Loyalty Review Board

4 Key excerpts on "Loyalty Review Board"

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  eBook - ePub

  Public Management and Change series

  The Development of the Public Employment Relationship, Second Edition

  • David H. Rosenbloom(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Georgetown University Press

    (Publisher)

  United States v. Lovett, a decision that influenced the decline of the doctrine of privilege by holding that barring individuals from public employment could violate the Constitution.

  In March 1947, under considerable pressure from the Republican-dominated Congress, President Truman issued Executive Order 9835, known as the “Loyalty Order,” which extensively modified the system of regulations concerning loyalty-security developed during World War II.33 The order was based on the assumption that “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 of the Government.” The order required “a loyalty investigation of every person entering the civilian employment of any department or agency in the executive branch of the Federal government,” and provided that “the head of each department and agency…shall be personally responsible for an effective program to assure that disloyal civilian officers or employees are not retained in employment in his department or agency.”34 The order further provided for the establishment of the Loyalty Review Board (LRB) within the CSC to review cases and generally oversee loyalty-security matters as well as for the appointment of agency and departmental loyalty boards.

  A federal servant charged with being disloyal had the right to a hearing before an agency or departmental loyalty board. He or she also had the right to appeal an adverse decision to the department or agency head and then to the LRB.35 At these hearings, which were not open, the federal servant was granted the right to have counsel and to present supporting witnesses and evidence. The charges were to be “stated as specifically and completely as, in the discretion of the employing department or agency, security considerations permit.”36 Although the Loyalty Order did not prohibit confrontation and cross-examination of adverse witnesses, neither did it guarantee these procedures. At the program’s inception, LRB chairman Seth Richardson stated that “disclosure of evidential sources to the employee, and the resulting opportunity of cross-examination of such sources by him will probably not be practicable.”37

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  eBook - ePub

  Cornell Studies in Civil Liberties

  • Walter Gellhorn(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  The striking disparity between these records and the record of the loyalty boards is not a reflection of different attitudes upon the part of the judges. Trials in the federal courts and in those of New York are notably fair; there is no inhumane disposition to hold the innocent guilty. The difference is that loyalty boards commence proceedings against federal employees, involving the scandalous imputation of disloyalty and jeopardizing their whole careers, on far flimsier evidence than will move a prosecutor to proceed against a pickpocket or a stock swindler. In large part this reflects the Loyalty Review Board’s conception of the function of hearings. The Board has told the subordinate loyalty boards that charges and hearings are to be deemed merely a part of the process of investigation. Hence the loyalty boards have been urged to issue charges whenever their files contain any unexplained “derogatory information,” even when that information is on its face inadequate to sustain a reasonable belief that the employee may be disloyal. A memorandum from the Loyalty Review Board emphasizes that “unless the Board concludes from an examination of the whole record that an employee is clearly eligible, it is desired that the Board proceed to dispose of the case after hearing and not by determination without hearing.” 18 Largely because of this instruction, cases may go to trial for very flimsy reasons and without any real expectation that a finding of disloyalty will be made, for as we have seen “derogatory information” embraces everything that suggests even a rather remote relationship with an objectionable organization or an individual. Social Results of the Loyalty Program If the only effect of this were upon the individuals who suffered the costs and concern of facing loyalty charges, the matter would be serious

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  Clearer Than Truth

  The Polygraph and the American Cold War

  • John Philipp Baesler(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • University of Massachusetts Press

    (Publisher)

  Fed their information by the FBI, Loyalty Review Boards made their decisions on the basis of J. Edgar Hoover’s alarmist views on the dangers of communism. Even so, until 1950 the vast majority of federal employees were reinstated after their review board had heard their case. The outbreak of the Korean War, however, inflamed partisanship anew, and under conservative pressure, the Truman administration established stricter standards, making “reasonable doubt” of a person’s loyalty sufficient reason for dismissal. President Eisenhower extended this strict standard to the whole federal workforce, establishing “security” rather than “loyalty” as the goal of investigations. 43 To what extent should investigations target not only actual deeds, but thought? How far should the requirements of security be allowed to reach into the personal history of Americans? The AEC Personnel Board saw the issues. It asserted, “The necessary but harsh requirements of security should not deny a man the right to have made a mistake, if its recurrence is so remote a possibility as to permit a comfortable prediction as to the sanity and correctness of future conduct.” 44 But it emphasized its priorities emphatically: There remains also an aspect of the security system which perhaps has had insufficient public attention. This is the protection and support of the entire system itself. It must include an understanding and an acceptance of security measures adopted by responsible Government agencies. It must include an active cooperation with all agencies of Government properly and reasonably concerned with the security of our country. It must involve a subordination of personal judgment in the light of standards and procedures when they have been clearly established by appropriate process

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  Truman

  • David McCullough(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Simon & Schuster

    (Publisher)

  On Friday, March 21, 1947, nine days after his address to Congress, Truman issued Executive Order No. 9835, establishing an elaborate Federal Employees Loyalty and Security Program. And he did so with misgivings.

  Roosevelt, in 1942, had empowered the Civil Service to disqualify anyone from government employment where there was a “reasonable doubt of loyalty,” and by executive order Roosevelt later assigned the Justice Department and FBI to check on the loyalty of government workers. But that had been during the war. Until now, no such step had ever been taken in peacetime.

  His purpose, Truman later wrote, was twofold: to guard against disloyal employees in the government work force, and to protect innocent government workers from unfounded accusations. To show that he had no intention of playing politics with the program, he put a conservative Republican, a prominent Washington lawyer named Seth Richardson, in charge of its Review Board.

  All federal employees were to be subject to loyalty investigations, whatever their jobs. FBI files and the files of the House Un-American Activities Committee would be called into use. Anyone found to be disloyal could no longer hold a government job. Dismissal could be based merely on “reasonable grounds for belief that the person is disloyal,” yet the term “disloyal” was never defined. Moreover, those accused would be unable to confront those making charges against them, or even to know who they were or what exactly the charges were. In addition, the Attorney General was authorized to draw up a list of subversive organizations.

  To David Lilienthal, who well knew the torment that self-proclaimed Communist-hunters could bring down on a loyal government employee, the whole program looked ominous. Anyone serving in the government could be at the mercy of almost any malevolent accuser. “In practical effect,” Lilienthal wrote in his diary, “the usual rule that men are presumed innocent until proved guilty is in reverse.” Yet Lilienthal, too, conceded that something of the sort probably had to be initiated, and so staunch an upholder of liberal principle as the New York Post

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