These are three appeals from judgments in criminal contempt sentencing each appellant to one year in jail for refusing to answer questions, later considered, in the same grand jury investigation as that in the appeals here in Alexander v. United States, 9 Cir., 1950, 181 F.2d 480 .

The three appellants are of a group of thirty persons chosen by the United States Attorney ¡because, he says, he thought he could obtain from them the whereabouts of the membership records of the Los Ange-les County Communist Party. The United States Attorney directed that the thirty subpoenas be served at seven o’clock in the morning of the same day because “unless served at that time it would be impossible to effect service thereafter on them.”

The Federal Register had disclosed only the month before that the Attorney General classified the “Communist Party U.S.A.” as one seeking to alter the form of the government of the United States by unconstitutional means, 13 F.R. 6138 . A person properly could infer that the Los Angeles branch of the United States Communist Party had the same subversive purpose, an inference sustained by the statement of the attorney General that the designation of the “Communist Party U.S.A.” “includes, of course, all the state and local branches and factions of the parent groups.” 14 F.R. 4708 . (Emphasis supplied.)

It is obvious that such subversive activities would ¡be secret. Persons, like appellants, finding themselves chosen as one of the group of thirty “in on the secret,” that is, selected because they knew of the whereabouts of the records of a membership likely to be secreted, well could regard the government as having them under suspicion.

Appellants, with seven others, had been adjudged guilty of civil contempt for failing to answer other questions put in the same grand jury proceeding — judgments reversed in the Alexander cases, supra. Among these questions were:

The civil contempt judgments against the three appellants and seven others were entered on October 26, 1948.' In the Los Angeles Examiner of the next morning appeared an article describing the contempt proceedings in which the United States Attorney, who had participated in them, is quoted as saying: “This is only the opening gun in the government’s inquiry into subversive and disloyal groups.”

The United States Attorney here admits the Examiner reported under the headline “Officials Plan ‘All-Out’ Red Inquiry Here,” the following:

The effect of the Examiner’s statements is heightened by the fact that they were effectively verified in a colloquy between the United States Attorney and counsel for the appellants, in which the United States Attorney carefully avoided denying his responsibility for this publication.

As indicated in our opinion in the Alexander case, supra, we are not in accord with the contention that a grand jury witness cannot possibly form a reasonable apprehension from matters stated in the press that answers to questions may incriminate him. Here the report is in the press of the city of the prosecution and the statement reported is of the prosecutor himself about the nature of the grand jury proceedings.

Within a week of this publication in the Examiner, the three appellants, on November 3, 1948, were again taken before the grand jury/which, as appears from its later presentment, was inquiring to “ascertain the official identity of one Dorothy Healy; the identity of the person or persons in charge of the books and records of the Los Angeles County Communist Party showing or pertaining to the membership of said organization.” (Emphasis supplied.)

In so seeking to ascertain the “official” identity of Dorothy Healy in connection with the identity of the person having the books and records of the Los Angeles Coun ty Communist Party, each of the three appellants was asked and refused to answer on the ground that the answers might be incriminating, questions substantially as follows :

The three appellants were brought before the court and on November 12th on the suggestion of the Attorney General, the court heard the witness Dobbs privately in chambers to determine whether the answers to these questions- would tend to. incriminate the witness. At the request of that appellant the hearing was made public. This witness Dobbs there testified:

Under similar circumstances on that day, appellant Kasinowitz stated:

Appellant Steinberg then similarly stated:

The witnesses were ordered back to the grand jury. The questions to each were repeated; each again refused to answer and the grand jury make its presentation to the court to that effect. The court treated the presentment as if it were an indictment for a criminal contempt. To these presentments the appellants pleaded not guilty.

After hearing and the taking of evidence, including a repeat of the testimony of the three appellants given to the judge on November 12th, a judgment was entered for each appellant holding him guilty of criminal contempt, from which followed these appeals. The ground of the appeals is that the facts judicially noticeable and those shown at the trial of the appellants warranted a reasonable apprehension of self-incrimination, if the questions regarding Mr. and Mrs. Healey were answered, in a likely prosecution under the Smith Act (28 U.S.C. 2385) and the general prohibition against conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States (18 U.S.C. 371). The pertinent provisions of the statutes are,

“Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying' the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

The offenses defined in the foregoing language include at least the following:

At the hearing below, the district court properly refused to allow appellants to require the United States Attorney, called as a witness, to declare his purpose in examining them before the grand jury. This, however, is entirely different from voluntary statements of the prosecutor such as reported in the Los Angeles Examiner, that the grand jury proceeding is an inquiry of the government into subversive and disloyal groups, or to appellants’ counsel respecting the purpose of the grand jury, later considered. The Examiner statement was offered in evidence, and we regard it as highly relevant on the issue of whether the witness may have a reasonable apprehension that his answers to questions showing his knowledge of such groups may incriminate him. If the United States Attorney had testified (which he did not) that he did not make the Examiner statement, the cross examination could have been controlled to prevent an inquiry as-to the government’s actual 'purpose in conducting the' éxamination of the witnesses.' '

The United States Attorney'admitted he had stated to appellants’ counsel that “probably” what the grand jury was trying to find out was that Dorothy Healy was'the organizing- secretary of the Los -Angeles Communist Party. Since the grand -jury’s •presentment states it is seeking to ascertain her “official” identity, it is difficult to imagine any other purpose than -to connect her with some office of that party.

The parties are agreed that- the. legislature of the State-of California, created a Joint Fact Finding Committee on UnAmerican Activities of which Senator Tenney was chairman; that this committee held investigations and made a report in whi-ch it found that the Communist Party of the United States advocated the' overthfów of the government by" forcé;' that Dbrothy Healy is the executive secretary of the Los Angeles County section of that 'party;' that appellant Dobbs is named as labor secretary of the Los Angeles branch; and that Philip Bock, its youth director,- is one of the group of thirty subpoenaed at the. same time and one of the ten the district court held in the Alexander case, supra, to have committed a civil contempt. The Tenney report also names the same persons as the national secretariat of the Communist Party as those named in the New York indictment charging Williám Z. Foster and the eleven others with conspiracy to overthrow the government by force. United States v. Foster, D. C, 83 F.Supp. 197, 198 .

The court sustained the prosecution’s objection that the portions of the report read were “incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, not the proper way to prove the facts allégedly contained therein.” ■ ■

Here is the same error we have before considered. The issue is not whether these facts exist. The issue to be decided by the court is whether appellants had reasonable grounds for believing that the facts might be true.' Here they are found to be true by a tribunal of the dignity of this fact finding committee' of the California Legislature. Whatever question there may be concerning one acquiring a rational apprehension of impending prosecution from newspaper reports, there can be no doubt that one may rationally have such apprehension from the reports of the testimony and facts found by such a committee.

Appellants also knew through their common counsel that, on the same November third, in the same investigation, Brodsky, so named in the Tenney report, had been asked before the grand jury questions similarly indicating that what was being sought •by the grand jury was evidence of persons and organizations in Los Angeles County seeking to overthrow the government by-force. They are:

It is also agreed that the Tenney report on subversive activities stated of Dorothy Healy that she was secretary of the Los Angeles Communist Party and her. husband, Don Healy, was registered as a member of that party.

The court held “immaterial” this evidence concerning Dorothy Healy and her position among other officials of the Communist Party of the United States and its branches, following a prior ruling in which it stated:

This ruling that the questions respecting Dorothy Healy must be answered because “that is no crime, to know anybody” we think is the basic error underlying the court’s decision in this, the Alexander and the Doran cases. The question which the witness may refuse to answer need not of itself require his admission of the commission of a crime, otherwise, as stated in United States v. Weisman, 111 F.2d at page 262, the witness “will be forced to disclose those very facts which the privilege protects.”

In the Weisman case the inquiry, equally innocent, was whether the witness knew anyone who visited, lived in or stayed at Shanghai in the years 1934 to 1939. In United States v. Cusson, 2 Cir., 132 F.2d 413, 414 , the question was whether the witness had met “any of the Groveses” upon a visit to Philadelphia in 1941. Equally innocuous were the questions, in United States v. Zwillman, 2 Cir., 108 F.2d 802, 803 , asking the witness who were his business associates in each year from 1928 to 1932. Likewise, those first stated in this opinion were innocent on their face, yet we held in the Alexander case that, in their setting of fact, the witnesses rationally could infer that they were incriminating, and reversed the conviction for contempt for refusing to answer them.

In the Alexander case, there was admitted in evidence a copy of the New York indictment of Foster and eleven others for conspiracy under the Smith Act and a copy of the indictment of one of the twelve for his individual offenses under that act, with the stipulation that there was a similar one for each of the others. The court in this proceeding refused to admit these copies of indictments when offered by appellants and there is no admission that the copies are true copies or that such indictments exist.

We are of the opinion that, without the admission of the New York indictments, the evidence discloses a setting making it likely that the answers concerning Dorothy Healy and her husband may ;be directly incriminating or, if not, may 'lead to such evidence. As we, said in our Alexander opinion of the question “Did you know Ned Sparks ? ” the tie-in with the incriminatory character of the prior questions to appellants concerning the names of the officers of and the organization and duties of the Los Angeles County Communist Party, is this evidence warranting appellants’ belief that Dorothy Healy is that party’s secretary. These appellants’ defense in a criminal prosecution well may be that they knew no one connected with the Communist Party’s conspiracy to violate the Smith Act.

The judgments against appellants are reversed, and the criminal contempt proceedings in the district court ordered dismissed.

POPE, Circuit Judge.

I concur in the result.

MATHEWS, HEALY. and BONE, Circuit Judges (dissenting).

We think that the judgments in all these cases should be affirmed.

. The following shows the fallacy of such a contention. One Albert Walter finds himself served at seven o’clock in the morning with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury at 10 o’clock a. m. that day. He wonders why until, at breakfast, ho reads in the morning Examiner an Associated Press dispatch stating that the Attorney General had learned that he, Walter, and one Lydon William had conspired to counterfeit and circulate twenty dollar bills; that they have made many such counterfeits; that Walter has passed certain of them for his hotel rooms and meals and in the purchase of clothing; and that the Attorney General is seeking the indictment of Walter and William each as counterfeiters and both as conspirator's to counterfeit. On being sworn before the grand jury, Walter is asked “Do you know Lydon William?” He refuses to answer on the ground the answer may incriminate him, and produces the Examiner with its Associated Press dispatch which he testifies is the source of his apprehension of incrimination. No other evidence is produced. In the contempt proceedings the court states, “It is reasonable enough what Walter contends about it being a part of the prosecution’s proof of a conspiracy between two persons that the one conspirator knew the other, but it is the law that no one can have a reasonable apprehension that a question may tend to incriminate him from anything he reads in a newspaper, and hence I sentence him to a year’s imprisonment.” Here is much more than the “irresponsible gossip” of a newspaper, held pertient in United States v. Weisman, 2 Cir., 111 F.2d 260, 262 . . “The Communist Party keeps its publicly ■ avowed members down to the smaEest possible number. The national headquarters of the Communist Party of the United States is located at 35 East Twelfth Street in New York City. “The Daily Worker is the official national publication of the' -Communist Party and the People’s Daily World serves the West Coast. “The national chairman of the Communist Party is William Z. Poster, possibly one of the most outspoken traitors the United States has ever tolerated. “The general secretary -is .Eugene. Dennis, alias Waldron. The administrative secretary is John Williamson. The office Of treasurer is vacant since the death of Charles Krumbéiri.' “A National Secretariat is composed of WiEiam Z. Poster, Eugene Dennis, Robert Thompson, John WEliamson, Bénjamin J. Davis, Jr., John Gates,’ Gil Green, Gus Hall, Irving Potash, Jack Stachel, Carl Winter, and Henry Winston ... “The California headquarters is. now located at 942 Market Street in San Prancisco. WiEiam Schneiderman is the California State chairman . . . “Nemmy Sparks is the chairman.of the Los Angeles County section. The Los Angeles County section includes the following: Ben Dobbs [appeflant], labor secretary; EEzabeth Ricardo, press director; Pettis Perry, minorities, chair- ■ man; Dorothy Healy, organizing' secretary; Sidney Burke, editor People’s Daily World; EmE Freed, chairman, 'Sixteenth Congressional District; .Alvin Averbuck, section organizer; Harry Daniels, legislative director; Jim Forrest, harbor section organizer; Merel Brodsky, veterans’, director; Phil Bock, youth-director; and Mort Newman, Carver Club section secretary.” (Emphasis supplied.) . “The Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed Dorothy Healy, who testified before the committee on Wednesday, January 2, 1946. Mrs. Dorothy Healy is presently the secretary of the Communist Party «f Los Angeles. She was a Young Communist League organizer under the name of Dorothy Bay. She was formerly the wife of Louis Schneiderman, brother of William Schneiderman, present secretary of the Communist Party of the State of California. She is presently the wife of Don Healy, former chairman of the Los Angeles branch of labor’s Non-Partisan League and formerly registered as a member of the Communist Party in the County of Los Angeles.”