Former state Rep. Albert Canwell, 95: Knight of the Red Scare dies, controversial to the very end
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Mr. Canwell died Monday in Spokane at age 95, unapologetic to the end.
"I haven't any desire to be remembered or not be remembered," Mr. Canwell told The Seattle Times in a 1998 interview. "I came and left. I did the job the way I think I'd do it again."
While Mr. Canwell had supporters to the end, many historians contend he shattered the lives of people whose sympathies may have leaned toward the Communist Party but who posed no threat to national security.
"In the sense that Canwell believed there were spies for the communists in this country, you would be hard-pressed to find an historian now who would argue with his belief," said Richard Kirkendall, UW history professor emeritus. "But it would be equally hard to find an historian who would endorse Canwell in the targets he chose. These were not people involved in espionage or indoctrinating students. They were involved in intellectual and political activities, which presumably are protected by the First Amendment."
Former Seattle Times reporter Ed Guthman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for stories that cleared UW philosophy professor Mel Rader, whom the Canwell Committee falsely accused of having attended a communist training school in New York in 1938.
"Canwell was so sure that everything he knew was right and there was no possibility of him ever being wrong," said Guthman, now a senior lecturer of journalism at the University of Southern California. "And of course, he was wrong a lot."
Mr. Canwell, a first-year GOP legislator from Spokane, presided over five days of hearings in July 1948 at the old Seattle Armory, now Center House at Seattle Center. They were boisterous affairs where State Patrol officers, on Mr. Canwell's orders, tossed out anyone in the audience who spoke out. Officers kept watch outside on protesters who chanted "Canwell must go!"
Mr. Canwell subpoenaed 40 professors and 11 were called to appear before his committee. The hearings resulted in the UW Board of Regents in January 1949 firing three of the professors who refused to appear: Joe Butterworth, Ralph Gundlach and Herbert Phillips. Mr. Canwell cited the three for contempt, and none ever taught again. Butterworth, an English professor, became a regular at the U District's Blue Moon Tavern, a counterculture hangout, before he died in 1970, destitute.
In 1994, a full generation after the firings, then-UW President William Gerberding issued a public apology on behalf of the school, saying he wanted to "state clearly and unequivocally that the University of Washington was wrong to dismiss" the three professors.
"This was a dark day in our history, and we must (ensure) that it doesn't happen again," Gerberding said at the time.
Some thought Gerberding's mea culpa was too little, too late. Others were offended that he apologized at all. Some believe denouncements of the Red Scare are attempts to rewrite history, failing to recall an era when one politician announced during the 1940 Democratic National Convention: "There are 47 states and the Soviet of Washington."
After a series of stories appeared in the UW alumni magazine, Columns, in 1998 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the hearings, several alumni wrote letters disagreeing with the widely accepted notion that the UW regents' decision and Mr. Canwell's efforts were misguided.
"Gerberding should have never apologized," wrote a 1942 graduate who said psychology professor Gundlach chided him in class because he was an ROTC cadet. "His act betrayed those of us who fought and bled to preserve the liberties of our country, while people like Gundlach stabbed us in the back on the home front."
Mr. Canwell maintained to The Times in the 1998 interview that the function of the hearings was not to strip professors of their jobs.
"It wasn't the function of the Legislature to give and take jobs," he said. "I left it to the regents."
The Canwell committee also targeted Burton and Florence James, who founded the University District's Repertory Playhouse. Mr. Canwell slapped both with contempt citations for refusing to testify before the committee. The theater eventually closed, and James, widowed, moved to Canada.
"I can remember getting catcalled in the neighborhood," Jim Kinzel, the couple's grandson, told The Times in 1998. "I remember getting called a commie, not with the understanding what a communist was." Kinzel was 4 years old when Mr. Canwell subpoenaed his grandparents.
Inside the theater once run by the Jameses, actors are performing a docudrama recalling the Canwell Committee 50 years after the hearings. Written by UW associate drama professor Mark Jenkins, "All Powers Necessary and Convenient" depicts Mr. Canwell as a true believer.
"He believed he was on a righteous mission," Jenkins said. "But in the process, he also seemed to enjoy destroying people's careers, reputations and lives. He possessed a fervor beyond just getting the job done."
One Canwell Committee folly was exposed by The Seattle Times with Guthman's reporting that vindicated Rader.
Guthman dug up evidence that Rader could not have been at the communist training school in New York in 1938, finding a notation in a hotel guest registry that proved he instead had spent the summer at a resort in the Cascades. Mr. Canwell had denied the registry existed, even though the committee had seized it from the resort operator. He boldly challenged The Times to try to find it. Guthman did.
The newspaper presented its evidence to then-UW President Raymond Allen. When Mr. Canwell refused to meet with Allen, he cleared Rader.
Mr. Canwell nevertheless denounced the Times stories.
"Anybody who disagreed with him he would accuse of being a communist or a fellow traveler," said Guthman, who left The Times in 1961 to become a press aide to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In order to get the job, he had to pass an extensive FBI security clearance.
"You know, I often wondered if it ever penetrated into Canwell's mind that because I was able to get a job in the Justice Department that I wasn't a member of the Communist Party," Guthman said. "But I don't think that kind of reasoning would have ever entered into his mind."
Mr. Canwell's concern about the rise of communism in the U.S. dated back to his youth and gained steam when he was working as a newspaper reporter in Yakima in the early 1930s, Kirkendall said. As a deputy sheriff in Spokane, Mr. Canwell reveled in his role as sleuth, bragging that he had wiretapped several legislators.
"He was convinced that Washington was an important part of the Soviet Union's plan for an invasion of the United States," Kirkendall said. "Washington was important because of the (Grand) Coulee Dam, Boeing and its geographical location that he felt made it an early stop on the invasion pathway."
While Kirkendall and Jenkins say Mr. Canwell's anticommunist fervor did not appear to be rooted in his own political ambition, he nevertheless aggressively touted his work while running for re-election in 1948. He lost. Other attempts at elective office also were unsuccessful.
History may not treat Mr. Canwell kindly, but he believed he won in the end.
"Someone said you shouldn't hate your enemies, you should outlive them," he told The Times in 1998. "Well, I've done that quite effectively. I think they got what they deserved. Me."
Survivors include Mr. Canwell's children, Lynne Schulz, Christina Weaver, Marshall Canwell, Stephanie Benagiano, Jon Canwell and Geneve Meyer, 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Services were yesterday in Spokane.