Security, Loyalty, and Science
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CORNELL STUDIES IN CIVIL LIBERTY ROBERT E. CUSHMAN, ADVISORY EDITOR SECURITY, LOYALTY, AND SCIENCE Security, Loyalty, and Science * VVALTER GELLHORN PROFESSOR OF LAW IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Cornell University Press ITHACA, NEW YORK, 1950 Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Copyright © 1950 by Cornell University First paperback printing 2019 The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-5017-4067-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-4068-8 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-5017-4069-5 (epub/mobi) Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Preface HIS volume is one of a series made possible by a grant T from the Rockefeller Foundation to Cornell University. For two years a group of scholars working individually under my direction have studied the impact upon our civil liberties of current governmental programs designed to ensure internal security and to expose and control disloyal or subversive con duct. This research has covered federal and state legislative activities in this area, the operation of federal and local loy alty programs, and this book by Professor Walter Gellhorn of the Columbia University School of Law is a study of the administration of security policies in "sensitive" areas. Other volumes in the series include one on the House Committee on Un-American Activities, by Professor Robert K. Carr of Dartmouth College; one on the President's loyalty program and the summary dismissal statutes, by Miss Eleanor Bonte cou, formerly an attorney in the Department of Justice; and a survey of state programs for the control of subversive activi ties, by several scholars working under Professor Gellhorn's editorship. There are monographs dealing with California, by Edward L. Barrett, Jr., of the University of California School of Law; with New York, by Lawrence H. Chamberlain, Dean of Columbia College; and with Washington, by Vern Coun tryman of the Yale Law School. A final report summarizes the findings of the entire study. v PREFACE No thoughtful person will deny or minimize the need for protecting, and protecting adequately, our national security. The right and duty of national self-preservation cannot be challenged. This protection of the national security requires in certain instances the restriction of some of our traditional civil liberties. We have, however, learned by hard experience that we can be made to sacrificemo re civil liberty to the cause of national security than is really necessary. There is, there fore, sound reason for examining with objective care the appropriateness and effectiveness of any particular govern mental action sought to be justified as a defensive measure against disloyal or subversive persons or conduct. This is what the books in this series undertake to do, and Professor Gell horn's present study deals with an area in which our national security exacts perhaps its heaviest toll in terms of the normal individual freedoms which must be restricted. It must be emphasized that the volumes in this series state the views, conclusions, and recommendations of the individ ual authors. An advisory committee of distinguished men has been associated with this project. They are Messrs. Lloyd K. Garrison of New York, Erwin N. Griswold of Cambridge, Earl G. Harrison of Philadelphia, and Philip L. Graham of vVashington. Each volume in the series has been strengthened and improved by the advice and suggestions of this committee, but each volume still remains the work and states the opinions of the person who wrote it. ROBERT E. CUSHMAN Cornell University Ithaca. New York vi Contents Introduction I Keeping Secrets 9 Identifying an Atomic Energy Secret 19 The AEC's Process of Declassification or "De-secretization" 24 How Scientific Data Become Military Secrets 27 The Declassification of Military-scientific Secrets 31 II The Balance Sheet of Secrecy 34 The Predictably Unpredictable Uses of Scientific Knowl- edge 35 The Compartmentalization of Scientific Work 39 Loss of Criticism 49 The Psychological Consequences of Secrecy 52 Effects of Secrecy on Recruitment and Training 55 III The Proper Limits of Secrecy IV The Standards and Mechanics of Security Clearance Personnel Security in the Atomic Energy Commission 79 Personnel Security in the Military Services 92 Scientists Employed by the Military 94 Scientists Employed Privately on Military Contracts 100 The Composition of the IERB 103 Centralization of IERB Proceedings 107 V The Spreading of Security Requirements 111 vii CONTENTS VI The Loyalty of Federal Scientists 127 The Loyalty Order 129 Guides to Disloyalty 131 The Attorney General's Black List 134 The Discovery of Disloyalty 143 Social Results of the Loyalty Program 157 VII The Universities and Security Searches VIII The Need for Fair Procedures 203 A Fair Opportunity to Defend 204 Findings and Decisions 212 Action on Applicants for Employment 217 IX Concluding Thoughts 225 Appendix A Declassification Policy 235 Appendix B AEC Criteria for Determining Eligibility for Personnel Security Clearance 238 Acknowledgments 282 Index 285 viii SECURITY, LOYALTY, AND SCIENCE Introduction HE world's polarization into opposing forces has cast a T shadow upon the traditionally accepted values of scien tists. In days gone by science was broadly viewed as an unselfish effort, international in scope, to expand knowledge for the benefit of all mankind. Today science has come to be regarded somewhat in the nature of a national war plant in which a fortune has been invested. The ties between government and science in the United States are increasingly tight. The Federal Government alone expends more than a billion dollars annually to support well over 50 percent of all the country's scientific research en deavors. In part this support is untinctured by the martial flavor of the times. Studies looking toward preservation of health or conservation of natural resources, toward agricul tural abundance or aviation safety, would go forward with equal, perhaps even greater, intensity if peace were in the air. But since the atmosphere is not wholly restful, the pre vailing emphasis is on studies related somehow to war. Few major industrial or institutional laboratories are without Army, Navy, Air Force, or Atomic Energy Commission con tracts. Military research and development contracts alone number close to 20,000, at a cost each year in the neighbor hood of $600,000,000. This means that nearly four cents of SECURITY, LOYALTY, Al'\D SCIENCE every dollar appropriated for the use of the armed forces, or about one cent of every dollar paid in federal taxes, is spent for research looking toward more effective weapons, equipment, medicines, and utilization of human resources in war. To this must still be added the research monies disbursed by the Atomic Energy Commission and many other civilian agencies as part of their respective programs. These massive expenditures are acknowledgments of the immense contributions of science toward winning the most recent war-radar, the proximity fuze, the atomic bomb, the lifesaving drugs, and all the smaller mechanisms and tech niques that were woven into the normality of military opera tions. They reflect, too, an awareness that the perils of the future may include still further extensions of military science. The average citizen, it is fair to suppose, is well persuaded that the remote and mysterious laboratory is the very citadel of his defense and the outpost whence to launch attack if need be. So it is that the old picture of science as the universal bene factor has become somewhat eclipsed by a less lovely picture of science as an armory of devices for waging war more ef ficiently than any enemy. Possession of this armory by the United States has not proved to be a wholly unmixed delight. This nation's com fortable consciousness of power is modified by anxious con cern lest the armory be invaded by others who themselves seek the knowledge and instruments that constitute military superi ority. To prevent this, physical safeguards are erected. Fences and guards exclude unauthorized persons from scientific labo ratories as from ordinary war plants. An Army ground division as well as Air Force units figures in the protection of the Atomic Energy Commission's installation at Hanford in 'Nash ington. Special squads of FBI agents are given technical 2 INTRODUCTION indoctrination courses and are then stationed in AEC labora tories. The Los Alamos area is patrolled by uniformed troopers of the Security Service, who far outnumber the scientists in the quarters under guard. Studies of sabotage vulnerability are made and protective measures are initiated at each of the more than 1,300 locations in the United States where work is done in connection with the atomic energy project alone. In addition to military and FBI personnel, some seven thou sand persons whose salaries are paid by the Atomic Energy Commission devote full time to guard details and other as pects of "security." These protections, however, are not enough, for the analogy between the laboratory and the ordinary war plant is incom plete. In science as it relates to military advantage, the great fear is that a competitor foreign nation, specifically the Soviet Union, may learn what American scientists have discovered and may thus diminish this country's margin of real or sup posed superiority. Physical barriers may prevent access to areas where work is being done, but they do not furnish full assurance that ideas and information will not pass beyond the enclosed areas.