The Press: Piecework

Managing Editor Russell McGrath of the conservative, successful Seattle Times (circ. 208,442) wound up his instructions to Reporter Edwin O. Guthman. Leaning across the desk in his office, McGrath told Guthman: “The courts have broken down. Now it’s our job to find out the truth.”

Guthman hustled out of the city room with a long-term assignment: to find the truth about Melvin Rader, professor of philosophy at the University of Washington. Before the state legislature’s Committee on Un-American Activities in July 1948, Melvin Rader had been labeled a Communist. His accuser, ex-Communist George Hewitt, charged that Rader had attended a secret party school near Kingston, N.Y. for six weeks in the summer of 1938. Rader’s reply was a detailed denial: he was not a Communist, and he had spent the summer of 1938 in Seattle and at Canyon Creek Lodge, a nearby Washington mountain resort.

Who Is Innocent? When his denial went unnoticed, Rader took another step: he started perjury proceedings against Witness Hewitt. But while a deputy prosecutor cooled his heels outside the offices of the Canwell committee (named for ex-State Representative Albert F. Canwell), Hewitt was packed aboard a plane for New York. There, a Bronx court refused to extradite him. Though Rader continued to teach at the University of Washington, his reputation was blasted.

Reporter Guthman, a husky young (30) Purple Heart veteran of the Italian cam paign and a University of Washington graduate who had been covering the Can-well hearings for two years, started his digging by driving to Canyon Creek.

There, he asked to see the 1938 guest register. It was missing ; it had been “borrowed” by Canwell committee investigators and never returned. But Guthman found an ex-housekeeper who clearly recalled the 1938 visit and added a corroborating detail: Mrs. Rader was pregnant.

For two months, Reporter Guthman gathered additional evidence that Rader was telling the truth. He found an optician’s record to prove that Rader had broken his glasses at the Washington resort, a University of Washington library card showing he had withdrawn books in Seattle during the time he had supposedly been 3,000 miles away, and a Seattle voting record.

Who Is Guilty? Then Guthman took the evidence to President Raymond B. Allen of the University of Washington. Last week, the Times headlined the story of Guthman’s detective work — and President Allen’s decision — on Page One. Said Allen: “I have examined the evidence assembled by Professor Rader and the Seattle Times … I consider that Professor Rader was falsely accused.”

This week, having cleared the innocent, the Times was trying to find out who was guilty. From the state attorney general, the speaker of the house and the president of the senate, Reporter Guthman extracted a promise to search the Canwell committee’s sealed records for the missing resort register. Snapped Canwell: “If you think the register has been suppressed, go find it.”