The canwell files

On January 22, , Dr. Raymond B. Allen, University of Washington President, dismisses three University of Washington professors for suspected associations with Communists. The committee was charged with investigating groups and individuals that were suspected of being Communists or members of other subversive groups. The University of Washington was one of the organizations investigated. The investigation took place in context of a national post-World War II "Red Scare" in which, for the second time since the Bolshevik revolution of , Communists were thought to have infiltrated and endangered American institutions.

The first took place in The United States House Un-American Activities Committee, inactive during the war, began its investigations, paving the way for the Hollywood blacklist. A similar process in the U. Senate unfolded under the leadership of Sen.

Joseph McCarthy. The First Amendment reads: "Congress must not interfere with freedom of religion, speech or press, assembly, and petition.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Thomas H. Bienz, a Spokane Democrat on the state Committee on Un-American Activities, stated, "There are probably not less than on the faculty who are Communists or sympathizers with the Communist party" Spokesman-Review.

The committee, also called the Canwell Committee after its chairman, Albert Canwell, considered having 40 University of Washington faculty members subpoenaed for questioning. He died, unrepentant and unapologetic, in Spokane in His mother, Christina, was a nurse. The Canwell family lived on Spokane's north side for a time, and then moved to a small farm in the hills just north of Spokane. His first appearance in the news came on June 2, , when a playmate found his father's revolver and accidentally shot young Albert, 4, in the arm.

His mother rushed him to an emergency clinic where he waited "without a whimper" to have his wound dressed "Wee Lad". He attended a Seventh Day Adventist school in Spokane.

He had aspirations to be a journalist or writer -- he particularly admired Jack London. He never finished high school or attended college. Instead, as a teenager he went on the road to work the fields and orchards of Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona. He followed the harvests every year until about , returning to work various jobs in Spokane in between. His jobs took him to places such as San Francisco, where he met many other itinerant workers and was exposed to the turbulent labor politics of the era.

He remembered one incident when he was riding the rails from Kennewick to Spokane and was confronted by a couple of Wobblies members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World or I. That's all I saw of them. That was one of my experiences with labor-organizing" Canwell, p. He worked for a time in a Spokane bookstore, which, as an aspiring writer, he especially enjoyed.

Then he spent some time traveling Idaho and Montana as a book salesman, peddling Seventh Day Adventists books from farmhouse to farmhouse. Around , he and some friends decided to start a small "shopper" a newspaper devoted mostly to classified ads in Yakima.

This was not the kind of newspaper job he would have preferred -- he would have liked a job as a reporter at a Seattle daily -- but he considered it an entryway into journalism. Around this time, he began his lifelong quest to monitor radical, communist activity, which he said was very intense in Seattle at the time. Canwell's shopper was printed at a job shop in Ballard -- and so was the Communist Party's local paper. Canwell would observe them quietly as they would put together their paper.

He came to believe that communism was a vital peril to America. He met another young journalist, Ashley Holden, who was doing undercover investigations of the Communist Party in Seattle and Canwell soon realized he had a knack for that work as well. He once attended a big meeting in Seattle led by Harry Bridges , the controversial and charismatic president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. I didn't look like all these longshoremen.

They let me get all the way into the place and then a couple of them picked me up and danced me to the front door and threw me out. That gave me a great interest in Harry Bridges. At the time, I believe I thought, 'Well. I'll get you, you so-and-so, someday'" Canwell, p. By and , Canwell was making trips to Chicago and Detroit, partly in his new job shuttling cars cross country for a broker, and partly for his investigations into labor and radical politics.

He received press credentials as a "roving reporter" from Hearst's International News service and sold some stories about sit-down strikes in the automotive industry. He called himself a newspaperman and believed he had found a niche. Canwell was not anti-union -- he believed that labor organization was a good thing and that "we'd be in a heck of a mess without it, because mankind is essentially greedy and he'll exploit his fellow man.

He acquired a Speed Graphic camera and he interviewed and photographed prominent labor leaders, including John L. Lewis of the CIO. Yet he had trouble finding a ready market for his writing and returned to Spokane in He became convinced it was fertile ground for his calling. The Pacific Northwest, he said, "was the basic launching operation of the world Communist movement" Canwell, p.

He believed that Communists were especially interested in the Northwest because it was full of vital strategic targets for a Communist takeover, such as The Boeing Co.

Canwell was certainly not alone in thinking that Washington was a hotbed of Communist activity. Because of his photography skills, he got a job in with the Spokane County Sheriff's Office's Identification Bureau. He took mug shots of suspects and sometimes photographed crime scenes. He kept his county job for most of the World War II years. He was never called up for service. By this time, he had become a married man. He married Marsinah Marshall on July 3, They would eventually have six children.

During his time with the sheriff's office, he continued doing his investigations into what he considered radical groups. He began keeping "files of a very extensive nature" on radical publications and radical activists. He claimed to have worked with the FBI on its anti-communist activities. He also claimed to have worked with the anti-subversive Red Squad.

He said he developed his own informants in the radical world Canwell, p. He believed that communists had made serious inroads into the railroad shops in Spokane and Hillyard. Canwell even came to believe that Spokane was also "unfortunate enough" to have Communists of "world importance" in its midst Canwell, p. By the mids he became disillusioned with his work at the sheriff's office.

His old friend Ashley Holden, now the political editor of The Spokesman-Review , and a staunch anti-communist, talked him into trying politics. Holden told him that running for the state legislature would be one way to "do something" about the Communist threat Canwell, p. Canwell dismissed the idea at first, since he was "a Republican living in a strong Democratic district," the Fifth legislative district Canwell, p.

But then Holden wrote a column about Canwell's anti-communist zeal and the Republican leadership asked him if he would run. He decided to give it a try.

He resigned from the sheriff's office and ran a race in fall of against another newcomer, Democrat Frank Martin, the son of the former Washington governor Clarence D. Martin That year they 'threw all the bums out. Canwell defeated Martin by 3, votes to 3, on November 5, The Republican landslide also changed the House from majority Democrat to majority Republican for the first time in 12 years.

By his own account, freshman Canwell was not a key legislative player at first. As the legislative session proceeded, one issue of particular interest to Canwell began to bubble up: The supposed Communist indoctrination in state colleges and universities.

Canwell and some of his fellow legislators felt that something should be done about this and other Communist threats, so in March Canwell introduced House Concurrent Resolution No. Its purpose: "To investigate the activities of groups and organizations whose membership includes persons who are Communists, or any other organization known or suspected to be dominated or controlled by a foreign power" Wick. It was patterned after a similar committee then making headlines in the U. House of Representatives and a state committee in California.

It passed both houses without much fanfare. It authorized the Speaker of the House to appoint a chairman. Al Canwell was duly appointed. The committee had seven members, seven investigators, and four clerical workers. For the first six months, the committee gathered information from investigators, and "listening to wire and tape recordings" Canwell, p.

It blamed high turnover and inexperienced workers at Wellness Connection for the lower than expected yields. But Wellness Connection countered in its complaint, saying, among other things, that CanWell supplied faulty equipment, and did not fully support and update it when the state of Maine implemented new requirements for marijuana extraction facilities, as the contract required.

Subscribe to Our RSS. As we dig deeper into this one we can see that it is going to run and run. CanwellComplaint Wellness Connection, which filed the lawsuit as Northeast Patients Group, claimed that CanWell did not perform extractions up to contract expectations.