Quit or Be Fired

Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer decided to get rid of two top employees who had become politically embarrassing. Last week he abruptly ordered 32-year-old Economist William Remington and 42-year-old Michael J. Lee, chief of Commerce's Far Eastern division, to quit or be fired. Both men were currently in the middle of new Government checks on their loyalty, and Economist Remington was under investigation by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, but Charles Sawyer said his dismissal notice was "in no wise intended to reflect in any way on the loyalty of either of these two men." The action had simply been taken, said he, in "the interest of good administration in the department."

To followers of Washington's noisy, tortured wrestling with the questions of loyalty and Communism, neither Remington nor Lee were unfamiliar names: P:Handsome, Dartmouth-trained William Remington had been accused by Elizabeth Bentley of having been a party member, but he had survived an intensive Government loyalty check, cleared his name and returned to work with back pay. He became the subject of another loyalty inquiry last month (TIME, May 15) when two other former Communists testified that he was a party member and that they had seen him at party meetings. P:Granite-faced, big-eared Michael Lee had been cleared in one Commerce Department loyalty check before he became involved recently in a second one. Born in Harbin, Manchuria of Russian parents and christened Ephraim Zinovi Liberman, Lee had failed three times in bids for U.S. citizenship (grounds: he was not of "good character" and was not "attached to the principles of the Constitution"). Lee changed his name, married an American, and on the fourth try achieved citizenship. Only two months ago, while a subcommittee investigated charges that Lee had slowed down vital gasoline shipments to the Chinese Nationalist forces, Secretary Sawyer had rallied to Lee's defense. "He's one of the department's best men, vital in the organization--if they're going to take out after him, we're ready to fight," Sawyer told a senator. The committee, unimpressed, advised Sawyer to fire Lee.

Both Lee and Remington served notice that they would not quit their jobs. "I cannot of course resign under fire," said

Remington. "... I am willing to see this fight through." Said Lee: "My record is clear and I have nothing to hide . . . I am not now and I have never been a Communist or a Communist sympathizer."

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