One hundred and fifty years ago William Tell put it this way: “Even the most virtuous man cannot live in peace if his bad neighbor doesn’t desire it.” The implication is that he either equips himself to deal with whatever machinations the bad neighbor may array against him—or he loses his life, and with it, of course, his virtue. We are essentially a peaceful and peace- loving nation. But we have little interest in being—or in becoming—a corpse, however virtuous. Most of us aspire to stay in condition to enjoy life—and the “blessings of peace,” even if it means an occasional international free-for-all.
Nations are lost these days not only to the bad neighbor’s force of arms, but also to his fraud and deception. Norway was an example in World War II. We need go no farther than Czechoslovakia for a more recent example. At the national elections of May, 1946, the Communist Party gained 114 out of 300 seats of the Constituent Assembly. Since this was the largest representation of any of the parties, it carried with it the right to name the new Premier in the newly formed government. His name was Klement Gottwald. Within six months the Communists controlled the Ministries of Information, Interior, Finance, Agriculture, Internal Trade, Social Welfare, and National Defense. From this point on it was merely a matter of time—and pressure.
Scarcely one year later, in October, 1947, the world was treated to a revival of the old Comintern—international alliance of Communist parties—under the newly assumed nomer of Cominform, and its activities within Czechoslovakia heightened the fears and consolidated the political opposition to the Communists to a point where it became evident that they would not get a majority in the 1948 elections. This they had hoped to accomplish by legal means in order to show the Western world that here was one country which accepted Communism voluntarily— and moreover, voluntarily by Western standards. However, when this became patently and predictably impossible, the groundwork had already been laid to proceed with the coup along previously established lines.
After the turn of the year, the Communists, already in control of the Ministry of the Interior, actively infiltrated the ranks of the police. Since they also dominated the Ministry of Information, it was most difficult to inform the people as to just what was happening. On January 9th, the Socialist Party’s newspaper reported on a Communist program of police terror in certain factories; the next day the Bratislava police suppressed the Slovak Democrat (majority) Party newspaper for charging the police with using Gestapo methods to obtain confessions from persons allegedly connected with conspiracy against the government. Even then, the Minister of Justice, one of the few remaining ministers not yet dominated by the Communist Party, brought serious charges in the Parliament which passed resolutions and demanded explanation by the Minister of the Interior as to the misuse of the police for political purposes. By the 23rd of February the situation had deteriorated to a point where there was an announcement that the anti-Communist parties had been caught in a conspiracy with foreign powers, and Interior Minister Nosek ordered the arrest of the opposition leaders and the indefinite postponement of the Parliament. By the 25th, President Benes’ will to resist was broken and he accepted Gottwald’s new cabinet, including the post of the Minister of Justice which controlled the court system. That was that. The rest involved merely picking up the pieces. Without firing a shot—officially at least—the Russians had stolen a nation and enslaved its people.
Now when someone tells you what he’s going to do to you—and it’s all bad—it is only good business to check up enough to see whether he is really serious! I have gone into the highlights of the progressive deterioration of the Czechoslovakian situation by way of offering historical evidence to the effect that the Man in the Kremlin is deadly serious. Everybody from Karl Marx on down to the more recent crop of Kremlinites tells us the same story: that sooner or later they’re going to have to hit us old capitalists over the head, and that if they have to be nice to us in the meantime for temporary reasons of expediency, that is strictly coincidental. Lenin said this:
“It is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist for a long period, side by side with the imperialist states. Ultimately one or the other must conquer.”
With this warning repeated ad museum over the past 35 years, it would seem only prudent then, to take a cue from the Hitler- Mussolini custom where they used to shake hands—and then step back to count their fingers.
There is really nothing new about the need for some sort of security precautions. Alexander the Great employed a routine for testing the loyalty of his officers through the simple system of opening their mail, a device which was probably not original with him and which has probably not been used for the last time. In fact, it is considered part of the standard operating procedure of many a jealous American housewife.
One of our important military forebears found it necessary to form a company of young men for his personal “Guard.” He addressed the following letter to Colonel Alexander Spotswood from “Headquarters, Morris Town, April 30, 1777”:
“Sir: I want to form a Company for my Guard. In doing this I wish to be extremely cautious; because it is more than probable, that in the Course of the Campaign, my Baggage, Papers, and other Matters of great public import, may be committed to the Sole care of these Men. This being premised, in order to impress you with proper attention in the Choice, I have to request that you will immediately furnish me with four Men of your Regiment, And, as it is my further wish, that this Company should Look well and be nearly of a Size, I desire that none of the Men may exceed in Stature 5 feet 10 inches, nor fall Short of 5 feet 9 inches, Sober, Young, Active and Well- made. When I recommend care in your Choice, I would be understood to mean Men of good Character in the Regiment, that possess the pride of appearing clean and Soldierlike. I am satisfied there can be no absolute security for the fidelity of this Class of people, but yet I think it most likely to be found in those who have Family Connections in the Country. You will therefore send me none but Natives, and Men of some property, if you have them. I must insist, that in making this Choice, you give no intimation of my preference of Natives, as I do not want to create any invidious Distinction between them and the Foreigners. I am, etc.
Do we need a security program? The requirement is probably as old as treachery and deception itself. It has been suggested that there is something novel and alien and un- American about enquiring into a man’s beliefs as a condition to his employment in the government.
George Washington said in effect that it would be pretty stupid business to employ someone who is planning to cut your political throat at the first opportunity—and that he wasn’t going to do it. In a letter written in September, 1795, to the Acting Secretary of State, the President stated,
“I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence, knowingly, whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the general government are pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide.”
The requirement we are talking about has its roots in, and indeed is a part of, the right to self-protection, whether it be an individual, a corporation, or a government. The courts have long recognized this right in the case of corporations. The corporation may protect itself through a by-law making ineligible as a director an attorney having a lawsuit against the corporation. It may further protect itself by stating criteria for directors in such a way as to exclude persons guilty of moral turpitude, such as, for example, embezzlement.
To sum up the matter of need, then, we have noted that modern nations are being lost not only to military conquest by a determined aggressor, but also to his machinations of infiltration. We keep men and weapons at the ready to deal with the one: we operate security programs to cope with the other.
We have convinced ourselves, I hope, that there is a real requirement for some sort of a system of self defense—on a national scale—designed to lock the barn door and take a second look at the stableboy before Man-o’-War disappears or the barn is burned down. As a matter of convenience, we may describe such a system as a security program.
What we are talking about really is any device short of armed force (maybe a few revolvers in the act) for protecting the country against aggression and loss by means other than armed force. As applied to the country’s defense potential and assets and components, we mean the protection of its property against sabotage, its secrets against espionage, and its personnel against subversion. As limited to defense against infiltration by the wrong people, we refer to personnel security programs. In terms of mission or purpose, and in a more formal vein, we may say that such a program is designed to identify and frustrate those who would infiltrate and subvert. In view of what we have seen, the frustration of such characters will take some doing. What are the tools we must have to do it?
Obviously the first thing we have to have is information. We have to be able to judge its reliability. And we have to be able to act on it. Information, verification, and action —the three indispensable elements of any such protective mechanism. It may be worthwhile to explore these in some detail.
How do we get information in the first place? And how do we keep it coming? In polite police circles, unchecked bits of information are called “leads.” A lead, as the name suggests, is something to follow—and check out—to see if it is true or false, or whether it leads you closer to the truth about whatever you’re looking for the truth about. No police department could work without leads. Their origin is as varied as the motives of mankind. Patriotism, honor, hatred, envy, jealousy, revenge—all these and many other stimuli—may be responsible for someone saying to another in authority, “If I were you, I would take a look at Joe’s accounts.”
How many times a day does a businessman hear something like this, “Look, George, you’re a friend of mine. I’ll tell you something you ought to know—but you’ve got to forget who told you.” Or, “Here’s the straight story, but if you ever say I said it, I’ll deny it!” . . . Some of this data may be gospel. Some of it may be the merest “backstairs gossip.” It all has to be listened to, carefully checked, thrown out, or checked further. All life involves matching the unknown against the known, reaching a decision about it, taking action on it, and repeating the process. Everybody and every institution, from a bookie to a bank, has its sources of information, some of them open, some of them highly confidential—sources of varying degrees of reliability. But you can’t do business without them. Think of the array of credit agencies around the country. As a result of their confidential reports, people get jobs, lose jobs, get married, stay married, stay single, sell houses, sign leases, choose between contractors on million dollar operations. Yet we seldom hear a hue and cry about the “faceless informant” in this field. Several national companies maintain an army of “shoppers” who check on the honesty of clerks in all types of retail stores. Their stock in trade is the concealment of their identity, and it is jealously guarded. Clerks are called in and fired on the strength of reports of unidentified “shoppers” who do not confront the clerk concerned. “Oh, that’s different,” I can hear you say. But in what respect is it really different?
About a year ago out in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, State Police received a report (or “lead”) that an independent car designer had just purchased a photograph of certain top-secret style plans of future General Motors cars. Investigation, followed by the arrest of two police officers and a plant guard, indicated that they had tried to sell the photographs for a thousand dollars to Chrysler and Ford. Charged with grand larceny, these people were fired. The reflection persists that had they stolen some of their country’s secrets instead of future GM style designs, there would no doubt have been picketing of the White House, complete with riff-raff and placards.
One or two things stand out about this matter of leads: no one cares much where a lead comes from so long as it leads you to the truth. Nobody cares much about who yells “Fire!”—so long as it brings the engines to the smoke and flame. (It may be worth noting in passing that we’re bound to have a few false alarms.) Another important point is that it is just good business not to betray the source of the lead. If you do, you will probably not hear from that source again, and your reputation will shortly prevent you from hearing from any other.
Of course, it is sometimes necessary to reveal your own informant. The successful counter-penetration of the Communist Party by the Federal Bureau of Investigation is one of the most skillful pieces of work that has ever been accomplished and, from the point of view of the safety of the country, one of the most fortunate. The conviction under the Smith Act of the eleven top Communists and, later, many of the second and third stringers, was made possible only through “blowing” many carefully placed informants and using them as witnesses. Under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, in criminal proceedings, the accused is entitled “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” (That these convictions really hurt the Party may be judged in part by the viciousness of the attacks which the successful prosecutions have stimulated.)
What do we mean by “blowing” an informant? It may take much planning, and many years of hazardous work, to place an informant in the Communist apparatus, say as an official of one of its district branches. Let us assume that this informant is able to provide information on a more or less continuing basis as to the party program and on the personalities involved. This is valuable data and, we may assume, provides pretty reliable information on various Party members or sympathizers who somehow find their way into Government, and who may be in the course of being checked out under one or another of the various personnel security programs. It is clear that the minute such an informant is identified, he or she has lost his usefulness completely. In a criminal prosecution, such an informant may have to be identified (i.e., “blown”) in order to obtain evidence to support a conviction.
As in any business, the question the government has to ask itself and answer is, “Will it be worth the price we have to pay?” It is good business sometimes to pay this big price, but only for big game. In the case of the eleven Communists, the decision was to pay it in order to break up the top crust of the conspiracy. If the Party can sell the idea that “confrontation” is necessary not only in a criminal proceeding, as the Constitution requires, but also in a simple case of hiring or firing, or security clearance, then it .has the government on the horns of a dilemma: either blow a valuable informant (i.e., pay a big price for relatively small game) or leave the wrong person in government, or in a sensitive spot in government. Either alternative is acceptable to the Communist Party. Either is bad for the security of the United States. Of course no such result was intended by those who drafted the Sixth Amendment. Nor is such a result necessary on elementary principles of fair play or good business.
Assume, if you will, a clerk in a store who is charged with dipping into the till on several (itemized) occasions and is called in before the boss. Is he permitted to insist on being confronted by the “shoppers” who have assembled the information on him? Would anyone criticize as unfair the manager who said, “Listen son, never mind who told us: the only question you have to answer is, Did you do it?”
Consider for a moment the routine of the Grand Jury. Nobody supposes for a minute that the names of witnesses before the Grand Jury must be revealed to counsel for the accused, and no serious complaint is heard, where an indictment is returned (a “true bill”), that the accused has been victimized by “faceless informants.” This is for the very practical reason that if the informants were named, at least in some of the more serious gangster-murder type cases, they would probably not be around to act as witnesses at the trial. It may be recalled that in one famous case a key informer-witness was shot from an adjoining building as he sat in the witness chair. Note, too, that where a person is indicted for murder, let us say, and later gains an acquittal at the trial, the stigma is nevertheless apt to follow him all his life. I have not heard it suggested that this is a valid reason for doing away with the Grand Jury.
Yes, it is just good business to protect our confidential informants. Having in mind their usefulness in the government’s efforts to defend itself against infiltration, it isn’t a bit amazing that they have become the target of the enemy’s propaganda barrage. What is amazing is that a nation of business men and poker players—and journalists who themselves protect to the hilt an army of informants—can have been so taken in on this issue! This, observed Director J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, in a recent address be- for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, is “disheartening.” He noted that law-abiding Americans apparently fail to realize that criminal conspiracies are conceived behind closed doors under the cover of darkness, that it is through confidential informants that we have been able to expose the Communist conspiracy in the past, and that on them we must stake much of the future security of the United States. He continued that the Communists have enlisted the propaganda assistance of “fictitious liberals” who “oppose urgently needed internal security measures; conduct a one-sided campaign to discredit Government witnesses; present the menace of communism as a myth of hysteria; urge that we tolerate the subversive acts of Communists because Communists are only ‘nonconformists’; contend that the Communist Party is a ‘political’ movement and that it is improper to consider it a criminal conspiracy linked to a world conspiracy to overthrow our Government by force and violence.” These words are significant.
I think we have explored sufficiently the point that, to operate any kind of protective mechanism, we have to have “leads” or raw information and that, to keep information flowing, protection of its source is indispensable. Inferentially we have noted that there must be an effective investigatory mechanism to follow the leads and to test their veracity: either to prove them out or to explode them.
Beyond that it would seem to be good business practice for the responsible head of any department or activity of the government, having a proper concern both for the security of the operation entrusted to his care and for the morale of his people, to cause the establishment of a Committee or Board to hear complaints along these lines, upon due notice to the individual concerned, and to make suitable recommendations as a basis for action by him. And this, we find, is the established practice.
What do we do with such a person pending a hearing?
This would seem to depend on many factors, among which are the nature and gravity of the complaint, the likelihood of its veracity, and the sensitivity of the work being done by the individual concerned. If a report develops that Lieutenant Smith has had Communist connections, the requirement for action to be taken in advance of a hearing should depend somewhat, one would think, on whether he is Ship’s Service Officer at Naval Air Station, South Pole, or whether he is Security Officer for a Top-Secret high priority, guided missile project. That is just good sense, good business, and I think, good security. It is merely the course of prudence to allow much discretion to the command or head of the activity concerned, on the issue of whether to leave a person on a particular job. He is the one on the scene and presumably best able to balance all the factors involved.
This much is clear: the disposition of the matter should be as rapid and as fair as possible, and financial burdens minimized in the process. The hearings are administrative rather than judicial. By the same token they are protective rather than punitive, and a long time away from the payroll can get to feel mighty like a fine.
Any system that society develops for its protection may be fraught with individual instances of inconvenience and even injustice. These are grounds for attempting to improve its operation—not for throwing it out. The only real question is, are these instances of injustice excessive, or the result of bad faith?
Thus far we have noted, first, the impelling requirement for some sort of mechanism to defend us against infiltration and subversion —which, for want of a better name we may refer to as a Security Program. Next, we have examined what I conceive to be essential elements of such a program: a flow of information or “leads,” an investigative mechanism to determine their veracity, and an action apparatus operating rapidly and effectively to provide the protective measures indicated by our information thus evaluated. In the course of this examination we have had occasion to explore and, I trust, to explode some of the more frequently voiced objections to the program. In the same vein, I should now like to consider and illustrate a few of what I consider to be sound business principles in, or incident to, the proper operation of such a program. In fine, these principles are nothing but normal business prudence applied to matters affecting the national defense.
The protection provided should be geared to the danger. And the degree of danger is likely to be a function of value—value in the sense of how badly someone else wants the thing which is being protected. Some items we put in our desks. Others—customer lists, for example—we might secure in a locked filing cabinet. Money, insurance policies, plans for new car models or improvements, secret formulae, or other items which for one reason or another we may feel to be particularly sensitive, we put in the vault—and a fireproof one at that—if we have one. So with the Government’s “classification” system. It merely recognizes that some things are more sensitive than others and therefore require a higher degree of care in their protection.
Put special trust only in trustworthy people. Consider the ordinary operation of a bank. Not everybody gets to go into the vault. In fact, and to fix responsibility in case anything is missing, access is normally limited to a very few people. Moreover, my banker in Erie, whom I consider an ordinarily prudent businessman, tells me that he limits such access to a few of the older hands whom he has known over the years, with whose reputation and habits he is familiar, in short, whom he has come to trust implicitly.
I read a few months ago of a contractor who, having recently employed a young man, put him to work helping to fill pay envelopes for other employees. Following his emergency visit home one Friday noon on account of the “illness” of his “wife,” it was discovered that the envelopes had only been partially filled, and that $9,000 and the young man himself were missing. A little further inquiry revealed that he had only recently completed a five-year term for larceny. Had this contractor done his checking earlier and kept this lad from the area of temptation, would any normal person have clamored that the contractor was not acting with prudence—or contended that the young man was not a risk to the security of the payroll? It is obviously not good business to put in the counting house someone you can’t count on.
The principle of the good trustee. Every officer and director of a corporation is in the eyes of the law to a certain extent a trustee for his stockholders. From this fiduciary or quasi-fiduciary relationship certain duties spring up, among them that of being alert to protect their interests and to expose them to no risk that can reasonably be avoided. To return for a moment to our bank president: if he came upon a rumor to the effect that one of his tellers was cleaning up in the stock market, it wouldn’t surprise any prudent operator if our banker friend made a few discreet inquiries about the matter. In fact, he might even move the teller over into the cancelled check department—or send him on a vacation—while he checked it out. This is not because he distrusts anybody particularly. He is simply recognizing his duty to his stockholders and depositors by ensuring that they are not exposed to unnecessary risk, if he can help it.
People in high places in their government, particularly those charged with national defense, would seem to have an even higher responsibility. To them has been entrusted, indeed, more than five talents. It then behooves them to make sure that when the Lord of the Vineyard returneth and asks what they’ve done about it, they do not have to stand around with a mouth full of teeth.
There is no substitute for the personal judgment. Provision must be made in any business—or in any security program—for retention of the element of the personal evaluation of persons. One of the first things a business man learns—if he stays in business—is the art of discerning those whom he can trust and even the degree to which he can trust them. He may conclude that Tom can be trusted out on the road selling, but that he talks too much to be entrusted with the plans for next year’s new model. The same prudent business man will probably decide that he had better not dictate the proposal governing an impending merger to his new secretary whose father-in-law happens to be counsel for one of the companies affected. This again is not because he necessarily mistrusts her, but because he feels that she should not be torn between two natural loyalties—that his stockholders should not be subjected to unnecessary risk—in this case, the risk that he may have erred in his judgment of the young lady. The ultimate decision to trust a person and the extent to which he is to be trusted should be the decision of the person responsible for protecting the subject of the trust. In the Navy, this is generally regarded as one of the functions of Command.
No “Univac” has yet been developed for measuring character, nor is there any known medical analysis for determining what lies behind the shifty eye. As Stuart S. Garson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, sums it up in commenting on the Canadian personnel security program, “…a person’s reliability is not a matter that can be put beyond doubt by rebutting certain formal charges. . . . Assessment of character in some cases must be the governing consideration, and where there is real doubt, it is not possible to give the individual the benefit of that doubt.”
“Be not deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals.” A man is still known by the company he keeps—and by the people to whom he is related.
It is a wonder to me that our leftist friends don’t attack as “un-American” the weekly advertisements of one of our well-known whiskies, which no doubt hopes to increase the number of its “associates” by showing its produce against an always beautiful background with an implication of pleasant and good living, over the inscription, “Known by the company it Keeps. ...”
Of course we are interested in a man’s associates and family connections—good or bad—and whether we’re talking about guests in our home, workers in our shop, employees of the government, or those who should (or should not) have access to its secrets. To say that such considerations, which have influenced mankind since the mark was put on Cain’s forehead, are un-American is the merest drivel. The fact that serious men and women are influenced by talk of “guilt by association” or “guilt by kin,” is illustrative of the efficacy of Hitler’s “big lie” technique. Obviously in these proceedings there is no question of “guilt” involved at all. As noted above, we are considering a purely administrative process of hiring or firing or of controlling access to secrets—and not any question of guilt or innocence of a person on whom a Grand Jury has returned a “true bill.” But it makes good propaganda, easy headlines, and its continued use by those who should know better plays directly into the hands of those elements which have launched an attack on anything the Government does to defend itself.
Would the board of directors of any corporation you know approve the action of the personnel manager in hiring for a position of trust and confidence the younger brother of a family of bank-robbers or holdup men? They might say to him, “Give the kid a job if you want to, and see if he’s any good—but don’t put him on the inside, or we’ll put you on the outside.” Would it surprise any reasonable business man to find the promotion going to a young man of good after-hour associations—over his companion of equal talent who spends his spare time at the corner saloon? How are evil plots hatched anyway except through backroom association with other evil birds?
The late Justice Robert H. Jackson (in a concurring opinion to a decision of the United States Supreme Court of May, 1950, upholding the constitutionality of the Taft- Hartley Act with respect to its requirement for a loyalty oath on the part of labor-union officers) made the following significant observations:
“The conspiracy principle has traditionall been employed to protect society against a ganging-up or concerted action in violation of its laws. No term passes that the court does not sustain convictions based on that doctrine for violations of the antitrust laws or other statutes. However, there has recently entered the dialectic of politics a cliché used to condemn application of the conspiracy principle to Communists.
‘Guilt by association’ is an epithet frequently used and little explained except that it is generally accompanied by another slogan, ‘Guilt is personal.’ Of course it is: but personal guilt may be incurred by joining a conspiracy. That act of association makes one responsible for acts of others committed in pursuance of the association.”
The security programs have been treated to all manner of criticism because they have looked into the matter of allegations that one or another of an individual’s parents, or a brother or sister, are, or have been, members of the Communist Party or one of its affiliated or dominated organizations. But just before we join the chorus of those who accuse program administrators of being “stumblebums,” or guilty of making “cruel and asinine decisions,” or of “incredible bureaucratic stupidity,” would it not be fair to consider some of the examples of misdirected family devotion that they have in their minds and memories? For example, it may be remembered that when the Communists wanted to penetrate the terrific security cordon that had been thrown around Los Alamos, they were able to accomplish this only through the unusual influence which Ethel Rosenberg had always exercised over younger brother, Sergeant David Greenglass, who had some years before given up his early connection with the Communist Youth movement.
Nor can it easily be forgotten that when the Party had twice been frustrated in wreaking vengeance by direct attacks on Trotsky (who had sought asylum in Mexico) they decided to accomplish this worthy mission by indirection and by infiltrating the group of family and friends who lived with him. It was known that some of this group spent the winter in Paris. The late Lavrenti Beria (now himself a good Communist) assigned the project to one Cardidad Mercader, a Catalonian woman and a former member of the Cheka, who then operated a spy ring in Paris. Hers was the job of selecting the man who would ingratiate himself with members of the family circle and who would eventually go back to Mexico with them. This she did, and the man who, while Trotsky pored over the manuscript he had been asked to criticize by this new but trusted young “friend of the family,” jammed an ice pick into his brain, was a man going under the name of Jacson, but whose real name was Ramon Jacobo del Rio Mercader—her own eldest son! . . .
The principle of Interdepartmental Integrity. If you’re going to hold a man responsible for the proper operation of any venture, you’ve got to let him pick his people— or at least give him a veto on the ones supplied. The sales department can’t be telling the production people who to hire or when to fire. Such interference would violate what might be called interdepartmental integrity.
This is a corollary of the theorem that responsibility without complementary authority is merely a simulacrum. Power enough to do the job is a good business concept, and it is good fundamental law. This idea is embodied in our basic constitutional doctrine of “separation of powers.” The founding fathers applied the concept of compartmentation to the Ship of State even before they provided for a Navy! Hence the independence, jealously guarded, among the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial departments of our government.
The Courts will normally refuse to interfere with the normal administrative housekeeping of the Executive and Legislative branches. At least in the past this principle has been scrupulously observed. The Supreme Court and the Court of Claims have time and again refused to review administrative firings, even though the result may involve implications of serious criminal misconduct against the employee discharged: acceptance of bribes, violation of the prohibition laws, several attempts at seduction by force, and theft of government documents, to name a few. Moreover, in view of the plenary character of the power in question, the action of the executive, according to the Supreme Court, may be based on confidential information.
This doesn’t mean that an individual who fancies himself aggrieved is without a remedy. But not every “wrong” has a remedy in the courts. As the Supreme Court noted in one of the earliest cases (Matter of Hennen, 13 Peters 230, p. 261), “If the [appointing authority] ... is chargeable with any abuse of his power, this is not the tribunal to which he is amenable.” To refer again to the Canadian way of looking at this problem, Mr. Garson noted that any civil servant who felt aggrieved by the government’s action in a security matter has many resources in the absence of recourse to the courts. Apart from the Civil Service machinery available to him, there is the civil servant’s own minister, other members of the government, private members of the government party, or even an opposition member who can have his case raised on the floor of the House. Or he can present his case to a newspaper, or “any of the other democratic checks upon the fairness of the government.”
Let us be fair—but not foolish. This is the last principle I can suggest for the operation of the security programs, and it is in reality a summary of everything that has gone before. This, too, is a sound business principle —applicable from the proper operation of the complaint department on up. As a matter of sound public relations, if not good business ethics, we can try to be considerate and fair, without allowing ourselves to be taken in by every false claim that comes along. Every insurance company applies some such principle in making payment of its claims. Good personnel policies in industry call for its application. I believe the security programs can stand on the same platform.
We have noted that these programs in their operation violate no specific legal or constitutional limitation. Is there any violation of its spirit? Is there involved any transgression of basic Anglo-Saxon ideals or traditions of good-sportsmanship? Justice Learned Hand, the great jurist of the New York Court of Appeals, has observed that due process limitations represent not the rules of a game but rather a spirit of fair play. Is this ignored in the security programs? I am thoroughly satisfied that it is not. Hear what the Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Intelligence) has said on the subject, and his directive is typical in my experience of the attitude and practice followed in the government:
“Quite apart from legal requirements involved, elementary considerations of fair play in government and the importance of the individual in the American scheme of things, require that we exercise the greatest degree of impartiality and fairness in [these processes], and give to the individual concerned every protection consistent with overriding considerations of national security.”
Have there been instances of inconvenience and injustice in the administration of these programs? Without a doubt. This can be judged from the fact, if from no other, that the decisions of several boards have been reversed by the heads of the departments concerned. Just as convictions by many lower courts have been set aside by superior courts. Have there been instances where the application of particular rules have produced silly results? Without a doubt. Just as there are silly results from unforeseen applications of guidelines in all the walks of life. Have there been instances where overzealousness of government personnel has carried them too far into the private affairs of our citizens? Without a doubt. But for whatever solace it may bring, their motives were possibly purer than those of the wire- tappers in New York who were apparently interested in getting some inside business information.
One thing we can be sure of: if the system of government that stands for fair play in government is uprooted and goes down, we have little to hope for from the system that will take its place. This reflection may be at the root of overcaution, for it is quite evident that if the lights go out in this last stronghold, mankind may wander across the earth in darkness for eons to come. Whatever we may think about some of the possibly overpublicized committee hearings, is there any one who will seriously assert, after he makes allowances for initial difficulties of organization and for reasonable percentages of error, that the governments’ security programs have really gone too far? If such an one can be found, is it fair to ask his opinion as to whether the Czechoslovakian security programs went far enough?—or soon enough?
It behooves us, it seems to me, never to lose sight of the main objective in all this, which is, if I may paraphrase some early language of the Supreme Court: Liberty under the protection of effective government— not the destruction of that government by tolerating the frustration of its every effort at self defense.