The Security System: Does Tt Threaten Our Freedom?
NOVINS, WALTER MILLIS \ ROBERT MORRIS \ STUART
THE SECURITY SYSTEM Does It Threaten Our Freedom? From CBS Radio's 'The Leading Question' The Participants: Walter Millis, consultant, the Fund for the Republic; former military columnist, the...
...If it were for something more than that, let them, as far as consistent with security itself, indicate to the prospective employer what the facts are...
...Where is the primary emphasis to be...
...Morris: That's a good point...
...If the record shows that a particular individual is loyal not to his own government but rather to some other government and if that can be amply demonstrated, I don't think you have any question of civil rights in doubt at all...
...Navins: We've all seen stories about people being dropped from Government jobs for allegedly being security risks under the President's security program...
...And 37 were high officials in the United States Government...
...Morris: The executive branch of the Government is charged with the responsibility of carrying out its duties...
...Does the Government security program infringe on individual civil rights...
...Now, the FBI certainly investigated that case thoroughly...
...Now that is the kind of test that is applied over and over again, and to my mind it simply does not indicate in any way that Mr...
...Second...
...When you have a situation of the Government trying to determine the suitability or lack of suitability of a particular employe, I imagine that the situation is often very much the same as when examining a witness before a legislative body...
...Morris: Mr...
...We are having hundreds and thousands of men and women brought up on this type of charges, which do not resemble the Bentley charges in any way...
...Morris: Well, very often you read that a particular employe reads the Daily Worker...
...I mean, he's being dismissed because his conduct at that particular hearing is such that he doesn't inspire trust and confidence and he's being separated from the Government...
...Novins: Well, if the security of the nation demands that certain safeguards be taken and if certain individual rights are lost along the way--is this a bad thing or a good thing...
...There's one famous case often cited in the Department of Justice...
...Millis, you say they're being sentenced...
...I think the record shows that they are being considered unsuitable and if the tag unsuitability carries with you more of a stigma than it actually should--I don't think you can blame that on the system...
...Novins: I wonder if the apparatus for determining whether these situations are right or not is not something that we could discuss...
...It has put him to a lot of cost to find out the probable source of the charge and to bring in a sufficient refutation, but in cases of that kind--and they are not numerous among those of which I am familiar--the facts apparently always come out...
...Novins: Except, Judge Morris, when you're examining a witness before a Congressional committee, you are not judging, you are looking for information...
...Millis: It is a sentence regardless of what legal term you apply to it...
...These are overt acts, aren't they...
...Morris: Well, there you come to the issue of the constitutional right of cross-examination...
...You mentioned, Mr...
...And it is perfectly proper for an entry of that kind to be made upon his record, if he is unsuitable...
...And do we not have now laws against treason and laws against sabotage...
...They checked and double-checked every statement she made...
...Novins: What are the criteria...
...Novins: Judge, we have used the word security and we've used the word loyalty...
...Millis, that witnesses are not capable of being cross-examined...
...He was tried by the courts, but he was not subjected to dismissal under the security program...
...And a great majority of those charges rest solely upon certain associations which these people are alleged to have had with the Communist party...
...What we are in the presence of today is a situation with which Elizabeth Bentley has nothing to do whatever...
...There's always ancillary evidence...
...What we have in existence, however, is a system which is quite unsuited to determining whether a person really presents a risk of espionage or sabotage--a system which is everyday turning tens, hundreds of people out of jobs, sentencing them to very onerous penalties of many kinds without any evidence whatever that they present any risk to the country of any kind...
...If you show that a man is loyal not to the United Stales but to some other government, certainly under the present security arrangement that man can be dismissed from his position...
...I think one of the things that's raised is that some of the people charged are often questioned as to periodicals or newspapers that they may subscribe to or read...
...Under the Eisenhower program, he can be ejected from the Government and also from a wide area of private employment on the grounds that he is a security risk...
...If he has been dismissed as a security risk, he has to put that down...
...In the first place, you sentence a man to the loss of his income...
...Morris: Don't you think, Mr...
...I agree with Judge Morris that if a man is unsuitable for employment in any of these industries, it should be perfectly proper for him to be dismissed...
...Millis: I would like to observe here that in the security cases with which I have any familiarity, when the question of reading the Daily Worker comes up, it almost invariably is in the sense that Judge Morris has just said--it is brought up as supporting evidence to buttress many other charges...
...In very few of the security cases with which I have any familiarity has the inability to cross-examine appeared to have any very great effect...
...Now, when she came forward from the Communist underground, from Soviet military intelligence, she disclosed to the FBI the identity of 87 American citizens who were working for her in Soviet Military Intelligence...
...So, let me put the question to each of you...
...I am not one of those who insists that the lack of the right of confrontation of witnesses in security hearings is of very great importance...
...so that anyone now who receives a dismissal for security-risk reasons, in effect, carries the stigma of disloyalty...
...Now, I think under the circumstances that the man has no right whatever to be confronted by his accusers...
...Millis: I'd like to revert for a moment to this question...
...I don't expect either of you to have any complete knowledge of them, hut some facts have emerged...
...What I object to is not the procedure in the system but the very fact that the system is there...
...Morris: Oh, yes...
...They were transmitting secrets by the thousands to the Soviet Union without authority...
...Novins: Well, you mentioned subversion and sabotage and espionage...
...I would say that anybody that had the responsibility of assessing that evidence had every right in the world to act and act expeditiously, because those people, as we see now, have worked terrible damage...
...They're being charged not with having been conspirators, not with being spies, not with being members of an espionage ring: they're charged solely with being security risks...
...Millis: It's strictly a precautionary thing because none of the people who are affected by this program have ever committed any overt act...
...Millis: I would say...
...When they had the facts, they turned over that information to the people then administering the loyalty program...
...Stuart Novins, CBS news analyst, moderator...
...And if some subsequent employer, as all private companies do, should make inquiry about the circumstances of his separation from the job, the record should show precisely for what reasons he was separated from government...
...Millis: I have a very strong conviction that it infringes very severely on civil rights in many ways, that it subjects men and women to trial--secret trial--without confrontation of witnesses...
...Morris: Well, Mr...
...Millis, to see what acts would be scrutinized by the security people if they aren't overt acts...
...The question in my mind is: Do we need a further apparatus such as we have in the Federal security program...
...This is for the reason that the facts in the security cases are not usually disputed...
...I know you both agree that the Government must be safeguarded against infiltration and subversion and espionage, but I think you disagree on how it should be handled...
...Millis: Actually I think that there is a fair amount of misconception over this whole problem...
...Morris: Certainly, you wouldn't expect a man to be retained in a sensitive position in Government up until the time he has been actually convicted for a crime...
...Certainly in a Congressional hearing, there's no such thing as a constitutional right of cross-examination...
...I don't think any form of judicial review is possible in this thing if you decide that it is necessary to set up a system of administrative tribunals to decide whether men and women are security risks--not to decide whether they are actual spies or saboteurs, but whether they present a risk of becoming saboteurs...
...Those, I do not think, are the type of charges which bring out whether a person is actually a risk to security or not...
...Novins: But under the present security arrangement isn't it also possible for a man to be labeled a security risk without being labeled disloyal...
...that's the case of a man named Peterson, who as a result of the operation of the security program was discovered to have been engaging in espionage...
...The concept of security risk now includes the concept of disloyalty and also what used to be called un-suitability--that is, that the person is not disloyal but that for one reason or another, because he drinks too much or for many other reasons, he is apt to imperil the national security...
...Under the Truman program of 1947, a person could be ejected from a Government job on the grounds of being disloyal...
...Morris: I think that you must remember that no individual has any right to a job...
...He is then debarred from employment in any other area...
...this is an adverse proceeding whereas a legislative hearing was not...
...There is no form of accepted judicial review that you can apply to that...
...So certainly reading the Daily Worker ipso facto is at least ambiguous...
...Do we mean the same thing...
...I don't profess to know what the real facts are...
...Now, however, when you consider that the Daily Worker is not an ordinary newspaper...
...In many other ways, it subjects them to very heavy penalties without any approach to what could be called clue process of law...
...Millis, that if the man as a matter of fact is unsuitable for his job, the Government should treat him as a person unsuitable and dismiss him...
...Morris: Mr...
...Certainly a man does not have a right to a Government job...
...Millis: I think that a great mistake is made here in spending all our time in discussing what went on ten or five years ago...
...The facts are usually accepted by both sides...
...I wonder if you gentlemen feel that this is, at least, a premise on which to base an accusation...
...Novins: Even though their protective action may infringe on the rights of a particular individual-Morris: What do you mean by "infringing on their rights...
...Morris: None of the people, Mr...
...There's not one of us here who will not say that the federal Government eminent has every right to protect itself against espionage, to protect itself against sabotage in the interests of a hostile power...
...Now I myself in the past read the Daily Worker with a great deal of regularity...
...I would like to return to one other point...
...Millis, I would grant you that, if any cases are what you described them to be, it's poor handling on the part of our security...
...Novins: Would there be any merit, do you suppose, in any kind of loyalty or security program for the final appeal to be in some kind of judicial procedure...
...former counsel, Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security...
...but] rather the medium for transmitting directives, the way the Communists have of passing out their particular position on a particular issue--now if a man regularly reads the Daily Worker in connection with, say, organized Communist party meetings that he attends at the same time, well, then that becomes something very meaningful...
...In the third place, when the defense is unsuccessful, you put a tag upon his employment record and he is not able to escape that tag...
...But the cases that I've run into have been--Let's take the case of the people involved in the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley...
...Morris: I think so...
...I think, somewhat of a play with words...
...If it's a question of unsuitability, let the Government say it's unsuitability...
...Millis, if the facts as you set them forth in the Landy case are true, it may very well be that that particular case works an injustice...
...The sentence is a very hard one, and to say that it is a sentence imposed upon him for his unsuitability rather than his disloyalty is...
...There are cases with which I am familiar in which it is quite obvious that somebody, for reasons of spite or what have you, has brought in false charges against a man and he hasn't been told who it is who's done it...
...you must operate the system on the basis of star-chamber proceedings, of administrative inquiry, of taking secret evidence--all the rest of the things that are objected to are more or less unavoidable--if the charge is of this loose, vague character...
...Robert Morris, Municipal Court Judge, the City of New York...
...Landy is unsuitable to hold a commission...
...If you feel that it is necessary to maintain a very large system of this kind...
...Disloyally is a more severe indictment than is lack of security...
...former military columnist, the New York Herald Tribune...
...If, as in my case, I read the Daily Worker because I wanted to know what directives the Communists were putting out--well, then, that should be interpreted in view of those circumstances...
...His reply is, "Sir, I refuse to answer that question standing on my constitutional rights...
...Is there a loss so far as American freedom is concerned...
...In the second place, you sentence him to a very heavy legal cost in defending himself and two times out of three the defense is successful...
...What I do say is that the procedures, the criteria, the tests which are applied to these people have almost no relation to whether they are suitable or not...
...But let's say a clerk in one of the Government agencies is asked by his superior whether or not he has been taking petty cash out of the petty cash box...
...Morris: It's hard, Mr...
...Novins: Judge Morris...
...Now if particular individuals working within that branch of the government do not fulfill their obligations because they're security risks or disloyal, then it seems to me the executive branch of the Government must take some kind of protective action...
...Millis: None who are affected by this program...
...The New York area was recently very much concerned in the case of Ensign Landy, who was held to be unsuitable to hold a reserve commission in the Navy because his mother had been a member of the Communist party, despite the fact that Ensign Landy himself had endeavored to convert her away from the Communist party...
...If in carrying out his duties he does it in a way that is held by a board to be unsuitable, well then he certainly has not had his rights infringed upon...
...What determines the final judgment is the interpretation which the judges place upon the facts, rather than the question of whether the facts are true or not...
...You don't have to wait until the subsequent conviction before you can take some kind of action-Novins: So this is in effect a precautionary thing...
...Morris: Oh, it's that and more...
...The Government doesn't publish the fact that X has been fired as a security risk, but when X goes to another job (and this doesn't concern only Federal employment, it concerns employment over very large areas of private industry today), the first thing he has to do is to fill out a personnel security questionnaire...
...sir, without any question that, if it were possible to create a system which would with even a reasonable degree of accuracy determine that a given individual was a risk to the security of the United States, then that system would have to be supported without any question...
...Long before the indictment and the conviction, enough facts come to the surface which would clearly indicate that that particular person is not suitable...
...Certainly, one might say that when Alger Hiss had to go to prison his civil rights were curtailed...
...The two are wrapped up in one...
Vol. 38 • October 1955 • No. 39
