Poole, William T., collector.

Historical Note

The Subversive Activities Control Board was established in 1950 in conjunction with enactment of the Internal Security Act (McCarran Act) of 1950. Its purpose was to secure registration of communist-action and communist-front organizations in the United States. The Board attempted to carry out this function for more than two decades but experienced frustration as a result of legal challenges and court decisions. It was abolished by Presidential executive order in 1973.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as it was generally known, was established as a committee of the House of Representatives in 1938. It was not a law enforcement agency, and, unlike the Board, had no concrete legal function. The broad and amorphous nature of its mandate, investigation and publicization of activities deemed un-American, ensured that any findings would be either tautologous (as applied to foreign countries and their governments and citizens) or tendentious. (Tendentious as well were the suggestions of critics that the Committee itself was un-American.) Investigation of communism was always a central, though not exclusive, concern of the Committee. HUAC was highly controversial, and largely as a defensive cosmetic measure the House retitled it the House Internal Security Committee (HISC) in 1969. Support continued to wane, however, and the House abolished the Committee in 1975.

William T. Poole was employed as a research analyst on the minority (Republican Party) side of the HUAC staff from the mid-1960s until the Committee's dissolution. When the Board and the Committee respectively went out of existence, Poole took possession of files unwanted for permanent government retention. He gave this collection of material to the Hoover Institution Archives in 1982.