The Charlotte News
Tuesday, November 23, 1954
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President, at his press conference this date, said that the greatest mistake the country could make would be to lose sight of Russia's quest for world revolution and domination, replying to a question whether Soviet talk of peaceful coexistence indicated any basic change in their attitude. The question related to a statement made by Senate Majority Leader William Knowland that the Russians were promoting a policy of peaceful coexistence as a Trojan horse to lull the U.S. into a false sense of security. The President said there had to be a distinction made between peaceful coexistence and just coexistence and that there was no tendency on the part of the U.S. to take anything for granted in connection with relations with Russia. The President also said that he would not favor a Big Three meeting with Russia until the London and Paris agreements regarding West Germany had been ratified, that there was a possibility such a conference could bear fruit, and that adequate preparations had been made for such a meeting. He said that if any country earnestly wanted to discuss peace, such talks would be held. He also addressed the pending implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, saying that he understood that the Court was seeking to find a way of creating a decentralized process for bringing about racial integration within the public schools and that he believed the Justices would take into consideration the emotional and practical problems involved in ending segregation, that they would not be arbitrary in their decision. He refrained from making any prediction on the method to be adopted. He also said that superintendents of West Point and the Naval Academy at Annapolis should trust to the judgment of the cadets and midshipmen their ability to debate the question of U.S. recognition of Communist China, the superintendents having nixed the debate which had been posed as one for college debaters generally during this year.
In London, it was reported that Communist China had announced this date the condemnation of 22 "American spies", including a colonel and major of the U.S. Air Force, to death or imprisonment, with Peiping radio saying that the defendants included 13 U.S. citizens and that the condemned included four Chinese sentenced to death as "American spies" in the same case and five others receiving prison terms. The U.S. Air Force colonel had received a sentence of ten years and the major, eight years, with one other U.S. citizen receiving a life sentence and another, 20 years. The Americans had been captured in two U.S. aircraft which had been shot down, according to the broadcast, one on November 29, 1952, and the other on January 12, 1953. The Chinese charged that the colonel and major had worked in the spring of 1952 for a Japanese branch of a U.S. counter-intelligence agency, recruiting Chinese agents who were later dropped into two provinces of Manchuria. They claimed that the plane had been shot down over northeast China after making contact with and providing supplies by airdrop to agents, planning to pick up one agent who was to report to them. It claimed that the Chinese agents sentenced at the trial had been former officers of Chiang Kai-shek.
At the U.N. in New York, the 60-nation Political Committee this date unanimously approved the President's atoms for peace plan. The vote followed an attempt by Russia to amend the plan with a provision making the proposed international atomic agency subject to the unilateral veto of each of the five permanent members of the Security Council, which was defeated after only the five Soviet bloc nations supported the proposal, with 12 others, mostly Asian and Arab nations, abstaining. All of the delegations, however, supported the overall plan in the final vote. It was the second unanimous decision by the organization during the current session, the first having been an agreement on a plan of operation for the Disarmament Commission.
The body of Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, who had died the previous day of a heart attack while pursuing his duties as chief Soviet delegate to the U.N., would be flown back to Moscow this night. Moscow radio announced early this date that the Soviet Government and the Communist Party had appointed a commission to organize the funeral, which included another Deputy Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, and Deputy Premier M. O. Pervukhin. The Soviet Embassy in London announced that Jacob Malik, Russian Ambassador to Britain, would take over temporarily as head of the Soviet U.N. delegation. Speculation as to Mr. Vishinski's permanent successor centered on Messrs. Gromyko, Malik, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Georgi Zarubin, and Arkady Sobolev, the second ranking member of the Soviet delegation. The latter would get the nod and remain in that position through 1960.
Senators, in recess until November 29 regarding the censure resolution against Senator McCarthy, so that his ailing elbow, as pictured on the page, could have a chance to heal after he had shaken hands too hard with some supporter, injuring his elbow on a glass table, were wondering whether the Senator was planning to strike out anew at his critics or was preparing some form of retraction designed to soften the charges against him. He had sought 15 minutes of free television time on NBC on Thanksgiving Day, but late the previous day, NBC announced its refusal of the request—perhaps chary of the notion that he might launch into a diatribe against the cranberry growers for being Commm-mmm-unists, infecting even Thanksgiving with a reminder of the Red conspiracy. The Senator was not taking calls from reporters, although he had posed, along with his wife, for press pictures the previous day at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Senator Everett Dirksen, an ally of Senator McCarthy regarding the censure resolution, said this date that he had no idea whether the Senator would be out of the hospital by the following Monday, at the scheduled resumption of the debate following an 11-day hiatus. Senator McCarthy was said to have undergone minor surgery the previous day, although there was some confusion over the definition of "operation" in his case. (He needed a brain transplant, but medical science, unfortunately, had not yet progressed to the point where it was a viable operation with any significant chance of survival.)
The President created this date a secretary to the Cabinet, his job to be to organize and keep records of the Cabinet and follow through on its decisions. The first appointee named by the President was Maxwell Rabb of Boston, who had been executive assistant to Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., when he had been Senator from Massachusetts.
In Monroe, N.C., near Charlotte, a predawn fire at a school had burned out of control for more than two hours, doing an estimated $75,000 to $100,000 worth of damage, destroying eight second-floor classrooms and resulting in water damage to the first floor. A janitor had discovered the fire early in the morning above the principal's office on the second floor when he reported for work, but the origin of the fire was as yet unknown. The school was attended by 654 elementary school students and 179 high school students.
In Charlotte, plans to make all of the roads leading to the city at least four-lane boulevards were announced this date by the district highway commissioner, who said that the city was growing so fast that it would have to have such avenues leading to it in the very near future. The story provides details.
In Oklahoma City, a woman was tired of having a woodpecker in her attic, having moved its whole family in through a hole it had drilled in a gable of the redwood house, had since drilled a second hole, and now its little woodpeckers were drilling several holes, mutilating her home. She had been informed by city officials that there was a law against shooting within the city or leaving out poison, specifically prohibiting the killing of woodpeckers. She said that it appeared she would have to brick her house up to keep the woodpeckers out.
On the editorial page, "Mes Amis, It's a Nouveau Deal" indicates that France's National League against Alcoholism was located in the Latin Quarter within ten seconds of nine bars, and was not doing very well, having not long earlier reported only 2,000 members of France's more than 40 million people, with its secretary admitting that most Frenchmen were not concerned about the 26.5 quarts of pure spirits per person consumed each year, saying that he, himself, always added some red wine to his water, because the water tasted so bad.
Thus, Frenchmen had become disturbed when Premier Pierre Mendes-France decided to battle the alcoholic beverage companies, campaigning to decrease wine consumption and increase milk consumption.
The Premier had obtained a settlement in Indo-China during his first 30 days in office the prior July, having staked initially his continuance as Premier on that accomplishment. He had also obtained a decision, albeit a negative one, on ratification of the European Defense Community, and had inaugurated a domestic recovery program while calming the explosive North African colonial situation, all being things he said he would do when he became Premier. The previous day, he had suggested a Big Four meeting in Paris the following May, premised on ratification in the meantime of the London and Paris agreements regarding rearmament of a sovereign West Germany as a member of NATO. It suggests that Frenchmen would not likely soon reject M. Mendes-France for proposing that conference and proposing to be its host.
It finds him remindful of FDR during 1933, the first year of the New Deal, and that he would likely be the person who would lead France to heights it had not reached since before World War II, in so doing, strengthening also the free world where it was weakest.
The Government of Premier Mendes-France, like every other postwar government thus far in France, however, would not last long, being forced to resign the following February.
"It's a Long, Long Way to Pigalle" tells of the ministers of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County being properly concerned with sin, but having become unduly alarmed over the lurid and inaccurate account of "Sin with a Southern Accent" in the so-called "Paris of the Piedmont", as appeared recently in an article of a pulp magazine. Police Chief Frank Littlejohn was also unduly alarmed, considering the article another attempt by "a syndicate with criminal and illegal support" to smear him and the Police Department.
It finds that such publications periodically boosted their circulation by overemphasizing vice in various cities, typically articles written under an assumed name. An executive of the magazine in question had responded to the newspaper's inquiry the previous day, refusing to identify the author of the piece and claiming not to know the author's whereabouts, saying he would not reveal it if he did.
It indicates that much of the information in the article appeared to be pure fabrication, including the suggestion that the author's informant was an employee of The News, but that woven into the article was enough factual material appearing in other newspapers to give it an authentic flavor and thus confuse the gullible.
It concludes that Charlotte was a fairly clean city and that if responsible parties developed information regarding rampant vice, an investigation would be in order. But it does not believe that irresponsible charges made by an unknown magazine author required any investigation, as suggested by the ministerial association, that any investigation should be directed toward the magazine.
"After a Choleric Roar: Silence" indicates that Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, who had died of a heart attack the previous day at age 70 while attending to his duties as the chief Soviet delegate to the U.N., had been the most gifted "ham actor" of them all, that the press which covered the U.N. knew him as "a white-maned old faker" and "The Squawk".
It indicates that at base, he was a mere mouthpiece for the Kremlin, while his propaganda assaults were longer and louder than those of any other diplomat, that fitting the old Bolshevik pattern of having mouthpieces rather than policymakers handling Soviet relations with the outside world. Litvinoff and his successor, Chicherin, had been such mouthpieces, with Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov being an exception.
One writer had described Mr. Vishinsky as having "a dozen voices, from the sly wheedle to the choleric roar, a dozen expressions, from the impish grin to the basilisk glare." He usually targeted the U.S., in a famous speech before the General Assembly in October, 1952, having accused the U.S. of "bluster, blackmail and pressure" regarding Korea, claiming that the U.S. had engaged in germ warfare during the Korean War and finally charged that U.S. billionaires were fomenting bloodshed across the world to increase their wealth.
At home, he had survived 37 years of power struggles within the Kremlin. He had served as a professor of law at Moscow University, leading to his appointment as commissar of justice. He had survived Stalin's blood purges during the 1930's, becoming a highly effective state prosecutor in the trials of hundreds of revolutionary heroes.
It concludes that few Americans would mourn his death, but that he would be missed at the U.N., if only because things would be a little quieter and less frantic, at least until a new mouthpiece was installed.
A piece from the Sanford Herald, titled "Other Lieutenant Governors", indicates that North Carolina could count itself lucky that Luther Hodges was Lieutenant Governor when, for the first time in 60 years, the Governor had died in office, as he was prepared to take over the reins of State Government. It finds that had such occurred when Lieutenant Governors of the previous 25 years had been in office, the state would also have gotten along well. Some prior Lieutenant Governors, it suggests, might yet become governor.
Lt. Governor Richard Fountain, in office between 1929 and 1933 under Governor O. Max Gardner, had been barely defeated in the gubernatorial race of 1932 by J. C. B. Ehringhaus. A. H. Graham, who was presently serving in his second term as chairman of the State Highway and Public Works Commission, had been Lieutenant Governor under Governor Ehringhaus, and had run subsequently in the gubernatorial race but lost. It chronicles the efforts of other subsequent Lieutenant Governors likewise to advance to governor, without success.
It indicates that though Mr. Fountain was dead, Mr. Graham could conceivably try to run again in the gubernatorial race in 1956, as might L. Y. Ballentine, who had been Lieutenant Governor under Governor Gregg Cherry between 1945 and 1949.
It suggests that had Mr. Fountain succeeded to the governorship during the term of Governor Gardner—who would subsequently die at the start of his voyage from New York to become Ambassador to Britain in early 1947—, none of the other lieutenant governors would have much upset the order of things.
The purpose of this piece appears a little murky, a topic in search of facts to support it on a slow day at the newspaper. In any event, no subsequent Governor of North Carolina has died in office since the death of Governor Umstead in 1954.
Drew Pearson provides the inside reason why the President's brother Milton had refused to go to South America as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Pan American Economic Conference, which had opened the previous day in Rio de Janeiro. Mr. Eisenhower objected to Secretary of Treasury George Humphrey's policy toward restriction of loans to Latin American governments, believing it to imperil the Good Neighbor Policy. He had previously disagreed with the Secretary's desire to combine the Export-Import Bank with the World Bank, and having just returned from a trip through Latin America, had argued against the restricted loan policy and won. But Secretary Humphrey would be the chief U.S. delegate to the Rio conference and therefore Milton Eisenhower did not want to be in a position of having to buck him as a delegate.
Secretary of State Dulles had withdrawn from the delegation also, though he had previously stated at the Caracas conference that he would be present and considered the Rio conference one of the most important of the year. In addition, Merwin Bohan, special U.S. ambassador in charge of preparing for the Rio conference, had resigned over his opposition to the Government loan policy of Secretary Humphrey, indicating that the best way to stop Communism in Latin America was to help economic development. Mr. Pearson concludes that with those three withdrawals, it was no wonder that Latin American delegates were skeptical of the outcome of the conference, with Chile having proposed a special "Inter-Latin American Bank", which would raise all of its money in Latin America and avoid thereby reliance on U.S. aid. Mr. Pearson adds that nothing would please the Kremlin more.
The President was maintaining a coexistence policy with Russia, despite pressure to the contrary from Senate Majority Leader William Knowland and some Pentagon officials.
The U.S. Embassy had reported that a major split appeared to be developing between Premier Georgi Malenkov and Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov, with the former wanting to follow a softer line in dealing with the U.S., while Mr. Molotov violently disagreed, wanting to increase the pace of the cold war. At a recent reception celebrating the October, 1917 Revolution, Premier Malenkov had talked so reasonably with U.S. Ambassador Charles Bohlen that Mr. Molotov had stood by glowering and shaking his head, obviously angry at the friendly reception. That, however, did not faze Mr. Malenkov who continued to talk in a friendly manner with Ambassador Bohlen, giving him his personal promise that the door to the Kremlin would always be open to settlement of any incident threatening Russian-American relations. The incident, relates Mr. Pearson, had taken place just before the President had decided to turn the other cheek with respect to the recent attack by two Russian jet fighters on a U.S. RB-29 photo reconnaissance plane over Hokkaido in Japan, resulting in the death of one of twelve crewmen.
The so-called assassination plot against Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt actually had been a phony operation engineered by the followers of the Premier as a means of getting rid of President Mohamed Naguib. U.S. agents had learned that the so-called assassin had been hired secretly and given instructions to make sure that he missed when he fired his revolver at the Premier, being promised that he could go free afterward, thus explaining how he had fired eight shots at the Premier from a distance of 20 feet and missed each time. The irony was that the putative attempted assassin would likely be shot because it would appear too phony to permit him to go free.
Assistant Secretary of Labor Rocco Siciliano, 32, was not only one of the youngest assistant secretaries but was also an untiring impresario of government service for other young men of ability and vision, urging that "no young man should turn down an opportunity to serve his government in a civil capacity at some time in his career, any more than he should dodge military service." Mr. Siciliano was a former infantry lieutenant, having won the Bronze Star for valor during World War II. His parents had immigrated from Italy and settled in Salt Lake City, establishing a thriving restaurant business. The Assistant Secretary had graduated from the University of Utah and Georgetown Law School, having a meteoric rise thereafter as a labor relations expert before joining the Labor Department.
Senator McCarthy's original strategy had been to stall the censure debate until Alger Hiss was released from prison on November 27, hoping that the publicity attendant the release would revive public alarm over the Communist menace.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop indicate that the gravest debate since whether to develop the hydrogen bomb was now ongoing behind closed doors in the highest Government circles, concerning primarily whether to develop and test the "Super-Super", a hydrogen bomb expected to develop several times the power of that which had been detonated on Eniwetok the previous spring, and, in a more general sense, whether the U.S. was correct in relying on the hydrogen bomb as its principal offensive weapon. The consternation on those issues centered on the danger to human life inherent in the nuclear fallout from the testing of the new types of hydrogen bombs. The problem was that no one in the international scientific community knew enough about the subject, with most of the distinguished experts disagreeing on the nature and extent of the danger.
The Alsops had recently conducted voluminous correspondence with physicists, geneticists, and other experts on the matter, and had yet to find two who completely agreed. Officially, there was wide variation between the estimate of the danger made by the Atomic Energy Commission versus that of the Defense Department, with the AEC having concluded that it was less dangerous than had the Pentagon, though the AEC, in its secret studies, was less reassuring than in its official statements.
The radiological hazard fell into three categories, local fallout, distant fallout, and general radioactivity. Local fallout was that which spread from city-wide destruction to statewide effect, covering an area of 4,000 square miles with radioactive dust. Distant fallout was caused by lighter particles which were radioactivated during the explosion, entering the upper atmosphere and then falling out randomly over the earth, carried by prevailing winds. Wherever the fallout occurred, there was a temporary, local increase in the level of radioactivity. Following the Eniwetok detonation, there had been a number of such distant fallouts at scattered points across the United States, notably in the Midwest, Florida and in the area of the nation's capital. Most of the experts believed that distant fallout caused no immediate danger to living persons, because the high winds carrying it around the globe caused the radioactive material to disperse and dissipate. Some experts, however, believed that local increases in the radiation levels could lead to "an increase in the probability of malignant growths", as indicated by Dr. A. H. Sturtevant of California. Such fallout also might present a danger to the human fetus, but experts again were in disagreement on that point.
The problem in distant fallout was the presence of radioactive strontium 90, which was produced in massive quantities in the fireball of the new type of hydrogen bomb. Strontium had the characteristic of settling in the bone structures and thus becoming a permanent part of the body, constantly irradiating through the body's cells. The fetus was particularly sensitive to radiation, particularly before the 20th week of pregnancy, while its cells were increasing at a prodigious rate. Heavy fallout of strontium thus could harm or destroy the fetus through the chain of cow's milk to the mother to the fetus, though some experts denied that there was any danger of increased incidence of cancer or stillbirths from the distant fallout. But there did appear to be general agreement that a long term "biological hazard" existed from increased levels of radioactivity, which would damage genes, causing human mutations in future generations.
There was also a universal hazard that "repeated atomic explosions will lead to a degree of general radioactivity which no one can tolerate or escape", according to British Nobel Prize winner Dr. Edgar Adrian. (The Alsops indicate that they would explore that topic in a later column.) Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been particularly disturbed about that prospect since he had learned the facts about the Eniwetok tests.
As no one could be certain of the radiological side effects from testing of such a weapon as the Super-Super, the debate over its development continued. AEC experts had grossly underestimated the radiation hazards at Eniwetok, resulting in inhabitants of the Marshall Islands and the Japanese fishing boat crew members having been endangered and sickened by fallout while being well outside the established AEC perimeter of safety. The experts, it was therefore believed, could be wrong again. No one could really be sure also what megatonage level was necessary for the hydrogen bomb to destroy not only the enemy, but all life on earth. They conclude that the most terrifying fact about the Super-Super was that no one really knew what it would do.
Thomas Mann, the German-born American author and 1929 Nobel Prize winner, known for such novels as The Magic Mountain and Buddenbrooks, writing in L'Express in Paris, provides his pessimistic view of Europe's destiny, which the editors note exampled a widespread opinion held at present in Germany. He indicates that, with mankind's moral standards and equilibrium shattered by the two world wars and divided into two camps whose strained relations threatened a catastrophe which could end in death to civilization, it was questionable whether West Germans really wanted to rearm, given their understanding that to do so could be regarded as a step toward war, which obviously the majority of them did not want.
He indicates that in contrast to what had occurred during the early Thirties in Germany, foreign influences had acted and were continuing to act to produce an "underground current" of political life, with its results only detected clearly by world opinion when those results were accomplished. But there were countervailing tendencies, such as the great economic recovery of West Germany, albeit with the qualification of the reemergence of German Social Democracy. "The Essen Proposals", drafted the previous July by a group of Social Democrats and Socialist theorists, had begun with a declaration of principles, stating that maintenance of peace had to be the first essential objective of their political action, that the best means to secure peace was a policy of friendship and understanding with all nations of the world, renouncing power politics because of "the danger and menacing character of militarism". It said that in 1945, the Social Democrats had recognized that the victorious powers had the right to exercise control over Germany, aimed at preventing the recrudescence of German militarism. They renounced the reestablishment of a German army as conflicting directly with their repudiation of power politics, which, given the direction of West German foreign policy, would constitute "a perpetual threat to Europe". They viewed an unarmed Germany as being able to satisfy the legitimate desire of their neighbors for security, and that a strong police force would be adequate for the internal security of Germany. Their repudiation of the policy of force also implied, they said, the renunciation of the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Mann indicates that the majority of Germans did not want to hear further talk of war, but wanted to live, to work and build, attaining only the power which was the natural and legitimate result of hard work and honest activity.
He concludes that time worked for everybody, to enable people to become better, wiser, and more mature, and that given time, the thought of a third world war would appear one day to be the "criminal folly, the mass suicide, which it is." He thus hopes that heaven would grant the world the time necessary to reach that realization.
A letter writer from Monroe believes that columnist James Marlow, on November 19, had contributed to public confusion and press degradation by drawing a false parallel between Senator McCarthy's refusal to appear before Congressional committees and such a refusal by the average citizen, suggesting that if the average citizen refused the same invitation to appear before a committee that Senator McCarthy had received, presumably referring to the 1951 and 1952 investigations of the Senator, that citizen would not have been facing the threat of jail for refusing to appear, as Mr. Marlow had suggested. He indicates that it was only when a citizen refused to honor a subpoena requiring appearance before a committee that he would face the threat of punishment. Senator McCarthy had refused only an invitation to appear, indicating that if a subpoena had been issued, he would have appeared.
The letter writer appears to have missed the point of Mr. Marlow's piece, that Article I, Sections 5 and 6 of the Constitution, provide the sole power of discipline of members of Congress to their respective house, and that all members are privileged from arrest during a Congressional session and during their travel to and from such a session, except for "treason, felony and breach of the peace"—though "direct contempt", that is open disrespect of the institution while on the floor, a direct challenge to decorum, or actual physical assault or battery, as described the previous day by the Democratic Digest piece regarding the 1902 incident involving fisticuffs erupting between Senators "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman and John McLaurin of South Carolina on the floor of the Senate during debate of a bill, would appear to fall into the latter category of breach of the peace. Thus, unlike the public, members of Congress are privileged from arrest from failing to appear before a committee, at its worst indirect contempt, the sole power being censure or removal for contempt, removal, like impeachment of executive or judicial officers, requiring two-thirds concurrence of the members.
Parenthetically, it appears, therefore, too bad for a certain former member of the House from North Carolina that he gave up his privilege from arrest by going to work for the White House for the final ten months as chief liar to the former liar-in-chief—that is, excuse us, we meant no contempt, chief of staff. He might have served everyone better, after all, to have remained a real estate developer in Highlands, N.C., or Tampa, Fla., or wherever the hell he's from. He grew up in Brandon, Fla., and so, apparently, that is what the Trumpies mean when they engage in that cryptic chant, "Let's go, Brandon". They want the man from Brandon. They're wily and clever, those Trumpies, even if most of them function on about a fifth-grade level of understanding of modern American politics and world affairs, to say nothing of their average level of maturation.
Given the fact that Alger Hiss was slated to be released on November 27 from his five-year prison sentence, with credit for good time, following his 1950 conviction in the second trial for perjury before a 1948 grand jury, and that contempt for failing or refusing to appear before Congress pursuant to subpoena or, if appearing, refusing to testify regarding a proper subject of inquiry by a given committee, is but a misdemeanor punishable by no more than twelve months in jail and a fine, the time brings to mind the notion that one cannot blame the witness, who might have to lie to avoid undesirable revelations, choosing not to appear or, at least, not to testify, thus creating far less criminal exposure than would a felony perjury charge, though, of course, the safer course, if statements to be made would be truly self-incriminating, would be to plead the Fifth Amendment privilege, even if impolitic for those who are desirous of a political future, thereby, in the McCarthy-era context, subjecting themselves to the label applied by the Senator, "Fifth Amendment Communist". Of course, if such adverse inferences of guilt are to be drawn by the public, contrary to the intent of the Constitution and the laws of the land, regarding anyone claiming the privilege against self-incrimination, then all the more reason such inferences ought be drawn anent the non-constitutionally protected conduct of simply ignoring a lawful subpoena. Ignoring the subpoena is not the same as pleading affirmatively the Fifth Amendment.
Regarding the assertion of executive privilege to resist a subpoena, assuming for the moment appearance is not required to assert that privilege as with the Fifth Amendment, Nixon v. GSA from 1977 is instructive, though dealing with a different context, the assertion of executive privilege of a former President over certain private papers and against even a Governmental agency's in camera review of the papers to determine which were properly deemed private as, itself, compromising that assertion of privacy, and appears to render any claim of executive privilege by a former Administration and its employees and functionaries unable to trump the incumbent Administration's determination to waive the privilege regarding a request by Congress for certain documents from the previous Administration and, moreover, regarding testimony relevant to such documents. Former President Nixon, in the 1977 case, conceded that assertion of executive privilege regarding state secrets and sensitive information pertaining to military or diplomatic matters belongs only to the incumbent President, not the predecessor, and so there could be no claim of privilege asserted by the predecessor on those grounds, as the privilege inheres in the Government, not the individual occupying the office at a prior time. Nor, based on the holding in that case, could there be objection to a secure process of weeding out which documents are subject to a claim of personal privacy. Query, therefore, how a duly constituted Congressional committee inquiry into the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection could possibly infringe any matter properly protected by executive privilege, when the incumbent President waives it with regard to that inquiry.
A letter writer indicates that Charlie Chaplin had affected him in odd ways, that he used to move him to laughter and tears, but now made him mad. He says he had never really understood what made him tick and why he affected him the way he did until reading the piece by Robert Warshow the prior Saturday on Mr. Chaplin. He found the piece "one of the most sensitive, sensible studies of the little man with a cane" that he had ever read.
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