Those would be the facts the Secretary would set forth, and the hope would be expressed that the committee would find some way of meeting the present situation by adopting some kind of a compromise procedure which would get us over this difficult initial period.

The second document was to be a draft letter of the type which the Secretary of State might send to the chairman of the subcommittee whenever a nomination is presented to the Senate for confirmation, and this is simply a draft. It is presented for the consideration of the committee and in general lines, indicates the kind of procedure which might work under the circumstances.

The letter reads

Will you give the Senators copies of the letter, please?

[Copies of the letter under discussion were distributed to the committee members present.]

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead and read it, get it into the record.
Dr. WILCOX The draft states:

DEAR SENATOR WILEY: There has been sent to the President, for transmission to the Senate, the nomination of to be Ambassador Extraordi

of

nary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to To the best of my knowledge and belief, Mr.

position and a loyal citizen.

The CHAIRMAN. And, a good security risk.

is well qualified for the

Dr. WILCOX. That could be inserted, "and a good security risk." It then continues:

However, I have requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation to make a full investigation of Mr. and report their findings to me. Upon the receipt of this information, I will examine these findings and submit to you the required security clearance or take such action as may be required.

This nomination is in accordance with existing law, and for your convenience in considering it there is enclosed a biographical sketch of Mr.

Letters have been sent to the appropriate Senators notifying them of this appointment.

Sincerely yours,

JOHN FOSTER DULLES.

That is a draft which is submitted for the consideration of the committee.

It has been suggested that there might be some time limit inserted, 30, 45, or 60 days, within which the procedure might be completed, and if it is not completed, the Secretary can so notify the committee at the end of that time.

THE PROPOSED PROCEDURE QUESTIONED

Senator FERGUSON. Mr. Chairman, what does he mean by, "I will examine these findings and submit to you the required security clearance"?

Are we to go through the same thing as we have been going through in the past?

The CHAIRMAN. I don't know just what, Senator-you mean that we should

Senator FERGUSON. We get nothing?

The CHAIRMAN. We get this. Let me say

Senator FERGUSON. We get the word of the Secretary that the man is a good man. We know that, in his opinion, when he sends him up. Senator SPARKMAN. Which is, in turn, based upon the examination of the file by the Evaluating Committee, and the chances are the Secretary himself will never go through it.

Senator FERGUSON. That is right. He will never see it at all. It will be the Evaluating Committee that passes on it. I cannot accept that. The CHAIRMAN. There is this difference, in this respect: That if the Secretary, through his committee, who examines this evidence, clears him, you have then the action of the executive department; whereas, if we attempt to examine these files we have got an interminable job and should have a separate group of specialists set up to examine them. They have done that in the Department down there, and they have not been very good, I will admit it, but I think it is a question of where do we go from here, and what are we going to do?

Senator GILLETTE. Mr. Chairman, is it to be assumed from this suggestion that the nomination is to be sent up here, we are to act on it, and subsequently in their good time, he receives a report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he evaluates it and sends it up. Are we to hold the nomination of those folks up until we have had that report?

Senator SPARKMAN. No, it is to go on their

THE PROBLEM IS DELAY

The CHAIRMAN. This is the basis: The parties come up here, and we would examine them as we have been doing, and take whatever steps we want to take to determine our own judgment as to his capability and security risk, and proceed to either turn him down or approve him for the calendar.

It is impossible to get the FBI reports at this time, so we are informed.

Now, I lay the thing in your laps, gentlemen. It is a matter that I have not been able to resolve, heretofore. The matter came up before in this committee, and the party would appear, or if there were any great objections filed, we would have hearings and let it go at that, one way or the other; but we thought, because of what has developed in the last few years in relation to security risks, that we should adopt another course, so we adopted the rule.

We found that the rule did not work because, in the sense that it would delay confirmation of important representatives of this Gov

ernment.

Now, as said by Mr. Wilcox, this might mean for instance, if we get somebody here, a man of good repute, if we delay 3 or 4 months on his confirmation, what is the committee's answer to the public? What does the public expect us to do?

Those are the things that caused me to call this meeting, and caused me to ask the staff to get busy and see if there was some way out of it.

72-194-77-vol. V

WHAT ACTION WILL BE TAKEN ON AN ADVERSE REPORT?

Senator GILLETTE. Mr. Chairman, may I ask another question along the same line?

Assuming then, as you have stated, that we received a nomination, without this clearance, we conduct this

The CHAIRMAN. With this letter?

Senator GILLETTE. Yes.

We conduct a hearing here. We confirm it. It gets to the Senate, we make our report, the man is confirmed, and later we receive a report from the State Department, after he has had a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is an adverse report. What is the situation then? The man has been confirmed. What action is to be taken?

The CHAIRMAN. The action will be taken by the Executive. He says he will take such action as may be required, probably remove him.

Senator GILLETTE. It is out of our hands, then.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right.

Senator GILLETTE. Mr. Chairman, as far as I am concerned, this is a constitutional responsibility that is laid on the Senate, and I am not willing to subrogate my responsibility in the matter to any agency.

WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR DELAY?

Senator FERGUSON. Mr. Chairman, I understood one of the questions involved, when we adopted this rule, was to have public confidence in appointees.

Now, if we are going to change it and name them with slight examinations here, and not a check, at least, I don't think we are going to win the confidence of the public. I think that we ought to have a talk with the tops of the FBI, and Mr. Dulles, if necessary.

I have gone through this before, about these long delays, but I cannot understand why a man like Conant cannot be investigated in days, and not weeks and months.

Why cannot Mr. Phleger be investigated out in California, where he has lived, in days?

We have thousands of FBI agents all over the country, and in foreign lands.

THE RULE HAS ALREADY BEEN ABROGATED

Senator MANSFIELD. Will the Senator yield?
Senator FERGUSON. Yes, I will yield.

Senator MANSFIELD. I think, for the record, it ought to be made very plain that we have already abrogated the rule in three instances, Mr. Dulles, Mr. McCardle, and Mr. Morton.

Senator SPARKMAN. And Stassen.

Senator MANSFIELD. Yes, and Stassen.
Senator SPARKMAN. And, Lodge.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, Senator Hickenlooper.

EXPEDITE ORIGINAL APPOINTMENTS BUT MAINTAIN THE RULE

Senator HICKENLOOPER. I understood this matter was fairly satisfactorily resolved, as far as I was concerned, so far as the original appointments, in getting this new administration underway, as far as that was concerned. It was my clear understanding that I was willing to go along with the certification, name check or something of that kind, and on the understanding that I understood the chairman had that if a later field investigation these first appointments, in the first few weeks here, in order to get the show on the road, and in order to get them in office and to get things functioning, if they seemed reasonably clear, that we would go ahead and confirm them based upon the assertion of the Secretary of State, which I am perfectly willing to accept, that if a field investigation shows serious derogatory information touching some of these people, that proper action, including the request for the resignation of the individual from the job, would be taken.

I thought that was all settled. I thought we had a formula here that would enable us to go ahead with some confidence and confirm people largely on the certification of the appointing officer, that they were not security risks, and we could get this thing on the road; but, people appointed 3, 4, or 5 months from now, certainly the Department should be ready with an investigation and report on those people at the time they send their names up.

Now, I am not willing to destroy the rule. I am willing to make an exception under the peculiar circumstances of a changing administration, and the executive responsibility, but we are all aware, I think, or at least most of us are of at least one case in which they held seven loyalty hearings on one individual and cleared him every time, six times, and on the seventh they finally checked him out on the information they had all the time, in all the six previous hearings, and decided he was no good.

Senator SPARKMAN. In the meantime, the rules of evidence had. been changed.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. Perhaps, although I disagreed with their approach all the way through.

The CHAIRMAN. The burden of proof.

Senator SPARK MAN. Yes, the burden of proof.

Senator HICKENLOOPER. I never liked, and never believed in that theory in government employment that they operated on. Senator SPARKMAN. Neither did I.

LOYALTY BOARDS HAVE NOT DONE THEIR JOB

i

Senator HICKENLOOPER. I do not mean to be so abrupt, but to me the crowning thing was that the evidence against him was bad, and it was bad all the way through and they cleared him six times, as I recall, and only fired him on the seventh.

There are any number of cases where they have had two and three loyalty board hearings at various stages on the same individual, with evidence sufficient to call another board, where very serious doubt has

arisen, and those boards just have not used the meticulous care in safeguarding the inviolate integrity of Government employees that they think they should have.

Now, I might be accused of saying this because it was a Democratic administration. I do not think so at all. I think it was part of the setup. I hope we can change that attitude. I hope we can change, within the departments, within the organizations, the attitude of the people who pass ooneyalty.

I know one man, for instance, right now-I won't mention his name but I know one man in the State Department employment right now, who I would not keep on 5 seconds. I think his record is bad, and yet I know high officials in the State Department who say that they will keep that man on.

Well, I disagree with them. I think his record is lousy. I think he is a bad security risk, very bad. He apparently is going to stay on. I do not agree with that. I would not vote to confirm the fellow with what I know about him in black and white. I would not vote to confirm him in any position of trust; but over there, they have a little different attitude toward him.

Now, it is some of those things that concern me.

THE DIFFICULTIES ARE PRACTICAL

Senator GEORGE. Mr. Chairman, I think you are just confronted with a practical difficulty here. I do not think that the committee is in any position, in all cases, it may be in some cases where a special hearing is had and testimony taken, that we will be in a good position to judge, as good a position as the executive branch, but I think as a matter of fact we have got to rely, first on the executive branch of the government, or we have got to assume the responsibility of saying that we, ourselves, from an examination or the examinations that we have made are satisfied about the security risk involved, and the character of the man and so forth who is appointed.

This is purely a practical matter.

It seems to me that if the Secretary of State, at the time he submits the name to the President for Presidential action, should send us a letter, in substance, in tenor and in effect like this letter, presumably the Secretary of State would want to change his letter in certain respects and no doubt will, but if he sent this sort of a letter, then in the absence of any objection filed with this committee, or in the absense of any facts developed in the hearing which the committee itself might hold, regardless of the fact that the letter had come along with the nomination, I would be willing to go ahead and act on the nomination. I think it is the only practical thing you can do, when you have got to change over from one administration to another, with possibly 100 or 150 names coming before this committee within the first 60 days of the new administration.

Now, after that, you will of course have more time, and I agree with Senator Hickenlooper that thereafter, after you have gotten away from this log jam, the State Department ought to complete all these examinations and inquiries so as to be able to advise us when the nomination comes in, of the facts in each case.