Lost to history: Files from our state's Red Scare

It was a challenge worthy of the PBS series “History Detectives.”

While researching a recent column about the Red Scare-era Canwell Committee and this year’s House Bill 2251 to repeal the state’s 1951 subversive activities statute, I came across a passage in Don Brazier’s “History of the Washington Legislature.”

It described the Legislature’s response to the “hot potato” of what to do with the files produced by the committee’s investigation into communists in government.

“ … it was ultimately agreed between the two houses that the report would be locked in a safe repository which would be accessible only by the simultaneous insertion of two keys, one in the possession of the (House ) Speaker and the other held by the (Senate) President Pro-tem,” wrote Brazier.

Why such security? Rep. Albert Canwell had persuaded the Legislature in 1947 to give him sweeping authority and a huge budget to ferret out subversives. The Spokane Republican was so eager that his bipartisan committee frequently ignored the rights of those he suspected. Innuendo took on the same status as fact.

This was a time when even suspicion of being a communist could cost someone his job and even his liberty. Some UW professors suffered both fates at the hands of Canwell.

By 1949, four of the six committee members – including Canwell himself – had been defeated. Returning lawmakers were having second thoughts, and attempts to reauthorize the committee failed.

But like spent fuel rods at a nuclear plant, the Canwell files didn’t lose their ability to do damage. By 1955, the Legislature decided it was too risky to keep the records.

“Whereas, it further appears that no use or purpose can be served at this time by keeping said records, documents, and property pertaining to the hearings of the committee,” stated a House concurrent resolution dug out of the files by researchers at the state Archives. It ordered the presiding officers of the House and Senate – the speaker and the lieutenant governor – to dispose of the records.

Charlie Hodde was the speaker who locked up the records in 1949. In his oral history interviews, he said he had to send state troopers to take them from Canwell. Hodde described what happened when his successor, John O’Brien, opened the vault six years later.

“... when they opened them up, they found out that we didn’t really get anything of any significance; we could have opened them up immediately. Apparently, Canwell had stored the critical records that presumed to show un-American activities in his own home or somewhere else,” Hodde said.

In his biography of O’Brien, “Speaker of the House,” Daniel Jack Chasen described the public grilling of Canwell at the hands of O’Brien and House GOP leader Mort Frayn in 1955.

“The hearing was held in the House chambers on a Monday night with the galleries packed and the state patrol on hand to keep order,” Chasen wrote.

Canwell proved elusive and uncooperative. At one point he refused to answer whether he had given the records to the FBI. Was he seeking protection under the Fifth Amendment, O’Brien asked.

“No,” Canwell said. “Only communists do that.”

Talk of a contempt citation never resulted in action. But Canwell’s contempt for the Legislature ended any chance of a new committee being formed to hunt subversives, Chasen concluded.

Canwell lost campaigns for the Legislature, Congress and the governor’s office. But he always kept up his hunt for communists and bragged about having extensive files on people and organizations.

Then, in 1984, an arson fire destroyed his downtown Spokane offices, and presumably his files. But was the fire a total loss? Spokane Spokesman-Review reporter Jim Camden was one of the last to interview Canwell.

“ … he hints that he still has many documents that would incriminate prominent Spokane residents,” Camden wrote.

Canwell died in 2002. There is no record of any files left behind.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
Twitter: @CallaghanPeter