TALLAHASSE, Fla. (UPI) - The files on a notorious state
committee, formed in the 1950s to root out communists but eventually
used by its leader to target homosexuals in Florida's colleges, will
be opened Thursday.

     For nine years, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee
used spies to to investigate anyone who didn't fit the middle-class
American profile, critics said. The targets originally were
communists, civil rights leaders, and subversives of every stripe.

     It's best known for attacks on homosexuals at colleges.

     The panel was informally known as the Johns Committee after state
Sen. Charley Johns, a Democrat from the North Florida town of Starke,
who pushed for its creation in 1956.

     Details of the activities during the nine years of the
committee's existence will come to light Thursday when the Florida
Legislature releases an estimated 40,000 pages relating to the work of
the Johns Committee.

     The records were sealed when the committee disbanded in 1965, and
were intended to stay that way until 2028.

     But the records are being released to comply with a 1992
constitutional amendment making legislative records public, but names
of committee targets and witnesses are being deleted.

     In the committee's 1959 report, college campuses were portrayed
as hotbeds of homosexuality, with teachers initiating students into
the gay subculture and those students in turn becoming teachers who
did the same, creating a cycle of moral degradation.

     The committee uncovered their information by employing a network
of undercover operatives, in most cases convincing gays to betray
their friends or risk their own exposure.

     "That situation in Gainesville, my lord a'mercy, I never saw
nothin' like it in my life," Johns said in a 1972 interview.

     In some cases, the spies lured gay men and women into
compromising positions, only to photograph them in intimate acts.

     The result was more than 100 teachers and untold numbers of
students driven from campuses after being exposed.

     Many likened the trail of broken lives and wrecked careers to the
one former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy left when he tried to expose
communists a decade earlier.

     "I don't think Florida had any damn business getting into that,"
said Mallory Horne, who was House speaker at the time. "It was an
invasion of privacy, and it didn't enlighten society one damn bit. It
was just a travesty from start to finish."

     In 1964, the panel published another report, known as the "purple
pamphlet" for the color of its cover, suggesting the number of Florida
homosexuals was 120,000, roughly the size of Tallahassee at the time.

     The pamphlet contained sexually explicit photos of young men and
children, creating a backlash of public opinion and an end of the
panel in 1965.

     Former state Rep. Henry Land, an Orange County Democrat, said the
committee focused on communist infiltration of civil rights groups
when he was chairman in the mid 1950's.

     He said when Johns took control the committee's work left much to
be desired.

     "You've got to keep in mind the rednecks controlled the
Legislature in those days," Land said. "I wasn't too proud of the
committee, let's put it that way."

     Johns, who died in 1990 at age 84, viewed the committee as his
instrument to eradicate homosexuality, which revolted him.

     "If we saved one boy from bein' a homosexual, it was justified,"
he said in the 1972 interview.

     Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union said the
committee's records, instead of being viewed as one man's vision of
Florida's future, should serve as a warning on the dangers of a police
state.