Definition of Loyalty Review Program and Huac in the History

Prelude to McCarthyism: The Making of a Blacklist

Fall 2006, Vol. 38, No. 3

Past Robert Justin Goldstein

The so-chosen "Chaser Full general'southward List of Destructive Organizations" (AGLOSO) was ane of the almost central and widely publicized aspects of the mail–World War II Ruby Scare, which has popularly become known as "McCarthyism."

AGLOSO burst into the American consciousness in December 1947, when it was published in connection with President Harry Southward. Truman's "loyalty programme," more than two years before Senator Joseph McCarthy made his start publicized allegations of widespread Communist infiltration of the American government in early 1950.

It originated with President Truman's Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947, which required that all federal civil service employees be screened for "loyalty." The social club specified that ane criterion to exist used in determining that "reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal" would exist a finding of "membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association" with any arrangement determined past the attorney general to be "totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or subversive" or advocating or blessing the forceful deprival of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking "to alter the form of Government of the U.s.a. past unconstitutional means."

Although officially the only purpose of AGLOSO was to provide guidance for federal civil service loyalty determinations, AGLOSO, one time published, was apace adopted by a broad variety of public and private groups, including state and local governments, the military, defense contractors, hotels, the Treasury Department (in making tax-exemption determinations), and the State Department (in making passport and displacement decisions), to deny employment or otherwise discriminate confronting listed organizations or persons declared to be affiliated with them.

As various scholars wrote contemporaneously and subsequently, AGLOSO, which was massively publicized in the media, became what amounted to "an official black list." In the public mind it came to have "authority as the definitive written report on subversive organizations," understood as a "proscription of the treasonable action of the listed organizations" and the "litmus exam for distinguishing betwixt loyalty and disloyal organizations and individuals."

The influence of the list could be very far-reaching. For example, the November 1956 issue of Elks Magazine carried an article entitled "What the Attorney General's List Ways," which began by accurately noting that "there are few Americans who have not heard of 'the Attorney General's subversive list'" and concluded by declaring, "In that location is no excuse for any American denizen becoming affiliated with a group on the Attorney General'due south list today."

Although AGLOSO itself was massively publicized, the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government released little or no information about key aspects of the list, including how information technology was compiled, what criteria were used to list groups, why the decision was made to publish the listing, and why listed organizations were non provided with any notice, charges, or hearings before they were designated.

Moreover, when AGLOSO was start published in belatedly 1947, only the briefest of references were fabricated to the fact that the government had been maintaining in secret an AGLOSO to help in screening federal employees for loyalty always since 1940.

The publication of the listing transformed what was supposedly a tool solely designed to help screen federal employees for loyalty into what effectively became an official government proscription blacklist, whose influence spread across American society, severely damaged or destroyed the listed organizations, and cast a general pall over freedom of association and spoken communication in the United states.

This article seeks to mankind out how the Truman administration AGLOSO was "made," drawing upon previously unreleased governmental records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act likewise as upon other bachelor sources, such every bit obscure congressional hearings.

* * *

Between 1940 and 1943 the federal government had screened federal employees for "loyalty" using a secret AGLOSO. The original legal basis for this list was the August 1939 Hatch Human activity, which banned from government employment whatsoever person who held "membership in any political party or arrangement which advocated the overthrow of our constitutional form of government in the Usa." Similar provisions were regularly included thereafter in congressional appropriations acts. Pursuant to these congressional mandates, Attorney General Francis Biddle created a temporary interdepartmental committee to investigate alleged subversion within the federal government. Biddle and the Dickinson Committee (named for Special Assistant to the Chaser Full general Edwin Dickinson), which he created in early on 1942, designated 47 organizations by May 1942 as falling within the Hatch Act criteria, membership in which raised a "flag" with regard to federal employees or applicants for federal jobs.

This first AGLOSO was compiled in secret, and the listed organizations were not informed or given any opportunity to claiming the listings. Even so, a brief reference to the undercover AGLOSO was contained in a Federal Agency of Investigation memorandum that was published as part of a study that Biddle fabricated to Congress in September 1942.

Without naming the organizations, across the Communist Political party (CP) and the pro-Nazi German American Bund, whose inclusion under the Hatch Act mandate had been previously announced past the Civil Service Commission (CSC), the FBI document reported that the Dickinson Committee had designated 47 organizations as coming "within the purview" of the congressional mandates, including "12 Communist or Communist 'front' organizations; two American Fascist organizations; 8 Nazi organizations; four Italian fascist organizations; and 21 Japanese organizations."

The major national news media barely mentioned the Biddle AGLOSO, even so, and even after Chairman Martin Dies of the House Committee on Un-American Activities placed leaked Justice Section memorandums concerning the designated Communist "front" organizations into the Congressional Record on September 24, 1942, the names of the groups were not reported in the mainstream printing. Therefore, although the Justice Section, in publishing the starting time Truman AGLOSO in December 1947 noted that 47 of the approximately ninety organizations on its list had been previously designated by the Roosevelt administration as "subversive" for "use in connexion with consideration of employee loyalty," most Americans were probably completely unaware that the federal government had previously been using such listing.

* * *

At the cease of World War II, a widespread belief that good relations with the Soviet Marriage would continue briefly macerated the concern over alleged Communist and other subversive infiltration of the federal authorities that had led to the Hatch Act and the Biddle AGLOSO. In Oct 1945 the Gaston Committee (named for Assistant Secretarial assistant of the Treasury Herbert Gaston and created in early 1943 to replace the Dickinson Commission) recommended that it exist abolished and its functions turned over to the U.South. Civil Service Commission. In December 1945 the new attorney general, Tom Clark, drafted a proposed executive lodge to implement this recommendation.

Yet, the rapid development of Cold State of war tensions afterward 1945 and concerns about possible Communist infiltration of the government soon created a drastically changed political climate in the United states of america. President Truman in late 1946 appointed yet another commission to study governmental employee loyalty, which somewhen led him to inaugurate a sweeping new federal loyalty program in March 1947.

The rapid, major deterioration in the civil liberties climate and the reemergence of the "subversives in government" outcome that marked the period between the stop of Earth War II and early on 1947 was largely attributable to iv intertwined and reinforcing factors that, due to space considerations and their all-encompassing treatment in scholarly literature elsewhere, can only exist briefly listed hither:

• the desperate postwar deterioration of relations with the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Cold State of war;
• a growing obsession with perceived dangers posed by internal subversion in full general and Soviet and Communist Party espionage in particular, fueled by reports, some public and some held within the government, of Russian spy operations in North America, accompanied by a new Communist "difficult" line that echoed general Cold State of war tensions;
• postwar economical tensions and frustrations in the The states, including massive inflation and a major strike wave in 1946, which fostered a general sense of acrimony and anxiety; and
• deliberate attempts to ignite a domestic Red Scare past a powerful coalition of American conservatives, notably the FBI, significant elements in the business community, the Catholic Church, and, especially, an increasingly politically desperate Republican Party.

Amid the growing domestic and international anxieties of the 1946 congressional election yr, the Business firm Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC), at present a permanent committee, investigated several alleged Communist "front end" groups. A House Civil Service Committee (HCSC) subcommittee concluded, afterward brief mid-1946 hearings, that American security was threatened by the federal employment of persons of "questioned loyalty" and that a authorities commission was immediately required to constitute a "complete and compatible" plan to protect the regime against "individuals whose primary loyalty is to governments other than our own."

During closed July 1946 hearings, CSC head Arthur Flemming told the HCSC subcommittee that, in the low-cal of congressional passage of the 1939 Hatch Act and other legislation, the CSC had "no difficulty" in determining that Communist Party members or followers of the party "line," along with "persons actively associated with groups or organizations whose primary loyalty was to Nazi, Fascist or Japanese governments," should be barred from federal employment.

Flemming vigorously defended the CSC policy of not asking federal applicants virtually their association with certain organizations, including pro-Spanish loyalist groups, since, along with "some Communist Party liners," those "whom yous and I would never in the world classify equally anything but very good progressives or liberals" had supported the loyalists, including "undoubtedly plenty of people in the Authorities right now" viewed "as responsible leading progressives."

During his testimony, Flemming placed considerable emphasis on an April 1946 federal district court ruling, Friedman v. Schwellenbach, every bit upholding the CSC'southward approach to loyalty cases, including its use of the Communist Party "line" test too as its reliance on membership in allegedly "subversive" organizations.

Meanwhile, Republicans made alleged Communist infiltration of the federal authorities their key theme during the 1946 congressional elections, bundling information technology together with attacks upon the Truman administration's economical tape under the slogans of "Had plenty?" and "communism vs. republicanism." Under the leadership of Republican National Chairman Carroll Reece, leading Republicans repeatedly made "anti-Communist" attacks upon Truman and the Democrats: thus Reece referred to the "pink puppets in command of the federal bureaucracy," while Firm Republican leader Joe Martin pledged to give priority to "cleaning out the Communists, their fellow travelers and parlor pinks from high positions in our Government." The election proved a groovy Republican victory, giving them control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1932.

* * *

On November 25, 1946, two weeks later on the ballot, President Truman suddenly announced the cosmos of the President's Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty (TCEL) charged with making a sweeping report of federal loyalty programs. This news was reported on the New York Times front page nether the heading, "President Orders Purge of Disloyal from U.S. Posts." The TCEL, consisting of representatives of vi government departments nether the chairmanship of Special Banana to the Attorney Full general A. Devitt Vanech (a Justice Section official who was shut to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), was charged with determining federal loyalty standards and establishing procedures to remove or disqualify "any disloyal or subversive person" from federal service.

The timing of Truman'due south action, along with his request that the TCEL submit a report by February 1, leaving it simply ii months to act, left both contemporary observers and historians with the confidence that he acted primarily to preempt further moves on the loyalty consequence from the incoming Republican Congress. That Truman's concern most "destructive" infiltration of the government was likely more than political than substantive is supported by his own gimmicky statements and past White House counsel Clark Clifford'south memoir. For example, on Feb 28, 1947, shortly before he instituted a sweeping new federal loyalty program based on the TCEL report, 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 and so far as Communism is concerned—nosotros have too many sane people."

President Truman with adviser Clark Clifford, ca. 1949. Clifford subsequently indicated in his memoir that Truman s loyalty program initiatives in 1947 were probably politically motivated, a response to election setbacks and pressure from J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney Full general Tom Clark to aggrandize the investigative authority of the FBI. (Truman Library)

In his 1991 memoir, Clifford declared that his "greatest regret" from his decades-long government service was his failure to "brand more of an effort to impale the loyalty programme at its inception, in 1946–47." Making clear that neither he nor Truman viewed Communist infiltration of the federal government every bit a serious problem, Clifford added that the 1946 elections "weakened" Truman but "emboldened [FBI Director] Hoover and his allies." The creation of the TCEL, Clifford wrote, resulted from "force per unit area" from Hoover and Attorney General Tom Clark, who "constantly urged the President to expand the investigative authorisation of the FBI."

The TCEL'south investigation consisted of sending form letters to near fifty government agencies and hearing oral testimony from Clark, FBI Assistant Director D. Milton Ladd, Gaston Committee chairman Herbert Gaston, and HCSC members Edward Rees and J. Combs. The most important testimony appears to have come from Clark, who told the TCEL that while at that place were only 2 dozen Communists employed by the federal government, the "gravity of the problem" should non exist "weighed in calorie-free of numbers but rather from the viewpoint of the serious threat which fifty-fifty one disloyal person constitutes to the security of the government."

Clark prepared for his testimony with the aid of a lengthy memorandum from Hoover, which stated that, under the Hatch Human action, the FBI investigated a federal employee only if there were "definite and substantial indications that he is a member of one of the 47 organizations alleged subversive by the Attorney General" or allegations that he personally advocated the overthrow of the government or belonged to an organization advocating such.

Bated from federal employees, Hoover told Clark that the FBI maintained files on those who, "later on investigation," had been "shown" to exist "members or, or affiliated with, 'subversive' organizations and in addition are either important or influential functionaries in such organizations or very agile, influential, or longtime members thereof, or occupy important or strategic positions outside the 'destructive' organizations to which they belong."

The final TCEL written report, submitted to Truman on March 2, clearly bore the mark of Clark and the FBI in its cadre conclusion that the possibility of fifty-fifty i disloyal employee justified a comprehensive federal loyalty program. The TCEL institute that the presence within the authorities of "any disloyal or destructive persons, or the attempt by whatever such person to obtain employment, presents a problem of such importance that information technology must exist dealt with vigorously and effectively."

The committee recommended that all 2 million federal employees, likewise as all future applicants, be investigated, with the standard for "refusal of employment" to be that "on all evidence, reasonable grounds be for believing that the person involved is disloyal to the government of the United States." The TCEL never defined the key terms "disloyal" or "reasonable grounds" just recommended that half-dozen types of activities should be considered in making such determinations:

1. sabotage, espionage, and related activities;
2. treason or sedition;
3. advocacy of illegal overthrow of the regime;
4. intentional and unauthorized disclosure of confidential information;
5. serving a foreign government in preference to the interests of the United States; and
6. "Membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with any foreign or domestic arrangement, association, movement, group or combination of persons designated by the Attorney General equally totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive, or every bit having adopted a policy of advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny other persons their rights under the Constitution of the Us, or as seeking to alter the form of Regime of the United States by unconstitutional ways."

The sixth, or AGLOSO, category, was clearly modeled on the Biddle AGLOSO, which was predicated on the 1939 Hatch Human activity. The TCEL report, still, which was published along with Truman'due south executive society establishing his loyalty program on March 21, 1947, never explicitly referred to the Biddle listing. Information technology cited no legislative basis for AGLOSO and provided no guidelines apropos how it should exist compiled, what standards should be used to determine which of the six distinct categories of doubtable groups an arrangement should exist placed in, or whether the list should be published.

Truman accustomed the TCEL's major recommendation past signing Executive Gild 9835 on March 21. It established a loyalty program requiring the investigation of all existing and prospective federal employees, irrespective of their responsibilities or ability to access sensitive information (during the Earth War II program, while all applicants were screened for loyalty, incumbent employees were investigated only if specific allegations confronting them surfaced).

1 of the final barriers to Truman's issuance of his society was apparently eliminated by the Supreme Court's refusal on March 17 to hear an appeal in the Friedman case, in which the lower federal courts had seemingly given the government carte blanche to burn down federal employees on wide-ranging loyalty grounds, including membership in dubious organizations and expressing sympathy with Communist Party policies. On March 19, a forepart-page Washington Post commodity reported the Court's inaction had paved the mode for issuance of an lodge by Truman that federal officials had "been told for well-nigh a month" would be "issued momentarily" and would lay down a lucent Administration policy to cleanse the Government of disloyal employees."

Executive Club 9835 received nationwide front-page coverage on March 23, with screaming paper headlines such equally "Purge of Disloyal on U.S. Pay Roll Ordered" and "Truman Orders Disloyal Employees Fired." The executive order declared that the loyalty of "the overwhelming bulk of all Government employees is beyond question" and that "protection from unfounded accusations of disloyalty must be afforded" them. It added that the "presence within the Government service of any disloyal or subversive person constitutes a threat to our autonomous processes" and required loyalty screenings of all present or prospective government employees, using the "reasonable grounds" standard and all of the specific loyalty criteria recommended past the TCEL, including the verbal text of its suggested AGLOSO criteria.

The social club also established a Loyalty Review Board (LRB), which would have the power to advise all federal agencies in making loyalty determinations, with the Justice Department directed to furnish the LRB with a listing of all organizations "which the Attorney General, afterwards appropriate investigation and conclusion," designated as belonging to one of the half-dozen categories, and the LRB charged with disseminating "such information to all departments and agencies."

Each employee was granted the right to a hearing if "charged with being disloyal," besides equally to written notice informing him "of the nature of the charges against him in sufficient detail, and so that he will be enabled to gear up his defense." Nevertheless, Truman'southward order specified that the charges need only be "every bit complete as, in the discretion of the employing department or agency, security considerations permit" and that, in submitting information to authorities agencies, investigative agencies such as the FBI could, at their discretion, "refuse to disembalm the proper noun of confidential informants," so long every bit they provided "sufficient information" so that the employing agencies could make "an adequate evaluation of the data furnished them." In practice, because most charges were based on FBI information and the FBI was generally unwilling to divulge its sources and methods or to make its agents or informants available for testimony, federal employees charged under the loyalty plan were usually provided only extremely vague charges and not told the sources of allegations against them and thus were denied the correct to cross-examine their (unknown) accusers.

* * *

Between the March 22, 1947, public proclamation of the new loyalty program and the massively publicized December 1947 issuance of the first Truman AGLOSO, the Justice Department began compiling AGLOSO behind a thick mantle of secrecy that has still non all the same been entirely lifted. Many relevant section documents have patently been destroyed, were never transferred to the National Athenaeum, or remain classified.

Nonetheless, the process past which the Truman AGLOSO was compiled can be at least partly patched together from surviving documents and statements made by Justice Department officials later on the list was get-go published in Dec 1947. These sources suggest that the FBI and the Justice Section devoted massive resources to compiling AGLOSO under what was perceived as enormous political pressure, that both agencies felt overwhelmed past the task and that, ultimately, decisions were made in a unclear and time-pressured way that paved the fashion for years of subsequent chaotic confusion and contradiction.

FBI documents obtained about six decades after under the Freedom of Information Act betoken that on or about Apr 3, 1947, the agency, in response to a March 27 asking from Assistant Attorney General Vanech for a compilation of "organizations thought to be destructive," provided a listing, without whatsoever accompanying write-ups, of 41 organizations which were "thought to be well-nigh dangerous inside the purview of the recent Executive Society."

According to a March 29 internal FBI certificate, these included the Communist Party, 38 alleged "front" groups, the Nazi Party, and the Ku Klux Klan. In an April 3 memorandum to Attorney Full general Clark, the FBI reported that it had previously sent the Justice Department "complete reports" on the Communist Party and "all of the major Communist front organizations," totaling "some fifty organizations," a grouping that presumably overlapped with the 41 organizations listed in response to Vanech's request.

As the jump of 1947 turned into summertime and fall, the FBI kept adding to its list of organizations for Justice Department AGLOSO consideration while increasingly groaning almost the workload required for compiling the reports. By fall, with Hoover's agreement, the FBI quit preparing further proposed listings.

In originally setting an October deadline for AGLOSO determinations, the Justice Department was probably responding to pressure from government officials charged with implementing Truman'southward executive society. Thus, on April 24, CSC President Harry Mitchell wrote to Clark reporting that information technology was "essential" that the CSC be furnished the "list of organizations" designated under the order "promptly," and then that agency loyalty boards could have "immediate action" under Truman's order. Clark added to the pressure by telling a reporter on May 31 that the AGLOSO list would probably be completed inside a calendar month.

But the sketchiest data nearly the Justice Department's internal processes concerning AGLOSO determinations was made public when the get-go Truman list was published in early Dec, but additional relevant information survives in archival material and in congressional testimony by department officials. According to a November 24, 1947, letter from Clark to the LRB that was published in the press on Dec five along with the Truman AGLOSO, the department had "compiled all bachelor data" apropos organizations nether review for AGLOSO, only the FBI was the only specific source of information mentioned.

At a December congressional hearing, Raymond Whearty of the Criminal Segmentation reported that Justice Department attorneys had thus far considered a total of 449 organizations for AGLOSO designation and that the 33 attorneys detailed to this mission had worked "total fourth dimension and including in some instances Saturdays and Sundays" between September 19 and Oct 31.

Co-ordinate to 1952 Justice Department documents, in cartoon upwards the first Truman AGLOSO, the department incorporated "in toto" the 1943 Biddle AGLOSO, without any review of Biddle's determinations and, in some cases, without any documentation about them. Thus, co-ordinate to an October, 1952 memorandum past Assistant Chaser Full general Charles Murray, head of the Criminal Sectionalisation, "no reexamination of [the Biddle] cases was fabricated prior to their re-designation in 1947," and with regard to many of the "Fascist" organizations, "incomplete or no files whatsoever take been located in the department and the basis upon which they were designated originally is unknown, relieve every bit summary memoranda prepared at the fourth dimension may still exist in existence."

Touching on what would soon become one of the about controversial aspects of the "list," Clark related in December 1947 congressional testimony that making AGLOSO designations was "a hard job and information technology is a trying job for the reason that we did not take whatever hearings," a procedure "a little chip contrary to our usual conception of autonomous process so I wanted to be careful nearly it. That is why I put these lawyers on information technology." The hearings upshot, forth with how to define criteria for designations and whether or not to publish AGLOSO, were all considered behind the scenes by the FBI and the Justice Department during 1947, but available documentation on these subjects is extremely fragmentary. A March 31 internal FBI memorandum from Assistant Director Louis Nichols, reporting the views of the FBI "executive conference" (almost height bureau officials aside from Hoover), reported a "unanimous" recommendation that the bureau accept "no position" apropos whether hearings should be granted before declaring an organization "subversive or not subversive."

However, an April 1, 1947, FBI memorandum from Nichols to top Hoover adjutant and Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson reported that Hoover had "very grave doubts" about granting hearings. It added that Clark had been brash through a subordinate that he should give this thing "his most mature and considered reflection, bearing in heed that Attorney General Biddle did not requite such hearings" and that, if hearings were granted, the attorney general "probably would non have fourth dimension for whatsoever list and would be confronted with the possibility of facing court activeness, of having writs served upon him, of a constant round of bickering, vilification, pressure and abuse."

In a 1961 speech at Columbia Academy, Clark, by then a Supreme Court Justice, reported to 400 constabulary students that he had reached the same conclusion, namely that if hearings were granted, organizations proposed for designation would (in the words of a reporter'due south summary of his presentation) "then competition and delay the list that it would never be gotten out." Clark added, "Perchance we should, every bit I await back at information technology now, have given the parties an opportunity to be heard before we issued [AGLOSO]."

The fragmentary remaining testify strongly suggests that Clark originally decided in the early spring of 1947 not to publish AGLOSO simply subsequently changed his mind. According to Nichols's March 31 FBI memorandum reflecting the executive conference's views, a superlative Justice Department official had "rather excitedly" asked him about the FBI's views concerning AGLOSO publication in the light of "a lot of pressure" coming from two newspapers, and the conference had later on unanimously expressed "no objection" to public release of the list. In his April one memorandum to Tolson, Nichols reported that Hoover's view was that Clark would be obliged to transmit the list to the CSC as shortly equally information technology was completed and "that when that was washed serious consideration would have to be given to the propriety of making such a list public."

However, Nichols added that a summit Justice Department official he had spoken to had reported, after talking to Clark, that the latter "was going to go very slow and doubted whether he would give out such a listing." Bearding Justice Department officials were quoted in belatedly March and mid-April printing reports equally indicating that the section would probably or definitely not publish AGLOSO for fear that such activity would lead designated groups to become undercover or change their names; similarly, Banana Chaser Full general Vanech was quoted by name in late March every bit declaring that the list would probably "never" exist officially released.

Clark told reporters on May 10 that he was undecided whether or not to publish AGLOSO but then announced on May 31 that it would be published, although he added, "We don't want this to develop into a witch chase."

Clark's own congressional testimony before HUAC on February v, 1948, just two months after publication of the first Truman AGLOSO, clearly suggests that in fact the determination to publish AGLOSO was fabricated as part of a deliberate campaign to destroy dissident organizations. Thus, Clark listed the "continuous report and public listing by the Attorney General of destructive organizations under the President'due south executive order" as function of an overall eight-point program designed to "isolate subversive movements in this country from effective interference with the torso politic" and render them "completely ineffective as a 5th column."

Clark noted with approval that the Treasury Department, upon his recommendation, intended to withhold tax-exempt status from AGLOSO organizations, which he described as engaging in "propaganda activity of a subversive nature."

* * *

The existing documentary tape apropos what criteria the Justice Department used to designate AGLOSO organizations is highly fragmentary. But the best evidence, above all the fact that department lawyers sporadically wrote lengthy memorandums on this subject for the side by side 25 years, indicates that the section had no articulate and solid criteria for putting a grouping on the listing.

In July 1947, Assistant Chaser Full general Theron Caudle sent Assistant to the Attorney General Douglas McGregor what he termed the "latest" AGLOSO standards prepared by the Criminal Division to determine if organizations were "subversive." Consisting of two double-spaced pages, the "organizational standards" included some relatively specific criteria, such as advocating the overthrow of the government and approval the use of forcefulness to deny others their constitutional rights, along with some extremely vague ones, such as "consistently opposing the enactment of, or advocating the repeal of laws and measures designed to strengthen and improve the security of the United States" and "closely cooperating with, supporting and furthering the aims of any subversive organization, association or combination of persons."

On July 24, 1947, McGregor was sent some other set up of proposed standards in a ix-page memorandum from special administration to the attorney full general David Edelstein and Joseph Duggan, which included both "broad general criteria" for AGLOSO listing likewise every bit "specific criteria" for categorizing designated organizations (as seemed required past Truman'due south club), as "totalitarian," "fascist," "communist," or "subversive."

Edelstein and Duggan began past noting the difficulty of seeking to found acceptable AGLOSO criteria, as it was "believed" that they were "designed to be elastic and flexible" and not based on whatsoever allegations of "specific deeds detrimental to the United States" that made possible "set detection," but rather intended to "encompass the vast surface area of political economic and social action which too often reside in the operation of the mind."

Such an arroyo, which clearly suggested that AGLOSO would exist based on perceptions of what designated organizations "idea" rather than any specific harmful deeds they performed, would, the authors noted, be inherently "especially imperfect" and "unfortunately limited in telescopic by human frailty." They added that their suggested criteria were "formulated on the assumption that their use will be restricted to the Chaser General and his subordinates and that they are non for publication."

Given their orientation, Edelstein and Duggan inevitably ended up with extraordinarily vague proposed standards. Thus, one of their suggested "broad full general criteria" for designating organizations was an overall conclusion that the "actual principles" of an system could exist "deemed hostile or inimical to the American form of government, orderly democratic processes and the ramble guarantee of private liberty, so as to lead a person of reasonable prudence and discretion to conclude that such principles are opposed to or in contravention of the principles of the Constitution or laws or the The states."

There is no documentary evidence that the Justice Department e'er adopted the Edelstein-Duggan proposals or any other criteria for designating AGLOSO organizations. In congressional testimony in July 1949, Attorney General Clark clearly suggested, withal, the sins of AGLOSO organizations were those of the listen or of engaging in completely legal activities such equally aiding Communist defence organizations, rather than those involving any illegal activities. He described AGLOSO as including groups that "conspicuously were organized for the purpose of fostering American policy favorable to the current policy of a foreign state; others are designed to promote the defense of specific individuals or to serve generally every bit legal defence or legal assistance groups for Communists, or others chose cases that tin be rendered into causes célèbres to serve the ends of the Communists; others again are designed to teach Communist dogma and tactics."

While the Justice Department secretly considered AGLOSO designations and criteria in the summer and fall of 1947, a public debate began over whether the government should undertake to create such an official list of "dubious" organizations at all and, if then, how this should be done. All the same, probably due to a combination of growing levels of anti-Communist feeling in the United States and the largely abstract nature of the subject field in the absence of a physical AGLOSO list, this discussion was oddly muted and express. Most conservative voices remained silent in credible tacit approval of the forthcoming AGLOSO listing, while liberal organizations and spokesmen generally focused on details of how AGLOSO would exist compiled and whether or not it would be published, without directly attacking the fundamental formulation behind it. Nigh all of the relatively few voices that disputed the bones propriety or constitutionality of an official government list of disfavored groups were associated, at least in the public mind, with "far left" or Communist Political party influence.

The major arguments stressed by liberal organizations concerning AGLOSO during 1947 were that designated organizations should exist entitled to a hearing or review of some kind earlier they were listed, that articulate standards should be established for designations, and that the list should exist published, on the grounds that present and prospective federal employees were entitled to know which organizational affiliations might jeopardize their jobs. Such arguments may have convinced Justice Department officials to discard their apparent original intention to proceed AGLOSO secret, every bit had been the case, with considerable success, with the Globe State of war II AGLOSO.

Thus, the American Ceremonious Liberties Marriage (ACLU), in a statement adopted by its board of directors in early April 1947, declared that the chaser general's AGLOSO powers granted past the Truman executive order posed the "greatest threat to civil liberties" because it appeared to be "without limit," without "even any requirement that the list be made public then that an individual affected might not innocently join an organization already on the blacklist." The organization also complained that Truman'due south order established "no standard" to guide the attorney general in his determinations and that words such as "totalitarian" and "communist" should be "precisely defined before organizations are charged with being of that character." Moreover, according to the ACLU, suspect organizations should not be blacklisted past the attorney full general without a hearing, and "as far as feasible the listing of proscribed organizations should be made public."

Similar arguments were made by several other prominent "anti-Communist" liberal voices. Thus, former New York City mayor Fiorello Laguardia declared, in a lengthy newspaper column entitled, "Even a Dog Gets a Hearing," that "some organizations" should "in all likelihood" exist "branded" every bit "disloyal and subversive," just they at least should be first given a hearing, since placement on the list had such broad implications for individuals and families who might observe themselves in those groups. Similarly, former Get-go Lady Eleanor Roosevelt told reporters in late March that whatsoever AGLOSO listing should be made public so that people could exist warned abroad from joining or giving funds to designated groups.

The Washington Post, which later would call for the outright abolition of AGLOSO, editorialized on March 29, 1947, that the concept of "guilt by clan" was "still, happily, an odious one to the American people" and that it would be a matter of "elementary justice" for the chaser general to make his "index expurgatorius" public "so that the country as a whole may scrutinize it and guess its validity." The Washington Post soon got its wish in December 1947.

The resultant massive media publicity given to AGLOSO quickly turned it into a quasi-official blacklist and greatly spurred the development of what later became known every bit "McCarthyism"—well before Senator McCarthy first made the headlines in February 1950 with his speech in Wheeling, Due west Virginia, alleging widespread Communist infiltration of the State Department.

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Robert Justin Goldstein retired in 2005 afterwards teaching political science for over thirty years at San Diego State Academy in California and Oakland University in suburban Detroit. He is the writer of many manufactures and 10 books that primarily focus on the history of American ceremonious liberties, including a series of books and articles apropos the controversy over outlawing "desecration" of the American flag.

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Annotation on Sources

In addition to newspapers, congressional hearings, and secondary sources indicated below, this article is based on Freedom of Information Human activity requests to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (notably correspondence amid Director J. Edgar Hoover, Assistant Director Edward Tamm, Assistant Director D. Milton Ladd, Assistant Director Louis Nichols, Acquaintance Manager Clyde Tolson, and Attorney General Tom Clark), on Department of Justice papers (Record Group 60, specially files 146-200-2-04, 146-06, and 146-200-2 012) in the National Athenaeum at College Park, Physician, and materials in the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, especially the Devitt Vanech and Eleanor Bontecou papers and materials dealing with the President's Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty. Microfilmed records from the archives of the American Civil Liberties Union were besides used.

Congressional records included Business firm Civil Service Committee, "Personnel Practices Concerning Loyalty of Regime Employees," 79th Cong., 2nd sess. (unpublished, 1946); Business firm Commission on Un-American Activities, "Hearings on Proposed Legislation to Curb or Command the Communist Party of the Us," 80th Cong., 2nd sess. (1948); and Report of the Federal Agency of Investigation, 77th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doctor. 833 (1942).

Among key secondary sources consulted were Alan Barth, The Loyalty of Complimentary Men (New York: Pocket Books, 1952); Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son's Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989); Eleanor Bontecou, The Federal-Loyalty Security Program (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1953); David Caute, The Great Fright: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978); Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random Firm, 1991); Richard Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Strange Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946–1948 (New York: Schocken, 1974); Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis, eds., The Spector: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974); Alan Harper, The Politics of Loyalty: The White House and the Communist Issue, 1946–1952 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1969); Athan Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971); Francis Thompson, The Frustration of Politics: Truman, Congress, and the Loyalty Issue, 1945–1953 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1979); and Michael Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Nifty American Communist Chase (Hanover, NH: Steerforth, 2004).

The author besides consulted newspapers and periodicals of the time: the Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Washington Mail, Los Angeles Times, and The New Democracy.

Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the Us Authorities.

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Source: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/fall/agloso.html

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