SUPREME COURT JUDGE ACCUSED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 15

SUPREME COURT JUDGE ACCUSED

(N.z p a. -Reuter—copyright j Mr Fortas’ appointment

WASHINGTON, August 6. President Johnson’s nominee as Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr Abe Fortas. was accused at a Senate Committee hearing yesterday of having had communist or leftwing connexions in the past. The charges were raised by several witnesses as the Judiciary Committee considered

The gravest accusation was made by Mrs Marjorie Shearon, the editor of a weekly newspaper called "Challenge to Socialism ” She said that Mr Fortas “has been significantly connected with communists and communist fronts over a considerable period of time.” She also said that he had once been a member of the United States National Committee of the International Juridical Association, which she described as “an international organisation of lawyers set up by Moscow to help communists when they are in trouble.” Lawyer Mr Fortas, who now heads an important Washington law firm, testified under oath that to the best of his knowledge he had never had any connexions with the International Juridical Association. He said it was possible that at sometime in the 1930’s someone might have written to him and asked him to join and that he might have agreed. But that, he added, was “the totality of my connexion, if any.”