McCarthys Charge Of Reprisals Angers Foreign Service Man, Evening Star (Article, February 1953)
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McCarthy's Charge Of Reprisals Angers Foreign Service Man
By the Associated Press
Senator McCarthy, Republican, of Wisconsin today accused State Department officials of reprisals against witnesses in a Senate investigation. One of them flared back that Senator McCarthy was destroying morale in the foreign service.
The angry exchange was between Senator McCarthy and Samuel J. Boykin, acting director of the department's Bureau of Security. It capped an inquiry by Senator McCarthy's Senate Investigations Subcommittee into how it happened that a State Department security agent was shifted to a new job soon after telling the Senators that documents often disappear from the department's secret files.
John E. Matson, who said he was shifted to a "pavement pounding" job, testified he believed the only reason was that his superiors "felt possibly I might disclose the truth" about department files.
Told of Report Vanishing.
Mr. Matson was a witness February 5 before the Senate subcommittee, and on that occasion testified that a report he had written on a suspected Communist in the foreign service disappeared mysteriously from the files. The man never was identified.
Mr. Matson said he was questioned extensively by his superiors in the next few days after his February 5 testimony and then given a less desirable job of investigating job applicants, which he termed a "pavement pounding and doorbell-ringing assignment."
Ripping into My. Boykin over the shift in Mr. Matson's assignment, Senator McCarthy told Mr. Boykin he was "incompetent" and had done "the most inexcusable act I've ever seen on the part of an officer."
Asks Discipline by Dulles.
Senator McCarthy called on Secretary of State Dulles to discipline the officials involved. He said the subcommittee would do this by contempt proceedings if the department's top men did not act.
Mr. Boykin insisted that Mr. Matson had not been demoted. But he said Mr. Matson had been given a new assignment and he defended this vigorously.
Mr. Boykin said that keeping Mr. Matson in his assignment would have contributed heavily to disruption of morale in his office.
He said "morale in foreign service personnel (the office involved) was just non-existent" because of the McCarthy hearing on the files.
Afraid of Losing Jobs.
"The people called up are just scared to death," Mr. Boykin said. "They're afraid of Senator McCarthy. They're afraid of Mr. Matson. They couldn't think and they couldn't do their jobs. They were afraid of losing their jobs."
Senator McCarthy indicated the next phase of his inquiry would concern the handling of cases of homosexuals. The group started into this 10 days ago with Vladimir I. Toumanoff, an assistant section chief in the foreign service division, in the witness chair.
Mr. Matson now has been assigned to investigating applicants for jobs in the State Department. Officials said that agents doing research work do have to go outside the office to make investigations.
"But he is not doing anything other than other agents are called on to do," said one official. He said the department's security agents generally are not specialists. They may be protecting a foreign official visitor one day, investigating a visa fraud case the next, or a job applicant the next.
