Who Was the Loyalty Review Board Used Against
Loyalty Probes and the National Security
Senate and the Mccarthy Charges; Loyalty Files
Sensational charges of Communist infiltration in the State Department, aired by Sen. McCarthy (R., Wis.) in Lincoln Solar day speeches and later elaborated on the floor of the Senate, have raised a tempest of controversy which has gone beyond the substance of the charges themselves and go expressive of far-reaching political divisions. The McCarthy attack has stirred upwards intra-party as well as inter-party conflict, and observers take surmised that it represents a bid by isolationist elements for renewed clout in the Republican fold and in the country. In its wide aspects, therefore, the attack may be viewed every bit the forerunner of a new struggle over foreign policy and America's position of leadership in the postwar earth.
Meanwhile, McCarthy'southward specific allegations, even so sick-founded they may prove to be, have had the event of raising questions as to the capability of President Truman'due south three-year-old employee loyalty program and of bringing into the open a problem of security separate from the loyalty problem itself. Coming on acme of the Hiss and Coplon convictions, the senator's charges—though vehemently denied by the President, Secretary of State Acheson, and the individuals named—could not fail to produce demands for investigation and for adoption of stricter measures to baby-sit confronting Communist intrigue. Administration leaders met the challenge by themselves sponsoring an inquiry past a Foreign Relations subcommittee headed by Sen. Tydings (D., Md.). Other committees of Congress moved to advance pending bills to tighten internal security legislation and provide new methods of controlling Communist activity.
The President, while offering to cooperate with the Tydings subcommittee in every reasonable style, said he would not permit transfer to it of loyalty files pertaining to the cases cited past McCarthy. The subcommittee, as directed by the Senate resolution authorizing the enquiry, thereupon served subpoenas on the Secretary of Country, a representative of the Attorney General, and the president of the Civil Service Commission. Merely those officials were obliged to pass up all demands for the files in compliance with a Truman directive of Mar. 13, 1948. The possibility that the officials would be cited for contempt of the Senate seemed remote. A long line of precedents supports the Executive Branch in refusing to furnish information whose disclosure it considers would be confronting the public involvement.
Source: https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1950040400
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