eral Murphy each ruled that under the statutes Attorneys General are not authorized to give official opinions on questions of law except upon call of the President or the head of an executive department to enable him to decide a question pending in his own department for action. It has been pointed out that the effort to advise both the executive and the legislative branches of the Government would be inappropriate under our doctrine of separation of the powers of the two branches, and that, like other efforts to serve two masters, such a practice would likely introduce conflict of duties. Congress has never seen fit to change the statutes so construed, and I take it that in spite of frequent requests for opinions Congress in its deliberate judgment has acquiesced in the meaning so uniformly ascribed to these statutes for well over a century.

I have been constrained to reach this conclusion notwithstanding the chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, who I understand was furnished a copy of your letter to me, has urged that in responding to you, I fully consider and discuss the legal principles involved.

I think you will agree that the rule, both well established and wise, requires me to answer your inquiry that I could not with propriety render the opinion which you suggest.

With best personal regards,
Sincerely yours,

(Signed) ROBERT H. JACKSON, Attorney General.

Hon. ROBERT H. JACKSON,

EXHIBIT No. 1086

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C., February 27, 1940.

Attorney General of the United States,

Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR MR. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 23d in reply to my letter of February 13, in which I asked for your opinion as to whether there had been a violation by officials of the National Labor Relations Board of section 201 of title 18 of the United States Code relative to the use of Government appropriations for lobbying activities.

I note your statement that, owing to precedents established by your predecessors, you are impelled to reply that you could not, with propriety, render an opinion to a committee of Congress on the subject. I have read the precedents referred to in your letter, which seem to me fully to justify your position. It is regrettable that a committee of Congress, conducting an investigation under specific authority with a view to recommending remedial legislation, should not have the benefit of the advice of the chief law officer of the Government as to whether, under an undisputed statement of facts, a criminal statute has been violated.

I think it entirely possible, if the incident referred to does not constitute a violation of the act, that Congress would desire to enact necessary legislation to prevent the continuance of the lobbying activities referred to.

As to the particular incident involved, my committee is charged solely with the duty of investigation and report. Any further action lies solely in the province of your Department.

With kind personal regards, I am
Sincerely yours,

TESTIMONY OF LAWRENCE A. KNAPP, ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL IN CHARGE OF ENFORCEMENT SECTION, LITIGATION DIVISION, NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, WASHINGTON, D. C.

(The witness was duly sworn and testified as follows:) Mr. FAHY. Please state your full name.

Mr. KNAPP. Lawrence A. Knapp.

Mr. FAHY. Your residence?

Mr. KNAPP. 1513 Thirtieth Street, city of Washington.

Mr. FAHY. What is your present occupation?

Mr. KNAPP. I am assistant general counsel in charge of the enforcement section of the litigation division of the Board.

Mr. FAHY. How long have you been an employee of the Board? Mr. KNAPP. Since the Board was formed.

Mr. FAHY. When was that?

Mr. KNAPP. July 1935.

Mr. FAHY. Were you with the organization at any time prior to the enactment of the act under which the present Board was set up? Mr. KNAPP. I was an attorney for the first National Labor Relations Board, established under Public Resolution No. 44 in 1934.

Mr. FAHY. Now, Mr. Knapp, will you please outline briefly your academic training and your experience up to the time that you became an attorney on the staff of the Board?

Mr. KNAPP. I was born in South Dakota in 1905 and am approaching my thirty-fifth birthday. I lived in Garden City, S. Dak., until 1918, attending the public schools there. In 1918 my family moved to Yankton, S. Dak., and there I completed my high-school work and attended college at a local denominational college known as Yankton College. I got my A. B. degree in 1925, and after a year of coaching. athletics and instructing in high school at Hardington, Nebr., I came 10 Washington in the fall of 1926 and entered the law school at George Washington University, which I attended until 1929. I graduated with an LL. B. degree and with honors.

During the middle of my senior year I went to New York and secured a position with the firm known then as Taylor, Blanc, Capron & Marsh. Its name was changed before I arrived in the fall of 1929 to Messrs. Mitchell, Taylor, Capron & Marsh, the senior partner of the firm being William D. Mitchell, the Attorney General under President Hoover. I remained with that firm in private practice until 1933, and in July of that year secured a position as assistant counsel to the National Recovery Administration, where I worked until my transfer to the first Labor Board in the summer of 1934.

Mr. FAHY. Will you please explain in outline the duties of yourself as assistant general counsel in charge of the enforcement section and the duties of those under you in that section?

Mr. KNAPP. I suppose it is fair to say that I have initial responsibility under Mr. Fahy and Mr. Watts for the preparation of our enforcement or review cases in the circuit courts of appeals and in the United States Supreme Court. That work entails largely the preparation of the Board's written briefs that are filed in those courts. Assisting in that work is a staff of approximately 35 lawyers, consisting of 30 that I would call staff lawyers and 5 supervisors who stand in the point of responsibility between me and the staff attorneys.

Each such case, whether it goes into a circuit court of appeals on a petition of the Board to enforce its order or on a petition of an employer or other aggrieved party to set it aside, is assigned by me to a staff attorney. Likewise, I assign to that case one of my five supervisors. In due course a date is set upon which the draft brief is due from the staff attorney and from the supervisor in order that I may have it, and that Mr. Fahy or Mr. Watts may review it in time to get it to the printer and file it on the date on which it is due in court.

That is the principal work which we do. There are, of course, many miscellaneous things attached to it, interlocutory steps of various kinds, motions and petitions and oppositions, but the bulk of the work consists of the main briefs in our enforcement and review cases in those reviewing courts.

Mr. FAHY. Is it true that you yourself review first all the briefs filed in the circuit courts of appeals and in the Supreme Court of the United States?

Mr. KNAPP. That is true.

Mr. FAHY. And in connection with the briefs in the Supreme Court of the United States what is the relation of the Board to the work on those briefs?

Mr. KNAPP. The Solicitor General of the United States represents the Federal Government and its various agencies in the United States Supreme Court so that technically he has final responsibility for the conduct of all such litigation, including that of the Board. As a matter of practice, what happens in those cases is that the Solicitor General leaves to the Board the initial preparation of all briefs in those cases, and I think it fair to say that the great bulk of that work is done by our staff with a review by the Solicitor General and his staff as the date for filing the brief approaches.

Mr. FAHY. Now, in connection with the court work that you have to do yourself, do you also make the assignment of attorneys to argue cases in court other than the Supreme Court?

Mr. KNAPP. Yes; that is true. The final designation of persons to argue such cases is made by Mr. Fahy and Mr. Watts. Ordinarily there are substantial groups of those cases to be argued, and in that connection I prepare a tentative list of possible assignments, depending upon the importance of the case and the abilities of the various attorneys, and submit those to Mr. Fahy and Mr. Watts, at which time a final assignment of the oral argument is made.

Mr. FAHY. Have you yourself been assigned to argue the cases in the courts since you have been with the Board?

Mr. KNAPP. Yes, I have; and I have argued a good many of those

cases.

Mr. FAHY. Could you mention some of them?

Mr. KNAPP. My first arguments were in the injunction cases, and I argued three of those in the district courts, two in the southern district of New York, one before Judge Patterson, now a circuit judge, and one before Judge Murray Hulbert. A third in the district of New Hampshire, before Judge Morris, and a fourth in the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Thereafter as our enforcement and review cases began to come along, I argued a number of those, including the renowned stove case in the sixth circuit, two cases involving the Oregon Worsted Co. in the ninth circuit, one involving the Sands Manufacturing Co. in the sixth circuit, the Serrick Corporation case in the Court of Appeals here, Greenbaum Tanning case in the seventh circuit, Sterling Electric and Swayne and Hoyt cases in the ninth circuit. And there may be one or two more that escape me. Mr. FAHY. Do you have any responsibility in connection with the legal branch of the Board, known as the review section?

Mr. KNAPP. None whatever in the matter of supervision.

Mr. FAHY. Mr. Knapp, I call your attention to the fact that at page 5251 of the record there was introduced as exhibit 400, a memorandum of Miss Boyls. Now, do you know Miss Boyls?

Mr. KNAPP. I do.

Mr. FAHY. Concerning a telephone call made to you December 15, 1938, with regard to the Schwarze Electric Co. Who is Miss Boyls? Mr. KNAPP. She is an attorney in the review division of the Board. Mr. FAHY. Do you recall such a conversation?

Mr. KNAPP. I recall the fact of the conversation.

Mr. FAHY. Will you please explain to the committee what the conversation consisted of and what you said or did?

Mr. KNAPP. Miss Boyls telephoned me and stated, in the abstract, two legal problems or questions which were in her mind and upon which she desired my advice in view of my experience in similar procedural questions in the reviewing courts. I had no knowledge of the case then and none since. The general facts were not outlined to me. As a matter of fact, my independent recollection of the instance is rather poor because it is of the sort which occurs with frequency, but I have read the transcript of the testimony. I have no doubt that the questions which she said she asked me were the ones which she did put to me, because over the telephone it was very brief. The record shows that she inquired, first, with respect to a problem of discrepancy between dates alleged in the complaint of the Board and the dates shown in the proof of the hearing, and whether that was the sort of thing which, in the absence of the motion to conform, might be prejudicial.

Mr. FAHY. Did the question have anything to do with the merits of the Schwarze Electric case or the facts of the case?

The CHAIRMAN. Any questions?

Mr. TOLAND. Mr. Chairman, I have no questions to ask my good friend Mr. Knapp.

Mr. FAHY. Mrs. Stern?

TESTIMONY OF BEATRICE M. STERN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, WASHINGTON, D. C.

(The witness was duly sworn and testified as follows:)

Mr. FAHY. Mrs. Stern, please state your full name.

Mrs. STERN. Beatrice M. Stern.

Mr. FAHY. And your residence?

Mrs. STERN. 2762 Chain Bridge Road, in Washington, but I am a legal resident of the State of California.

Mr. FAHY. What is your present occupation?

Mrs. STERN. I am assistant secretary to the Board.

Mr. FAHY. How long have you been connected with either the present Board or its predecessors?

Indicates page reference to verbatim transcript of committee proceedings, January 11,

1940.

Mrs. STERN. I came to the first National Labor Board in 1933, in October, and was assistant executive officer of that Board. I remained with the successor Board, which was the first National Labor Relations Board, under the chairmanship first of Mr. Lloyd Garrison and next of Mr. Biddle, and was transferred with the staff of that Board to the present National Labor Relations Board.

Mr. FAHY. When did you first go with the first Board-what year?
Mrs. STERN. In October of 1933.

Mr. FAHY. And who was Chairman of that Board?

Mrs. STERN. Senator Robert F. Wagner.

Mr. FAHY. How long have you been assistant secretary of the Board? Mrs. STERN. I was appointed assistant secretary, I believe, in the term of the middle Board, the first National Labor Relations Board. Mr. FAHY. Would that be the Garrison board?

Mrs. STERN. Yes.

Mr. FAHY. So you have been with the work now almost 7 years?
Mrs. STERN. That is right.

Mr. FAHY. Now, Mrs. Stern, do you know Theodore Freter?
Mrs. STERN. I remember him.

Mr. FAHY. Please state what you know about his first connection with the Board.

Mrs. STERN. As I recall it, his first connection with the Board was on an authorization for temporary employment as an auditor in the accounts section. I say temporary authorization because he was not then eligible for a civil-service appointment. He had, however, taken an examination, and it was during the time when the Civil Service Commission was examining the papers of those who took that examination that he was certified to us on a temporary basis.

Mr. FAHY. That was in the auditing branch of the work?

Mrs. STERN. In the auditing branch.

Mr. FAHY. Did his services there terminate?

Mrs. STERN. His services there terminated when he failed to qualify for a permanent position by passing the examination.

Mr. FAHY. Then thereafter did he have any further appointment with the Board?

Mrs. STERN. Thereafter he applied for the position of field examiner and was given a temporary appointment or a probational appointment. Mr. FAHY. In the Indianapolis office, as he testified?

Mrs. STERN. That is right.

Mr. FAHY. What occurred with respect to his employment in the Indianapolis office on a temporary or probationary period?

Mrs. STERN. He did not qualify for a permanent appointment. Mr. FAHY. Then could you state whether or not, after he was not continued in Indianapolis, you had a conversation with him in Washington?

Mrs. STERN. I did.

Mr. FAHY. In the record now, Mrs. Stern, he says that in a conversation that he had with you after his employment in Indianapolis had been terminated, and I now refer to the record, that there was nothing in the record against him or his work except that the Board felt that his family background was not such as would fit him for this sort of work, and he attributed that statement to you. What do you have to say to the committee about that statement which he attributed to you?

T