WOMAN PLAGUED BY FATHER'S PAST FBI INVESTIGATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605650002-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 1, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20015 656-4068
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
WDVM-TV
CBS Network
DATE March 1, 1981 7:00 PM CITY Washington, DC
SUBJECT Woman Plagued by Father's Past FBI Investigation
MORLEY SAFER: This portrait is of a father an daughter.
On August 25th, 1948 there was a report in the New York Herald
Tribune, stating that the father, Lieutenand John Rudder, was the
first black man to hold a regular Marine Corps commission. It
was an historic moment. But you will not find John Rudder's name
in any history books. He gained no great reputation for having
broken the color bar. But he did gain fame of another kind.
J The young woman beside him is John Rudder's daughter
Miriam. And it is that questionable fame of her father, the so-
called sins of her father, as perceived by J. Edgar Hoover, that
Miriam Rudder is paying for.
M I R I AM RUDDER: I feel I'm paying for it. I feel that
if I should have a child, my children will pay for it, their
children will pay for it. I don't know where it's going to end.
SAFER: Miriam Rudder is 24, a native of Washington,
D.C. Three years ago she got a job here with Congress as a file
clerk with the House Committee on Assassinations looking into who
killed President Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Committee Chairman Louis Stokes had an agreement with
the CIA and the FBI to get any records he wanted as long as all
committee employees got security clearances.. Miriam Rudder was
no problem. Her parents were.
MISS RUDDER: My personal background was very clean.
I wasn't concerned at all with my clearance no.
SAFER: But you were concerned about your association
with your parents. ?
Material supplK,d by Rodeo N Reports. Inc. may be used for file orsd relerence puIFoses only. It may not be reproduced. sold or publicly de Drsstmted or e, h b led.
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SAFER: Why?
MISS RUDDER: Because they had been damaged for so long
that I saw what it did to them.
SAFER: So when you went to work for the committee, did
you say, "Look, there may be a problem with my clearance"?
SAFER: And they said?
MISS RUDDER: When -I talked to the chief of--security
he said that it wouldn't matter, that I was an adult, that I lived
alone, I was self-supporting, and that I was clean as a whistle,
not to concern myself.
pointed.
SAFER: But Miriam's mother warned her she'd be disap
MISS RUDDER: She went on and on about that they would
never give me a clearance.
SAFER: And what did you say?
MISS RUDDER: I said that this wasn't the '50s and it'
wasn't Dick Tracy and they didn't do these kinds of thing anymore
and Hoover was dead and forget about it. And I was wrong. I was
very wrong.
1, SAFER: As we said, the problem was her parents. For
better than 20 years the FBI had employed platoons of people to
compile anything and everything Miriam Rudder's parents did. It,
fills eight volumes, who they spoke to, what they said, what
their mail said, what their. telephone conversations were about-,.
The FBI was convinced they were communists, but the raw data also,
says the Communist Party, the CP, was suspicious of. them.
The Rudders were activists for peace.. They did attend
protest rallies for civil rights, against loyalty oaths. Miriam's
mother was white and Jewish, her father black and Quaker. Rudder
was a black man a bit ahead of his time, a college graduate, was
in combat as a Marine enlisted man in World War II, and after the
war became a Marine Corps officer. Because of his Quaker -convic_-
tions, he gave up. his commission, became ,a schoolteacher, went to
law school,' and drove a-cab part-time and ra-ised five children.
In the early '50s, anyone who spoke up for civil rights
and spoke against the Cold War and was black and had given up a
Marine Corps commission was bound to attract the attention of the
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SAFER: It is alleged here that you once said you had
no loyalty to this country.
JOHN RUDDER: That's a lie. This is my country. Four
hundred years of Afro-American struggle, blood makes that the
most reprehensible lie in there. My primary loyalty is to the
United States of America.
SAFER: Mr. Rudder, have you ever been a member of the
Communist Party?
RUDDER: No, I've never been a member of the Communist
Party. But to define the -- to answer the question yes or no
would certainly evade the central issue here, which is whether
or not an American has a right to belong to any political party
whether it be Communist, Socialist, Democrat, Republic.
SAFER:. Did the FBI ever
ask you?
RUDDER: No. They never asked me whether or not I was
ever a member. I find a thousand non-communist affidavits. There
was never, never any effort to ascertain whether or not I was a
member of any party. I happen to be a Democrat and have been a
member of the Democratic Party for 30 years. But no one even
asked that.
SAFER: Why would the FBI spend 30 years, heaven knows
how many informers, informants, special agents, time, money to
track John Rudder?
RUDDER: Probably they were somewhat hurt and somewhat
determined to make me become an informer. I've always felt that
an informer, a stool pigeon was the lowest type of human animal
existing.
SAFER: Well, who asked you to do this?
RUDDER: Members of the FBI. And there were several
other people whose names I will divulge to you if you want me to.
SAFER: Sure.
RUDDER: Bobby Kennedy was with a group of people who
came to me once and asked me whether or not I'd be willing-to
serve. I think he was the McCarthy Committee then.
SAFER: When he was counsel to the McCarthy Committee?
RUDDER: Yes.
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4
SAFER: Robert F. Kennedy asked you...
RUDDER: Whether or not I would be-willing to work with
certain agencies In the role as an informer.
SAFER: And what'd you tell young Kennedy?
RUDDER: I reminded him, as I reminded all of them, that
there was a man named Judas who betrayed a man whom I have admired
and devoted my entire life to, a man named Jesus Christ, that I
will not betray anyone's confidence. It wouldn't matter whether,
or not they were activists or non-activists or Socialists or Demo-
crats or workers. It is against the American tradition of infor-
ming. I would not accept a position as an informer.
SAFER: John, do you think that here was the case of a,
black man, Marine Corps officer, well-educated, informed sort of
person, would have been -- excuse me -- a first class house Nigger...
RUDDER: Right.
SAFER: ...if he'd only come on and joined the team?
RUDDER: During slavery, it was, if you opposed slavery;
you were a crazy Nigger.
J. Edgar Hoover was horrified that I had refused to be-
come an informant. I have a document which suggests that in res-
ponse to my refusal he ordered my appearance before a grand jury.
There were wiser heads in the department that suggested that still
a man must be accused of a crime or must have committed a crime..
SAFER: One of the more suspicious things that you did
was the Sunday school you sent your daughter to.
RUDDER: My wife is Jewish. So we thought it was impor-
tant for our children to grow up with an appreciation of Judaism,
Catholicism, Protestantism.
SAFER: Why would the FBI find a Jewish Sunday school
suspicious?
RUDDER: They clamed that several of the officers were
Communists, without any proof whatsoever. They claimed that sev--
era I officers of the school were members of a. subversive organ i --
zation.
SAFER: When.: you were-a kid growing up in your-parents'
home, how much Communist indoctrination did you get?
MISS RUDDER: I didn't know what'-Communist indoctrin-
ation was. I was brought up in an educated home, in a home that
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stressed reading, that stressed the arts. And if that's Com-
munist, then that's what I was brought up.
We grew up in a political household because of the era.
We grew up during the civil rights era. But our politics of our
house was the politics of this country, of poor people and black
people being denied human rights and civil rights. And that was
going on here in our country, not in Russia, not In Czechoslovakia.
It was here.
So it was the American Dream that we were brought up
under, not a Communist household.
SAFER: Did you have a chance to say this to the FBI?
MISS RUDDER: I never spoke with an agent from the FBI
or any of the agencies.
SAFER: It is 1977 and the FBI is investigating Miriam
for that congressional committee job. The last entry on her par-
ents' record is 1967. The report on Miriam Rudder says the bureau
spoke to 25 people, and they all vouched for her loyalty, trust-
worthy,-intelligent, honest and hard-working. But there was that,
quote, subversive, unquote, Sunday school when she was 10 years
old.
The CIA is also investigating, and comes to a judgment:
"Reasonable doubt on subject's loyalty because of her parents, to
whom she is apt to be bound by ties of affection and obligation."
And the CIA's recommendation is: "Security disapproval."
But the final decision on whether to keep her or let her
o is up to the Chairman of the House Committee on Assassinations
,
Congressman Louis Stokes of Cleveland.
SAFER: What happened when you went into Congressman
MISS RUDDER: Congressman Stokes was very sympathetic
to my problem. He was torn between being a congressman and trying
to be a good guy. So there was a conflict of interest in that.
He said It hurt him as much as it was hurting me.
REP. LOUIS STOKES: I may have said that to her, because
I did feel that it was not right for her not-to be judged upon
her own background and her own reputation, and that a judgment
was being made with reference to that of her parents and other
members of her family. And I thought that this was not right or
proper, and that this was a denial of her rights.
SAFER: Do you consider her a security risk?
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REP. STOKES: No, I don't. No. Based upon everything
I know about Miriam Rudder, she would not have been, in my opin-
ion, a security risk.
But in this case, she was in a very peculiar situation.
She had been hired with the understanding that she would have to
get a security clearance. And when she was unable to do so, I
could not let the entire investigation be bogged down in some
type of conflict with the CIA, and when we were operating under
very limited time and a great deal of pressure from the Congress
to get the investigation concluded.
SAFER: But isn't there something wrong here,. where
someone like Louis Stokes re t f' ht
f
, g ig er
or civil rights -- right?
REP. STOKES: That's right.
SAFER: Must have a dossier a mile long on him in the
REP. STOKES: I'm sure that I have.
SAFER: And it's conceivable that if Louis Stokes were
not a congressman but a man going to work for a congressional
committee, probably could be, conceivably, denied the job as a
security risk. Start counting up all the people you've spoke to
over the last 20 years.
REP. STOKES: That's conceivable.
SAFER: In essence, it just wasn't worth fighting the
CIA over a file clerk. So Miriam Rudder was fired. The sin of
John Rudder, if it was a sin, had been visited upon his daughter.
RUDDER: Here was a child who went to a Sunday school
for less than a year, and on that basis it's considered an unac-
ceptable risk,. in spite of the fact that even the FBI suggests
that she's a good, loyal, dedicated American. It is insanity.
MISS RUDDER: I want my name completely cleared. I
would like to see a formal apology from the CIA.and from the
President's office to my parents and to myself.
SAFER: But don't you think that the government does
have an obligation to all of us to protect our secrets, the gov-
ernment's.secrets?
M'ISS.RUDDER: I agree that our government has a serious
job of protecting the country in the cases of real threat. If
they are going to judge a person's involvement, a political in-
volvement from 25-30 years ago and pass that speculation onto
their children, they'.re chasing shadows. They're chasing people
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like me and chasing people like my parents? It's Incredible.
SAFER: Miriam Rudder did get a job working for a D.C.
councilman, but she has higher hopes, wants to become a lawyer
and eventually work for the government; but feels that whatever
career she chooses, she'll be crippled by that failed security
clearance, by unproved allegations against her father, by, ac-
cording to John Rudder, his refusal to become a stool pigeon.
John, supposing you had, as they say, kept your nose
clean. You would have been, probably, a pretty rich fellow
right now, In politics, in the law, in education, in government,
somewhere.
RUDDER: Yes. I would have probably felt less of my-
self, too. What does it matter to be a judge, if I wanted to
be? What would it matter if at the end of that time of compro-
mising my integrity, of my compromising my tradition as an Afro-
African, compromising my sense of I am somebody? What could I
say to my children?
I wanted them to be proud of me; and I'm sure that if
you have. children, you want them to be proud of you. I cou I d
not look my children in the face and say, "Here is a stool pigeon
who sacrificed in order to get ahead."
SAFER: So you have no regrets.
RUDDER: I have no regrets. I love my country and I
love the support that I've received. In spite of it, I'd do it
all over again. But they scared me. They scared me.
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