The University of Colorado is spending its time and your money fighting to keep a tax-funded, anti-Communist witch hunt secret. Because it has held this report for 51 years, you'd think CU would have an airtight argument for its continued stealth.

Instead, CU's assertions are strange and contradictory.

On Friday, the Daily Camera met the university in court, where CU was required to convince a judge that it should not produce a secret report commissioned in 1951. That year, the state learned that a CU professor had belonged to the Communist Party from 1938-43. Collectively, Colorado flipped out.

The governor asked all public colleges and universities to investigate "communistic" people on campus. CU was the only campus to do so, employing two former FBI agents (who happened to be attorneys). After three months of work, the investigators turned in a 126-page report, which was soon locked in a bank vault and kept there until this newspaper sued.

Last summer and again this spring, yours truly formally requested the report under the Colorado Public Records Act. The university refused, claiming that the report was a privileged "work product" of elected officials, that it was a confidential attorney-client communication and that the report's release would "substantially harm" the public interest.

Now CU has made its case. It's a strange case.

The university argues that the report can be legally kept secret because it is a "work product." To qualify as a "work product," the report must not have formed the basis of a decision by elected officials.

"No action was taken based on the report," CU attorney Michael Schreiner told the judge, emphasizing that there was "no evidence" to the contrary. That is incorrect. "Glory Colorado," an exhaustive history of the university, reports that the regents fired Irving Goodman, an assistant professor of chemistry, because of findings in the secret report.

Schreiner is clearly familiar with "Glory Colorado." He quotes small portions of the history in his legal brief. But when the Camera sought to introduce the entire text of "Glory Colorado," including the parts that contradict his assertions, he objected to the "hearsay" evidence.

Nonetheless, CU cited that source of "hearsay" as it quoted a former regent who described the report as "a collection of facts jumbled in with vicious, insidious rumors." Sounds bad. Very bad.

It is odd, then, that the university claims the release of the secret report would have a "chilling effect" on the university community. "The board must be able to engage in sincere and good-faith efforts to conduct legitimate fact-finding efforts when needed. This ability to conduct legitimate investigations in the future should not be compromised."

How could "legitimate investigations" suffer from the release of a report full of "vicious, insidious rumors"? As far as we know, 1951 was the only time CU investigated its entire faculty in search of unpopular thoughts. If a reincarnated witch hunt were thwarted by the report's release, we'd all win. So would the Constitution.

Reach Clint Talbott at (303) 473-1367 or talbottc@thedailycamera.com.

May 7, 2002