This leads to a factor which I believe is of the greatest importance and which may be misunderstood in Washington. Whenever you get into an argument with serious students, they will ask you about reliable sources of information. What is the correct information on such and such a subject?

Well, you answer that they should read newspapers, and they reply that newspapers are not reliable. You go further and say they should read several papers, but they repeat their skepticism. Thereupon you point out that, in addition to academic books that discuss background facts, there are reams of governmental publications, including large amounts of congressional sources and data. To your surprise, you discover that the students do not know what you are talking about. You have to explain that there is the Congressional Record, with its debates and appendix, and that there are committee hearings, reports, and prints. This really is news to many. The next argument is, invariably, that this is unreliable information.

The students have heard a great deal of criticism of some congressional hearings, but I have met only very few who ever bothered to read a single hearing to evaluate the criticism. A more troublesome aspect is that they do not understand the method and value of the parliamentary debate and do not know that congressional debates disclose factual information. They do not recognize that adequate interpretations are insured through the bipartisan composition of committees, and that many findings are accepted by both parties. They are quite unaware of the large masses of basic data which in one way or the other are fed into the congressional process. The students do not know any better because the teaching fraternity has failed to make use of the information that is readily available in congressional publications, and because professors have an emotional distrust of congressional

sources.

There also is a great deal of skepticism with respect to publications by the executive departments. For example, the Vietnam white paper issued by the State Department is sniped at by many orators who appear at teach-ins. It is often implied and sometimes stated that an academic specialist possesses better intelligence than the U.S. Government. In one instance, I read a Defense Department release to a student audience which replied with laughter to information that the Vietcong were being supplied with weapons from China, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and North Vietnam. They knew it better, and informed me that virtually all the weapons in the hands of the Vietcong were American made and had been transferred to the guerrillas largely by deserters. How did they know? They read it in the newspapers or in propaganda materials. Thus, haphazard information was more acceptable than official U.S. data.

The U.S. Government was accustomed to having its word taken at face value. During World War II we stuck resolutely to a strategy of truth, even in our enemy broadcasts. It is almost incredible, the extent to which the credibility of the Government has been undermined. Much of this undermining results from poor teaching, bad press reporting, and hostile propaganda. But it is also true that the Government is not very effective in producing pertinent information and distributing it to those who are really interested in forming sober judgments. Nor should we forget that too many instances of

managed news and too many misleading statements on matters of national security have contributed to the present confusions. Since this subcommittee is interested in legislation, may I suggest that the informational gap that presently exists be carefully analyzed, and that the Government's information technique be remodeled in such a way that facts become known, rather than that releases be given to newspapers which print the story in truncated form, whereupon it is forgotten. There is little awareness of the fact that the academic youth requires adequate informational support.

Mr. SOURWINE. Dr. Possony, you speak of the less prevalent knowledge of the Communist Party now than in former years among the students and faculties of the universities.

Do you know of any college or university or high school in this country where students are taught not Communist theory, but the history of what communism has done to human beings in its 48 years of existence, and the story of its tactics of infiltrating, the united front, and so forth?

Mr. PossoNY. I think we have to split this question up, Mr. Sourwine.

Quite a few courses deal, to some extent at least, with strategy and tactics in a broad sense. But techniques like demoralization, infiltration, subversion, espionage, deception, united front operations, and the like, are rarely discussed, if ever. Professors are usually adept at campus politics but their knowledge of political warfare and the black arts of international conflict is fragmentary and naive. Exceptions do not change the general picture.

The inhumanity of communism as a subject is not being taught anywhere, to the best of my knowledge. This is one of the subjects which remains concealed, like sex during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Mr. SOURWINE. What are the arguments in behalf of letting Communists come in and conduct seminars, so to speak, to students that this is a necessary exposure of the students to one of the facts of life which is plausible on the surface, at least. But if you are going to have such an exposure, it is not important that the students know that they are being exposed and they have enough of a background to be able to relate what they see and hear to the background facts rather than taking what they hear as the truth as they hear it.?

Mr. PossoNY. I think most of them realize that they are being exposed to a line. They cannot miss this fact because the political speeches, performances, or spectacles-however you want to call this sort of production-are presented by many different people coming in which contradictory lines. The problem is one of plausibility, and the trouble is that the students lack much of the background required to sort out truth from falsehood.

While teaching of relevant background must be improved, I personally would not find appearances by Communist speakers particularly dangerous. I do not see any reason why we should abrogate the princple of freedom of speech which, though it can be abused, has benefited this country enormously. The crucial task is to render this freedom more meaningful. There is a question about who selects a speaker, and who administers the budget through which political speeches and debates are being financed. In terms of selection of speakers, I would prefer admitted Communists to concealed Com

munists. I would like to see that Socialists honestly describe themselves as Socialists, rather than, as they usually do as "liberals." There is a question of balance between various viewpoints (which frequently does not exist) and of objective reporting in the campus newpapers. Instead of concentracting on factual information, there often is a tendency to make a circus out of a poltical debate, and an inclination to invite proponents of extreme viewpoints, rather than spokesmen from the right and left of the broad middle group, which I think commands a 90- to 95-percent majority among the American people. There is nothing wrong with freedom of speech on the campus, including exposure to any viewpoint. But the political speech activities are often mismanaged, and it happens frequently that the left radical viewpoint enjoys administrative and organizational advantages.

There is no question in my mind that the true utility of freedom of speech is derived from solid factual knowledge, just as a free debate serves the main purpose of insuring that all relevent facts are being considered. It is useful for the students to see Mr. Gus Hall, and watch him squirm when he is asked a pointed question. But in terms of citizenship and real education, it would be more important if the student concluded from the facts he learned why he should resist communism. The argument he hears on the campus usually is couched in ideological terms. The Communist ideology is analyzed and criticized, and compared with other ideologies. The impression emerges that as corporations may be differently organized, so entire economies may be organized according to different concepts. Why get excited about this? Abstract teaching on a portion of the subject results in the opinion that idealological differences are too unimportant to warrant resistance, let alone military conflict. The concrete meaning of ideology in terms of human lives gets lost in this sort of academic exercise.

If you were to propose that we should have as part of a course a history of Communist terrorism, most probably the argument would be thrown against you that this would be an incident to cold war and

its escalation.

In my experience this sort of suggestion often is decided upon, not on the strength of whether a particular set of facts is important and has been presented accurately or inaccurately, or whether a thought is right or wrong, or whether a particular set of phenomena or events bears on national survival, but rather on the basis of political emotionalism. The achievements of the political and social sciences may be just as great as those of medicine and law, and their standards may be just as high; but I have the feeling that there would be a great deal of criticism if the medical schools ceased to teach about cancer and if the law schools ignored homicide.

I believe that the radicalization of American youth today has gone beyond the wildest expectation of the Communists. Perhaps this has happened for a reason which they did not anticipate and which they do not appreciate. I should say that this radicalization includes a sharp rebellion against the Communist tradition itself and against the discipline of the Communist Party. It is rebellion for rebellion's sake. I think the best way to characterize the phenomenon is to compare it to anarchism. You find many contemporary parallels to the

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history of the anarchist movement in southern and eastern Europe. I would guess that in due time the Communist Party will try to regain control over the radical effervescence. In the meantime, the Communist Party no longer is the vanguard, but the pace is being set by the "radicalinskis."

The number of radical ring leaders is estimated at 200-300 persons of about 27,000 Berkeley students. Some of them are Communist Party types and a few are dedicated to extraneous issues, but most of them seem to be Marxist-Leninists and fully dedicated to an American revolution. There are larger numbers of sympathizers, some 800, who spend much time agitating, who can be persuaded to participate in unrest, and who showed themselves willing to go to jail and face indictment. Finally, there are the spectators. Naturally, only part of the crowd that gathers in a rally to listen to a demagog is sympathetic. But if Berkeley and some other campuses are any guide, 10-15 percent of the student body seems to be willing to accept at least a part of the radical argumentation.

I am told by well-informed authorities that a considerable percentage of the hard-core leaders are second-generation Communists, or, as they also are called, red diaper babies. The effectiveness of Communist conditioning of young people is therefore in evidence. From many points of view the fact is astounding and must be perturbing to those who believe in the self-explanatory merits of our social system. The propaganda of the deed has been very successful, not necessarily in terms of activating students to enter and stay within the radical movement, but in terms of disaffecting them. The Communists know that they cannot activate a revolution in this country at this time. They have the more modest aim of paralyzing the U.S. Government, and this is about all they need in order to attain their current objectives. As a byproduct, the Government and other public authorities are being discredited, and a few public activities are dislocated. As another byproduct, the capability of the Communists to organize mass demonstrations and to put the authorities under pressure is growing perceptibly. The key point is this: the effectiveness of this propaganda in terms of paralyzing national will has been greater than is generally recognized.

Mr. SOURWINE. If I understand you correctly, you are talking of the importance of this movement and the student demonstrations as propaganda among students and young people generally against the policies of this Government.

Does this repetition of demonstrations also have its substantial propaganda effect elsewhere in the world as reported in other parts of the world?

Mr. PosSONY. Yes, sir; that is one of the points I wanted to bring up before.

Mr. SOURWINE. I am sorry if I anticipated you.

Mr. PossoNY. In true revolutionary tradition, the propaganda seed is being planted on the American campus.

It is a propaganda which impresses foreign nations, for the simple reason that the incidents are widely reported and that oversea students, for example, in Latin America, are rebellious by nature. The whole set of operations from sit-ins via teach-ins to big demonstrations "proves"-in quotation marks-that the U.S. institutions can

be disrupted, and that American communism is on the march, at long last. For the first time foreign radicals have the impression that an American revolution may not be entirely impossible, and naturally they underrate the stability of the overall American society. This underestimation of American cohesiveness and of our capability to absorb trouble may be the key factor that propels Communist strategists to fatal miscalculations.

Yet we must not make the opposite mistake and misevaluate revolutionary commitment, training, and action for simple student pranks. This is more than juvenile entertainment, granted that many demonstrators lack serious revolutionary intent.

In this connection, I would like to allude briefly to a delicate subject: We now have on American campuses considerable numbers of foreign students. I want to stress that I am entirely in favor of student exchange programs, and have had the pleasure of teaching many highly qualified foreign students. However, I also noted that some of those foreign students are taking part in radical political activities, and in some instances have been able to exert considerable influence. I am unsure how to evaluate this rather surprising development, but perhaps as a result of such foreign participation, the degree of radicalization appears larger than it really is.

This too is good old revolutionary practice: a small group is run in such a way that it gives the impression of being a real mass movement. To create the so-called bandwagon effect, the impression is being created systematically that a strong radical movement is arising. I am not particularly worried about the French or British getting excited about this development. Our allies know a great deal more about the United States than Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung. But the intelligence services in Hanoi and Peiping will overestimate the significance of these student demonstrations, and of the teach-ins, and of other types of unrest, and misconstrue the radical impact on U.S. strategy. They may assume that the students and professors will influence American foreign policy in the end, hence why stop the war? They will be reinforced in this assumption when they see delegates of the Government and the White House traveling to various campuses to explain the President's policy. It remains quite incomprehensive to Asians, for example, that the Government feels compelled to explain its policy to agitated professors and students, especially when the Government enjoys full congressional support. But the fact of life is that Communist planners will misinterpret this practice of democracy and conclude that since U.S. policymakers are worried and on the defensive, the chances of Communist victory look good. It is indeed a matter of endurance.

I think this is the overall strategic significance of the offensive psychological warfare to which the United States is being subjected. I do not think that the Communists could plan and time it as it comes out, but they are pushing on all sides, and their splits as well as spontaneous radicalism are helping them.

Mr. SOURWINE. You say that certain activities of the reports "prove" something and you put the word "prove" in quotes as you did.

Do you mean not really establish it, but induce those who hear about it in that particular way to believe it?