While running the House Un-American Activities Committee, New Jersey's red-faced J. Parnell Thomas was frustrated by the Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which says: "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Thomas unmercifully badgered many witnesses who fell back on that constitutional guarantee. Last August his committee seriously proposed that Congress find some means of barring the Fifth Amendment's protection to Communists.
Last week the shoe was on the other foot. As he had requested, Congressman Thomas was called before a federal grand jury in Washington which is investigating charges that...
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