A Decent Burial
O'NEILL, WILLIAM
A Decent Burial Un-American Activities: The Trials of William Remington By Gary May Oxford. 393 pp. $30.00. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history, Rutgers; author. "A Democracy at...
...To Rauh, the Constitution was at issue, not the man's character...
...But no one did more than Rauh...
...indeed, at points, Un-American Activities almost sinks beneath the weight of documentary evidence...
...Court of Appeals overturned his subsequent conviction, because the judge presiding at the trial did not instruct the jury properly...
...In March President Truman had issued the Executive Order that established the Federal Employee Loyalty Program and officially launched the Red Scare...
...Innumerable writers have labored to show that Alger Hiss and Julius Rosenberg were framed by the government...
...Over the course of several meetings, he provided her with economic data related to the American War effort...
...Following a year of graduate study at Columbia, Remington entered government service as an economist...
...The ineffable Lillian Hellman stood out as a master of that genre...
...One cannot finish Un-American Activities without feeling sympathy for William Remington...
...Remington's ex-wife, who was not of particularly sound mind either, also gave false testimony, perhaps unwittingly or as a result of government bullying...
...But he had never met most of those he named...
...He had been placed in a wing that housed extremely dangerous criminals...
...This material- extracts from the Washington Post, press releases, memoranda he had written for the War Production Board-had dubious value, but the Soviets may have found some use for it...
...In refreshing contrast, Gary May is nonpartisan, almost to a fault...
...Joe Rauh, at the start of what would be a brilliant career, is the hero of the book...
...Much of the vast literature on the Great Red Scare is tainted by defensiveness, apologetics and, when all else has failed, dishonesty...
...He agreed to represent Remington-for nothing, as it turned out, and at a considerable opportunity cost to himself...
...But a retrial resulted in a conviction that stuck...
...He returned to Dartmouth fired with new ambition...
...Still, he emerges in the book as no less annoying a figure than he must have been in life...
...Few lawyers in private practice have demonstrated so deep an attachment to the First Amendment...
...A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II" FEW STORIES arising from the McCarthy era are more pathetic than William Remington's...
...As a college student he became something of a Left-wing activist, not an unusual phenomenon in the Red Decade-except that he attended Dartmouth College, among the most backward Ivies, where the rich radical culture of the day fell upon especially barren ground...
...His own character was a significant factor...
...Embarrassed government officials attributed the murder to a botched robbery...
...Born in 1917, William Remington developed arebellious streak early...
...Nonetheless, inspired by the Soviet Union's struggle against Nazi Germany, he arranged to meet with a woman known as "Helen" who had access to Soviet authorities...
...Remington's ordeal was too lengthy and complex to summarize here...
...Save for a brief period of disagreement over legal strategy, he stood by his client to the bitter end, even though initially Remington lied to him about past beliefs and associations...
...The two trials were almost as appalling as the death and its coverup...
...Unlike the brilliant Hiss, he had a solid but unspectacular career, rising to the level of middle manager in the Department of Commerce...
...No hero by any standard, Remington tried desperately to save himself, fingering over 50 people for the FBI...
...During a year off from school, he worked in a menial capacity for the Tennessee Valley Authority, and associated with Communists and fellow travelers...
...Unfortunately for Remington, Helen was the soon-to-be-notorious Elizabeth Bentley, a Soviet agent who changed sides and became an FBI informant (and mis-informant...
...Yet the complete and utter destruction of Remington-his losing his dignity, his career, his assets, his freedom, and finally his life-was not merely a function of history, or bad luck...
...Thereafter, whenhe worked at all, it was mostly as a casual laborer while living with his parents in New Jersey...
...Nor have many been told by an author as scrupulous as Gary May, a professor of history at the University of Delaware...
...It was difficult for Rauh to find people willing to testify on his behalf, partly because very few liked the man well enough to overcome intimidation by government agents and take chances for him...
...This makes the young lawyer's extraordinary efforts to save him appear all the more impressive...
...On April 24,1954, in Lewis-burg Penitentiary, he died of brain injuries inflicted by three dimwitted convicts who thought they were eliminating an important Communist...
...He carefully presents and analyzes all the evidence he has been able to find bearing on Remington-a remarkable achievement in this highly politicized field...
...On the other hand, since he was a Federal employee who had met in wartime with a Soviet secret agent, he could be held up as a dangerous traitor, making the FBI and Federal prosecutors look good, and bolstering their contention that a vast Soviet conspiracy required eternal vigilance-not to mention larger Congressional appropriations...
...At Commerce Remington was in no position to know, let alone betray, matters of national security...
...His only piece of luck was the interest of a young Washington lawyer named Joseph L. Rauh...
...In fact, because his radical activities were so marginal, he was deemed of little value as an informant...
...He did know his future was at risk...
...The instances of malice detailed by May remind us of how brutal the witch-hunters were, and how completely lacking in honor...
...The usual caveats apply, of course: the need to respect constitutional rights even during times of national peril, the danger of scapegoating, and so on...
...And it underlines a problem May is unable to overcome...
...The U.S...
...He recruited William Chanler and Jack Minton to do the trial work in New York, and raised much of the large sums needed for Remington's defense...
...Forty years later, what are we to make of the Remington story...
...Remington's second wife was pregnant when he was sentenced to a three-year prison term...
...Chanler, a conservative attorney, spent the better part of two years on the case, out of principle alone...
...Huge amounts of Federal money and manpower were expended to convict a minor official, on the flimsiest evidence, for what was essentially an indiscretion...
...Remington had a cold, arrogant, self-centered nature that even his Hollywood looks could not offset...
...In 1948 Remington was called to answer charges based on Bentley's testimony, first before a Federal grand jury in New York, then before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, then by a Federal Loyalty Board...
...It is no reflection on Gary May's fine scholarship to say that the question remains hard to answer...
...Other books, frequently by the subjects themselves, have portrayed the targets of McCarthyism as true-blue Americans, persecuted solely because of their concern for the less fortunate...
...Suffice it to say that Remington was indicted for perjury by the Federal grand jury...
...The Commerce Department had suspended him without pay, cutting off his only source of income and leaving him without any way to pay his first wife alimony and child support...
...Elizabeth Bentley, a mentally unstable alcoholic, lied repeatedly on the stand...
...His actions, apparently gestures of support and sympathy, were certainly improper yet hardly seem treasonous...
...in 1939 he graduated with numerous honors, despite having to largely support himself...
...It is possible that such a desirable political prey would have been destroyed whatever he did...
...Foolishly, though, Remington gave his tormentors the means to ruin him by lying about his past, repeatedly and in different venues...
...In April 1947, when he was interviewed by the FBI, he didn't know it had gotten his name from Bentley and placed him under investigation 17 months earlier...
...the Bureau of Prisons director misrepresented it as being Remington's own fault...
...Not only did he attempt to deny his actual record as a fellow traveler, he even tried to pass himself off as a dedicated anti-Communist...
...his successor, Minton, made a significant sacrifice as well...
Vol. 77 • November 1994 • No. 11
