Mayor YORTY. I am sure if one had more time you could go back to the early statements of Lenin-I have forgotten the exact quote, but I think he said the police are the last bulwark of the bourgeoisie, and the application of the propaganda against the police department follows strictly party lines.

Mr. TUCK. Mayor Yorty, have you found that the decision of the courts and several Federal laws in respect to law enforcement have had a tendency to impede or hamper the police in the enforcement of the law?

Mayor YORTY. We are very handicapped, not by any laws that you have passed, but by the reinterpretation, really the rewriting of the Constitution by the United States Supreme Court, in the exclusionary rule of evidence, the rules of search and seizure, registration of known criminals, and so forth; law enforcement has become increasingly difficult.

The young police officer in many cases is very uncertain as to what his rights are in enforcing a law. We are sort of in a transitory period where we are going to have to get some settled rules so that the police officer will known what his rights are and what the citizen's rights are and not be so uncertain as to just what he can do.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Mr. Mayor, you have referred to the earlier works of Lenin where he emphasized the necessity of smashing the state machinery.

(At this point, Mr. Watson entered the hearing room.)

Mr. MCNAMARA. He referred specifically to the police as a part of the state machinery which the Communists and the workers must smash. I believe you mentioned, did you not, that the work you had in mind was "State and Revolution"; is that correct?

Mayor YORTY. No, but I think that quote is from that one, about 1917. Mr. MCNAMARA. I think it is of interest, Mr. Chairman, that in addition to his "State and Revolution" statement, Lenin in 1902, in "What Is To Be Done," made the following statement. He complained about the fact that the Russian workers "as yet display so little revolutionary activity in connection with the brutal way in which the police maltreat the people."

Then he went on to say of the Communist, "he must be able to group all these manifestations"-that is, manifestations of tyranny and oppression "into a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation."

These quotations certainly verify the statement made by Mayor Yorty to the effect that these headlines and the agitation which has been carried on in this country throughout the years in various cities by Communist elements go back to the basic teachings of Lenin.

Mayor YORTY. That is correct. I know myself of no period in our history where the campaign against the police has been quite as effective as it is today.

I notice, Mr. Chairman, that before a House Appropriations Subcommittee, John Edgar Hoover said on February 16, 1967:

The cumulative effect of almost 50 years of Communist Party activity in the United States cannot be minimized, for it has contributed to disrupting race relations in this country and has exerted an insidious influence on the life and times of our Nation. As a prime example, for years it has been Communist policy to charge "police brutality" in a calculated campaign to discredit law enforcement

and to accentuate racial issues. The riots and disorders of the past 3 years clearly highlight the success of this Communist smear campaign in popularizing the cry of "police brutality" to the point where it has been accepted by many individuals having no affiliation with or sympathy for the Communist movement.

So, we have a pretty good authority there, I would say, certainly the best in the world, on the effectiveness of this campaign against the police.

Another statement before the Appropriations Subcommittee, which I am certain that you all recall, was made by Mr. Hoover on February 10, 1966. He said:

At a still higher level, the national headquarters of the party, on August 15, 1965, instructed the southern California party district to prepare articles concerning the riots for early publication in The Worker, an east coast Communist newspaper. Special efforts were to be made to play up the "police brutality" angle. Major portions of subsequent issues of The Worker and People's World, a west coast Communist newspaper, were devoted to the uprising in Los Angeles and its aftermath. Each article faithfully followed the line set by party headquarters. Mr. MCNAMARA. Mayor Yorty, were police brutality charges made in your city during the Watts riot?

Mayor YORTY. Yes. An attempt was made, of course, to blame the police for the rioting. This led to my unpleasant confrontation with Dr. Martin Luther King. We had always welcomed him to our city on previous occasions and tried to work with him in the field of civil rights. But, during the aftermath of the rioting, he rushed out to Los Angeles and in a private meeting with some of his aides and our chief of police, Mr. William Parker, he began to blame the police for the rioting.

I pointed out to him that the police department of Los Angeles is run by a civilian commission; they are actually the head of the department. I also pointed out to him that three of the five members were from minority groups and, also, that one of the persons at the meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King was the father of a member of the police commission.

But he persisted in arguing that the police were to blame for the rioting. Then he went out and got before the cameras and newspapers and made that same charge. I felt it necessary to answer that charge and to tell him that it was very unfair for him to come out to Los Angeles and try to blame the police for the rioting.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Your exhibit, Mayor, and various items that we have read in the Communist press over the years indicate that many charges of brutality have been made against the police in Los Angeles, as in the case of other cities.

Will you tell the committee whether or not any police officers in Los Angeles, since you have been mayor, have been dismissed for brutality? Mayor YORTY. I don't know of any case where an officer has had to be dismissed for brutality.

We, of course, investigate every charge that is made to us of police brutality, first within the department, and then I have instructed our civilian police commission that if people are not satisfied with the action of the department that they can ask the commission to hold a hearing.

I think the best example of the big lie technique was the case where one of the newspapers in Los Angeles, not a Communist newspaper, but one that circulates only in the Negro area, had a picture of two

little girls who looked like twins on the front page with an inflammatory story saying that they had been arrested in front of their classmates and dragged out, I think handcuffed, in front of their class. I made an investigation of this myself, and it wasn't at all true.

I won't bore you with a lot of details that are not necessary to make the point, but the little girls had been, through some good police work identifying people, had been in a restaurant, were brought into the principal's office, and they were asked if they had been in the restaurant and they said "yes" and that their brother, and so forth, was there. So, the police went and got the brother, and he took the police to where he had thrown out a billfold, and mainly a passport, which was what was worrying the victims-they were Mexican citizens and they had lost their passports.

The story was so different from that which appeared in the paper that I ordered-not ordered, but I told the police commission that I felt that they should hold a hearing on this matter so that the public could get the truth. Those who were involved in making these charges themselves requested that we not hold the hearing. This is rather typical.

Mr. ASHBROOK. I think you make the point in your report-isn't the key factor here that the people who are making these charges don't care about the truth? Time and time again they make these accusations and allegations and the facts might be totally contrary to what you are saying.

Here you are in a position as a responsible public official having to investigate every charge and every allegation. Don't you come to the conclusion, as most of us do, that these people do not care about the truth? The truth is not in them, and it is an attempt to rile up the public, to play on the humanitarian instincts of good and right-thinking people, but when you get down to it they don't care about the truth. Mayor YORTY. I think yes; you are correct. There are many people who make these charges whose motives are to discredit the police department and to carry on the so-called Communist struggle campaign, creating every struggle that they can so that in a cumulative way they break down respect for the law enforcement officials and, of course, eventually they hope to break down the ability of our Government to operate.

Mr. ASHBROOK. You have a high standard as a public official, and they don't have the same standard. And you are fighting an uphill battle with your standards, trying to compete in the minds of the public and public opinion when they don't have the same standard and they don't mind using lies, smears, and everything else.

It is a terrible battle in every one of our cities that you and other mayors have to wage, and we certainly commiserate with your problem. We recognize what it is.

Mayor YORTY. You are right.

Getting back to the specific case of the two little girls, for instance, I am sure that the facts of the case were never published, so that the public got only one side. Unfortunately, the nature of news is that it is usually negative. The bizarre makes more news than the everyday hard work of law enforcement.

Mr. ASHBROOK. Isn't it also the fact that when a charge is made you never fully convince everybody it is not true? There are always going

to be some people who think there was some substance to it and if you add enough of these over a period of time the big lie technique, as you say, is successful.

Mayor YORTY. It is successful. There is a tendency on the part of most people who do not understand subversive agitation or propaganda, to say, "Well, where there is smoke, there must be some fire." Mr. ASHBROOK. Yes.

Mayor YORTY. And the subversives keep up such a drumfire of these charges that there is no chance for the truth ever to catch up, and innocent people are misled.

Mr. ASHBROOK. This is what this committee continually runs into. And the American people, to their credit, think from the high standards that you do and they cannot possibly contemplate that there are people who do not operate on the principles of truth, and so forth. Mayor YORTY. I think you have made a very important point, Congressman.

Mr. ASHBROOK. You have the problem; we have the same problem. The average good American just does not want to think that there are people in their midst who subvert, lie, deceive.

Mayor YORTY. They simply do not understand communism or the Communist Party and the way it operates and, of course, your job has been made increasingly difficult over the years.

We badly need now for people to understand the Communist Party and its apparatus. They are not getting the information, and I think that for the protection of our country they must get it. I certainly feel that the inquiry that you are conducting now is of extreme importance because perhaps you can dramatize the issue enough to get some attention to it.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Mayor, but, as you may suspect, I was just told this morning that there are certain elements in the press, which should know better, who are lambasting the committee for conducting these very hearings.

Mayor YORTY. Well, of course, that is to be expected

The CHAIRMAN. I told them on TV this morning: They don't want any part of me; I don't want any part of them. They don't like me; I detest them. There is nothing we can do that will ever be right in their eyes.

Mayor YORTY. The public has been conditioned to feel that the charge of communism is some kind of smear on innocent people. Now, if you call a Communist a Communist, that is immediately called McCarthyism, and ever since the days of Senator McCarthy this has been the first cry that goes up.

So, the public, I don't think, is capable of differentiating between a charge that a Communist is a Communist and a charge that somebody who is not a Communist may be a radical, and there is a vast difference, of course. But we have to overcome that, and I think your committee through the methods that you employ can, with the persistent hard work that you have to do, overcome it.

I think under your predecessor, Tad Walter, we came a long ways because of the care you have used in protecting witnesses against loose charges. But there has been, there is no question about it, an atmosphere in the country that when you say a Communist is a Communist or that a certain demonstration was planned by the Communists and carried