Standards for Security

Three weeks ago the Atomic Energy Commission cleared Frank Graham, President of the University of North Carolina, for important work at the Institute of Nuclear Studies in Oak Ridge. The decision reversed a recommendation of the Commission's own Security Office. It kicked up a load of complaints and charges of "laxity" by columnists, and commentators. And it threw some much-needed attention on the Government's entire security program.

Graham was originally blackballed by the AEC's Security Office because of his past association with "Communist front" groups. He had been active in many such organizations, most of which fought racial discrimination in the South and plugged for academic freedom. About two dozen of these appeared on Attorney-General Tom Clark's long list of groups attracting Communist sympathizers. By the Security Office's standards, these associations made Graham a dangerous risk in work involving classified information. The AEC disagreed; Graham was anti-communist and the commission knew it. In reversing the Security Office it stated that Graham's record was "in keeping with American traditions and principles," and that all security judgments must be made on the basis of "the man himself."

But so far our security practices have rarely worked out that way. Government job applicants are eventually screened against FBI or the new Central Intelligence Organization's files and the filed material is along the lines of that appearing in the Graham case: proof of membership in organizations that have turned up on the "subversive" lists released by Clark or the Un-American Activities Committee. Being a member in any of these groups is considered adequate grounds for rejection; one young executive of Federal Telephone and Telegraph, a New Jersey firm which turns out considerable material for AEC, was fired when it turned up that he had belonged to a black-listed "Student Union" at N.Y.U. six years before the war. There have been many similar cases; the AEC's decision has shown how groundless and wasteful these can be.

No matter how important the security program is, any aspect of it that assumes a man is a Communist simply because his name is linked with Communists is faulty. In Graham's case, such "evidence" was so obviously misleading that the AEC eventually ignored it as inconclusive. With less well-known people, on the Navy Yard draftsman or Oak Ridge chemist level, it is still damning. It would undoubtedly require a lot more work to dig down well past a man's clubs and organizations and friends and find out if he is a Communist or not. But this work is essential. Otherwise we are going to lose a lot of very good men like Frank Graham; some will be turned dow, some will refuse to work under an implied restriction of their outside activities. Association is a dangerously weak standard by which to condemn a man; until this standard is much further replaced by actual investigation, our security program will be neither just nor efficient.