Bring back the House Un-American Activities Committee: Gingrich

Ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich wants to revive the Cold War-era House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and deploy it in a "war" against Islamic Extremists on the home front.

Ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich wants to revive the Cold War-era House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and deploy it in a "war" against Islamic Extremists on the home front. Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Bring back the House Un-American Activities Committee: Gingrich 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

The Cold War-era House Un-American Activities Committee should be revived to wage a war on Islamic extremism, according to ex-U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is running hard to be Donald Trump's running mate.

"We're going to ultimately declare war on Islamic supremacists and we're going to say, 'If you pledge allegiance to (the Islamic State, or ISIS) you are traitor and you've lost your citizenship.' And we're going to take much tougher positions," Gingrich said Monday on Fox & Friends.

Gingrich was discussing the Orlando massacre, committed by an American-born U.S. citizen from Port St. Lucie, Florida, who called 911 during the killing spree at the Pulse nightclub to declare his support for ISIS.

The House Un-American Activities Committee was known for often-questionable "investigations" of suspected communists. The committee broadened its mandate to target civil rights groups as well as 1960s advocates for a ban on nuclear weapons testing.

Its tactics drew scathing criticism, such as a probe into the venerable ban-the-bomb group Women Strike for Peace.

A famous drawing by Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block ("Herblock") showed a congressman arriving at the hearing and whispering to a colleague: "What's un-American today, women or peace?"

Gingrich noted that HUAC, as the panel was known, came into being in 1938 to ferret out both Nazis and communists operating in the United States.

"We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis," he said. "We're going to presently have to take similar steps here."

Gingrich is not the first to make the suggestion. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a loud opponent of immigration reform, was quoted by MSNBC voicing support for a new HUAC and saying: "I think that is a good process and I would support it."

Ex-Rep. (and 2012 presidential candidate) Michele Bachmann memorably said during the 2008 campaign that Congress should be investigated to "find out if they are pro-America or anti-America."

The hearings of HUAC were famous for demanding that witnesses name names. If they refused, a contempt sentence followed, and following that a place on blacklists of suspected communist sympathizers (or "Comsymps" in the parlance of the 1960s far-right). The blacklist meant becoming jobless and unemployable.

A similar panel in Congress' upper chamber, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, was chaired by Mississippi's arch-segregationist Sen. James Eastland and "investigated" communist influence in the 1960s civil rights leadership.

Four newly elected Washington Democratic congressmen took what was then considered a radical step in 1965 by voting against funding of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Only 53 colleagues had the courage to join them.

Eventually, the House made attempts to gussy up HUAC, in 1969 renaming it the House Internal Security Committee.

The post-Watergate Congress abolished the committee in 1975.