McCarthy Group to Call Furry For Questioning

For the second time this year, Communist-hunting congressmen will summon Wendell H. Furry, associate professor of Physics, for testimony before an investigating committee, it was learned over the weekend.

Staff investigators for Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said Saturday that Furry would be called within the next two weeks for questioning about "certain people who worked with him in the 1940's."

Contacted last night, Furry said he had not yet been subpoenaed. He refused further comment.

Testified in February

Furry, who testified before the Velde House Un-American Activities Committee last February and again in April, is presumably being called for testimony in connection with the Senate committee's investigation into espionage in the Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth, N.J.

On Saturday, Furry was identified by a Boston paper as the "Harvard professor" mentioned in testimony by an "M.I.T. professor" at Friday's executive hearings in New York.

According to a statement by McCarthy on Friday, the M.I.T. professor, since identified as Norman Levinson, associate professor of Mathematics, had given the committee the name of "a professor at Harvard who is now teaching there and said he was and is a Communist Party member who worked in the radiation laboratories of the Signal Corps in the 1940s."

Attorney Challenges Statement

This statement was challenged on Saturday by Walter N. Kernan, a Boston attorney who attended the hearings with Levinson on Friday.

Kernan said Levinson had never testifield that Furry worked for a Signal Corps Laboratory, only that he had worked for the M.I.T. radiation lab, which was under the direction of the National Defense Research Council.

This is far from news, however, since it was mentioned by Furry himself in his first appearance before the Velde Committee last spring.

Kernan also said Levinson had admitted knowing Furry as a Communist up until 1945, when Levinson quit the Party, but did not say he was one at present.

In his testimony last spring, Furry refused to answer questions as to his past membership in the Party, saying only that he has not been a member "for the past two years."