What Price Security?

...Army by acts or affiliations, past or present, over which he has complete control, and whose performance of service would otherwise warrant characterization as 'honorable,' should, except under the most exceptional circumstances, upon the expiration of his term of service have such service characterized as 'under honorable conditions' and, if discharged, be given a general discharge...

...The employe submitted a complete autobiography, much of it dealing with his long anti-Communist record in his union...

...At subsequent hearings, the soldier's civilian counsel noted that the accused could not have known in 1946 that the SWP was on the Attorney General's list since that list was first promulgated in the late fall of 1947...

...He then gets a "letter of allegations" which often deals heavily in guilt by association and kinship...

...The husband was permitted to retire and survives by doing part-time jobs...

...The price of such a revised security system would be a fraction of what the present program is costing us, both in money and in the blood, sweat and tears of innocent people...

...If one may judge from these samples, what finally happens to the people involved depends less on what they or their relatives and friends did or said in that receding past which is as yesterday to the FBI, as upon their energy in fighting the charges, their choice of an attorney and their luck with respect to the security board that hears them...

...he is not to be appointed, enlisted or retained beyond his obligatory service...

...Mr...

...Theoretically, under the Selective Service Law and Army regulations, every young man of draft age is entitled to: (1) the right not to be drafted if the armed forces know that he will not be permitted to serve on the same basis as any other inductee...

...The Army didn't have to concern itself with the security status of its draftees before their induction...

...The first of these studies is a collection of 50 Case Histories in Personal Security, compiled by Adam Yarmolinsky and published by the Bureau of National Affairs in Washington...

...Only recently, with the publication of two careful and valuable studies financed by the Fund for the Republic, have we begun to understand the operations and human costs of the Eisenhower security program...

...He is to remain in this status unless he has a change of heart and voluntarily clears himself...

...In theory, it is not a crime to be labeled a security risk by the head of the Government agency that employs you (perhaps you merely picked the wrong father, mother or mother-in-law) ; or to be fired by your industrial employer for reasons that have nothing to do with your integrity, patriotism or competence...

...Hence, these case studies do not pretend to provide us with a comprehensive picture of the security system as a whole...

...The same judgment applies to the unfortunates who found themselves caught in security tanglefoot ten years after they had learned about Communism the hard way by joining American Youth for Democracy and getting properly fed up with it, so that their FBI files show no subsequent Communist affiliations or activities...

...The Army, concludes Mr...

...The husband recovered his health and was discharged from the institution...

...Their ordeals are as devastating as those of similar little people who have experienced the mindless fury of a flood or hurricane...

...The task of devising a security system that is at once adequate, just and humane is not easy...

...Although no evidence was presented at the hearings to show that the soldier had engaged in political activities other than the anti-Communist union fights which he described, and although his service record was good, he was given a dishonorable discharge...

...and that in his job application he had failed to note two previous periods of Government employment...

...Watts rather conclusively demonstrates, the Army ought to get out of the security business, the Yarmolinsky study makes it equally clear that the Government should radically revise the present security program as it applies to Government employes and to workers in classified industries...

...In addition, he was informed by the regional office of the Civil Service Commission that he was now rated ineligible for other Civil Service appointment and barred for three years from competing in Federal Civil Service examinations...

...By James Rorty Some sort of security system we shall have and should have as long as the cold war lasts...

...that he had been a member of the International Workers Order, a Communist-controlled insurance organization...

...His lawyer's bill, if it is ever presented, is likely to be ruinous...

...We have here only those employes and servicemen who chose to fight...

...Their past left-wing affiliations and those of their relatives and associates usually date back five, ten, 15, even 25 years...

...Many servicemen do not contest the "undesirable" or "general discharge under honorable conditions" given them by the armed services...

...and he is not to have access to any classified information...

...Character of Service to Be Determined...

...It has decreed lifetime punishment (by dishonorable discharge) of those who have committed no offense against the Army...

...These charges alleged that 13 years before he had signed a Communist nominating petition...

...He had spent the previous year fighting Communist domination of his union, a fight which ended victoriously when he led the union out of its Red-dominated international and back into the CIO...

...Ten days later, he was committed to a mental hospital...

...Watts, should get out of the security business...

...But to combat the subversion, sabotage and espionage that are constant aspects of Communist aggression, even in a period of detente like the present, must we subject thousands of Government employes, workers in classified industries, and drafted servicemen to protracted nightmares of crippling anxiety, moral misery and public branding...

...For example: "It is charged that your mother-in-law is lying low as a Communist but will become active in the peace movement again...

...An employe, once cleared, should not be subjected to renewed charges unless they are based on new and substantial derogatory evidence...

...The second is a study of the Army Military Security Program entitled The Draftee and Internal Security, by Rowland Watts, National Secretary of the Workers Defense League, which publishes the volume along with a separately bound appendix consisting of 49 case histories involving servicemen...

...In his Case 10, the draftee was inducted in October 1952 even though he had told his draft board, and written on his Loyalty Certificate, that he had been "screened off merchant vessels by the U.S...

...The results of this policy are illustrated by the 49 case histories assembled by Mr...

...In the event of clearance, the Government, not the accused, should pay the legal costs of his defense...

...Watts quotes enough nonsense of this sort to justify fully his conclusion that the ideal draftee, from the point of view of the present Army Security Program, is "an only child of spontaneous generation who, despite a hermit childhood, has miraculously acquired the ability to read and write English, but has never made use of these useful skills...

...The public knows little of this record...

...Many employes resign or accept dismissal rather than go through the strain and expense of fighting suspension as a security risk...

...Despite his volunteered information that he was a security risk by Army standards, the soldier, while not promoted, was permitted to serve as a weekly instructor in an indoctrination course on world events to troops stationed in West Berlin...

...Two months later, the employe received notice that he had been fired, for the reasons set forth in the original letter...

...The answers made it clear that the charges were trivial, based on misunderstandings, or false--e.g., instead of teaching English to Russian Embassy personnel, the husband had taught Russian to U.S...

...At the same time, his wife was also suspended from a similar job because of her "continued sympathetic association" with her husband...

...The Communist literature turned out to be a copy of Das Kapital, acquired as a reference text while in college...

...he is not to be promoted...

...But we hear nothing about the hundreds of hapless people who, after being caught and maimed in the security machinery set up under Public Law 733 and Executive Order 10450, have crawled away to lick their wounds in the obscurity that has become their most precious possession...

...An anti-Communist Russian emigre with a 26-year record of clerical service for a Federal agency was suddenly informed in June 1954 that he had been suspended on charges of having Communist "leanings...

...The critical section of Executive Order 10450 requires that no civilian officer or employe be employed or retained unless his employment is "clearly consistent with the interests of national security...

...Yet, his ordeal has cost less emotional suffering than that of some loyal and responsible Government workers who were cleared after exhausting their financial and emotional resources in repealed hearings and appeals...

...His counsel appealed this decision, but the appeal was denied...

...But the interests of national security are scarcely endangered by the employment of former members or fellow-travelers of the Socialist Workers party or the Independent Socialist League, whose political activities five, ten or 15 years before consisted chiefly of fighting the Stalinists...

...that he had associated closely with officers of the Socialist Workers party...

...This is a preliminary instalment of a much larger compilation which, when completed, will he put at the disposal of the New York Bar Association's recently established Committee on the Federal Loyalty-Security Programs...

...Meanwhile, however, the general direction of the changes required to make the present system equitable is apparent enough: -The program should be greatly restricted in scope so that it applies only to employes occupying sensitive positions...

...that he hadn't mentioned his previous Government jobs because both had been brief and terminated by resignation for good reasons, one being that his eyesight did not permit him to do welding...

...They do not refuse to answer questions or take refuge in the Fifth Amendment...

...Confident that his anti-Communist record would result in his prompt clearance, the postal clerk felt he needed no legal help in replying to the charges against him...

...The wife then withdrew her letter of resignation and filed answers embodying denials of the charges by both herself and her husband...

...If, as Mr...

...In fighting, whether they won or lost, they have revealed the stupidities, cruelties and injustices inherent in our present security program, and it is significant that in about two out of three cases they won...

...The victims are not likely to advertise their misfortunes, even after they have rescued themselves from the toils of our security system with the help of friends and lawyers, and after expending vastly more time, money and emotional energy than they could afford...

...Others have resigned knowing that they were innocent, but unwilling to go through the struggle of trying to disprove ten- and 15-year-old accusations by FBI informers whom they would not be permitted to confront...

...A week later, the employe was suspended without pay by a letter citing the earlier charges and others, among them that his wife's name had appeared on a mailing list of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, that in March 1944 she had been a member of the Young Communist League (which both husband and wife denied), and that Communist literature and art had been observed in their home...

...The factor of risk-by-association and kinship should be considered only when the adverse current effects of the association can be demonstrated...

...The anti-Communist postal clerk has not yet been cleared and may never be cleared...

...Hearing procedures should be speeded up and revised to permit access by the accused and his counsel to all the charges against him, subject only to the necessary safeguarding of the identity of FBI informants...

...Coast Guard, June 1951...

...This appeal was also denied, and the employe has filed action in a Federal court to contest the adverse determination in his case...

...It should adopt a new program under which it would take responsibility for the draftee only during his period of active service, and under which, if it does not choose to retain a man on either active or reserve duty, it will accord him a discharge based solely on the character of the service he has rendered...

...Watts...

...Later, because of his continuing interest in the anti-Communist union struggle, he had attended the SWP 1946 convention, but only as a spectator...

...nor do such charges appear in their FBI dossiers, if one may judge from the terse and incomplete summaries which are all that the accused or their counsel are permitted to see...

...The security criteria should be revised to attach much more weight to the current or recent anti-Communist activities of the persons affected and much less to early Communist or Communist-front affiliations...

...Counsel then appealed to the United States Civil Service Commission...

...A few make headlines: Wolf Ladejinsky, Norman P. Gaston, Stephen Branzovich, Eugene Landy...

...In general, the boards tend to make more sense than either the law or the security officers who administer it...

...Actually, as these case histories show, the Army has deprived many of its inductees of all these rights, both by applying its regulations and in some cases by disregarding them...

...It could have put this burden on Selective Service, where it properly belonged, and accepted only young men whom the draft boards have cleared and who signed the Loyalty Certificate denying membership in the Communist party and its fronts...

...Actually, these are all moral, social and financial disasters of the first magnitude which only spies and saboteurs should be made to suffer...

...The employes and servicemen involved do not admit to current or recent membership in the Communist party and its fronts...

...the pictures were cheap reproductions of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Renoir and Modigliani...

...he is to remain in the lowest enlistment grade during his tour of duty...

...Most of Yarmolinsky's 30 case histories of Government employes involve low-salaried workers in non-sensitive positions, without contact with classified materials and without supervisory responsibilities...

...This time, the employe engaged counsel and was given a hearing by a board consisting of three civilian members of military installations...

...Finally, it has constituted itself the censor and judge of the draftee from his earliest adolescence to the completion of his reserve duty six years after his separation from active service...

...In his reply, the employe declared that he had never been a member of any organizations, or knowingly associated with persons, engaged in subversive activities...

...The letter also charged that the accused had distributed the Militant, organ of the SWP, at the 1949 convention of the National Maritime Union...

...Brooding over these charges, the man became deeply depressed, wrote a letter of resignation, and persuaded his wife, who did not wish to aggravate his precarious condition, to write a similar letter...

...Navy and Army officers...

...It has played jailer to men who are charged with no crime...

...2) the right, if he is drafted, to serve on the same basis as every other inductee, and (3) the right, upon the completion of his term of active service, to a separation, and upon completion of reserve service to a discharge, based on the character of the service he has rendered in the armed forces...

...Both studies deal with employes or servicemen who have contested the unfavorable action taken by the security authority, have demanded and in most instances obtained hearings, and have been represented by counsel...

...Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in testifying before a Congressional committee: "Under such a directive, a young man about to be inducted could avoid military service merely by scribbling across the certificate, 'Refuse to answer, Fifth Amendment.' He would thereby have successfully avoided all compulsory military service and--unfortunately--without sufficient stigma to prevent such a directive from being abused...

...They arc disastrous even when, after months or years of hearings and appeals, you are triumphantly cleared and restored to your job or given an honorable discharge...

...Both, interestingly, are likely to behave more sensibly and humanely when the security charge involves drunkenness or sex deviation, rather than past political sins committed either directly or vicariously by the accused person's mother, uncle or sister-in-law...

...or to be given, at the end of your draft service, an "undesirable" or "general discharge under honorable conditions" instead of the honorable discharge which your service record would normally entitle you to...

...He was separated from active duty on the completion of two years of service and given a paper...

...It should be assigned to an impartial non-political commission of qualified experts...

...The security policy of the Army is succinctly stated in Department of the Army Message No...

...he is not to be placed in any position of responsibility or authority...

...Under such a set of rules, the Selective Service Act would become a farce to anyone willing to subscribe to such tactics...

...It has burdened itself with a vast system of detection, investigation and hearing...

...What immediately strikes the reader of these histories is that in most of them neither the law nor the public interest required the bringing of the charges...

...The soldier denied that he had ever been a member of the SWP or of any organization except the Seafarers International Union (AFL), in which he had been active in fighting the Communists...

...It would strengthen, not weaken, the national defense against Communist subversion and espionage...

...Yet, despite repeated appeals, neither husband nor wife was given hearings or permitted to withdraw their resignations...

...that his signature on a Communist nominating petition 13 years before did not reflect his support of the Communist party...

...58493, which provides that "Any person who limits his usefulness to the U.S...

...Take, for example, the substitute postal clerk who in February 1954 received notification that he was under investigation by the regional office of the Civil Service Commission...

...Although the Army's investigation of the draftee frequently begins before his induction, so that he may be flagged from the beginning of his service, he is left to wonder why he remains a private until toward the end of his two years of active duty...

...They arc disasters which, on the record, have fallen with (quasi-divine impartiality upon the guilty and the guiltless, upon Communists and anti-Communists, upon Socialists and Republicans, upon those who were merely foolish or careless when young, and upon those who were related to or friendly with the wrong people...

...Two months later, the soldier received a "letter of allegations' charging that he had attended the national convention of the Socialist Workers party in 1916, knowing at the time that the SWP had been cited as subversive by the Attorney General...

...She died when the soldier was 8 years old...

...He denied all the charges against himself and his wife except yielding on impulse to the request of a street solicitor to sign a Communist nominating petition--at a time when the party was legally on the ballot...

...Yet, precisely such cases recur again and again in the compilations assembled by Yarmolinsky and Watts...

...Thirteen witnesses, some of them prominent in state and local politics, testified concerning the employe's good character, loyalty and anti-Communist union activities...

...Therefore, we reluctantly accept as a solution, for lack of a better one, the taking of this type of young man into the service with certain safeguards, namely: His record is to clearly show his status as being a 'security risk...

...His appeal from this decision to the Army Discharge Review Board is still to be heard...

...Its reason for not adopting this procedure was stated by Admiral Arthur AY...

...He had again cooperated with the anti-Communist forces, including SWP members, when Joseph Curran broke with the Communists in the National Maritime Union...

...Nor does it make sense for the Army to keep those boys in a kind of military deep-freeze during their active service, flagged against promotion, occupied with routine jobs, and tarred eighteen months or two years later with an "undesirable" or "general discharge under honorable conditions...

...Public counsel should be made available to the accused without charge, but he should also be permitted to employ outside counsel...

...He had participated, along with members of the SWP, in a caucus against the racially discriminatory policies of that union...