Lusk Committee

The Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities, popularly known as the Lusk Committee, was formed in 1919 by the New York State Legislature to investigate individuals and organizations in New York State suspected of sedition.

A private, two-month-long investigation of radicalism conducted by a committee of the New York City Union League Club produced a unanimous vote of the Club's members to petition to the New York State Legislature for a government investigation.

Within days, the New York State Legislature established the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities by Concurrent Resolution on March 26, 1919. The nine-member Committee targeted offenses committed under the criminal anarchy articles of the State's Penal Code. The committee was chaired by freshman State Senator Clayton R. Lusk of Cortland County. who had a background in business and conservative political values, referring to radicals as "alien enemies." With the exception of a minor case, this was the first time that the state's criminal anarchy statutes had been invoked since they were enacted in 1902 following the assassination of United States President William McKinley by an anarchist in Buffalo, New York.

For more than a year the Committee gathered information on suspected radical groups by raiding offices and examining documents, infiltrating meetings, assisting law enforcement agents in thousands of arrests, and subpoenaing witnesses to testify at the committee's hearings. The Committee's use of search warrants and raids was an exceptional departure from legislative practice. It also had the cooperation of local police departments and prosecutors to enable it to operate aggressively despite its limited budget.

The Committee and the federal government's Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI, cooperated by sharing information, interrogation expertise, and informants. Rayme W. Finch, formerly an agent in the Bureau's New York office, became the Committee's chief investigator. This cooperation allowed federal authorities whose powers were limited by the lack of a peacetime anti-sedition statute to use state authority against radicals.

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