More Room for Fairness

Many critics of the Government's personnel security program admit that its flaws show up less in the wording of Executive Order 10450, which sets the standards and procedures, than in the way the program is carried out. Last week Attorney General Herbert Brownell announced a new set of procedures to reduce the number of unfair deeds committed by security officers and boards in the name of "Ten-Four-Fifty." President Eisenhower approved Brownell's recommendations and ordered them put into effect. The new rules:

P: "Charges against the employee should be drawn as specifically as possible . . . enough to be meaningful to the employee," so that he can prepare a defense.

P: "The final decision as to suspension should not be delegated below the Assistant Secretary level ... A personal interview with the employee prior to suspension is helpful in most instances."

P: Hearings should be attended by a legal officer who should advise boards on procedure and employees on their rights.

P: Agency chiefs should "periodically and personally" make sure that they have assigned "high caliber" persons to sit on hearing boards?

P: Where the employee has been cleared in another agency, his chief should consult the other agency "to avoid conflicting evaluations." This is an obvious outgrowth of the Ladejinsky case (TIME, Jan. 3 et seq.), in which Agricultural Attache Wolf Ladejinsky, long since cleared by the State Department, was fired by Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson, rehired by Harold Stassen's FOA.

P: Except where sources must be protected, "every effort should be made to produce witnesses... [who] may be confronted and cross-examined by the employee."

P: Violations of law in security proceedings should be reported to the Justice Department. One thing Brownell may have had in mind is the almost total absence of perjury citations by hearing boards, a situation which in past years encouraged real subversives to lie and, consequently, tended to reduce the credibility accorded innocent witnesses.

Each of the new rules, observed Justice Department Security Chief William F. Tompkins, "further protects the rights of the individual."

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