Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his communist political beliefs were exposed, and he was accused of manipulating the Board's policies to favor his own political leanings. He was also investigated several times in the late 1940s and 1950s for being a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. No evidence of espionage was ever found.
Background
Nathan R. Witt was born February 11, 1903, into a Jewish family on the Lower East Side of New York City.Strategy and Tactics of World Communism ... , p. 796.Jowitt and Jowitt, p. 46. His father changed the family name to Witt shortly after his birth.Irons, p. 125. His college education was interrupted several times by the need to earn a living: he drove a taxi cab. In 1927, he graduated from New York University (NYU). It was at NYU's Washington Square College that he met Lee Pressman.
Angered by what he perceived as the judicial mistreatment and illegal execution of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, he drove a taxi cab for two years to earn money for law school.Auerbach, p. 183. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1932, or 1933, specializing in labor law. He attended Harvard shortly after Alger Hiss had left the school, and he was a friend of Donald Hiss, a Harvard Law classmate and Alger Hiss's younger brother.
Career
Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
Witt joined the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in July 1933.Burnham, p. 104. His friend, Lee Pressman, recommended him for the job.Gall, p. 40. According to accusers Whittaker Chambers, Lee Pressman, and Elizabeth Bentley, Witt—along with John Abt, Charles Kramer, Alger Hiss, and Nathaniel Weyl, among others—were part of the so-called "Ware group," a clandestine Communist Party USA group formed by AAA economist Harold Ware.Haynes and Klehr, p. 63. Chambers also alleged that Witt became leader of the group after Ware died in an automobile accident in August 1935. Pressman said the men merely met to study and discuss left-wing political theory, but Chambers described it as a Soviet-controlled cell dedicated to committing espionage. Historian David M. Kennedy, assessing a half-century's evidence about the case, concurred with Pressman's assessment in 2001.Kennedy, p. 211.
There is widespread disagreement as to whether Witt was actually a Communist Party member or not. Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. observed that Chambers never provided evidence of Witt's party membership, just uncorroborated accusation.Schlesinger, p. 235-236. Labor historian Leon Fink agrees.Fink, p. 220. Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, however, concluded that Witt "probably" was both a member of the Communist Party and held communist ideals,Lichtenstein, p. 33. but historian Ronald Schatz has asserted that Witt's communist sympathies did "not necessarily" mean Party membership.Schatz, p. 90.
Witt never hid his communism and made it well known to others from his earliest days in the government. Chambers told Adolf A. Berle, then Assistant Secretary of State, about Witt's involvement in the "Ware group" in 1939. Berle later said that "to be blunt about it, Mr. Witt's statements and sympathies were so well known that what Mr. Chambers had said added nothing to anything that wasn't public knowledge at the time." William S. Leiserson, an NLRB Board member, knew Witt held communist beliefs almost from the first days after Leiserson joined the Board.Dubofsky, p. 156. There is general agreement among professional historians that Witt's communist views did not affect his work and did not change the outcome of any policy choices made by government agencies.Irons, p. xii.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
Witt joined the legal staff of the "first" National Labor Relations Board in February 1934. The National Labor Relations Act became law in June 1935, creating the "second" (permanent) NLRB. Witt was named the NLRB's assistant chief counsel ("assistant general counsel") in December 1935."Named Labor Board Aides," New York Times, December 4, 1935. He exerted a great deal of influence in the Review Section, the division of the NLRB which reviewed transcripts of NLRB hearings in labor disputes, revised transcripts to emphasize points of law, reviewed draft decisions of examiners for adherence to NLRB policy and law, and made oral reports to the three members of the Board. He chose (with the approval of the Board) the attorneys who staffed the Review Section, assigned cases to attorneys, and checked the drafts of Board decisions for technical accuracy. Witt recommended Pressman for a job as a trial examiner at the NLRB in 1936.
Witt was named Secretary (the highest non-appointed bureaucratic office—or "the top administrative officer") of the Board in October (or November) 1937. The enormous workload and tremendous expansion in the number of personnel at the NLRB made Witt the agency's most powerful individual. He attended Board meetings, took Board minutes, prepared and served Board decisions ordering union organizing elections, granted and denied requests for oral testimony from employers, oversaw each Board member's appointments and administered the office and oversaw the staff of 250. He was the Board's chief liaison to Congress and oversaw preparation and submission of the Board's budget. He was the sole supervisor of the Board's 22 regional offices, overseeing the roughly 225 personnel in the field. He alone exercised the authority to authorize a hearing in the case of unfair labor practice (ULP) or election cases, and he alone reported on these cases (in oral, not written) fashion to the Board. Almost all correspondence, telephone contact, and telegraph contact between the regional offices and the Board passed through his office first, and his office collected nearly all the information coming in from the field regarding elections, ULPs, settlements, strikes, enforcement issues, informational inquiries, and the development of new policies.
Witt's communism was the cause of much dispute within the NLRB and eventually led to his resignation as Board Secretary. The NLRB was under intense legal, media, congressional, and public criticism in 1938 and 1939 for what many people saw as overreaching.
In July 1939, the House of Representatives created the Special Committee to Investigate the National Labor Relations Board (popularly known as the "Smith Committee" after its chairman, conservative Democratic Rep. Howard W. Smith—a "powerful, arch-segregationist and anti-Communist".) to investigate the NLRB. The Smith Committee received testimony from hundreds of witnesses, conducted a nationwide survey regarding the impact of the NLRB, and questioned NLRB officials at length about the agency's alleged anti-business and anti-American Federation of Labor/pro-Congress of Industrial Organizations biases.
From December 1939 to February 1940, the committee "probed Witt's handling of labor cases, strikes, and controversies." The committee weakened Witt in its accusation that he "hewed" to the Communist Party line. In response, Witt wrote to the committee that "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party, a 'Communist sympathizer,' or one who 'hews to the Communist Party line'."
In December 1939, board member Leiserson testified that he believed Witt held too much power at the NLRB, that Witt had influenced the NLRB's decisions in favor of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and that Witt's far-left views were unacceptable."Leiserson in Feud," New York Times, December 12, 1939; "Green Says Inquiry Shows NLRB Biased," New York Times, December 21, 1939. Leiserson testified that he had repeatedly voiced his concerns to board chairman J. Warren Madden, but that Madden and board member Edwin S. Smith had allied to prevent any attempt to rein in or fire Witt. Later testimony revealed that an internal NLRB study had backed Leiseron and that Madden and Smith had suppressed it,Stark, "Methods of NLRB Indicated in Study Made By Own Men," New York Times, March 22, 1940. and that Witt had assisted Madden in secretly building public and expert support for the NLRB (expending federal funds in lobbying against Congress).Stark, "Madden Defends NLRB on Lobbying," New York Times, February 9, 1940; Stark, "NLRB Rounded Up List of Witnesses to Back Labor Act," New York Times, February 21, 1940. Madden attempted to defend Witt.Barkley, "Madden Declares NLRB Record Best and Defends Witt," New York Times, February 2, 1940.
By September 1940, the Smith Committee was accusing other NLRB employees, such as chief economist David J. Saposs, of harboring communist ideas."Links Saposs, Brooks to NLRB Red Talk," New York Times, September 28, 1940. It was clear that neither Madden nor Witt could continue at the NLRB much longer. President Franklin D. Roosevelt named University of Chicago economics professor Harry A. Millis to be the new chairman of the NLRB in November 1940, after Madden's term on the Board expired in August.Hurd, "Roosevelt Names Dr. Millis to NLRB, Replacing Madden," New York Times, November 16, 1940.
Witt resigned from the NLRB on November 18, 1940, although his resignation was not accepted until after Millis was sworn in on November 27."Split in Two-Man Board Balks NLRB Resignation," New York Times, November 21, 1940; "Millis Is Sworn In As NLRB Chairman," New York Times, November 28, 1940. He ended his work at the Board on December 10."Witt Ends Work With NLRB," New York Times, December 12, 1940. Later that month, Witt joined Board member Edwin S. Smith, former Board associate general counsel Thomas I. Emerson, and four other NLRB attorneys in denying Smith Committee testimony that they were members of the Communist Party or had followed the CPUSA line in their work."NLRB Employees Deny Any Communist Ties," New York Times, December 24, 1940.
Witt & Cammer
In 1941, after leaving the NLRB, Witt joined with Harold I. Cammer (founder of the National Lawyers Guild) to form a law partnership of Witt & Cammer in New York City. (On November 24, 1947, the address for "Witt & Cammer, Esqs." was 9 East 40th Street, New York, NY.) New clients for Witt & Cammer included the CIO (in New York), other labor organizations, and left-wing unions like the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (known as "Mine-Mill"). In 1941, Witt represented the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (or SWOC, later, the United Steel Workers of America).