Defends Stand on Loyalty Cases, Evening Star (Article, January 1954)
Full Text
Defends Stand on Loyalty Cases
Administration Resists Public Airing of Data on U.S. [Employees] Separated for Security Reasons
The Eisenhower administration is 100 [percent] right in resisting the campaign undertaken by some Trumanite newspaper writers to force a public disclosure of the nature of the 2,200 cases involved [employees] who in the last 12 months have been separated from Government service for security reasons.
The attempt is significant because it comes from the so-called "liberal" group which is usually the first to denounce "smearing" tactics and "character assassination."
Originally, the Truman administration set up a loyalty and security program in two categories-- those [employees] who for loyalty reasons would be declared ineligible to remain in Government service and those who for reasons of security would be allowed to resign or be discharged.
Many of the cases in "loyalty" class got into the newspapers anyhow despite efforts to keep such procedures confidential but initially there was no publicity given out about individual security cases. It was generally conceded that, if a man was dismissed for "loyalty" or "security" reasons and his name as revealed, his reputation for life would be injured.
When the Eisenhower administration came into power it decided to try to avoid such a formal characterization as "disloyalty" except in cases involving actual espionage or treason. So all doubtful cases were ordered to be investigated under one general heading--"security." The broad term was to be used to cover all types of security risks.
This method was designed to protect the individual especially since it was frankly announced that "security" includes those who habitually are indiscreet in their conversations outside of the Government offices--drunkards, and those who are found to have such abnormal personal habits as to make such [employees] subject to blackmail by enemy agents.
Not satisfied with this generous treatment of all security risks in an omnibus classification, some of the newspaper critics now have set out to compel the disclosure of a "breakdown." They claim that only a small [percent] of the cases involved so-called "loyalty" matters and that a misleading impression is given by the 2,200 figure. That's a customary maneuver here to force information into the open. It was, for example, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate who first goaded Senator McCarthy on the floor of the Senate in 1950 to name names when the Wisconsin Senator introduced his charges about the State Department on a statistical basis.
Concentration their fire on Attorney General Brownell, the Trumanites resent the accusation that there were 2,200 security risks left in the Government when the last administration ended its term. At last week's press conference, one newspaperman implied by his question that the Attorney General was violating President Eisenhower's order about "freedom of information" in the Government because Mr. Brownell wouldn't make public a classification of each type of security risk uncovered in the last 12 months.
But the plot is plain to see. If the Department of Justice or any other department gives out figures showing how many [employees] were fired in any of the eight categories covered by the "security" order issued by the White House several months ago, the next demand will be for the names or the facts. If these are refused, then will come leaks as to their identity or the nature of a few individual cases and the administration will promptly be accused of "character assassination."
The so-called "liberals" can't have it both ways--they cannot insist that innocent persons shall not be smeared and yet be parties themselves to a process which inevitably must lead to disclosure of all the sordid facts about some of those [employees] in the Government who have done improper things either in their repeated contacts with Communist sympathizers or who may become potential security risks in the future because of personal habits involving abnormal behavior in the past. It is the future rather than the deeds of the past which usually excite apprehension about a security risk.
The Eisenhower administration sees no good cause to be served by giving out the exact number of homosexuals, the exact number of drunkards, and the exact number of persons whom there is reasonable doubt as their future loyalty. After all, the quest for percentages is spurious on its face anyway. For it takes only one Alger Hiss out of 20,000 [employees] in the State Department, only one Harry Dexter White out of many thousands of [employees] in the Treasury Department, and only one Klaus Fuchs in the entire atomic-energy project to injure the United States Government. It is a small percentage statistically but nobody probably will ever know how many undetected contacts they had inside our Government to carry on their work for the cause of Soviet Russia.
