} 5 eed atlas pee Aa aa Di Beet . Po 1 * Yolanda Hall and Milton M. Cohen, to test HUAC’s constitutional grounds rather than answer the committee’s questions. This refusal to submit to questioning led to the contempt of Con- gress charges. Stamler, who is 48, is director of the Heart Disease Control Program and the Division of Adult Health and Ag- ing for the city of Chicago. After the indictment he was placed on inactive status by the Chicago Board of Health pending the outcomeof the case. Stam- ler is also the executive director of the Chicago Health Research Foundation, the Board of Health’s. research arm, an associate professor in the department of medicine at Northwestern University Medical School, and Western Hemi- sphere editor of the Journal of Atherosclerosis Research. He has published more than 150 articles on diseases of the heart and blood vessels and has written several books since 1949, the year he was licensed to practice medicine. In May 1965, on the day he was named to receive the Albert Lasker Award in Medical Journalism for his coauthorship of a series of articles on the prevention of heart disease, Stamler and Mrs. Hall, a research nutritionist associated with him at the research foundation, were subpoenaed to appear before the HUAC hearings. Along with Cohen, a Chicago social worker, they filed a civil suit against HUAC on 24 May 1965, the day before the hearings were to open. The suit, which attempted to enjoin the hearings and to have the committee’s enabling act declared unconstitutional, was dismissed as premature. 1967, the government announced its intention of seeking indictments. Albert E. Jenner, Jr., a well-known Chicago attorney who was a senior counsel to the Warren Commission, heads the legal team working on Stamler’s, Mrs. Hall’s, and Cohen’s behalf. Jenner sought an injunction to halt the government action, but the request was denied, and before review could be sought, the government presented the cases to a grand jury and obtained criminal indictments. As a result of the indictments, the Chicago Board of Health, which had given Stamler a vote of confidence following the HUAC hearings, placed him on inactive status, without salary, pending the outcome of the contempt proceedings. Eric Oldberg, president of the Chicago Board of Health, told Science in a telephone interview that Stamler was placed on “inactive” status rather than suspended—as Chicago rules demand when city employees are under indictment on criminal charges—because Oldberg felt there was less stigma attached to being made inactive. Although Stamler is not receiving his $21,800 annual salary from the Board of Health, he does continue to receive his salary from the privately operated Chicago Health Re- search Foundation, of which Oldberg is president. If Stamler is eventually cleared of the contempt charge, he will receive his back pay from the Chicago Board of Health. Second Suit Filed Following the HUAC hearings in Chicago, Jenner filed a second civil Hall, and Cohen refused to testify at suit, on 6 December 1965, against the committee, That suit updated the first civil action and described in detail what had taken place before the subcommittee. The second suit requested a judgment which would have declared that the hearings were invalid, that the subpoenas served on Stamler, Mrs. addresses. As a consequence, the three the committee’s enabling act was un- Stamler, Mrs. Hall, and Cohen then appeared during the HUAC hearings, along with 13 other witnesses who had been called. But unlike the 13, who cited the Fifth Amendment as grounds for refusing to testify. Stamler, Mrs. all, except for giving their names and were cited for contempt of Congress in October 1966. HUAC never revealed why they had been called. However, their attorney contends mittee was attempting to from any involvement activities by harassing Stamler. that the comdeter Mrs. Hall in civil rights both her and For 9 months following the congressional action the government did nothing to secure criminal indictments against the three. Then, on 7 July 8 DECEMBER 1967 Hall, and Cohen were invalid, and that constitutional. Like the first suit, the second was dismissed on the basis that it involved certain ‘threshold’ questions. Jenner immediately appealed the decision and consolidated the appeal ac- tion with the appeal for the first suit. What opened the door for the latest judicial decision, challenging the com- mittee to prove its constitutionality, was a ruling on 10 November 1966 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which overturned the prior judgments by a lower court that had dismissed the first and second civil suits filed by Stamler, Mrs. Hall, and Cohen. On 9 November 1967, just one day short of a year after the Court of Ap- peals paved the way for the suits against HUACto be heard, the three- judge U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois unanimously denied a motion by HUAC to dismiss the suit against it. The court ordered HUAC’s members to file an answer to the charges relating to the committee’s constitutionality by 8 Jan- uary 1968. The court also, with one judge dissenting, ruled that the Attor- ney Genera! of the United States and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois be added as defendants to the suit, along with the members of HUAC. Jenner, in a letter written to heart surgeon Paul Dudley White, who is chairman of Stamler’s Legal Aid Fund,* noted on 22 November that the latest “rulings are a milestone in this litigation. The House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities and the members are subject to being called to testify at pre-trial depositions.” To date, the costs in the various suits brought by Stamler, Mrs. Hall, and Cohen, and those in preparation for their defense in the suits brought against them, have run about $100,000 —an amountnearly equalto that raised by more than 2000 sponsors of Stamler’s legal aid fund. The criminal indictments against Stamler and his fellow defendants have been consolidated, but no trial date has been set. On 12 January, a status report will be issued by the court, 4 days later than HUACis supposed to answer the charges brought against it in court. Clearly, the outcome of the battle between Stamler and HUAC will rest largely on the final action in the civil suit. Jenner stated in his letter to White that he hopes “eventually to obtain a general order of continuance of the criminal cases pending outcome of the civil case.” If the civil case, in which HUAC’s constitutional basis is challenged, is decided in favor of Stamler, Mrs. Hall, and Cohen, there would appear to be little on which the contempt of Congress charges could be based.— —KATHLEEN SPERRY *The Jeremiah Stamler, M.D. Legal Aid Fund, Faculty Exchange Box 36, University of Chicago, Chicago, Hlinois 60637. 1295