THE NEGLECTED FRONTIER
Shannon, William V.
PROGRESSIVE The Neglected Frontier by WILLIAM V. SHANNON This guest editorial is adapted from a recent commentary by William V. Shannon, Washington correspondent and political columnist for the...
...What clubs did he join in college...
...It is all a waste of time...
...No one believes in the security program...
...The deal was made...
...Former Senator Harry Cain, who was denied reappointment to the Subversive Activities Control Board by Eisenhower because of his courageous fight for mistreated government employes, could be brought back to office to search out these wrongs and correct them...
...There is, first of all, the vast and useless security program for all government employes, from janitors to cabinet members...
...Like prohibition, it should be abolished for the health and sanity of the republic...
...Walter came through with a ranting, embarrassing speech linking Republican opponents of the rules reform with Nikita Khrushchev and other national enemies...
...A case can reasonably be made for a security program covering a small number of policy-making officials in the State Department, Defense Department, and Atomic Energy Commission...
...Does he drink...
...Yet even these are only halfway measures...
...Hoover is the symbol and the source of much of the confusion in the public mind on security issues...
...Other officials could do the task just as well, but the choice of Cain would be both a personal act of justice to him and a happy piece of symbolism...
...They are filling out—in quintupli-cate, mind you—the same old FBI forms...
...This agency has treated both aliens and naturalized citizens in a most arbitrary, malicious, and inhumane manner...
...The Kennedy Administration inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower regimes a complex, oppressive body of laws, executive orders, regulations, and official attitudes in the so-called security area...
...The Rules Committee reform was probably worth the price of keeping Swing...
...The outlook for reform is discouraging...
...Moreover, President Kennedy omitted any reference to immigration legislation in his State of the Union message...
...Yet the new people coming into jobs in the Kennedy Administration are politely and circumspectly going through all the prescribed rigmarole...
...Does he give late parties...
...The reappointment of General Joseph M. Swing as Chief of the Immigration and Naturalization Service is another sad development...
...Nothing would do more to restore the pure air of American freedom than to abolish the whole lot of them...
...If the security program is to be retained, at least some elementary safeguards could be introduced into it...
...PROGRESSIVE The Neglected Frontier by WILLIAM V. SHANNON This guest editorial is adapted from a recent commentary by William V. Shannon, Washington correspondent and political columnist for the New York Post...
...Yet Swing has been kept on because Representative Francis Walter, Pennsylvania Democrat, Chairman of the Un-American Activities Committee and co-author of the McCarran-Walter Act, wanted him, and the Administration wanted Walter's help in the Rules Committee fight...
...The Democratic platform of 1960 specifically pledged: "We shall provide a full and fair hearing, including confrontation of the accuser, to any person whose public or private employment or reputation is jeopardized by a loyalty or security proceeding...
...A re-reading of this platform by those now in high places in the government would do no harm...
...It was a mistake when President Truman started it by executive order in 1947...
...It is a joke and a cynical racket...
...It is inconceivable, the miles of filing cabinets that must be filled with this stuff...
...But there is no reason why there should be security programs for employes in such completely domestic agencies as Agriculture, Labor, and Interior...
...While it is not quite reasonable to expect him to fire Hoover, one cannot escape the observation that few actions would have done President Kennedy more lasting honor...
...Unfortunately, Hoover was the first official reappointed by President Kennedy...
...But if the Democratic Party is to be true to itself, it must soon do something to protect the human rights and civil liberties of the refugee, the alien, the naturalized citizen, the government employe, and the isolated individual confronting the power of the state...
...Yet we never find any Communist spies this way...
...Civil liberties has been, so far, the most neglected sector of the New Frontier...
...This could be accomplished by executive order...
...It is as if Twentieth Century surgeons had to kneel and say the abracadabra of jungle witch doctors when they did not believe a word of it and knew it would do no good...
...But President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, have thus far touched nothing labeled "security...
...Another step the President could take on his own is to right some of the injustices done to individuals by this program in the past...
...The whole weight of his reputation, his Congressional connections, his newspaper allies, and his secret dossiers is thrown against any security reform, great or small...
...The House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security subcommittee could not function if it were not for the information and support supplied by Hoover and the FBI...
...A thorough housecleaning is needed...
...Our civil liberties cannot be restored to their full vigor as long as J. Edgar Hoover remains as head of the FBI...
...No action by Congress is required...
...What magazines does he read...
...The same coveys of naive security agents are going around asking the same silly questions...
...Such officials are in genuinely sensitive national security areas...
...It was a worse mistake when Eisenhower broadened it with his executive order in 1953...
Vol. 25 • April 1961 • No. 4
