INVESTIGATIONS: Runaway Jury

The federal grand jury for southern New York kicked over its traces last week, running away from the Truman Administration over the problem of American subversives in the U.N. In the past nine months, a hundred witnesses appeared before the jurors; they left behind a shocking impression of Red infiltration at the U.N.’s high levels. But Washington, through the Justice and State Departments, tried to sidetrack and block the inquiry. In a thunderous presentment, shaking off all attempts to restrain it, the grand jury made public its findings. Main points:

¶ “Startling evidence has disclosed infiltration into the United Nations of an overwhelmingly large group of disloyal U.S. citizens.” Many are Communists or proCommunists; scores among them have long records of former federal employment; most hold positions of trust and responsibility in the U.N.

¶ “The employment of so many of our disloyal nationals . . . constitutes a menace to our Government.” As host country, the U.S. is at a disadvantage in keeping its subversives out of the U.N.; in contrast, Russia needs merely to withhold passports from those citizens it doesn’t want employed by the U.N.

¶ The U.S. Government has failed to scotch the menace. “In some of the most flagrant and obvious cases of disloyalty, the State Department gave the disloyal officials a clean bill of health to the United Nations.” Furthermore. State refused to give the names of State officers who approved such bills of health.

Correctives. The presentment praised the advice given to the U.N. by an international panel of jurists, i.e., discharge of disloyal American personnel (TIME, Dec. 8), but insisted that the U.S. must take steps on its own. Recommendations:

¶ U.S. security clearance of all U.S. citizens as a condition of U.N. employment.

¶ Plain answers by any U.S. applicant for a U.N. job to plain questions concerning Communist affiliations.

¶ Another grand jury to continue the inquiry.

In Washington, the House Judiciary Subcommittee, chaired by Kentucky’s Frank L. Chelf, promptly began looking into the charges of interference by the Justice and,State Departments.

Dismissals. The grand jurors reported that more than a score of U.N. witnesses before them had refused to answer questions about Communist activity, including espionage; all had taken refuge in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which says that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.

This safeguard in the Bill of Rights is the so-called privilege against selfincrimination; historically, it arose out of the English law as protection for accused individuals who once could be tortured into admissions against themselves. But the right of anyone to refuse to say whether he is, or was, a Communist or a Soviet spy does not carry with it the right to a job in the U.N. or anywhere else.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a famous opinion of 1892, made this important point. The case concerned a New Bedford, Mass, policeman, fired from his job by the mayor because he solicited political funds, an activity banned by a local rule. The policeman claimed that he had been denied his constitutional right to express his political opinions. Ruled Justice Holmes: “There is nothing in the Constitution … to prevent the city from attaching obedience to this rule as a condition to the office of policeman, and making it part of the good conduct required. The petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.”

U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie seemed last week to be veering toward a similar decision. On the heels of the grand jury’s presentment, he sent an ultimatum to nine U.N. officers who had recently refused to answer questions before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee about possible Communist affiliation. Warned Lie: answer, or be dismissed. The nine were dismissed.