XI
The Dies Committee Suppresses Evidence
SUSPECTED NAZI SPIES were quietly taken out of the
Navy Yard to the Dies Congressional Committee
THREE
Brooklyn
headquarters in New York in Room 1604, United States Court
House Building. The three men were each questioned for about
five minutes by Congressman J. Parnell Thomas* of New Jersey
and Joe Starnes of Alabama. The men were asked if they had
heard of any un-American goings-on in the Navy Yard. Each
of the three subpoenaed men said he had not, and the Con
gressmen sent them back to work in the Navy Yard after warn
ing them not to say a word to anyone about having been called
before the Committee.
When
question
I
learned of the Congressional Committee
men
they had subpoenaed,
I
wondered
s
refusal to
at the
unusual
procedure especially since it promptly put Nazi propagandists
(such as Edwin P. Banta, a speaker for the German-American
Bund) on the stand as authorities on "un-American" activities
in the
United
States.
A
little
inquiry turned
up some
interesting
facts.
One
Committee s chief investigators, Edward Francis
had worked closely with Nazi agents as far
back as 1934. Sullivan s whole record was extremely unsavory.
He had been a labor spy, had been active in promoting antiof the
Sullivan of Boston,
*
Formerly known as J. Parnell Feeney. He changed his name because he
thought he could get along better in the business world with a name lik*
Thomas than with a name as potently Irish as Feeney.
137