SECURITY WITHOUT WITCH HUNTS
Dulles, Allen W.
Security Without Witch Hunts By Allen W. Dulles OSS Chief in Switzerland and Germany, 1942-45; Author, "Germany's Underground" THE ROYAL COMMISSION which investigated Communist spy activities...
...Such a commission could help throw light on these activities in instances where publicity is the best weapon for presenting the evidence to those softheaded people who — in the relative security of North America — still believe Communism is a beneficent force...
...In time, it would build up a body of information on the pattern of Soviet penetration of our free institutions, which would serve to open the eyes—in time of even those who are most blind to what we are facing today...
...Members of Congressional investigating committees, however, have full-time jobs as legislators...
...This kind of medicine can be worse than the disease...
...But their tactics are flexible and subtle...
...With the great resources available to it, the Soviet Union is following the pattern which they have been using so successfully in the Far East, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere...
...Popular understanding of the pattern of communist intrigue will help arm our citizens and disarm those who would undermine our society...
...The Commission to which I refer would not prosecute crimes...
...In this particular case, some of those implicated by the Andings of the Commission were convicted of crime...
...Or they disguise their activities so as to have them appear as local and indigenous movements arising out of economic, racial, or other inequalities in our own system...
...If law violations are discovered as a result of their investigations, the matter then goes to the proper government judicial officers...
...In fact, it will probably be impossible to legislate*, to meet all the methods of communistic intrigue which today threaten our security...
...We have had neither the weapons of offense in dealing with it abroad nor the weapons of defense in meeting it right in our midst...
...a Federal Trade Commission to investigate unfair trade practices...
...These commissions can so conduct their proceedings that there need be no premature disclosure which would prevent the proper following up of all criminal leads and clues by the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau of Investigation...
...and those who still look upon Chinese or other Communists as mere land reformers...
...It is natuarl and proper for them to carry on investigations to provide a background for the framing of adequate legislation to deal with these abuses, but they should not be forced to take over longterm investigations of the whole range of Communist intrigues...
...It showed the inadequacy of laws to meet the dangerous techniques •which the Communists employ...
...We cannot meet it by attempting to create a whole new category of crimes and misdemeanors...
...Author, "Germany's Underground" THE ROYAL COMMISSION which investigated Communist spy activities in Canada two years ago was not a judicial body in the sense that it laid before the world a judicial presentation .of the facts...
...Where, as in the case of the Canadian Royal Commission, there was evidence of crime, it would be incumbent on our judicial machinery to move into action...
...We have a Securities and Exchange Commission with powers to investigate our practices in the sale of securities...
...This result of the Commission's work illustrates one of the difficulties we find today in dealing with-the Communist menace...
...Both Canada and Britain have long had more effective "Official Secrets Acts" than we have had here in the United States...
...SUCH LAWS MAY BE HELPFUL...
...Their leaders have a fanatic faith in their cause and supreme confidence in ultimate success...
...I am not speaking here of military weapons...
...Moscow has not been able to hide its disappointment over pur failure to have a serious depression since the war...
...These laws have not seriously cut down on civil liberties or the freedom of the press...
...Groups in our society are being penetrated wherever they present signs of being useful allies for the Communists when the time for direct action comes...
...These dangers might be almost as serious as the Communist intrigue itself...
...We cannot legislate to meet all phases of the communist danger...
...We have fooled them so far, but that only means that Russia has postponed certain planned measures...
...To sever those relations would be a step on the road to war...
...We have been quicker to see the need for this type of preparedness than we have for preparedness in the ¦war of ideas...
...To achieve success the Moscow master-minds of the communist movement often try to remain veiled behind a high degree of secrecy...
...We cannot do it, either, by merely banning the Communist party or driving . it underground...
...The non-communist world is the subject of a systematic program of penetration by skilled artisans of worldwide revolution...
...Communist intriguers do their best to stop short of committing provable crimes, and we cannot maintain the type of free society which is our great heritage, by drawing any iron curtain around our borders...
...Our chief difficulty has been the inadequacy of our general approach to the whole issue of the world - wide menace of Communism...
...In fact, this type of legislation will not stop communist intrigue in our midst, for those who master-mind world revolutions will not be deterred because we equip ourselves more effectively to deal here and there with those agents caught redhanded...
...They have many ways of entry, not least of which is the privileged official channel open to them so long as we maintain diplomatic relations with Moscow...
...This does not mean that there are no gaps in our laws which should and can be filled without danger to civil liberties...
...These are all bi-partisan bodies with quasi-judicial powers...
...Where the facts pointed to" violation of law, then the legal machinery of justice was set into motion to determine whether a crime had been committed...
...An interesting example of this has been the recent attack on our jury system by counsel lor the indicated eleven Communist leaders on trial in New York...
...They are not a cure...
...Fortunately, the communist drive within our labor unions is now being vigorously and courageously resisted, and recently both British and American union leaders have given notice to the Communist - dominated World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) that they will have nothing more to do with this instrument of world-wide communist propaganda...
...She has not abandoned them...
...Whenever they run against the existence of sound economic conditions, . they play a waiting game...
...THESE MEASURES short of war...
...Its findings, when made public, must reflect the highest degree of impartiality and of intense and continuing study...
...But we are not without weapons of defense, one of the best of which Is publicity...
...It would try to find the facts...
...Such a commission could investigate the practices and policies of Soviet Communism stemming from abroad but . operating here and fanning out in various channels to threaten our democratic institutions...
...CANADA'S ROYAL COMMISSION...
...Our points of weakness and our frailties are being studied...
...If the tools we possess are inadequate, and I believe they arc, we certainly huve the ingenuity to create new ones...
...In the United States we have developed various forms of administrative commissions to deal with possible abuses in our economic system...
...We have already known in our own history the effect of "Alien and Sedition Laws...
...The job I suggest for the Commission on Internal Security is not one that can be done part-time, and it is one that should be wholly free from any political bias...
...At least this could not be done without endangering our civil liberties...
...Our free press is doing a splendid job of education, but it could do even more if more facts were made available to it...
...Wa might well follow this lead and again prove the soundness of the great principle that knowledge of the truth can keep us free...
...which we certainly should not be the first to take...
...SUCH A COMMISSION would not replace investigating bodies of Congress which have performed vitally important functions, both in the field of subversive activities and in arousing the public conscience to abuses, public and private...
...The Canadian authorities—in a bold move which entitles them to the gratitude of the non-communist worldthrough the Royal Commission which investigated the communist plot two years ago, have shown us here in the United States a good example...
...If we have found it necessary to have commissions to deal with possible threats to our economic freedom and welfare, it is certainly high time that we had an adequately equipped body to deal with the sinister campaign at- . tacking the very basis of our democratic institutions...
...The Communist works in the dark—we must bring him into the light...
...Their investigations can be public or private...
...It would not invade the field of the Federal Bureau of Investigation...
...They believe they can bide their time and choose their victims...
...The proposed commission could maintain secrecy where this is desirable in any investigation to protect the rights of reputations of individuals, or to prevent premature disclosure of evidence of crime...
...It has also shown us how this danger can be exposed in a manner to convince even the most ak optical that here at last are hard, solid facts soberly analyzed and impartially presented...
...This would, of course, require legislation...
...require of us—if we are to protect ourselves--counter-measures which are not limited solely to prosecuting statutory crimes or to attempting to exclude the agents of communist revolution...
...We would certainly be deluding^ ourselves if we thought that we could keep communist plotters from our shores by any exclusion measures...
...Others, though apparently caught in the general web of the conspiracy, had managed to skate around an actual violation of the criminal laws...
...a Tariff Commission to deal with importations which threaten our domestic production...
...In fact, it could show how they use and abuse these very institutions of liberty to destroy liberty...
...The success of the Commission's work points to the desirability of creating in the United States a federal agency which we might for convenience call a "Commission on Internal Security...
...We in the United States and Canada are being subjected to long-range attacks...
...whose findings have now been publicized in every part of this country and the free world, has done as much as any one other agency to educate us to the type of danger we face...
Vol. 32 • May 1949 • No. 20
