THE TRIUMPH OF 'BIG SISTER'
Wechsler, James A.
The Triumph of Big Sister' by JAMES A. WECHSLER On some early spring days I found myself reading two recently-released Congressional documents that evoked morbid memories of some of the darkest...
...Sourwine: Yes...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...I do not know that...
...Sourwine: It might please you to know that the Committee's information indicates that he did recommend you most highly for the job...
...Sourwine: You did not solicit that recommendation...
...Sourwine: Did you know Mr...
...Whatever the outcome, the transcripts of the Eastland inquisition deserve wide study...
...I had been troubled before that time by the lack of a requirement of confrontation in passport cases...
...Sourwine: That is hard to accept...
...Sourwine: Are you aware of the security problem generally presented by homosexuals in government...
...Sourwine: Did you know you were also recommended by David Rockefeller, the president of the Chase Manhattan Bank...
...Again I quote from the transcript: Mr...
...I have maintained contact with some of the military and navy I met there, but certainly not Russians...
...You were one of the officials named...
...Schwartz was responsible for a ruling under which "diplomatic passports" were issued to all members of the Supreme Court—not to the Chief Justice alone...
...Miss Knight: Yes...
...I think it would be useful if you told us just what was involved here, and how it came up, and what order was issued or action taken, if any...
...There is, for example, a lengthy effort to establish that, back in 1941, one A. Schwartz whose name was found on the rolls of the United Federal Workers Union was the Abba Schwartz under examination...
...foreign offices to keep a vigilant eye on Professor H. Stuart Hughes, the Harvard dissident and co-chairman of SANE, during his prospective sabbatical abroad...
...Hoover, and Senator Eastland would have had abundant reason to assume that Schwartz would be an easy target...
...Sourwine, the embattled heroine of the drama reveals that Mr...
...Let's face it—the courts simply don't care," Miss Knight said...
...I spelled out our objections in a detailed memorandum to Mr...
...For how long will the name of the late Justice Frankfurter be invoked to cast suspicion on a government employe...
...Thus, on April 13, 1964, there occurred this dialogue: Mr...
...Yet, amid all the diversionary forays, there is a certain meaning in the madness that periodically emerges in the transcripts...
...One need hardly agree with all of Hughes' critiques of American foreign policy to detect the monstrous-ness of this surveillance order...
...Sourwine: Because persons of this unfortunate circumstance are necessarily regarded as security risks, are they not...
...I was so instructed by memorandum from Mr...
...Second Session...
...But they finally got their man in the time of Lyndon Johnson...
...She has "no confidence" in the (Kennedy) Justice Department...
...JAMES A. WECHSLER is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post and a regular columnist for that newspaper...
...At no point does J. Edgar Hoover appear on the stage during these dramas...
...These fragments explain why the FBI has acquired so large a stake in Miss Knight's role...
...but his heavy hand can be felt throughout...
...Her smallest grievances (such as over proposals to change the passport format) are solemnly and tediously aired...
...Accordingly, to avoid exposure through confrontation, passports have been issued to applicants suspected of being Communists...
...Certainly it is clear that Mr...
...Sourwine: Did you so state...
...The end of the affair may not be in sight as this is written...
...Sourwine: Mr...
...Schwartz: I do not...
...Upon his return a newspaperman told him that a "reorganization" plan had been fashioned...
...Schwartz's ship was "iced in" at Murmansk during World War II, and he was being found guilty of association with Russians (with whom we happened to be allied at the time...
...Hoover, is an American phenomenon that casts little credit on the liberal community in the Senate, or anywhere else...
...The following exchange leads nowhere...
...I have not...
...Miss Knight: On July 16, 1964, I was instructed by Mr...
...Sourwine: You say this idea originated with Mr...
...There is no record that Mr...
...I do not...
...Mace dated May 8, 1964, but the result was an order to prepare the necessary change in instructions and notification of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other interested agencies...
...he has played this role for a long time, and he is capable of making almost any interrogation sound like an old, broken record...
...the witness had no recollection of any such affiliation, and its significance twenty-three years later could hardly be described as ominous even if the point had stood up...
...Sourwine: From information and testimony already received, we have a definite impression that diplomatic passports are issued a good deal more frequently now than formerly...
...this could surely have been anticipated...
...I am sure she would not be offended by this characterization...
...Sourwine: And you have had no such reports...
...no, sir...
...Sourwine: No knowledge from any other source...
...Sourwine: Are there any persons in SCA at any levels who are known by you to be homosexuals...
...When The Times learned of the Hughes case, Miss Knight's office promptly disclosed that the request for the "alert" had come from the FBI— a point never subsequently denied...
...Schwartz...
...On the same day, Sourwine grimly grilled Schwartz on his naval service...
...The traffic in children under five could be very lucrative...
...As reported by The Times: "Under rules governing the issuance of passports, set in a State Department memorandum January 12, 1962, persons denied passports because of derogatory information in the files of the FBI have the right to review the evidence and confront the witnesses...
...She bitterly lamented the "breach of security" that permitted the news about Hughes to get around and denounced her critics inside and outside the Department as "creeps...
...As reported in much of the press, the conflict assumed the aspect of a personality struggle between Abba Schwartz, a long-time, able liberal lawyer whom John F. Kennedy designated—and the Senate confirmed—as Assistant Secretary of State in charge of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs in October, 1962, and Frances Knight, head of the State Department's Passport Office since 1955 and long a woman of distinction in the McCarthyite set...
...But an appalling amount of the transcript belongs to the political theater of the absurd...
...At a hearing in August, 1964, Schwartz was confronted with this dispatch, which indicated the real nature of the dispute...
...But neither can this contretemps be dismissed as another episode in the archives of jealous bureaucratic rivalries...
...is this correct...
...His most recent book is "Reflections of an Angry Middle-aged Editor...
...The essential issue was the right of accused Americans to confront their accusers...
...Sourwine had thus deftly established, if he had proved anything, that Mr...
...It involves what has been called America's "credibility...
...At another high moment, under the gentle direction of Mr...
...Schwartz, have you been asked about the problem of homosexuals in government as it applies to SCA [Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs...
...Schwartz: We certainly met the Russians in that period of time, both in Murmansk and in Archangel...
...One, for instance, was his decision to issue diplomatic passports to all members of the Supreme Court...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...he merely remarked rather lamely that such future demands for the use of embassies and consulates to engage in such missions would be more carefully scrutinized...
...Needless to say, there was no consultation or advance notice to the Passport Office...
...Schwartz's management team which toured Europe last year...
...is it correct that this was your belief...
...The first two installments of the transcript cover 578 pages plus indices...
...Miss Knight: To the best of my knowledge, Mr...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...Big Sister" had triumphed...
...By now Sourwine needs no introduction in such a cast...
...Sourwine: In this article reference is made to "State Department officials" and later on in the article certain officials are named as believing that the government at that time was "complying for the first time with the constitutional requirement for due process of passport cases...
...Sourwine: Do you know there is such a problem...
...that would be brought to my attention by the Office of Security if they were aware of it...
...The questioning was conducted largely by Counsel Sourwine, with the generally benign aid and approval of such Subcommittee members as Eastland, vice-chairman Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, and Roman L. Hruska of Nebraska...
...Sourwine: Did you have any contact with the Russians on shore...
...Will any Senate body dare to join in combat with the Eastland Subcommittee...
...Miss Knight: When the Passport Office was asked for comments, we took the position that this was highly undesirable and opened the door to all kinds of fraud and deception...
...Another allegedly momentous matter explored by Sourwine in a duet with Miss Knight was disclosed in this testimony: Mr...
...This situation has aroused Miss Knight . . . she complained that the regulation in effect forbids us to protect ourselves...
...The Department's regulations were promulgated at a time when I was engaged in the private practice of law...
...A more appropriate title might have been a paraphrase of a current Broadway production: "The Political Mutilation of Abba Schwartz as Performed by the Members of the Eastland Subcommittee under the Direction of Miss Frances Knight and Jay Sourwine with the Collaboration of J. Edgar Hoover...
...Schwartz: I have known Mr...
...Schwartz: This has not come to my attention...
...Schwartz has no children and is not an expert in photography...
...he said he was prepared to step out voluntarily if someone who reflected his viewpoint replaced him...
...Gradually another real and meaningful clash is discernible...
...Under these rules, the government sought to reestablish constitutional requirements of due process in passport cases...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...Sourwine: Were you able to get ashore at all during that time...
...And so, much of the remainder of this report will be devoted to excerpts from these volumes...
...I can assure you that pictures of children are identifiable, and any parent will tell you so...
...Sourwine: Do you know who else recommended you...
...When I had completed them, a refrain kept recurring in my head: Who said Joe McCarthy is dead...
...he said he was reluctant to create a conflict that might be damaging to the President...
...Thus: Mr...
...Sourwine: Were you given an opportunity to advise or comment with respect to this proposal, before it was put into effect...
...Justice Frankfurter since I was a student of his at the Harvard Law School...
...In any event there can be no doubt that Schwartz had become the symbol and spokesman of the Kennedy effort (pursued by Lyndon Johnson) to humanize and liberalize our refugee, visa, and travel policies...
...Sex still rears its head in any Sourwine production...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...they also no doubt explain why much of Sourwine's grilling of Schwartz was unmistakably based on his access to FBI files...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...Sourwine : Miss Knight, you referred a moment ago to a question of the photographs—of infants and children, I believe you said—on passports...
...This is based on Mr...
...There are repeated intimations that, under Schwartz's diabolical guidance, grave and perilous relaxations in passport policy have occurred...
...Schwartz: Yes...
...they were released shortly after the disclosure that Schwartz had been forced out of his post through the combined efforts of the Eastland Subcommittee and the FBI, with perhaps the additional assistance of the CIA, and with the pusillanimous consent of Secretary of State Dean Rusk and his deputy, William J. Crockett...
...Eastland's decisive role in passing on judicial nominations has long intimidated many of his colleagues...
...If so, what was your official advice or comment...
...Schwartz and Miss Knight were never destined for an ideological romance...
...Schwartz's statement that infants have few distinguishable characteristics and as they grow older their features change rapidly, and therefore the photograph no longer provides an accurate method of identification...
...That would be in the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary for Administration or the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Security...
...Johnson would have intervened at an earlier stage if he had been familiar with the script can only be a matter of speculation...
...Schwartz: I am most pleased, but I was unaware of that...
...It seems inconceivable that this will be how the story ends—but, then, the power for survival of the Eastland Subcommittee, like that of Mr...
...Whether Mr...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...Sourwine: You were iced in at Murmansk for nearly a year...
...Schwartz had come to personify a civilized enlightenment in areas that are the test of our national spirit...
...The story is bigger than any of the individual adversaries...
...Seemingly some things never change in Washington...
...Schwartz: I have stated on many occasions that I agree with the Secretary's regulations...
...As I think I testified previously, my contact leading to this job was with the President...
...After a day of meditation and consultation, Rusk told Schwartz that he could not discourage him from submitting at once the letter of resignation he had drafted...
...The exposure of FBI informants inherent in this system has aroused bitter criticism, much of it by rightist groups...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...Schwartz to eliminate the photograph requirement for all children under five years of age who are named in their parents' passports...
...Schwartz...
...it simply enables the questioner to create an atmosphere...
...Do you concur in the statement you have just made about photographs of children not providing good identification...
...Certain of the exchanges have some substantive relationship to the real arguments...
...If Barry Goldwater had been elected president, Frances Knight, Mr...
...Schwartz...
...Hearings of the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary...
...You speak of Russians...
...I know my children were recognizable as mine in early infancy, and pictures of any one of them between the ages of, say, one to six, certainly would have been recognizable as pictures of the same child...
...Schwartz: I considered at the time when the State Department passport regulations of January 12, 1962, were issued, and I believe now, that the right of individuals to be confronted with evidence used in deciding passport cases was properly and wisely provided for in the regulations...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...The White House has indignantly— but unconvincingly—denied through various unofficial press agents that Presidential aide Marvin Watson was a participant in the coup...
...This, too, was symptomatic of the meaning of the upheaval...
...This was, in fact, a reassertion of the authority—and authoritarianism— in the Passport Division that Schwartz had endeavored to curb at the late President Kennedy's behest...
...Schwartz: Yes, sir...
...I believed that, if the issue of confrontation were to be passed on by the Supreme Court, the Court would decide that confrontation with the evidence relied upon is constitutionally required in passport cases...
...Schwartz is a bachelor who may be soft on subversive children...
...It is a measure of the tenacity of McCarthyite minds that the Subcommittee has regarded the issuance of this nightmarish nonsense as anything but self-revelation...
...Schwartz: Yes, sir...
...Sourwine: Did you know he had recommended you in connection with your present position...
...It did not take long for the significance of her victory to be revealed...
...Eight-ninth Congress...
...Yet it is hard to believe that an Administration avowedly committed to more enlightened immigration and travel policies can indefinitely endure a full-scale resurrection of Miss Knight's intolerant absolutism...
...Schwartz: Somewhere in the neighborhood of ten months...
...It is the privilege of the taxpayer to subsidize the publication of this colloquy— as well as pay the salary of the leader of the discussion...
...Schwartz: Yes, sir...
...Schwartz: No, sir...
...She is quoted as lamenting: "Patriotism is going down because the court is tending to look at individual cases rather than the broad picture...
...Sourwine: The Committee's information, which I believe is accurate, but which is unsworn information, of course, is that you did have high recommendations from both of these eminent gentlemen...
...Through the inverse process of quoting an attack by a Communist leader on Miss Knight, Sourwine establishes her impatience with the procedures on confrontation laid down by the State Department in 1962...
...Sourwine: I meant with the people you met in Russia...
...yes, sir...
...Rusk's capacity for blurring issues...
...This provision complies with court decisions...
...In August, 1964, Sourwine placed The Times dispatch in the record and this exchange ensued: Mr...
...A record of a conference of agents in charge of passports that took place soon after Schwartz's advent describes Miss Knight as deploring a "lackadaisical idea of citizenship" and denouncing the Supreme Court for decisions liberalizing travel standards...
...it is...
...Sourwine: Have you maintained contact with any of the people you met there then...
...We have followed the criteria until certain exceptions were ordered by Mr...
...Sourwine: Do you have knowledge of the extent of the problem in the State Department...
...In practice the FBI has mostly refused to expose its sources...
...That bombshell emerges in this exchange: Mr...
...Schwartz had unquestionably tried to disrupt the undercover alliance in which the Passport Division served in effect as a unit of Hoover's governmental network (or what The New Yorker described as the Big Brother Excursion Plan...
...Sourwine : Do you have knowledge of the extent of the problem in the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs...
...On May 12, 1963, The New York Times reported that "Attorney General Kennedy, Abram Chayes, State Department legal adviser, and Abba Schwartz, head of the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, of which Miss Knight's office is a unit," were in agreement on these procedures, and were being accused of being "soft on Communism" by the Knight cabal...
...Much of the European press was to give the case extensive treatment, with inevitably anti-American overtones...
...I am quite surprised at these things in the nature of recommendations...
...The Triumph of Big Sister' by JAMES A. WECHSLER On some early spring days I found myself reading two recently-released Congressional documents that evoked morbid memories of some of the darkest seasons in our modern national history...
...rarely have the vanities and tribulations of any woman stirred so much protectiveness in a Senate committee, and rarely has anyone been subjected to such trivial badgering as Mr...
...Schwartz: To my present knowledge...
...I do not...
...Time and again through these volumes of testimony the reader is tempted to wonder how grown members of the Senate could sit through the proceedings without some small sense of doubt as to whether the care and sustenance of Miss Frances Knight warranted so high a priority...
...Schwartz went to Dean Rusk and urged him to reconsider...
...Schwartz: No such report has ever reached me...
...The elimination of Schwartz was finally accomplished while he was on a government mission abroad late last winter...
...Schwartz on June 19, 1963...
...The volumes are portentously entitled "State Department Security—1963-1965—Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs...
...Justice Frankfurter before you took your State Department job...
...Rusk took umbrage at her words...
...He also noted fatuously that no "shadowing" had been ordered, but that officials had been asked only to "report back" any sinister data they encountered—a distinction characteristic of Mr...
...At the very least it is plain that none of the President's aides gave him adequate notice of the dimensions of the storm that was in the making until after the deed was largely done...
...Sourwine: Was this contact of any personal nature at all...
...For some two years the struggle has been waged behind closed doors at the so-called "hearings" of the subcommittee...
...Shortly after Schwartz's departure, which occurred after Dean Rusk had flatly refused to halt his "reorganization" plan under which Schwartz's office was decimated, The New York Times revealed that Miss Knight's office had "alerted" all U.S...
...She questioned whether there actually exists the will to defend the country from the inroads of Communism . . . "Administration officials, however, believe that the government is now complying for the first time with the constitutional requirements for due process in passport cases...
...But it is of such stuff that FBI dossiers are made...
...United States Senate...
...Sourwine: You had no official contact with them...
...Miss Knight: This was an idea projected by Mr...
...Miss Knight was the last-ditch embodiment of the oppressive spirit of McCarthy and the late Senator Pat McCarran, co-author of the restrictive immigration act of fifteen years ago...
...Is any Rockefeller now deemed a dangerous connection...
...Miss Knight was unshaken by the revelation...
...Will the Knight watch continue after the furor subsides...
Vol. 30 • May 1966 • No. 5
