Numbers Game, Evening Star (Article, March 1954)
Full Text
Numbers Game
Washington's celebrated [numbers] game--the turmoil about 1,456 or 2,200 "security risks"--had two more payoffs last week. And, as might have been expected, the payoffs [benefited] nobody, not even the bookie.
Civil Service Commission Chairman Philip Young released a tabulation of resignations and charges which, he said, had taken place in the last seven months of 1953 through operation of the Republican-sponsored security program.
The table showed a total of 2,427 separations from Government service, 1074 of them firings and 1,353 resignations. All these people, Mr. Young emphasized, had left the Government; the total did not include any who had transferred to other civil service posts.
The Civil Service chairman also gave a partial--and far from definitive--breakdown of the causes for separation: "Subversive" cases, sex perversion, felonies and misdemeanors, and "all others." This breakdown did not include reasons for separation of 189 persons in the Air Force, 235 in the Navy and two in the office of the Secretary of Defense--a total of 426 persons.
For the remaining 2,001 separated persons, however, the table showed 2,227 reasons. The explanation of this discrepancy was that some persons had been separated for more than one cause; for instance, a sexual deviate might also be found to be an alcoholic (one of the "all other" categories), or a felon might also be found to have subversive information in his file.
Revised Count
On Thursday Mr. Young revised the totals upward without really clarifying the situation.
His new total showed 2,429 persons separated and a total of 2,655 reasons cited. "Subversive cases," according to Mr. Young's tabulation number 422; sex perversion, 198; felonies and misdemeanors, 611; "all others," 1,424.
One thing the release of the tabulation did was knock in the head such statements as that of Senator McCarthy that 90 [percent] of all separations were for subversive or homosexual reasons (the report showed that 23.4 [percent] of the total in these columns). It also torpedoed the credibility of such statements as that of Representative Bender, Republican, of Ohio that "the Eisenhower administration had gotten rid of over 2,000 Communists and fellow travelers."
Not answered yet--and probably never to be answered--was the question: How many Communists has the administration fired? Of the 422 listed as "subversive cases," Mr. Young was not prepared to say last week that even one was a proved disloyalty case.
