CHARGES AGAINST LATTIMORE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27698, 30 June 1955, Page 13

CHARGES AGAINST LATTIMORE

Prosecution Now To Be Dropped WASHINGTON, June 28. The Justice Department announced today that it will not proceed with its prosecution of Professor Owen Lattimore. aged 54, on charges of perjury. With key counts of two different indictments knocked out by Court rulings, the Attorney-General (Mr Herbert Brownell) said there was no reasonable likelihood of a successful prosecution on the five remaining charges that Professor Lattimore lied to a Senate committee which was investigating alleged Communist activities. Mr Le Rover, who has been prosecuting the case since the Eisenhower Administration took office, said he would move later for formal dismissal of the remaining counts. Professor Lattimore, a Far Eastern specialist, is on a lecture tour of England and Western Europe. He left the United States on May 26, after the State Department, after considerable delay, renewed his passport. Since he was first indicted in December, 1952, Professor Lattimore, a onetime official of the Office of War Information, has been on leave of, absence as a Johns Hopkins University lecturer. The indictment grew out of 12 days of stormy testimony before the Senate Internal Security Sub-committee early in 1952. Since the original indictment, the case has shuttled around the courts with the Government losing two major rounds. Mr Brownell’s Comment “Upon a consideration of all aspects of the case.” said Mr Brownell, “it has been decided not to apply to the Supreme Court for a review on the two counts that were recently invalidated.” The two counts Mr Brownell referred to claimed that Professor Lattimore swore falsely when he testified he had never been a follower of the Communist line or a promoter of Communist causes. Throwing out these charges in a United States District Court Judge Luther Youngdahl called them “formless and obscure.”