Civil Service Reports on Impact of Federal Loyalty Program
The U. S. Civil Service Commission reported on this day that 8,008 “security risks” had been separated from federal employment, and that 5,912 of those were unrelated to loyalty to the U.S.
Questions about these removals prompted further inquiries by Rep. John E. Moss (D–California), who began hearings on government secrecy on November 7, 1955. These investigations eventually led to passage of the historic Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), signed by President Lyndon Johnson on July 4, 1966.
President Harry Truman launched the Federal Loyalty Program on March 21, 1947. The program called for the investigation of all federal employees and the removal of any about whom there were questions about their loyalty. One of the central problems with the investigations is that employees did not have an opportunity to confront and cross-examination people who had accused them of disloyalty, or of being members of the Communist Party, or of having communist or other left-wing associations, even if the accusations involved behavior or associations that were years in the past.
The second insidious aspect of Truman’s program was the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations, which President Truman ordered the Attorney General to create and which was published on December 4, 1947. People fell under suspicion even if they had been members of a listed organization many years before.
Learn more about FOIA: http://www.foia.gov/
Learn more at the John E. Moss Foundation website: http://www.johnemossfoundation.org/
Read: Herbert Foerstel, Freedom of Information and the Right to Know: The Origins and Applications of the Freedom of Information Act (1999)