Senate Report 1167: return of property held by the crime committee (1952)

The printed title is “Providing for the return to their owners of certain property loaned to or subpenaed by the so-called Special Crime Committee.” It is Senate Report No. 1167, 82d Congress, 2d Session, ordered printed February 14 (legislative day, January 10), 1952, submitted by Mr. Johnson of Colorado from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce to accompany S. Res. 271. This is not a report of the Kefauver Committee itself; it is the closing administrative record of that committee’s papers.

The report states that “On September 1, 1951, the Special Committee To Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce ceased to exist,” and that under Senate Resolution 129 all of its files, papers and documents were ordered transferred to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Among those papers were documents “subpenaed by, or loaned to” the crime committee by private individuals, corporations and local governmental bodies, and their owners had asked for them back. The report recommends that Senate Resolution 271, as amended, be adopted.

Its examples are a Baltimore certified public accountant’s work sheets, an individual’s bank statements and checks, and the city of Cleveland’s original police reports. A memorandum by the Senate’s Assistant Legislative Counsel on the owners’ right to the return of their documents is printed at the end of the report. The report names no witness in the committee’s hearings.