Committee on UnAmerican Activities

Committee on UnAmerican Activities Synopsis

The first film by a private citizen which criticizes a US goverment committee, includes 1930s footage of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Chairman Martin Dies (D) of Texas attacking "subversives" in labor unions; the 1947 Hollywood Witch Hunts; the Cold War blacklistings; & the 1960 San Francisco hearings where police turned fire hoses on student protestors inside the City Hall. The film contains an analysis of how the HUAC subpoened the newsfilms of the City Hall protests from TV stations KRON & KPIX & used federal facilities to edit them into "Operation Abolition," a falsified film attacking the HUAC'S critics; thousands of copies of which were then sold for private profit throughout the USA, including to the Armed Forces. Revelation of "Operation Abolitions" untruths led to the Pentagon banning it from all military bases. Among the HUAC's critics shown: Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt & Harry S. Truman, civil rights leader Reverend Wyatt T. Walker, Congressmen James Roosevelt & Phillip Burton, & Frank Wilkinson, Director of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation who, like the "Hollywood Ten," was imprisoned for insisting that the First Amendment gave him the right to refuse to answer questions about his political beliefs & associations. FOIA acquired files reveal the HUAC, in violation of the First Amendment, investigated Robert Carl Cohen for making this film.