Ray John Madden (February 25, 1892 – September 28, 1987) was an American lawyer and World War I veteran who served 17 terms as a United States representative from Indiana from 1943 to 1977.
He was born in Waseca, Minnesota. He attended the public schools and Sacred Heart Academy in his native city. He graduated from the law department of Creighton University with an LL.B. in 1913 and was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Omaha, Nebraska.
Madden was elected as a municipal judge in Omaha in 1916. He resigned during the First World War to serve in the United States Navy. After the war, he was engaged in the practice of law in Gary, Indiana. He was the city comptroller of Gary from 1935–1938 and the treasurer of Lake County, Indiana from 1938–1942. He was a delegate to every Democratic National Convention from 1940 through 1968.
He was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-eighth and to the sixteen succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1943 – January 3, 1977). While in Congress, he served as a co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Organization of Congress (Eighty-ninth and Ninetieth Congresses), and chairman of the Committee on Rules (Ninety-third and Ninety-fourth Congresses). He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1976 to the Ninety-fifth Congress.
On September 18, 1951, the United States House of Representatives established the Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study of the Facts, Evidence, and Circumstances of the Katyn Forest Massacre, known as the Madden Committee after its chairman.[1] The purpose was to determine which nation was responsible for the atrocities and whether any American officials had engaged in covering up the massacre.[1]
The committee ruled unanimously that the Soviet Union was responsible for the executions, recommending a trial before the International World Court of Justice. The question of an American cover-up was more complicated. On this issue, the committee concluded that American officials failed to properly evaluate and act upon Russian behavior evident as early as 1942. The committee also determined that American policy toward the Soviet Union might have been different if information had not been deliberately withheld from the public.[1][2]
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