Fairbank Says Investigators Play Games

Congressional investigations resemble "a cops and robbers game" in the words of John K. Fairbank '29, professor of History, returned from being investigated himself yesterday.

In a personal interview he described the methods used by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee which spent two days questioning him. Fairbank was defending himself at his own request, on previous charges made before the committee that he was a communist. The Senate group is currently probing the Institute of Pacific Relations, of which the Far East expert is a trustee.

Standard procedure of the investigating committee, according to Fairbank, is to extract from the IPR files letters of the accused which seem to suggest "ulterior motives."

"In my case, they found a letter I wrote to Lauchlin Currie, one-time administrative assistant to F.D.R., when I was in China. I told him about intellectuals in China.

"They asked me if I had had any correspondence with him. If it had slipped my mind, and I had said 'no,' they could then flash the letter and trap me.

"As it happened I did remember and said 'yes,' and all they could do was produce the letter in confirmation.

"But in the case of Lattimore, the committee had files that went back 15 years. It was impossible for him to remember everything."

Concerning Lattimore, Fairbank said he was convinced the man is not and has never been a communist.

"I told the committee I have supported Lattimore ever since he was first attacked. Although I haven't always agreed with him, he's an honest man."

The investigators became a bit defensive on the second and last day of the hearings. One of the senators asked Fairbank how he could accuse the committee of guilt by association tactics, and the professor succeeded in getting confirmation that the committee has a procedure of first holding closed 'executive sessions' to question witnesses. Then in the public session, the committee counsel questions and the accusatory witness merely says, "yes."

"My complaint," Fairbank concluded, "is that there is no searching for evidence at these hearings; no cross-examination."

He went on to describe the actual organization and function of the IPR.

"The IPR is a very loose, decentralized, private agency consisting of businessmen, professors, and research workers in ten different national groups--one in each country around the Pacific.

"It has two ideas--to have conferences every two or three years with delegations from each group to discuss the problems of their areas, and permanent research programs which go on all the time in between so that the conferences can be based on study."

The group has been functioning since 1925. In that time it's had 11 international conferences. It also encourages and sponsors books on areas in the Pacific.

"To call it a subversive influence on United States policy in the Far East shows a complete ignorance of facts," Fair-bank asserted.