ACitizen-News Hollywood, California Wednesday, August 30, 1950 - Page 13
Educator Testifies: Weinbaum's Criticism of Russia Told at Trial
A government witness in Dr. Sidney Weinbaum's perjury trial testified today that although the former California Institute of Technology scientist recruited him for the Communist Party, Dr. Weinbaum denied he was a member.
“Dr. Weinbaum said that if he had been a member of the Communist Party it might jeopardize his chances of going to Russia,” testified Dr. Gustave A. Albrecht, Chapman College physicist. “He said he had been offered a position at the University of Kiev.”
Even though Dr. Sidney Weinbaum was a sort of recruiting agent for the Communist Party, he occasionally was critical of Russia, Dr. Gustave A. Albrecht declared today at the perjury trial of the California Institute of Technology physicist.
Continuing his testimony in Dr. Weinbaum's trial, Dr. Albrecht, head of the Chapman College physics department, stated that the accused perjurer often admitted that “Russia's standard of living was not as high as that of the United States, that there was not as much liberty in Russia, and that the Soviet Union was young and far from perfect.”
Himself an admitted former communist, Dr. Albrecht reiterated that it was because of Dr. Weinbaum's influence that he joined the party in 1938.
It was their mutual love for chess and for a little-known Russian composer's music that brought him and Dr. Weinbaum together, the physicist said.
One thing led to another and eventually he joined a “discussion group” on communism and fascism and later went into the Communist Party, he said.
Most of the conversations between him and Dr. Weinbaum, Dr. Albrecht declared, were in respect to halting the spread of fascism. Dr. Weinbaum claimed that other nations should form an alliance to stop Hitler and other fascists, the Chapman College educator said.
Although he agreed with the communist theory of planned economy and government ownership of basic industries, Dr. Albrecht said he disagreed, even at the time he joined the party, with the communists' “Machiavellian tactics, that the end justifies the means.”
He quit the party, he said, when it became apparent to him that Russia “was not too interested in world peace.”
Dr. Weinbaum, 52, former Cal-tech jet-propulsion specialist, is on trial for denying that he once had been a member of the Communist Party.
U.S. Atty. Ernest A. Tolin, prosecuting the case, claims that Dr. Weinbaum, under the party name of Sydney Empson, carried Membership Card No. 61094 and was an organizer for Pasadena Professional Unit No. 122.
Dr. Louis G. Dunn, director of Caltech's secret jet-propulsion laboratory, testified yesterday that Dr. Weinbaum was connected with the laboratory from 1946 to 1949, and that he had access to classified information.
Other witnesses yesterday were Lt. Col. Francis M. Wray, who conducted the Army Industrial Employment Board hearing Sept. 23, 1949, at which Dr. Weinbaum allegedly committed the perjury, and Walter J. Murphy, former personnel administrator at the jet-propulsion laboratory.
Accused on four counts of perjury and two of fraud against the government, Dr. Weinbaum is on trial before Federal Judge Ben Harrison.
Richard Rosanoff was scheduled to testify this afternoon in the trial, and Dr. Jacob Dubnoff, who earlier had refused to testify, was in the courtroom this afternoon, waiting his turn to testify.
Weinbaum's Criticism Of Russia Told at Trial 30 Aug 1950, Wed Los Angeles Evening Citizen News (Hollywood, California) Newspapers.com
