Loyalty Of Civil Servants In U.S.: Senate Wants Files

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 March 1950, Page 6

Loyalty Of Civil Servants In U.S.: Senate Wants Files

WASHINGTON. March 29.—Officers of the United States Senate today served subpoenas demanding high Government officials to produce loyalty records which President Truman had declined to make available to a sub-committee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The records are required by the sub-committee in connection with its investigations of charges by Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican) of Communist infiltration into the State Department. The subpoenas call for the production by April 4 of all records of the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Civil Service Commission, bearing on the loyalty of about 90 persons accused by Senator McCarthy. . Mr Truman yesterday rejected the sub-committee’s request for the records, which he said should be kept confidential in the interests of the effectiveness of loyalty checks by the departments concerned, and in fairness to the persons involved. The subpoenas were served on Mr Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State, as head of the State Department; Mr Howard McGrath, the At-torney-General, as head of the Justice Department, which controls the F. 8.1.; and Mr Harry Mitchell, the chairman of the Civil Service Commission.

The penalty for failure to produce the records is possible citation for contempt of the Senate. As Messrs Acheson, McGrath, and Mitchell are agents o£ the President, the issue in effect is whether the Senate can force him to produce Government records. White Ho'use officials who are on holiday with Mr Truman at Key West, Florida, made it clear, today that the President would fight the sub-committee’s attempt to secure the files by the subpoenas. Few Congressmen held more than a thin hope that the President would yield to pressure. Many thought that, even if the question was referred to a court, it would be held that the President had a constitutional right to withhold the files.