SAWDUST SLEUTH

...II Loose-mouthed talk was responsible, as well, for Velde's second claim to notoriety this year—the uproar that broke out because he said, extemporaneously in a radio interview, that he might investigate the "field" of the churches...

...They were anxious to chase Communists so long as chasing Communists seemed to lead to almost automatic promotion to the Senate...

...A goodly number of freshman Republicans yearned for places on the House Un - American Activities Committee, out of which young Richard M. Nixon of California, already seemed to be making a good thing...

...I believe our religious leaders should be made aware of it...

...And there is no evidence that he has purged or insisted upon correction of his committee's voluminous files of plain gossip...

...Meyer had written a WILLARD SHELTON is a Washington correspondent who has reported most of the major develop' ments in the nation's capital for more than a decade...

...IV It seems unlikely that Velde understood precisely what Davis meant when he persistently told Clardy that his own examination would be acceptable "as long as groups of individuals do not misuse some of the testimony," and insisted that even a Communist teacher might be pure and guiltless of indoctrinating malleable youth if, for example, his subject happened to be mathematics rather than the social sciences...

...He was a licensed ham operator...

...Donald L. Jackson of California, not Velde, who assumed the House floor and Congressional immunity to flail back at Bishop Oxnam and charge him with "serving God on Sunday" and Communist fronts the rest of the week...

...Velde was excruciatingly grateful to the crusader from California who galloped to his rescue, and the incident accurately demonstrated the true driving force inside the Un-American Activities Committee...

...Meyer" of Soviet Russia Today was really quite another Mrs...

...Agnes Meyer, wife of the board chairman of the Washington Post, had called him names, he must call names back at her...

...Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam of the Methodist Episcopal Church protested...

...Rep...

...Hearing the testimony of Robert Gorham Davis of Smith College, a former Communist who despises the philosophy he once embraced, Velde took almost no part in the questioning...

...His wife Olive, with her children in school, got a job as a riveter in an aircraft factory...

...When it turned out that the "Mrs...

...Davis declined to speculate on the "motive" of others...

...He and other Committee members were anxious to evoke from Davis any tribute to their work that he could bring himself to utter...

...Mayer, a housewife in British Columbia, Velde was most reluctant to retract...

...It is doubtful that Velde and his colleagues caught the point, in relation to Congressional inquisitions and academic freedom, when the witness suddenly asked to add something to his testimony: "I do think the loose use of the word 'Communist' in the last four or five years has made teachers in some colleges and universities afraid to speak out on controversial questions for fear they may be called Communists...

...Earlier Mr...

...Education, government agencies, and labor are the "fields" they still envision as their first goals—but if a member of the clergy happens to fall into their net, Velde and his companions may force McCarthy to share front-page headlines with them more frequently than has been the case up to now...

...A third-term member of the House from central Illinois, Velde can legitimately claim the title of "judge" in which he delights...

...Velde is among them...

...He seems to have carried this concept into the hearings of his Un-American Activities Committee...

...Velde, with his FBI background, got the prized assignment...

...With the shipments from his distillers' district he dispenses good cheer in his office...

...One of Velde's own wartime "cases" involved the so-called Scientist X — Dr...

...Kit Clardy of Michigan, a freshman, insisted on getting Mr...

...He enlisted in the Army Signal Corps, but three months later the FBI approval came through...

...A campaign manager, the late William H. De Garis, in 1948 wrote a letter warning all "tavern keepers, distributors, distillers, and everyone connected with the liquor industry" that two of Velde's Republican primary opponents were "preachers" and that "if a preacher goes to Congress" from the distillers' own district "we will be the laughing-stock of the entire world...

...A House associate says: "I can't think of him as Un-American chairman...

...Agnes Meyer was talking about when she denounced Congressional witch-hunters in the field of education...

...his gray eyes are gentle...

...Velde took his honorable Army discharge, went to work for J. Edgar Hoover, trained at Quantico, and served through the war in counter-espionage work, principally at San Francisco and Salt Lake City...

...Jackson seemed to want the witness to certify that the Committee would not damage academic freedom—and was not wholly successful...

...Joseph Weinberg—later under long investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...he has nothing of Thomas' overt malignancy...

...Jackson, not Velde, is the emotional power, the Congressman best suited by temperament for McCarthy-like operations...

...Velde, it is worth observing, fell silent when the Committee majority decided that they—not the chairman —would decide which "fields" should be investigated...

...His articles on public affairs have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Reporter, and The Rotarian...

...Weinberg was acquitted of perjury charges recently in Washington—and Velde, according to his staff, "broke down in his office and cried...

...friendly letter to Soviet Russia Today, and went on, in effect, to accuse her of opposing Congressional investigation of the schools because she wanted to save Communists from exposure...

...A widely circulated story is that at a party he was giving for reporters covering his Cornmittee, he suddenly muttered that he didn't know what he was doing in Congress, that he wasn't really bright enough to be in Congress...

...It was Rep...

...The Republican member of the Senate, Everett Dirksen, is a fellow citizen of Velde's in Pekin, and there is no prospect that Illinois voters will choose another Senator from the same small town...

...But times have changed: more than a hundred new Congressmen clamored this year for vacancies on the Committee...

...Velde's candid self-doubts earn him a certain amount of respect...

...Rep...

...Six feet, two inches tall, he carries his 215 pounds well...

...Velde exploits this hapless situation to demonstrate the utter unfairness of cartoons attacking him for running his Committee just in order to "hunt votes...

...He looks, indeed, like a small - town high - school football coach, the grown-up version of the all-American boy who was taught by his parents and scoutmaster never to gang up unfairly on one kid...

...The tone is set, rather, by the distillery powers of Peoria and the relatively recent industrialization of East Peoria, across the Illinois River, where huge tractor plants and heavy-duty earth-moving equipment plants employ tens of thousands of workers...

...he can be managed by others who plan to make the House Un-American Activities Committee a stepping-stone in their careers...

...They have learned, too, that "road shows," with local television coverage in sundry cities, get them better publicity than competition - handicapped hearings in Washington, so there will be a good many more "road shows...

...Velde insists that he did not know anything about the De Garis letter until after it was mailed...

...Velde gushed on: "Well, for the life of me I am not able to determine that either, but it seems that every time we hold an investigation, certain people take opposition to our hearings, the manner in which we conduct them, and cite many facts which I believe, as you have so ably described, are untrue...

...Oddly enough, however, Velde is willing to admit that he stumbled badly in the Meyer-Mayer case...

...Individuals are damaged by Velde's committee, of course, and more will be damaged in the future as they rely on the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions on present or past affiliation with the Communist Party...

...Other members of the Committee, however, are not so unfortunately located, politically, as Velde...

...He went to Bradley University and Northwestern University, where he was graduated in 1931...

...Louis Post-Dispatch two children, now university students themselves...

...Before he got his law degree in 1937, he and his wife, the former Olive Pfander, had their 'A-Hunting We Will Go—' Fitzpatrick in The St...

...Velde's one exotic experience—the years with the FBI—served him well when he came to Congress in 1949...

...This has now grown to "Communist infiltration" among the clergy...

...chairmen like Reps...

...he w,ill not admit a stumble in regard to the clergy...

...Even if their pickings are slim they regard the results as better than nothing...

...They have seen politicians make national names for themselves by pursuing Communists and they intend to get their share of the headlines...

...Sawdust Sleuth By Willard Shelton TUDGE" Harold Himmel Velde, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, is a sawdust Torquemada, basically miscast in the sinister role made infamous by that ruthless operator of the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century...

...House Un-American used to be considered a "kiss of death" assignment...

...He had already applied for admission into the expanding staff of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the draft board was moving faster than the FBI...

...Jackson's speech, moreover, stiffened his spine...

...While Velde studied law, his wife ran a boarding house and the future Congressman earned money by working as a radio repairman...

...That is why he got himself into trouble when he decided that because Mrs...

...But his modesty does not obviate the fact that he does like headlines...

...This does not mean that he is prepared to subpena Bishop Oxnam—not at all...

...In 1942, after Velde had set up law practice in Pekin with a distant relative, the draft board was breathing down his neck...

...But he still doesn't know what Mrs...

...Time suggested that a junior member of the House should listen to his elders before venturing rashly into a "field" that more cautious men shun as the Devil is reported to shun holy water...

...Velde was born on a farm in Tazewell County, a region of bountiful fields and rural serenity that is not typical of the Illinois Congressional district...

...Velde's progress from farm boy to member of Congress is almost a case history of the rise of the typical American politician...

...Yet a murmured phrase and a glitter in the eye of staff members suggest that Velde himself still hopes that one of his furtive investigators will be able to unearth one or two clerical characters who might provide documentation of his charge of Communist "infiltration" of the clergy...

...Velde is a blunderer and something of a blabbermouth...

...He probably hasn't a chance of early advancement to any more lofty political office...

...But there are more energetic and tough-minded members of the Committee, and Velde is at least sufficiently susceptible to pressure and prodding to make it reasonably certain some people and principles are going to be hurt by Velde's committee...

...He was elected county judge in Tazewell County in 1946, and although the county court deals principally with misdemeanors and minor civil cases, still the presiding officer is a judge...

...A strapping, pleasant-faced man, Velde occasionally admits quite frankly that he is not the brainiest politician in Washington...

...He did not trouble to get the facts straight before he charged that Mrs...

...But the record of hearings reveals few of the loaded questions and the studied refusal to let a witness make his case and complete a defense of official conduct that characterized McCarthy's contemptible persecution of the Voice of America official, Reed Harris...

...And since it was a small committee, with only four Republican members at that time, and since others advanced with great rapidity to the Senate and even more exalted posts, —Vice President Nixon and Senators Mundt and Case of South Dakota are examples—Velde became the ranking Republican, hence chairman, after four short years...

...This is not the only time Velde's political operations have brought him in conflict with the clergy...

...A note of defensiveness has crept into Velde's operations as a result of the blistering he took in the Agnes Meyer incident...

...A visitor to his office gets the impression that he would be delighted to have Bishop Oxnam stroll into his committee room, put himself under oath, and subject himself to inquisitorial procedures...

...Some members of the House who never presided in court love to be called "judge," and practically all of them who ever served on a bench think it only respectful of their colleagues to use the "judge" title in floor debate...

...Many of Velde's industrial constituents in East Peoria were recruited from Tennessee and Kentucky, where they were traditional Democrats, and many are now members of the politically conscious CIO United Automobile Workers...

...Davis for his general certificate of good character and asking if the witness would mind suggesting what might be the "motive" of clergymen such as Bishop Oxnam in "opposing" the Committee's work...

...I think a certain amount of timidity exists now that didn't exist in the past...

...Every time I see him I am reminded of the big, rollicking fellow on the beach, throwing a beach ball wildly, kicking sand in other people's faces, eating hot dogs, and having himself one hell of a good time...

...He is not mean and suspicious like Parnell Thomas, not a fanatic like Jen-ner, not vicious like McCarthy," one of the newsmen who knows him well said recently...

...Ill Personally an amiable and gregarious man, Velde is well liked by most of the ink-stained wretches compelled by the necessities of their profession to "cover" the checkered field of loyalty investigations...

...Republican Governor William Strat-ton is a magnetic vote-winner, and he will probably have some ambitions himself when and if he decides to yield the governor's mansion to someone closely tied to his own state organization...

...The district used to be safely Republican, but the Democratic vote has been rising...

...Velde suffers one handicap that would endlessly torment most ambitious members of the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...Originally, Velde said something vaguely to the effect that since Communists are "out to destroy all religious freedom...

...Shelton worked for a number of newspapers, including The Chicago Sun, The St Louis Star-Times, and PM...

...Looking at this open-faced, handsome man of 42, it is almost impossible to imagine him as J. Parnell Thomas' successor...

...The Velde family, continued De Garis, "has been liberal for many years...

...Velde himself ended by "thanking" Mr...

...Davis to agree that he was "entirely willing to say" that "the manner in which we have conducted this inquiry is wholesome and good...

...This Torquemada may be stuffed with sawdust, but he still yearns for vindication when his publicity turns sour...

...He is a Methodist himself in Pekin, but frankly an anti-Prohibitionist...

...The reporters, enjoying his hospitality, thought it only decent to suggest that he shouldn't worry, that there was lots of people in Congress more stupid than he—but suddenly there was an embarrassing lack of specific names...

...He finally surrendered— and fired the staff member who had given him the inaccurate information...

...Martin P. Dies and Parnell Thomas seemed to have bad luck...

...the Committee will not let Senators Jenner and McCarthy get all the Communist-chasing credit if they can help it...