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Mr. BARKER. Mr. Chairman, this is the letter.

The CHAIRMAN. Therefore, I think we can shorten it if we refer to it as the Hart letter.

Mr. BARKER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. We will refer to that letter, which is a copy there.
Thank you.

Mr. BARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator MCKELLAR. What did you do with the original of that letter?

Mr. BARKER. Detective Osborne and I returned all of the original material to room 235 in the Clark Building, the Communist Party headquarters, and put it back where we had found it.

Senator KNOWLAND. What became of the photostats?

Mr. BARKER. I told the Public Works Committee, when I testified about this, that I thought there were two photostats made and I kept one and he kept one. I might have been mistaken about that, but I did bring away from Birmingham a complete set of photostats. Senator KNOWLAND. Prints or negatives?

Mr. BARKER. Photostats, just like this, black. That is, the paper itself. I brought that away with me to Chattanooga and to Knoxville and subsequently to Washington, D. C.

Senator MCKELLAR. What did you do with the photostats after you got here?

Mr. BARKER. I delivered all that material to Congressman Martin Dies in his office in the New House Office Building.

After we got this material, I made that subpena for Laurent Brown Frantz a subpena duces tecum and the subpena duces tecum enumer ated that Laurent Brown Frantz was to appear in Washington, D. C. I believe he appeard April 19, 1940, and he was to bring with him all records, books, papers, documents, files of any description in the Communist Party headquarters in Birmingham to which he had custody because he had the key.

I told the marshal not to serve that subpena on him until after his release from jail.

Then, Osborne and I went around town looking for these three Communists-Paul Crouch, Wirt Taylor, and Rob Hall. We drive around there to places that they were known to frequent, but apparently they had fled and gone. We did not find them.

Senator MCMAHON. Getting back to when you spoke to Mr. Dies about your material that you found down in Birmingham, did you call his attention to this particular letter?

Mr. BARKER. Oh, yes; very definitely, and I am coming to that. Senator MCMAHON. You considered this an important discovery? Mr. BARKER. I considered it an important piece of evidence because it showed Communist activities in the Tennessee Valley, if the letter was to be believed on its face.

Senator MCMAHON. You discussed that with Mr. Dies?

Mr. BARKER. Oh, yes.

Senator MCMAHON. He read it?

Mr. BARKER. He read it.

Senator KNOWLAND. The photostat or the copy?

Mr. BARKER. The photostat copy of the letter.

Senator MCKELLAR. I want to ask you if the letter that the chairman of the committee has just shown you as coming from Henry C.

Hart, Jr., to an address to Robert F. Hall, secretary of the Communist Party, Post Office Box 1871, Birmingham, Ala., is that a true copy of the original that you found in that Communist office down there?

Mr. BARKER. It appears to be. My best recollection is that it is. Senator KNOWLAND. At the time you located the letter, which you considered an important piece of evidence, you saw what purported to be the signature of Mr. Hart on it. Did you, as an investigator, then endeavor to get a sample of Mr. Hart's handwriting from any school he had attended or any business signature so that you could compare the signature to that which you believed to be his? Mr. BARKER. Not at that time.

Senator KNOWLAND. Normally, would that not be the procedure to follow?

Mr. BARKER. Yes, but I had a specific duty to perform and that was to serve subpenas on Wirt Taylor, Rob Hall, and the other man. Senator KNOWLAND. You recognize that one of the cries that is made on an accusation of this kind is that it is a forgery and that the signature is not the real thing so that the normal thing would be to get a copy of the real one so you could compare?

Mr. BARKER. Oh, yes. I came on to Chattanooga out of Eastern Airlines and came on the train up to Knoxville and got hold of Detectives Adcock and Rays in the Knoxville police department and they knew where Paul Crouch was located.

We went out to Paul Crouch's house and served a subpena on him. He was hiding somewhere-I think it was 422 Baxter Street-and we served a subpena on him. That subpena also required him to appear before the Dies committee in Washington forthwith, and that subpena was duces tecum to bring all the records of the Communist Party. Senator MCKELLAR. Did you ever get their attendance?

Mr. BARKER. No; Paul Crouch and Rob Hall and Wirt Taylor ignored those subpenas.

Senator MCKELLAR. What did the other man do?

Mr. BARKER. Well, Laurent Brown Frantz, this lawyer that was arrested by the detective down there in the Communist Party headquarters, he did appear here in Washington and came up here on April 19.

Now, just prior to his appearance the Birmingham Age Herald, which I do not have with me, but I do have the Birmingham News. The Birmingham Age Herald opened up on the Dies committee with a vicious attack for violation of Laurent Frantz' civil rights, and they claimed that he had been locked up in jail on a mere subpena from a congressional committee.

When Frantz arrived in town he went over to the Department of Justice, and they filed charges with Attorney General Robert Jackson against the Dies committee for illegal arrest and false imprisonment of Laurent Brown Frantz. Of course, Laurent Brown Frantz never did admit that he was a Communist, but when he appeared at the hearing before the Dies committee, Adam Lapham, the Washington correspondent for the Daily Worker, the official paper of the party, sat alongside Frantz.

He had two lawyers representing him, Louis Fleisher and Sol Cohn, and those two same lawyers had been representing Communists for a

month or two before that, and they represented Frantz when he appeared before the committee.

All this stir in the newspaper had occurred prior to that date and they had made a lot of noise about it. It sounded like someone had opened Fibber McGee's closet in the newspaper.

Mr. Dies was very much concerned about the matter, especially the adverse publicity that the Dies committee was getting as a result of this.

Senator MCMAHON. Do we have to go into the publicity of the Dies committee?

Mr. BARKER. I just want to put in the date.

Senator MCMAHON. I wish the witness would come to the point. Mr. BARKER. That was in the Daily Worker of Birmingham, Ala., April 18, 1940.

Senator MCKELLAR. The Senator has announced that he has made up his mind. At least give the witness the respect and let him continue on.

Senator MCMAHON. I would have more respect for him, Senator, if I could see that he was saying anything that was to the point. But I have been listening to him for half an hour, taking the time off from the Senate, and frankly I do not think he has said anything to the point yet.

Senator MCKELLAR. There is a difference of opinion about that.
Senator MCMAHON. I realize that.

Mr. BARKER. April 18, 1940, was the date, and it says in the beadline: "Forces Probe of Illegal Arrest in Alabama."

Senator KNOWLAND. Was any effort made by the Dies committee to enforce a subpena on the two people who ignored the subpena, or the three people?

Mr. BARKER. Not to my knowledge. We served a lot of subpenas that the Communist Party ignored. They always said they had no records, and if they came to appear before the committee, they said they did not have any records.

Of course, we indicted six of them down here in district court for contempt of the House of Representatives, and it took 7 years to get them tried. So you see, the Department of Justice did not cooperate very well with the Dies committee. They were not carrying the ball for us.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not, myself, see the object of introducing a story that appeared in the newspaper. Did you want to connect that up with something?

Mr. BARKER. Yes. Mr. Dies said to me: "Well now, listen, Barker, I don't want you to use this letter unless Laurent Brown Frantz produces the original. Because you obtained this letter without a search warrant."

I said, "Yes; I did."

He said, "Well, if Laurent Brown Frantz brings the original letter, you can put that photostat in evidence, in the record.” I said, "All right."

Now, there was another reason for that. Two Dies committee agents, Chester Howe and George Hurley, had just been jugged up in Philadelphia by Federal Judge George A. Welch, who used to be a Member of the House.

He got them on a charge that on April 2, 1940, they had descended upon Communist Party headquarters at 250 South Broad in Phila

delphia, and the International Workers Order, at 810 Locust Street in Philadelphia, and had seized the records of those two organizations on a magistrate's search warrant with the help of 25 Philadelphia police, illegally.

And that case against those two Dies committee agents was pending at that time. And he sends old Barker down to Birmingham, Ala., and he comes back with a dead cat, another piece of evidence that has been seized illegally.

Now, Dies did not want that information exposed in public, when he had a Federal judge up here who had decided that two men were to go to jail, and there was a man down here who claimed that he was put in jail on a Dies committee subpena-which was absoluetly

not true.

And under those circumstances, the Hart letter was suppressed. Nothing was said about it.

Senator MCKELLAR. Suppressed by whom?

Mr. BARKER. By me and Chairman Dies.

Senator MCKELLAR. You and Chairman Dies.

Mr. BARKER. That is right.

Senator MCKELLAR. Well now, as a representative of the committee, you delivered that to Chairman Dies and talked with him about it and left it there?

Mr. BARKER. Yes. Now at that particular time, though. Because this hearing on the Laurent Brown Frantz case occurred on April 19, 1940, as reported at page 7841 of volume 13 of the published hearings of the Dies committee.

And I asked, when the members of the committee had finished with Frantz and turned him over to me for examination-I asked Frantz if he had brought those records with him.

He said that he did not have control of those records, and that he had brought no records with him in response to the subpena.

This Laurent Brown Frantz was a brother of John Marshall Frantz, who was an employee of the Tennessee Valley Authority at that time.

Senator MCKELLAR. Was John M. Frantz a well-known Communist?

Mr. BARKER. Oh, John M. Frantz was an avowed Communist, Senator.

Senator MCKELLAR. Well now, I will ask you this question: I want to come back to that letter to this extent. You saw the letter, the original letter, that was found in the Communist headquarters; did you?

Mr. BARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator MCKELLAR. And you had a photograph of that letter, or one or two photographs of it, taken?

Mr. BARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator MCKELLAR. You delivered that letter to Mr. Dies?
Mr. BARKER. Yes, sir.

Senator MCKELLAR. Now, I want to ask you: Did you read the letter when you first went to the Communist headquarters in Birmingham?

Mr. BARKER. Oh, yes.

Senator MCKELLAR. Did you read the copy, the photostatic copy, or the letter, after it had been photographed?

98078-47-30

Mr. BARKER. I read it here in Washington when I showed it to Mr. Dies.

Senator MCKELLAR. Yes. Well, you have referred to that copy. In your judgment, and from your knowledge of the facts, is that an exact copy of the letter that you and Mr. Osborne found in the Communist headquarters at Birmingham?

Mr. BARKER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. At that point, Mr. Barker, let me ask you: Is it your opinion that that letter was written by Mr. Hart?

Mr. BARKER. Now, that I do not know. I was coming to that, Mr. Chairman.

any

The CHAIRMAN. Maybe we can get to it right now. Do you have any proof by comparison of the signature on that letter with known and proven signatures of Mr. Hart that would lead you to believe that that was Mr. Hart's letter?

Mr. BARKER. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have any admissions by Mr. Hart at any time or under any circumstances that he signed that letter?

Mr. BARKER. No, sir. Henry Hart was never confronted with that letter.

The CHAIRMAN. Then I take it that you have no proof other than what you have recited that that letter was either signed or sent or delivered as an instrument executed by Mr. Hart.

Mr. BARKER. No, sir. The only connection would be that Henry admitted when we examined him that he was a Communist. But he was not asked about that letter. Because that letter stayed here in Washington.

The CHAIRMAN. Was he ever confronted with that letter, that you know of, or was he ever confronted with a photostatic copy of that letter, a photograph?

Mr. BARKER. No, sir; he was not.

Senator MCKELLAR. That letter was published, however, in the Knoxville papers, both of them; was it not?

Mr. BARKER. Yes; but that was years later.

Senator MCKELLAR. But he saw it then, had every opportunity to see it then; did he not?

Mr. BARKER. I think he made some kind of affidavit about it. Senator MCKELLAR. Yes; and that affidavit will be produced here before this committee.

The CHAIRMAN. As I understood, and I had the affidavit here a moment ago, the affidavit denied that he ever wrote the letter.

At any rate, Mr. Hart will be here tomorrow, and unless it is connected with Mr. Barker's testimony and his proof, I would prefer not to take the time to go through the Hart affidavit, when he will be here tomorrow and will testify.

Senator MCKELLAR. That will be perfectly satisfactory.
Mr. BARKER. May I proceed, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed; yes.

Mr. BARKER. Following this hearing on April 19, 1940, which was held in the caucus room of the House Office Building here in Washington, Mr. Dies sent for me to come over there to his office. I I went over to see Mr. Dies, and he said: "Now, Barker, this letter shows that the Reds are active down there in the Tennessee Valley Authority, and I want you to go down there and investigate the

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