Excerpt from Annual Report of the Committee on Un-American Activities for the Year 1953 This foreword is prepared to furnish an outline for the report, and the matters referred to therein are more fully elaborated upon in other sections of the report. During 1953, the committee held hearings in Washington, D. C.; Los Angeles, Calif; New York City; Albany, N. Y.; Columbus, Ohio; Lansing, Mich; Philadelphia, Pa.; and San Francisco, Calif. The committee held 154 sessions, which total excludes business meetings. A total of 280 witnesses were heard in open and executive sessions. A greater number of witnesses heard during 1953 cooperated with the committee in furnishing valuable information relative to their personal knowledge of subversive activities. However, as has been the case in former years, a majority of the witnesses subpenaed refused to affirm or deny their alleged membership in the Communist Party or to answer any questions relative to their purported activities in or on behalf of the conspiracy. In almost all cases, noncooperative witnesses invoked the provision of the fifth amendment, claiming that answers to the questions might tend to incriminate them. In no instance of which the committee has knowledge has a witness appearing before and cooperating with the committee relative to his past membership or association with subversive organizations been subsequently prosecuted because of his testimony. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.