Without Due Process

Seventy-five newspapers throughout the country have recently completed the presentation of seventeen articles written by former F.B.I. counterspy Herbert Philbrick. These articles, called "I Led Three Lives," concern nine years of undercover work by the author.

This series has a certain educational value, as it provides an interesting if biased study of American Marxist groups during the early forties. But it is not for academic reasons that seventy-five newspapers have published these accounts. Their high reader interest value stems from the fact that Philbrick includes the names of people still living today.

There are two objections to this. First, the people whose names crop up through the narrative of Philbrick's articles are discredited irrespective of what they have done or are doing today. In effect, the Philbrick series accuses them of sedition despite the efforts of both author and newspaper editors to avoid such a consequence. Because those so accused cannot claim for their statements the prominent position held by the "I Led Three Lives" series, they have little chance to deny the implications of Philbrick's articles. In fact, unless they are officially accused and brought to trial--most of them will not get even this chance--they will not be able to deny the charges at all.

Secondly, the articles mainly concern pacifist organizations operating in the early forties when pacifism did not automatically suggest communism, as it does today. Readers of the Philbrick series, most of whom have already blurred the distinction between pacifism and sedition, can hardly be expected to remember that the distinction existed in even clearer terms during the early forties. Those who were members of these groups may not have wished to overthrow the government then; they may not wish to overthrow it now, and they may not even be pacifists now. Despite all these possibilities, they will be associated with sedition by a large segment of the American population.

For example, Philbrick mentions the Cambridge Youth Council and its subsidiary, the Harvard Student Union. Members of those groups, regardless of their present beliefs and actions, must now undergo the suspicion of many Americans merely because Philbrick mentioned them in his series.

Editors of newspapers running this series have spotted this difficulty, and have pointed out by way of introduction that the mere appearance of a person's name in the series does not make him or her a subversive. However, this can hardly be effective at a time when the smallest suspicion of Communist taint is enough to seriously discredit a person.

There is no legal issue here; several people in Los Angeles tried to secure an injunction forbidding further publication of the Philbrick series on the grounds that it was prejudicing jurors in a trial of communists. They failed. It is indisputable that any man has the right to expound whatever he wishes in print so long as it is not libelous.

However we feel it equally indisputable that Philbrick is abusing this right. Because his articles, as well as his career, deal with ferreting out subversives, he cannot avoid discrediting entirely innocent individuals. He has in effect tried these individuals before the American public in a trial where the accused have no chance to defend themselves.