Executive Order 9835

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Page one of Executive Order 9835, signed by Harry S. Truman in 1947

President

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

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

As U.S. relations with 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

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

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

The signature page of Executive Order 9835

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
    subversive

Subversive organizations

EO 9835 facilitated the establishment of the highly publicized "

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

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

front groups."[4]

Outcome of the order

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

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

The order

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

References

  1. ^ Harry S. Truman, Executive Orders The Federal Register, U.S. National Archives
  2. ISBN 9780521795371
    .
  3. ^ The Second Red Scare Archived 2006-10-18 at the Wayback Machine, Digital History, Post-War America 1945-1960, University of Houston
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Executive Order 9835 Archived 2005-11-29 at the Wayback Machine, via Origins of the Cold War: Interpreting Primary Sources, University of Houston
  6. ISBN 978-0-8262-1050-0
    .
  7. ISBN 9780824792312
    . Retrieved March 22, 2015.
  8. ^ Justia.com: Peters v. Hobby, 349 U.S. 331, accessed November 29, 2010
  9. ^ National Archives: Executive Order 10450, Section 12, accessed November 29, 2010
  10. ^ "Cole v. Young, 351 U.S. 536 (1956)".

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External links

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