Mr. MOULDER. Have you any knowledge or information, whether it be in the form of an opinion or from your experience, as to the total Communist Party membership in this area at the present time?
Mr. DENNETT. No. I have no adequate idea about that. I think that it must be very small. Someone asked me the other day what I thought it was, and I said, “Well, I think the ranks of the Communist Party have been decimated by their own foolish behavior and by the change in public attitude. I think that has resulted in them being reduced to a mere handful, a shell of its former self.”
Mr. MOULDER. Then you would tell us now that you have no knowledge or information of any communistic or Communist Party activity in Seattle at this time?
Mr. DENNETT. No. We are coming to the point of my expulsion, which occurred 7, nearly 8 years ago. So my experience and knowledge would have to break at that point with respect to the Communist Party itself.
Mr. VELDE. I presume you are familiar generally with the testimony Barbara Hartle gave here?
Mr. DENNETT. I listened to it very carefully.
Mr. VELDE. She brought Communist Party activities in this area up to date as nearly as anyone possibly could in her situation.
Would you appraise her testimony as being true as to general matters concerning Communist activities here?
Mr. DENNETT. In all fairness to her and in all fairness to the persons that she mentioned, I would have to say that I think Barbara Hartle was her real self when she was here. She appeared to me to be exactly the same as the person I knew many years before. She was very deliberate and methodical. She always had been. And I think that she gave as accurate an account as she could possibly do. I marvel at the ability that she displayed in doing it, the names that she mentioned.
I have tried to explain to my personal friends--they have asked me about it; how could a person name so many people as she did? I can only say that Barbara was in a position where she had access to those records. It was part of her duty to handle records of the membership. Therefore, she would be required to know those things.
People have asked me, “Well, do you know the same people that she knew?” And I have had to answer, “I certainly knew most of those people.”