DEFENCE OPENED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1939, Page 5

DEFENCE OPENED

IN BRIDGES DEPORTATION TRIAL ALLEGED "FRAME-UP.” ATTACK ON PROSECTION. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. SAN FRANCISCO. August 7. After four weeks' testimony, the Government's ease for deportation of the Australian Labour leader Harry l.ridges has been completed and 1 lie case for I lie delencc has opened. Ail al tempt will be imide I o prove 1 hat 1 he deportal ion proceedings wort 1 a ‘' frame-up’’ by employers and anti-radieal groups. Mr. Richard Gledstein, counsel for the defence, today contended that the case against Bridges was not prepared by the Government. He said it was prepared in an improper manner and then presented to the prosecution and taken into Court. Harper Knowles, an American Legion anti-radical leader, who was treated as a hostile witness, admitted that Stanley Doyle, a Legion official, rigged up a recording device in Bridges's hotel room. Judge Landis commented that this might be nice but it was improper. Knowles denied that shipping firms and other employers were backing his committee or that he had conspired with Portland and Seattle immigration officials to secure Bridge’s deportation. Judge Landis declared that aliens were not necessarily deportable because they were undesirable, although they were if they advocated the overthrow of the Government by force. "The fact that a hen is a chicken doesn't mean that a chicken is a hen, nor is an alien deportable because he wears an orange tie on St. Patrick’s Day,” he commented.