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- MILESTONES, Page 67
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- DIED. John Abt, 87, veteran counsel for the U.S. Communist
- Party; in Hudson, N.Y. After working as a New Deal lawyer, Abt
- helped direct Henry Wallace's presidential bid on the
- Progressive Party ticket in 1948. That same year, ex-communist
- Whittaker Chambers fingered Abt and Alger Hiss as members of a
- communist apparatus within the Federal Government in the 1930s.
- Abt refused to answer many questions of the House Un-American
- Activities Committee. In 1965 he successfully argued before the
- Supreme Court that individual communists should be allowed to
- invoke the privilege against self-incrimination and to refuse
- to register with the Attorney General as required by the 1950
- McCarran Internal Security Act. In 1984 Abt finally "came out"
- as a communist.
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