Court Opinion

ID: 9651135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:08:47.934137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:30.566461
License: Public Domain

*939HEALY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
It was not charged nor is there evidence that the alien has advocated the forcible overthrow of the government of the United States. Nor was there charge or proof that he entertained views inimical to constitutional government, or that he at any time possessed or distributed literature subversive of the Constitution. The accusation is that he was a member of or was affiliated with an organization, namely, the Communist party, which did those things. This accusation the alien has countered with a flat and unequivocal denial. For those who cherish traditions of American justice it is permissible to believe that the alien should not be deprived of his freedom to remain here unless the truth of the accusation be fairly established. That it was not so proven must be patent, I think, to any candid person who takes the trouble to examine the record.
I am aware that in a proceeding of this nature the court is powerless to review or weigh the evidence in the ordinary sense. It is not my purpose to do more than consider its adequacy in the light of the whole record. I desire particularly to point out what seems to me to be the fact, namely, that the crucial finding in the case was arrived at in reliance upon incompetent evidence — evidence, moreover, received and considered in violation of a regulation of the Department designed to insure fair hearings and to safeguard the rights of aliens. If this be true, I think it follows that the alien was not accorded due process.
Bridges is a native of Australia. He came to the United States as a sailor in the year 1920.1 His entry was lawful and he had and has the legal right to remain unless he has transgressed some act of Congress authorizing his expulsion. Some years after his arrival he became a longshoreman in San Francisco where he was active in establishing the International Longshoremen’s Association (affiliated with the American Federation of Labor) as opposed to company-controlled unions of longshoremen then . functioning on the waterfront.2 The ILA, as is conceded, was a legitimate union organized to combat practices toward longshoremen which my associates in the majority appropriately characterize as “vicious and inhumane.” In the maritime strike of 1934 the union strove effectively to remedy these substandard practices.3 During the strike the alien was chairman of the joint strike committee of the participating unions. He became, so to speak, a storm-center of bitter industrial controversy, accumulating many enemies and earning the hostility of powerful interests.
For a period of several years following the strike certain volunteer organizations, notably the Portland police and a committee of the American Legion headed by one Knowles, embarked actively on a far-flung search for evidence upon which the alien might be deported. The Immigration Service, spurred on apparently by complaints of Knowles, itself made investigations and checked on information called to its attention by the private inquisitors: But in 1936 the Service reported its inability to discover grounds for deportation.
In 1938 a deportation warrant was issued on charges identical with those made in the later proceeding with which we are here directly concerned. Before the trial began the Supreme Court decided Kessler v. Strecker, 307 U.S. 22, 59 S.Ct. 694, 83 L.Ed. 1082, whereupon the warrant was amended to charge that the alien “both was and is” a member of or affiliated with the proscribed organization. The hearing on the charges, conducted before Dean Landis as trial examiner, continued almost un*940interruptedly over a period of eleven weeks, being finally closed in September 1939. In all forty-five days were occupied in the actual taking of testimony. The testimony covered 7,724 pages, exclusive of 274 exhibits. The examiner found that the evidence established neither the alien’s membership in nor his affiliation with the Communist party. The report and proposed findings were accepted by the Department and the warrant of arrest was cancelled.
There followed the statutory amendment of June 28, 1940, designed to avoid the holding in Kessler v. Strecker, supra. From the legislative history of the amendment it is evident that its proponents had the Bridges case specifically in mind.4 A second warrant was issued in February 1941 and a second hearing had, this time before presiding inspector Sears. This hearing continued over a period of two and a half months, the testimony adduced totaling 7,546 typewritten pages exclusive of 359 exhibits, 297 of which were introduced by the government. Much of the evidence taken at the prior hearing was read into the record, and the two inquiries largely covered the same territory. The trial eventuated as described in the majority opinion, the inspector’s findings of membership and affiliation being set aside by the Board of Immigration Appeals and thereafter reinstated by the Attorney General.
It is notable that the alien, in one fashion or another, had been under almost continuous investigation for a period of more than five years. Prior to and during the course of the second trial the Service had enlisted the powerful cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The country had been scoured for witnesses, every circumstance of Bridges’ active life had been subjected to scrutiny, and presumably no stone left unturned which might conceal evidence of the truth of the charges which the alien so flatly denied. The most significant feature of the inquiry, as it seems to me, is the paucity of the evidentiary product as contrasted with the magnitude of the effort expended in producing it.
The finding of Communist party membership presents the crux of the case. This finding rests upon two items of evidence. One of these is the testimony of the witness Lundeberg concerning his recollection of a remark said to have been made by the alien in a conversation occurring six years before. The other consists of-an unsworn and later disavowed oral statement of a man named O’Neil.
Before looking at the testimony of these two men I turn briefly to circumstances said to establish the alien’s "affiliation” with the Communist party as distinguished from membership therein. In the main there is no dispute concerning these circumstances. The bulk of them had long been known alike to the authorities and to the general public, and were freely admitted by the alien himself. Nearly all of them had been evaluated and discarded by inspector Landis and by the Department upon the first trial. They relate to the alien’s willingness to accept help from Communist quarters during the course of the longshoremen’s strike; to the fact that there were Communists among Bridges’ associates; to the alien’s public denunciation of “redbaiters” as no true friends of labor; to his participation, before and during the strike, in the editing of a mimeographed sheet called the Waterfront Worker in which was printed news relating to the strike and articles designed to inform readers of the economic ills from which the longshoremen suffered. It is not claimed that the contents of this partisan paper were suggestive of Communist doctrine; the significance of the circumstance is said to rest in the fact that the paper had been started by the Marine Workers Industrial Union (an allegedly Communist front organization), shortly abandoned by that group, and thereafter taken over by Bridges and his associates and issued from the former address. There is the related circumstance, heavily stressed by the Service, that Bridges’ union and the Marine Workers Industrial Union, both of which were participants in the maritime strike, rendered mutual assistance in the course of it. Hence the finding of affiliation with the MWIU.
The alien, who was nothing if not a forthright witness, made no effort to minimize or excuse the facts. He pointed merely to the reasons impelling his conduct. He would, he said, “probably do the *941same thing again.” His concern was not with the opinions of men, but to win the strike If a man was a good unionist he was for him, if a bad unionist he was against him. If it is permissible to compare small things with great, one may remark that the bonds which today unite our people with the Soviet Union afford a striking analogy to those which in 1934 linked Bridges with the MWIU. Surely no one would suggest that a liaison dictated by the necessities of a common struggle for survival make of our people or of our government “affiliates” of the Communist party.
On this aspect of the inquiry the problem is not one of conflicting inferences to be drawn from conceded facts. Involved, rather, is the question of the meaning of the term “affiliation” as employed in the statute. The question is one of law. Dean Landis pertinently observed that “affiliation” means more than sympathy and impliés a stronger bond than mere association. One must not here lose sight of the policy of the law. In condemning “affiliation” with a proscribed group it would seem that Congress had in mind a working arrangement of some sort designed, or at least having a substantial tendency, to further the subversive aims of the group. A temporary or occasional joinder of forces for the attainment of an end entirely legitimate in itself, as for example, the betterment of substandard conditions of workers in a given industry, can hardly be thought to fall within the legislative ban. I suppose that in every-day practice even Communists have their constructive moments.
For the most part the cases dealing with the term “affiliation” involve facts so much stronger than the present that they are of little aid to decision. Perhaps the fullest discussion of the term is found in United States ex rel. Kettunen v. Reimer, 2 Cir., 79 F.2d 315, 317. Said Judge Chase, who wrote the opinion: “In deciding this case, we shall not attempt to give a comprehensive definition of the word ‘affiliation’ as used in the statute. Very likely that is as impossible as it is now unnecessary. It is enough for present purposes to hold that it is not proved unless the alien is shown to have so conducted himself that he has brought about a status of mutual recognition that he may be relied on to co-operate with the Communist Party on a fairly permanent basis. He must be more than merely in sympathy with its aims or even willing to aid it in a casual intermittent way. Affiliation includes an element of dependability upon which the organization can rely which, though not equivalent to membership duty, does rest upon a course of conduct that could not be abruptly ended without giving at least reasonable cause for the charge of a breach of good faith. So tested we cannot agree that there was evidence to establish that this relator was affiliated with the Communist Party. His application for membership would indicate his then sympathy with its aims, but his reconsideration and failure to join shows his unwillingness to let his sympathy control his action, and there is no proof which shows any mutual recognition that co-operation was to be expected from him.”5
The Attorney General was not at pains to explain his understanding of the statutory term. In arriving at his finding of affiliation he appears to have relied indiscriminately on every circumstance which might be thought to spell sympathy or to be indicative of an association however temporary or in pursuit of ends however legitimate. His finding on this issue is without substantial evidentiary support.
I turn now to the evidence of party membership. Lundeberg testified that in a conversation had in 1935 at Bridges’ home the alien said “I am a Communist.” This wit*942ness was the head of a rival union. His attitude toward the alien was admittedly one of implacable hostility. His story, under persistent leading questions, grew more specific with each repetition of it. The four participating members of the Board of Immigration Appeals unanimously rejected it as unworthy of credence. The Board called attention to the avowed enmity of the witness, to the enlargement of his story while on the stand under the prompting of government counsel, • to his incurable evasiveness under cross-examination, to the man’s prior inconsistent statements made under solemn circumstances and more than once repeated. On the other hand the presiding inspector and the Attorney General' thought Lundeberg a credible witness. As a matter of course, the court, whatever its own view, is not at liberty to choose between the conflicting appraisals of credibility by the officials charged with the responsibility of determining the facts. I point to the disagreement as disclosing how closely the proof here approaches if it does not cross the borderline of inadequacy.
The remaining evidence on the point is that of O’Neil, a man whom the Board of Appeals, not without ample warrant, characterized as “a theatrical, sensation-loving braggart.” O’Neil is reported as having said to representatives of the Service, in the course of their investigations, that in 1937 he entered Bridges’ office in the middle of an afternoon and found the alien sitting at his desk openly posting stamps representative of Communist party dues. The statement to this effect, assuming it to have been made, was not given under oath, was not signed, nor does any effort appear to have been made to obtain the man’s oath or signature. When called by the Service and sworn O’Neil denied having said the things attributed to him. Further, he categorically denied that the incident had ever occurred and declared that he had no information as to Bridges’ membership in the Communist party. The alleged statement was thereupon offered and received in evidence over the alien’s objection. It was accepted and relied upon by the presiding inspector and by the Attorney General as affording affirmative proof of party membership. The Board of Appeals thought the statement inadmissible for any purpose other than impeachment. That body was doubtful even of its admissibility for impeachment purposes, and I think properly so since the government was obviously not surprised and O’Neil had given no testimony damaging to the government’s case. There was no point in impeaching him.
The field of use of ex parte statements in deportation proceedings is carefully delimited by Departmental rules. Such statements, when their possible use as evidence is contemplated, are required by the rules to be taken under oath or affirmation, “recorded” (i. e. reduced to writing), and signed by the relator.6 These precautionary requirements are elementary and may be said to prescribe the minimum of fairness.7
The rules, adopted as they were under authority and direction of law, are part and parcel of the regulations “governing the arrest and deportation of aliens.”8 They were disregarded here. The Attorney General so concedes in his decision. He excused their violation on the specious plea that they “were not called to the attention of the presiding inspector.” However, they were called to the Attorney General’s attention. One is left to wonder on what ground that high official condoned his own disregard of them. Upon him rested the inescapable responsibility of accepting or rejecting the evidence, as of ordering the deportation. The rules were obligatory on him if on anybody. To toss them aside for reasons deemed expedient in a particular case amounts to the substitution of a government of men for a government of law. There are numerous and persuasive decisions to the effect that the disregard by *943officials of departmental rules on which the rights of aliens depend amounts to a denial of due process.9 I have found no authorities to the contrary.10
Apart from non-observance of the regulations, the situation is no better. Of course the mere reception of incompetent evidence does not invalidate a hearing; but error in reliance upon such evidence may, in appropriate circumstances, go to the substance of a fair trial.11 The real inquiry is whether the practice was “such as might have led to a denial of justice.”12 In this instance the remaining showing of party membership was of so flimsy a character as to lead the Appeals Board to reject it entirely. The Attorney General’s acceptance of the O’Neil hearsay as probative evidence might easily have served to tip the scale. I am satisfied it did so.
To be sure, the ordinary rules relating to the reception of evidence are not generally applied in administrative hearings. The reasons underlying this departure from judicial practice have often been stated.13 Administrative proceedings are in the main informal, are frequently not conducted with the aid of counsel or heard by men trained in the law, and of necessity they are often of a summary nature. None of these reasons obtained in this instance. The hearing was conducted before a trained judge, and both the Service and the alien were represented by experienced counsel. There was ample time and opportunity to observe the precautions thought by the courts to be essential to a fair trial. Moreover, the case, unlike the mine run of administrative hearings, was one in which the liberty of a human being was at stake. Surely it presented an occasion where “the more liberal the practice in admitting testimony, the more imperative the obligation to preserve the essential rules of evidence by which rights are asserted or defended.” 14
As applied to the situation here presented, arguments predicated on the “protective weapon” of cross-examination are without validity. A witness who denies ever having made an alleged prior statement and who denies all knowledge of the facts purportedly then stated offers no target against which the weapon may be employed. The infirmity of the O’Neil hearsay cuts across all rules. No amount of philosophizing can serve to make a silk purse out of this obvious sow’s ear. Rather than deport the alien on evidence which would be condemned and proscribed without hesitation by any American court it would seem a more forthright procedure to do what was proposed in the first place, deport him by legislative resolution “not*944withstanding the provisions of any other law.”
I think the judgment should be reversed with directions to grant the petition.
I am authorized to say that Judge GARRECHT agrees with this opinion.

 In 1921 he filed first papers for naturalization. Application for final papers made in 1928 was denied on the ground that the 7-year period for filing had elapsed. He filed first papers again in 1928, but these were again permitted to lapse. He filed first papers for the third time in 1936 and this application was still pending at the time of the trial.

 Bridges was president of this union from 1934 to 1937, when it became affiliated with the CIO, changing its name to International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union. Bridges was then elected president of the Pacific Coast district for the CIO and apparently still occupies this post.

 The evils giving rise to the strike are described in detail by Presiding Inspector Sears who states that it was the company-controlled, or “Blue-Book Unions,” which enabled the employers to perpetuate the practices described. “These company unions,” said Inspector Sears, “were in existence on the waterfront until October, 1933, when they were forced out of existence by the newly revived and militant ILA Union, of which Bridges became an early member.”

 A private bill for the deportation' of Bridges, “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” actually passed the House. It was rejected in the Senate after a protest by Attorney General Jackson, now a member of the supreme bench. S.Rep. No. 2031, 76th Gong., 3rd Sess.

 In United States ex rel. Yokinen v. Commissioner, 2 Cir., 57 F.2d 707, 708, Judge Augustus Hand said: “It is enough that the alien Yokinen, by pledging himself to perform certain tasks prescribed by the Communist Party in order to secure reinstatement, must be regarded as affiliated with it.” And in an unreported opinion, Tolsky v. Wilson (S.D.N.Y.), June 22, 1920, Judge Learned Hand said: “As to affiliation the case is not so clear, and depends upon how one defines that word. I take it to mean a relation of cooperation between the members of two or more organizations. Perhaps it may also include an irregular connection of a single individual with the society, not amounting to membership. However this may be, it seems to me pretty dear that it involves a mutual recognition of ’ permanent cooperation between the organization and the person affiliated and not a spasmodic or casual assistance. Mere sympathy with the aims of the society, even accompanied by efforts to further its aims, does not fall within that word.”

 Regulations § 150.1 [c], [d]; § 150.6 m.

 The Board of Appeals, in commenting on the purpose of the rules, said: “Here a written statement at the Schofield interview would have guarded against mistake in hearing, memory or transition. As to both statements, the oath and signature of the maker would at least have shown O’Neil to be, on two occasions, willing to pin himself down, and to do so under oath, thus providing the safeguard of fear of perjury prosecution; and, contrariwise, had he been asked to swear and sign and refused, the fact of his unwillingness, on two occasions, so to pin himself down, would have been of no small weight in evaluating the truth of the statements made.”

 Fed.Reg. January 4, 1941, p. 68. The revised regulations appear to have been the outgrowth of much study and experience. Consult report of the Committee on Administrative Procedure, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Dept. of Labor, May 1940.

 Consult particularly Sibray v. United States ex rel. Plichta, 3 Cir., 1922, 282 F. 795 (violation of Rule 5[b] relating to the reading to the alien of the evidence on which the warrant was based); United States ex rel. Chin Fook Wah v. Dunton, D.C., 288 F. 959, decision by Judge Augustus Hand (relating to Rule 3 providing that the alien might have a friend or relative present during the hearing); Mah Shee v. White, 9 Cir., 242 F. 868 (relating to Rule 5[e] governing the alien’s right to forward new evidence to the Secretary along with the record); Ex parte Radivoeff, D.C., 278 F. 227 (violation of Rule 22 relating to examination by the alien of evidence on which warrant was issued). Consult, also, Whitfield v. Hanges, 8 Cir., 222 F. 745, opinion by Judge Sanborn.

 Cf. United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U.S. 149, 155, 44 S.Ct. 54, 68 L.Ed. 221; Tisi v. Tod, 264 U.S. 131, 134, 44 S.Ct. 260, 68 L.Ed. 590. Seif v. Nagle, 9 Cir., 14 F.2d 416, cannot fairly be thought contra.

 The majority opinion quotes extensively from the opinion of Justice Brandeis in Tisi v. Tod, 264 U.S. 131, 44 S.Ct. 260, 261, 68 L.Ed. 590. Omitted, however, from the quotation is the following significant passage which is the essence of the decision: “But here no hasty, arbitrary, or unfair action on the part of any official, or any abuse of discretion, is shown. There is no claim that the lack of legal evidence of knowledge was manifest, or that the finding was made in willful disregard of the evidence to the contrary, or that settled rules of evidence were ignored. The procedure prescribed by the rules of the department appears to have been followed in every respect, and the legality of that prescribed is not questioned.”

 Cf. language of Justice Brandeis in United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U.S. 149, 157, 44 S.Ct. 54, 57, 68 L.Ed. 221.

 1 Wigmore on Evidence, 3rd Ed. 1940, § 4(a), (b); Landis, Crucial Issues in Administrative Law, 53 Harvard Law Review 1077 (1940); Davis, An Approach to Problems of Evidence in the Administrative Process, 55 Harvard Law Review 364 (1942).

 Interstate Commerce Commission v. Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co., 227 U.S. 88, 93, 33 S.Ct. 185, 187, 57 L.Ed. 431.