1947 Loyalty Order by President Truman
President
Harry S. Truman
signed United States
Executive Order 9835
, sometimes known as the "Loyalty Order", on March 21, 1947.
[1]
The
order
established the first general loyalty program in the
United States
, designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government. Truman aimed to rally public opinion behind his
Cold War
policies with investigations conducted under its authority. He also hoped to quiet right-wing critics who accused
Democrats
of being soft on communism. At the same time, he advised the Loyalty Review Board to limit the role of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) to avoid a witch hunt.
[2]
The program investigated over 3 million government employees, just over 300 of whom were dismissed as security risks.
[3]
The Loyalty Order was part of the prelude to the rise of Senator
Joseph McCarthy
, Republican of Wisconsin. It was mostly the result of increasing
U.S.?Soviet tensions
and political maneuvering by the president and Congress.
[4]
The order established a wide area for the departmental loyalty boards to conduct loyalty screenings of federal employees and job applicants. It allowed the FBI to run initial name checks on federal employees and authorized further field investigations if the initial inquiry uncovered information that cast someone in a negative light. Executive Order 9835 also was the main impetus for the creation of the
Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations
(AGLOSO).
Background and Truman's motivations
[
edit
]
As U.S. relations with the
Soviet Union
rapidly deteriorated following
World War II
, there were accompanying concerns about government infiltration by communists.
[4]
As the U.S. fell from being
wartime allies
to staunch adversaries with the USSR, American obsession with perceived dangers associated with the Soviet Union, and communists in general, began to grow. Much of this obsession was fueled by reports, in and out of the government, of
Soviet spying in the United States
. Economic tension helped foster a general state of anger and anxiety in the U.S. and its government. As
congressional elections
approached in late 1946, many
American conservative
groups attempted to ignite a new
Red Scare
. The
Republican Party
, assisted by a coalition that included the
Catholic Church
, the FBI and private entrepreneurs, worked to inflame public fear and suspicion. As fear of Communist infiltration in the government grew, it became a central campaign issue in the 1946 elections.
[4]
Fresh investigations by the
House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC) ensured that the issue would stay on the minds of constituents, and Republicans found a niche they could use for an election advantage. HUAC, amid the anxieties of the elections and international tensions, had investigated several alleged Communist "front" organizations. These investigations led to fresh questions about employee loyalty from the House committee. Republicans, looking for sizable Congressional gains, took full advantage of this atmosphere and made the issue a central theme of the
1946 campaign
. Communist infiltration, along with attacks on the Truman administration's economic policies, were manifested in campaign slogans such as "Had Enough?" and "Communism vs. Republicanism."
[4]
Meanwhile, under the leadership of Republican
National Chairman
Carroll Reece
, the Republican Party made repeated anti-Communist attacks on Truman and Congressional Democrats. Reece often referred to the "
pink
puppets in control of the federal bureaucracy."
[4]
House Republican leader
Joe Martin
pledged to clean out Communists from high positions in the U.S. government. The election of 1946 produced a huge Republican victory in which they gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1932.
[4]
Two weeks after the sweeping Republican victory, the president announced the creation of the President's
Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty
(TCEL) on November 25, 1946. News of the TCEL made the front page of
The New York Times
under the headline "President orders purge of disloyal from U.S. posts." Truman's commission consisted of representatives from six government departments under the chairmanship of Special Assistant to the Attorney General A. Devitt Vanech, who was close to
FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover
at the time. The commission sought to determine federal loyalty standards and establish procedures for removal or disqualification of disloyal or
subversive
persons from federal posts.
[4]
Contemporary observers as well as historians have characterized Truman's action surrounding TCEL and the 1947 executive order as purely politically motivated.
[4]
The timing of his actions so soon after the Democratic electoral defeat, and his request that TCEL submit its report by February 1, 1947, have been interpreted as a move to preempt further action on the loyalty issue from the new Republican-controlled Congress.
[4]
On February 28, 1947, about a month before he signed EO 9835, Truman wrote to
Pennsylvania
Governor
George Earle
, "People are very much wrought up about the Communist 'bugaboo' but I am of the opinion that the country is perfectly safe so far as Communism is concerned?we have too many sane people."
White House Counsel
Clark Clifford
wrote in his 1991 memoir that his "greatest regret" from his decades in government was his failure to "make more of an effort to kill the loyalty program at its inception, in 1946-47." He added that the 1946 elections had "weakened" Truman but "emboldened Hoover and his allies" and that the creation of the TCEL was the result of pressure from FBI Director Hoover and Attorney General
Tom Clark
, who "constantly urged the President to expand the investigative authority of the FBI."
[4]
Provisions
[
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]
The
Federal Employee Loyalty Program
allowed the FBI to research whether the name of any of 2 million federal employees raised questions about their associations and beliefs and, if "derogatory information" was found, to follow up with a field investigation. The results of field investigations were delivered to 150 loyalty boards in various government departments. Those boards conducted their own investigations and were authorized to use the testimony of confidential witnesses whom the subject of the investigation was unable to confront. An employee could be fired if "reasonable doubt" existed concerning their loyalty. A loyalty board's decision was not subject to appeal.
[
citation needed
]
The text of the EO provided specific powers pertaining to employee loyalty. First and foremost among these was that "there shall be a loyalty investigation of every person entering civilian employment" in any facet of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Much of the rest of EO 9835's content simply reinforced policy surrounding the first statements on loyalty investigations, as well as seeking to establish a manner in which to go about with the loyalty investigations. As such, Part II of the EO provided the power to the head of each department or agency to appoint one or more loyalty boards. The boards' express purpose was to hear loyalty cases. In addition, Part V of the EO outlined criteria and standards for the refusal of (or removal from) employment for disloyalty. Disloyalty for these purposes was defined in five categories. These included:
[5]
- sabotage
,
espionage
, spying or the advocacy thereof
- treason
,
sedition
or the advocacy thereof
- intentional, unauthorized disclosure of confidential information
- advocacy of the violent overthrow of the U.S. government
- membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with any organization labeled as
totalitarian
,
fascist
,
communist
or
subversive
Subversive organizations
[
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]
EO 9835 facilitated the establishment of the highly publicized "
Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations
" (AGLOSO). Eventually, AGLOSO would become one of the central influences in the second American
Red Scare
, known collectively as
McCarthyism
. The list came into being after Truman signed EO 9835, both the order and AGLOSO established more than two years before Senator
Joseph McCarthy
's first allegations of Communist infiltration in the U.S. government in early 1950.
[4]
The stated purpose of the list was to lend guidance for federal civil service loyalty determinations. However, AGLOSO essentially became the litmus test for loyalty and disloyalty in a variety of public and private departments and organizations. The Attorney General's list was adopted by state and local governments, the military, defense contractors, hotels, the
Treasury Department
(
tax-exemption
determinations) and the
State Department
(
passport
and
deportation
determinations). The list was massively publicized in the federal government's effort against Communist infiltration. Despite the widespread publicity, the
Justice Department
and other agencies refused to release more than small amounts of information on other aspects of the list besides its contents. Included among the secret information were particulars such as how the list was compiled, criteria for listing, why the list was published, and why no notification was given to any of the listed organizations about their designation prior to the list's publication. Little was made at the time of the revelation that AGLOSO was nothing new; in fact, the government had been keeping a secret list to aid in screening for federal employee loyalty since 1940.
[4]
The first official list was published shortly after the March 21 executive order. According to FBI documents, obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act
nearly 60 years later,
[4]
AGLOSO was born on or about April 3, 1947 when the bureau responded to a March 27 request from the
Attorney General
for a list of "organizations thought to be subversive." The FBI's response included 41 groups "thought to be most dangerous within the purview of the recent Executive Order (9835)." A March 29 FBI document indicated that among the groups on the list were the
Ku Klux Klan
, the
Communist Party
, the
Nazi Party
and 38 alleged "
front groups
."
[4]
Outcome of the order
[
edit
]
Between 1948 and 1958, the FBI ran initial reviews of 4.5 million government employees and, on an annual basis, another 500,000 applicants for government positions. It conducted 27,000 field investigations.
[
citation needed
]
Besides those officially terminated as a result of investigations, around 5,000 federal employees offered voluntary resignations in light of the investigations. Most of the resignations took places at hearings conducted by Congressional committees.
[
citation needed
]
According to one historian, "By mid-1952, when more than 4 million people, actual or prospective employees, had gone through the check, boards had … dismissed or denied employment to 378…. None of the discharged cases led to discovery of espionage."
[6]
The executive order said: "maximum protection must be afforded the United States against infiltration of disloyal persons into the ranks of its employees, and equal protection from unfounded accusations of disloyalty must be afforded the loyal employees." But those protections were deemed inadequate, as objections surfaced regarding the lack of
due process
protections resulting from the departmental loyalty board procedures. One complaint concerned the lack of opportunity to confront those anonymous informants that EO 9835 protected from being named to the accused.
Initially, both the
D.C. Circuit Court
affirmed the procedures of EO 9835 in
Bailey v. Richardson
in 1950, and a tie in the
U.S. Supreme Court
allowed that ruling to stand.
[7]
In 1955, the Supreme Court held in
Peters v. Hobby
that the removal of a consultant to the
Civil Service Commission
by the commission's Loyalty Review Board was invalid.
[8]
The case had little impact, since by then the Loyalty Review Board was only defending old cases and had been dismantled by a 1953 Executive Order.
Revocation and Repeal
[
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]
The order
Executive Order 10450
, signed by President
Eisenhower
in April 1953, revoked Executive Order 9835 and extended the restrictions to all other jobs in the US government.
[9]
However, both Executive Order 9835 and Executive Order 10450 were later repealed when US President
Bill Clinton
signed
Executive Order 12968
in 1995 and
Executive Order 13087
in 1998. The enforcement of employment suspension for issues such as sexual perversion was also weakened by the US Supreme Court's
Cole v Young
ruling in 1956
[10]
and the US Civil Service Commission formally reversed its discriminatory hiring policy against gays and lesbians in 1975.
[
citation needed
]
In 1977, under the guidance of Jimmy Carter, Executive Order 9835's provision which enforced the barring of employment of gays in the
foreign service
, as well as a policy which required the
Internal Revenue Service
to enforce LGBT education and charity groups to publicly state that homosexuality is a "sickness, disturbance, or diseased pathology," was repealed.
[
citation needed
]
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Harry S. Truman, Executive Orders
The Federal Register
, U.S. National Archives
- ^
Hogan, Michael J. (2000).
A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954
. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 254?5.
ISBN
9780521795371
.
- ^
The Second Red Scare
Archived
2006-10-18 at the
Wayback Machine
, Digital History, Post-War America 1945-1960, University of Houston
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
Goldstein, Robert Justin.
Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist
,
Prologue
, Fall 2006, Vol. 38, No. 3, U.S. National Archives.
- ^
Executive Order 9835
Archived
2005-11-29 at the
Wayback Machine
, via Origins of the Cold War: Interpreting Primary Sources, University of Houston
- ^
Ferrell, Robert H.
(1994).
Harry S. Truman: A Life
. University of Missouri Press. p. 301.
ISBN
978-0-8262-1050-0
.
- ^
Rabin, Jack, ed. (1995).
Handbook of Public Personnel Administration
. New York: Marcel Dekker Inc. p. 79.
ISBN
9780824792312
. Retrieved
March 22,
2015
.
- ^
Justia.com:
Peters v. Hobby, 349 U.S. 331
, accessed November 29, 2010
- ^
National Archives:
Executive Order 10450, Section 12
, accessed November 29, 2010
- ^
"Cole v. Young, 351 U.S. 536 (1956)"
.
Further reading
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]
External links
[
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]
Wikisource
has original text related to this article: