DEFENCE DESCRIBES U.S. TRIAL OF COMMUNIST LEADERS AS “BOGEYMAN”

Grey River Argus, 24 March 1949, Page 5

DEFENCE DESCRIBES U.S. TRIAL OF COMMUNIST LEADERS AS “BOGEYMAN”

(Rec. 9.30) NEW YORK. March 22. Defence counsel, Mr Harry Sacher, said at the trial of the eleven U.S. Communist leaders to-day that the prosecution had raised the issue of Marxism and Leninism as “a bogeyman.'’

The defendants are charged with conspiring to teach and advocate the violent overthrow of the United States Government.

Mr Sacher said that the defendants, who are members of the Communist Party National Board, had done nothing' more than exercise their constitutional right of freedom of speech, press and assembly. He said that the indictments against the defendants charged only that they “ talked, published books and held meetings,” thus exercising the rights guaranteed by the first Constitutional Amendment. Mr Sacher said the chief aim of the platform adopted by the defendants in reconstituting the Communist Party in 1945 had been influencing American people to oppose war.

Mr . J. Isserman, another defence counsel, said that there was not a line in the Communist Party Convention resolutions about force or violence. He claimed that the defendants were indicted because they believed in new ideas in politics. The charge that they sought to overthrow the Government by

force was “unthinkable, untrue, never happened and could not have happened.” He contended that the trial issue was not the right of the defendants to teach Marxist and Lenists principles. It was the right of the American people to hear them.