Spies and Un-Americans During the Conflict and Deadlock of the 1950s

Spies and Un-Americans During the Conflict and Deadlock of the 1950s


On March 22, 1947, President Truman issued his Executive Order 9835, which decreed that "there shall be a loyalty investigation" of every Federal employee. During the next four years some three million individuals were examined and cleared, over 3000 have resigned while being investigated, 308 were dismissed as "security risks" and only one—a 27-year-old-girl analyst in the Justice Department—was arrested on charges of being a spy. This gigantic operation was carried out by secret police methods which ran counter to the best American traditions, but it was made necessary and even inevitable by the unpleasant facts of the Cold War. According to the F.B.I. in 1947 there were 80.000 US Communist Party members who recieved inspiration from Moscow. Alhtough there was never a chance that this many people can succesfully overthrow the American government, they could spy for Russia, as some of them already had. The R...