Answer to Come

In Washington last week, dozens of Government workers queued up quietly to be fingerprinted. Obediently, they filled out FBI forms asking for data on addresses, places of employment, and affiliations with any groups or societies dating ten years back. Across the nation, in other Government offices, picked employees with similar forms and portable fingerprinting outfits began to bustle from desk to desk. The Government's 11 million, congressionally approved check on the loyalty of its two million-odd employees was officially on.

"Derogatory Information." Actually, it had been going on, in a smaller way, even before Harry Truman first ordered Government agencies to root out their subversive--e.g., Communist and fellow-traveling--workers in March. The Army had fired over 100 civilian employees suspected of disloyalty, the Navy at least 23, the Labor Department five. None of the purgees had complained publicly. But when the State Department suddenly ousted ten of its workers because "derogatory information" had been received about them, some pertinent questions began to be asked.

At least six of the ten men fired claimed (to their lawyers) that they had done nothing subversive; one thought he had been fired because his name had somehow got on the mailing lists of a left-wing book store. They also claimed that they had not been able to find out the specific charges against them, to defend themselves before their accusers, or to appeal the decision that cost them their jobs.

When these claims got around Washington, the State Department (which had not named any of the ousted workers) hastily set up a three-man loyalty board of review to listen to their protests. Then State pointed out that the purgees could take their case through a series of additional Government appeal boards to the courts.

Uneasy Stirrings. Now that the FBI was officially under way on the all-out loyalty check, a certain uneasiness began to stir in Government offices and at least part of the nation's press. The case of the State Department employees seemed to reverse the process of Anglo-Saxon law--which assumes that the accused is innocent until proved guilty. It seemed to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of their constitutional rights. Also, the ten had apparently been convicted of disloyalty on mere "derogatory information," which was the tool of a police state and not a democracy.

Nobody wanted disloyal people in jobs that made them dangerous to the U.S. But the question was how to insure the maximum security for the state without trampling on the basic American principle of individual rights. To date, nobody had a good answer.

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