43 Facts About Nathan Witt

Nathan Witt 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.

Nathan Witt was investigated several times in the late 1940s and 1950s for being a spy for the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Nathan R Witt was born February 11,1903, into a Jewish family on the Lower East Side of New York City.

Nathan Witt's father changed the family name to Witt shortly after his birth.

Nathan Witt graduated from Harvard Law School in 1932, or 1933, specializing in labor law.

Nathan Witt 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.

Chambers alleged that Nathan Witt became leader of the group after Ware died in an automobile accident in August 1935.

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein concluded that Nathan Witt "probably" was both a member of the Communist Party and held communist ideals, but historian Ronald Schatz has asserted that Nathan Witt's communist sympathies did "not necessarily" mean Party membership.

Nathan Witt never hid his communism and made it well known to others from his earliest days in the government.

Nathan Witt joined the legal staff of the "first" National Labor Relations Board in February 1934.

Nathan Witt was named the NLRB's assistant chief counsel in December 1935.

Nathan Witt 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.

Nathan Witt chose the attorneys who staffed the Review Section, assigned cases to attorneys, and checked the drafts of Board decisions for technical accuracy.

Nathan Witt recommended Pressman for a job as a trial examiner at the NLRB in 1936.

Nathan Witt was named Secretary of the Board in October 1937.

Nathan Witt 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.

Nathan Witt was the Board's chief liaison to Congress and oversaw preparation and submission of the Board's budget.

Nathan Witt was the sole supervisor of the Board's 22 regional offices, overseeing the roughly 225 personnel in the field.

Nathan Witt alone exercised the authority to authorize a hearing in the case of unfair labor practice or election cases, and he alone reported on these cases fashion to the Board.

Nathan Witt's communism was the cause of much dispute within the NLRB and eventually led to his resignation as Board Secretary.

Later testimony revealed that an internal NLRB study had backed Leiseron and that Madden and Smith had suppressed it, and that Nathan Witt had assisted Madden in secretly building public and expert support for the NLRB.

Nathan Witt resigned from the NLRB on November 18,1940, although his resignation was not accepted until after Millis was sworn in on November 27.

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.

In 1941, Nathan Witt represented the Steel Workers Organizing Committee.

Nathan Witt was involved in numerous labor union disputes and labor-related free speech cases in the 1940s and 1950s.

Nathan Witt represented members of the College Teachers Union when they were accused in 1941 of being communists by the Rapp-Coudert Committee.

Nathan Witt was the lead attorney for the Seamen's Joint Action Committee, a CIO-backed insurgent group which allied with three CIO longshoremen's unions to challenge International Longshoremen's Association president Joseph Ryan.

Meantime, Pressman, remained as chief legal counsel of the CIO itself as well as the SWOC, both of which he had joined in the late 1930s, as Nathan Witt was joining and rising in the NLRB.

In early 1948, Nathan Witt's clients included the Greater New York CIO Council.

Also in early 1948, Nathan Witt was working with fellow National Lawyers Guild member Joseph Forer of Washington, DC.

Nathan Witt represented several members of the Teachers Union accused of being communists in 1950 and 1952.

Nathan Witt had a close connection to Albert Pezzati, who had been eastern regional director, national board member and secretary-treasurer of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.

In 1975, Nathan Witt retired as associate counsel for the miners' division of the United Steel Workers.

Nathan Witt later testified in February 1949 before a federal grand jury investigating illegal CPUSA activities in the United States.

Nathan Witt freely admitted his legal role in obtaining the publication fee.

Nathan Witt last appeared before Congress in 1955, eventually totaling six times, several times with Clinton Jencks from his client, the Mine-Mill union.

Nathan Witt engaged in a shouting match with Eastland, accusing the senator of antisemitism.

Eastland demanded to know about his membership in the CPUSA and the "Ware group," and Nathan Witt invoked his Fifth Amendment rights again.

On June 19,1930, Nathan Witt married Anna Laura Phillips.

Hal Witt worked with Joseph Forer in the 1960s on the Giles-Johnson case in defending the Giles brothers and in the Supreme Court Giles v Maryland.

Leda Nathan Witt was the biological mother of Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein, the separated twins who were adopted by different families who didn't know they were twins.

Nathan R Witt died age 79 on February 16,1982, at Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City.

Nathan Witt noted the guilt by association tactics of fellow journalists, for example, Westbrook Pegler, who sought to discredit Eleanor Roosevelt through link to Hiss via Felix Frankfurter.