Handouts for Communists?

No conscientious Congressman would cosset Communists, much less give them handouts of U.S. money. With a roar of pain and surprise Congress learned last week that the Atomic Energy Commission had done just that, in dealing out fellowships for study in advanced physics and other scientific fields.

At least one, possibly two, Communists had received the handouts. One was 23-year-old Hans Freistadt, part-time physics instructor at the University of North Carolina who got $1,600 for studying general relativity at the university. In Chapel Hill, Communist Freistadt, a naturalized Austrian, made no bones about his party membership.

In the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper angrily added a report of another case. It involved a science scholarship with a $3,600 stipend, but he did not identify the student. Iowa's Hickenlooper wanted to know why no loyalty check had been made of fellowship recipients. An answer of sorts came from Princeton's Dr. Henry DeWolf Smyth, up before the committee for confirmation as a $15,000-a-year member of AEC. "These men," said Dr. Smyth, "have no access to secret material." He thought that the best potential scientists had "an inquisitive turn of mind" and were "apt to be politically naive." He hoped that the "idea will not get abroad that the only people who can get AEC fellowships are complete conformists."

Impatiently Hickenlooper snorted: "If a man is a Communist, he can go and get an education, but I don't want him to do it at public expense. There are plenty of people who haven't developed these vagaries of political thought."

AEC tried hard to explain its hapless way out: Freistadt had been picked by the prestigious National Research Council, the top U.S. organization in the development of scientific talent. In any case where study involved a matter of national security, the student was checked by the FBI. "The introduction of security procedures into nonsecret fields," said AEC Chairman David Lilienthal, "would establish a precedent of grave and far-reaching consequence to our scientific and educational system." Nonetheless, the fact remained: the AEC had dished out scholarships to train young men who, because of party membership, could never be eligible to work for the AEC or, for that matter, for any other Government agency.

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