Moynihan Commission On Government Secrecy - Loyalty

Loyalty

There is much information within a bureaucracy which could be used to injure the Government, or the national interest if revealed by disloyal persons to hostile nations or, for that matter, to hostile internal elements. It appears that the three-tiered gradation of today, Confidential/ Secret/Top Secret was adopted by the U.S. military from British forces in France in 1917, and was institutionalized with the Espionage Act of 1917. The U.S. Civil Service Commission, established by the Pendleton Act in 1883, was debarring persons relating to “loyalty” as late as 1921.

The Commission Report quotes Max Weber,

Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret...Bureaucracy naturally welcomes a poorly informed and hence a powerless parliament—at least insofar as ignorance somehow agrees with the bureaucracy’s interests.11

In March 1947 President Truman issued Executive Order 9835, establishing the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, providing uniform investigation standards and procedures, and authorizing the creation of Loyalty Review Boards across the Government. The Truman Order—based on the findings of an interdepartmental committee established in 1946—was superseded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s issuance of Executive Order 10450 in April 1953, which provided that “he appointment of each civilian officer or employee in any department or agency of the Government shall be made subject to an investigation,” and made each agency head responsible for ensuring that “the employment and retention in employment of any civilian officer or employee within the department or agency is clearly consistent with the interests of the national security.” While abolishing the Truman Order program, including the Loyalty Review Boards within the Civil Service Commission, the new Order also made clear that “the interests of national security require that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government, shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.”

In this manner, a broader “security” program was established across the Government. The political pressure had increased with the passage of legislation in 1950 “o protect the national security of the United States by permitting the summary suspension of employment of civilian officers and employees of various departments and agencies. . . .” In addition, beginning in March 1948, the Attorney General’s List was published on a regular basis—with members of organizations included on such a list to be denied employment in the federal government or defense industries as well as the right to a U.S. passport. During the 1952 presidential campaign, Dwight Eisenhower promised to root out Communists and other security risks from government and defense industry employment— suggesting that their presence had been tolerated too easily by the Truman administration despite the existence of rules to address “loyalty” concerns. In his first State of the Union address Eisenhower promised a new system “for keeping out the disloyal and the dangerous.” Executive Order 10450 soon followed. Senator Joseph McCarthy praised the new Executive Order. The New York Times reported, “The new program will require a new investigation of many thousands of employees previously investigated, as well as many more thousands who have had no security check.”

In November 1953, Attorney General Herbert Brownell would allege in a speech that Truman had nominated a Soviet spy—senior Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White—to serve as the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, despite what Brownell said was the President’s awareness of White’s involvement in Soviet espionage. And on December 3, 1953, President Eisenhower directed that a “blank wall be placed between Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and secret data”—marking the beginning of the process that led to the Atomic Energy Commission’s suspension of Oppenheimer’s security clearance later in December and its 4-to-1 decision on June 28, 1954, against restoring the clearance.12