C., July 1995.
• Schamel, Gharles E. [https://archive.org/details/RecordsOfTheHouseUn-americanActivitiesCommittee-NaraFindingAid Records of the House Un-American Activities committee, 1945–1969, renamed the House Internal Security committee, 1969–1976.] Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Administration. Washington, D.C., July 1995.
• {{cite journal | url=http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol3/investigator/investigator.html | title=From the Archives: The Investigator (1954): A Radio Play by Reuben Ship | author=Ship, Reuben | journal=The Journal for MultiMedia History | year=2000 | volume=3}}

• {{Cite book

| editor-last = Bentley

| editor-first = Eric

| editor-link= Eric Bentley

| title = Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968

| publisher = Nation Books

| year = 2002

| orig-year = 1971, Viking Press

| isbn = 978-1-56025-368-6 }}

• {{Cite book

| last = Buckley

| first = William F.

| author-link = William F. Buckley

| title = The Committee and Its Critics; a Calm Review of the House Committee on Un-American Activities

| publisher = Putnam Books

| year = 1962

}}

• Caballero, Raymond. McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
• {{Cite book

| last = Chambers

| first = Whittaker

| author-link = Whittaker Chambers

| title = Witness

| publisher = Random House

| year = 1952

| isbn = 978-0-89526-571-5 }}

• {{Cite book

| last = Donner

| first = Frank J.

| title = The Un-Americans

| publisher = Ballantine Books

| year = 1967

}}

• {{Cite book

| last = Gladchuk

| first = John Joseph

| title = Hollywood and Anticommunism: HUAC and the Evolution of the Red Menace, 1935–1950

| publisher = Routledge

| year = 2006

| isbn = 978-0-415-95568-3 }}

• {{Cite book

| last = Goodman

| first = Walter

| author-link = Walter Goodman (TV Critic)

| title = The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities

| publisher = Farrar Straus & Giroux

| year = 1968

| isbn = 978-0-374-12688-9 }}

• {{cite book|last=Newton |first=Michael |title=The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: a history|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YSLCS7hg-DEC|year=2010|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-4653-7}}
• {{Cite book

| last = O'Reilly

| first = Kenneth

| title = Hoover and the Unamericans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace

| publisher = Temple University Press

| year = 1983

| isbn = 978-0-87722-301-6 }}

• {{cite book | last = Schmidt | first = Regin | title = Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, 1919–1943 | publisher = Museum Tusculanum Press | year = 2000 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Fo1jblFR3BcC&pg=PP1 | isbn =9788772895819}}
• {{Citation|url=https://archive.org/details/factsoncommunism195901unit|author=U.S. 86th Congress – House Committee on Un-American Activities|date=December 1959|title=Facts on Communism – Volume I, The Communist Ideology|series=House Document No. 336|pages=166|oclc=630998985|access-date=2013-10-06}}→{{usstat|75|965}}
• {{Citation|url=https://archive.org/details/factsoncommunism195902unit|author=U.S. 87th Congress – House Committee on Un-American Activities|date=December 1960|title=Facts on Communism – Volume II, The Soviet Union, from Lenin to Khrushchev|series=House Document No. 139|pages=408|oclc=80262328|access-date=2013-10-06}}→{{usstat|75|961}}

• {{cite web | url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1khEGRvkO_nTSne4jDqCdtJ9aCXcPjhQaxVMExAVE_pk/preview?pli=1 | title=I am no communist | publisher=Photoplay | date=March 1948 | access-date=August 28, 2013 | author=Bogart, Humphrey }}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080205061418/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,894425-1,00.html "Operation Abolition", Time magazine, March 17, 1961]
• {{cite journal | title=The National Laboratories and the Atomic Energy Commission in the Early Cold War | author=Seidel, Robert W. | journal=Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences | year=2001 | volume=32 | issue=1 | pages=145–162 | doi=10.1525/hsps.2001.32.1.145|jstor = 3739864}}

{{Commons category|House Un-American Activities Committee}}

• {{Gutenberg author|id=48809}}
• {{Librivox author |id=14789}}
• [http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-permanent-standing-House-Committee-on-Un-American-Activities/ History.House.gov] HUAC – permanent standing House Committee on Un-American Activities
• [http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-1948-Alger-Hiss-Whittaker-Chambers-hearing-before-HUAC/ History.House.gov] HUAC – 1948 Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers hearing before HUAC
• [https://libguides.ecu.edu/c.php?g=17484&p=97624 Eastern Carolina University Libraries]: The Cold War and Internal Security Collection (CWIS): HUAC
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20130903060443/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhuac.htm Un-American Activities Committee] The Spartacus Educational website, UK
• House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) Collection: Pamphlets collected by HUAC, many of which the committee deemed "un-American". (4,000 pamphlets). From the [https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/ Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress]

{{Authority control}}

Category:1938 establishments in Washington, D.C.

Category:1975 disestablishments in Washington, D.C.

Category:Anti-communist organizations in the United States

Category:Anti-fascist organizations in the United States

Category:Cold War history of the United States

Un-American activities

Category:Government agencies established in 1938

Category:McCarthyism

Category:Political repression in the United States