In the summer of 1948, with Cold War tensions rising, a young state legislator from Spokane, Washington, named Albert Canwell set out to combat the “communist menace” through a state version of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. University of Washington professor Melvin Rader was a victim of the Canwell Committee’s rush to judgment, but he fought back. False Witness tells of his struggle to clear his name. It is a testament of personal courage in the face of mass hysteria and a cautionary example of how basic freedoms can rapidly erode when the powers of the state are allowed to serve a rigid ideological agenda.

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In the summer of 1948, with Cold War tensions rising, a young state legislator front Spokane, Washington, named Albert Canwell set out to combat the "communist menace" through a state version of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. University of Washington professor Melvin Rader was a victim of the Canwell Committee's rush to judgment, but he fought back. False Witness tells of his struggle to clear his name. It is a testament of personal courage in the face of mass hysteria and a cautionary example of how basic freedoms can rapidly erode when the powers of the state are allowed to serve a rigid ideological agenda. Fifty years after the Canwell Committee's inception, False Witness is reissued as part of the All Powers Project, a multidisciplinary effort by the University of Washington to recreate, reexamine, and redefine the significance today of those tumultuous times. The book includes a new Afterword by Leonard Schroeter, a Seattle attorney and activist who succeeded Melvin Rader as president of the Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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