[Marxism] William A. Price

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, May 2, 2009
William A. Price, Journalist Who Defied Senate Panel, Dies at 94
By WILLIAM GRIMES

William A. Price, a reporter for The Daily News who took the unusual 
step of invoking the First Amendment, rather than the Fifth, when 
refusing to answer questions before a Senate panel in 1956 about his 
possible ties to the Communist Party, and who later won a court judgment 
against the F.B.I. for wiretapping his phone in the 1970s, died on 
Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 94.

The death was confirmed by his nephew G. Jefferson Price III.

On Jan. 5, 1956, Mr. Price appeared before the Senate Internal Security 
Subcommittee, which was investigating allegations that Communists had 
infiltrated newspapers, radio and television. Also appearing before the 
subcommittee that day were Otto Albertson, a proofreader for The New 
York Times; Richard O. Boyer, a contributor to The New Yorker; and Dan 
Mahoney, a rewrite man for The Daily Mirror.

All three declined to answer any questions and invoked the Fifth 
Amendment to the Constitution, which protects a witness against 
self-incrimination. Mr. Price, in a move that seemed to confound the 
subcommittee, refused to take the Fifth. Instead, invoking the First 
Amendment’s protection of free speech and a free press, he told the 
subcommittee that it did not have jurisdiction to inquire into his 
political beliefs.

Members of the subcommittee wanted to know whether he had been a member 
of the Communist Party and, more specifically, whether he had used the 
plane he owned to fly a courier for the Communist International, the 
organization also known as Comintern, to Latin America.

His attempt to invoke the First Amendment was overruled repeatedly by 
Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi, the chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. Price was later indicted for contempt of Congress, along with Alden 
Whitman and Robert Shelton, who were then copy editors at The Times (Mr. 
Whitman became a noted obituary writer and Mr. Shelton a music critic at 
the paper); Seymour Peck, a Sunday editor at The Times who was later its 
culture editor; Herman Liveright, a former program director at WDSU 
television in New Orleans; and Mary Knowles, a librarian in Plymouth 
Meeting, Mass. The others had appeared before the subcommittee on 
separate occasions.

Mr. Price was found guilty, fined $500 and sentenced to three months in 
jail.

His difficulties with the government did not end there. In April 1972, 
the F.B.I. placed a wiretap on Mr. Price’s home telephone on the 
suspicion that he might be in contact with fugitive members of the 
Weather Underground. Five years later, he filed suit against the agents 
who carried out the wiretaps, and in 1981 the Justice Department awarded 
him, and others, $10,000 in damages for the violation of their civil rights.

William Addison Price grew up in Montclair, N.J., and earned a 
bachelor’s degree from Principia College in Elsah, Ill. He started out 
in the newspaper business as a part-time feature writer for The Santa 
Paula Chronicle in California and a sports reporter for The Springfield 
Sun in New Jersey. In 1940 he joined The Daily News as a copy boy.

During World War II he flew air-rescue operations in the Aleutian 
Islands, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He emerged from the war a 
committed socialist. Mr. Price returned to The Daily News, where he was 
a reporter on the police beat. He was also pilot of the newspaper’s 
airplane, which was used to take aerial photographs. Later, he was 
assigned to cover the fledgling United Nations.

He displeased his superiors by working with a team of newspaper 
reporters investigating the death of his cousin, George Polk, who was 
murdered in Greece in 1948 while pursuing stories unfavorable to the 
right-wing government, which was supported by the United States.

His career at The Daily News came to an abrupt end the day he appeared 
before Senator Eastland’s subcommittee. Richard Clarke, the executive 
editor of The Daily News, informed him in a telegram that his conduct 
had “destroyed” his “usefulness to The News” and that he was fired.

Mr. Price’s conviction, and those of seven others, were set aside by the 
Supreme Court in 1962 on the narrow ground that the subcommittee had not 
specified the subject of its inquiry. He was re-indicted and found 
guilty, and sentenced to 10 days’ probation.

Mr. Price drove a bus and did carpentry work after losing his job, but 
went on to write for The National Guardian, a left-wing newspaper, for 
which he covered social issues in New York City and the civil rights 
movement in the South. Beginning in the 1970s, he worked with community 
organizations on the Upper West Side to defend tenants’ rights and stop 
the urban renewal plans of the city’s housing authority.

He is survived by two brothers, George J. Price of Miami and Henry Price 
of Brooklyn.