TRUMAN TO FIGHT SENATE CALL FOR LOYALTY FILES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23217, 31 March 1950, Page 5

TRUMAN TO FIGHT SENATE CALL FOR LOYALTY FILES

(11 a.m.) WASHINGTON, March 30 Senate officers yesterday served subpoenas demanding that high Government officials produce the loyalty records which President Truman has declined to make available to the Senate Foreign Relations Sub-committee. The records are required by the subcommittee in connection with its investigation of the Republican, Senator Joseph McCarthy's charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department. The subpoenas call for the production by April 4 of all records of the State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Civil Service Commission, bearing on the loyalty of about 90 persons accused by Senator McCarthy. . , President 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 the loyalty checks by the departments concerned and in fairness to the persons involved. Demands on Department Heads

The. subponeas were served on Mr. Dean Acheson as head of the State Department, Mr. Howard McGrath, Attorney-General, head of the Justice Department which controls the F. 8.1., and Mr. Harry Mitchell, chairman of the Civil Service Commission. The penalty for failure to produce the records is a possible citation for contempt of the Senate. As Mr. Acheson. Mr. McGrath and Mr. Mitchell are agents of the President, the issue, in effect, is whether the Senate can force him to produce Government records. White House officials on holiday with President Truman at Key West, Florida made it clear today that the President would fight the sub-com-mittee's attempt to get the files by 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 the court it would be held that the President had the constitutional right to withhold the files.