Spies in the Ointment

When Dwight Eisenhower was running for President in 1952 he spoke much about rooting Communists out of the Government. Looking back on that campaign, it now seems quite significant that the General said little about the exact methods he would use. For the Federal security program has exhibited many faults in the past two and a half years, and the need for correction has recently become too urgent to overlook.

The Administration's most flagrant missteps in the internal security field are well known. Among the martyrs have been Wolf Ladejinsky, who was declared a "security risk" by the Agriculture Department and then cleared and re-hired by the Foreign Operations Administration, and Professor Val Lorwin, whom the Justice Department indicted for perjury on what it later admitted were false grounds. The general faults of the security program have included its vague definition of a "security risk", its failure to provide legal officers at hearings, its lack of any machinery for appeals, and its refusal to let the accused employee confront his accuser.

When the President himself last fall ordered a Justice Department Committee to study the whole security program, it seemed possible that the Administration would correct its own mistakes. But the committee's report, approved by the President last week, studiously avoids the heart of the problem. It provides such superficial improvements as interviews for the accused and legal advice at bearing's but still maintains that the accuser must always remain hidden and that no appeals board is necessary. In short, the President and Attorney General Brownell have made clear their determination to keep the main features of the security system just as they are.

Events of the past week indicate that the system is even more unhealthy than was previously apparent. First there was the admission, by an Air Force "security risk" firings were actually probationary employees fired for non-security reasons. Still more upsetting were the continued recantations of Harvey Matusow, Marie Natvig, and Lowell Watson, three former $25-a-day witnesses for the Justice Department who now admit that they lied in their incriminating testimony against suspected Communists. Is it this same type of witness, one wonders, that the Department is shielding when it refuses to let an accused employee confront his accuser?

The various inadequacies of the security program are obvious, as is the Administration's reluctance to make the needed revisions. These improvements must consequently come from outside the Executive Branch. The most promising source at the moment is the senate proposal to establish a Commission on government security. Such a body would be completely bipartisan and unbiased--its members chosen from both within and outside of the Government--and it would report by March, 1956 on legislative or administrative improvements needed by the security set-up. Presumably the committee's recommendations would have enough authority, especially in an eledtion year, to convince the Administration of their value.

The Justice Department recently stated that its information sources would "dry up" if all accused employees could confront their accusers. Without some enlightened body like the Government Security Commission, however, the Government may soon find that its sources of able civil servants have dried up instead.