These “courts” must not be confused with courts as we know them in the American judicial system. Run by hardened, old-time comrades, they are weapons of Party discipline. “Sentences” are meted out on the basis of expediency, not justice. Rules of evidence, the fair balancing of opinions, and the seeking of truth play no role. Communist discipline is a repugnant totalitarianism. Here is the account of one victim of communist discipline. John Lautner had been a member of the Communist Party for more than twenty years. He had risen through the ranks until he was a member of the National Review Commission of the Communist Party; he headed the New York Review Commission, was security officer for the Party headquarters building, then at 35 East 12th Street, New York City. He considered himself a dedicated member of the Party. One day in January, 1950, he was told to proceed to Cleveland, Ohio, to help in perfecting plans for the communist underground in Ohio. Upon arrival he was taken ostensibly to a Party meeting in the basement of a residence. There he was ordered to remove his clothes and for a period of several hours was subjected to the basest of indignities. He was told that he would not leave alive as six other communists, who Lautner said had “butcher knives,” “revolvers,” “rubber hoses,” and a “recording machine,” started questioning him about his knowledge of the underground, his army record, his relationship with Hungarian defectees, and his reports to federal agencies. He was accused of being an enemy agent, a spy, of hiring unreliable people to work in the Communist Party defense office, and protecting government “spies” in the Party. Actually, Lautner was innocent of these charges, and the Party’s injustice inured to the government’s benefit. Finally Lautner had the presence of mind to state that he had left at his hotel the name of one of the communist officials conducting the star-chamber proceedings. He was released and returned to New York, where he read in the _Daily Worker_ that he had been expelled from the Party as an enemy agent. Lautner even filed an appeal of this expulsion order but never received an answer. Several months later he came to the FBI with his story for the first time and since has testified in several legal proceedings. Such is the way communist “justice” is dispensed in the United States.