"In the Interest of the U.S."

State Secretary George Marshall had demanded and gotten a special, closed-doors session of the Senate's Appropriations Committee. He wanted another $3 million tacked on to the $13 million just authorized for State's Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs. But the committeemen listened impatiently to his argument that OIC and its "Voice of America" needed more money. They had an old argument of their own to bring up.

As soon as Marshall had finished, the committeemen began. If State wanted to meet Communist propaganda, why didn't it kick out the Communists on its own payroll? One of the members read off a list of Department employees who were under direct FBI suspicion, but who had not yet been fired. They brought up the name of a secretary with access to confidential memoranda, who had been hobnobbing with local Reds and the Soviet Embassy staff for months. State's only action, they said, had been to call in the secretary, ask her if she was a Communist and accept her denial.

For an hour and a half the Senators hammered away. The burden of what they said: "We have had a lot of promises that action would be taken to clean Communists out of your department. We know this started long before you took over, but this situation has got to be straightened out."

General Marshall protested that he needed more time, that he wanted to be sure no injustice was done. Said the committeemen: if there is any doubt at all, the employee should be fired. "It is not necessary to prosecute," insisted Committee Chairman Styles Bridges. "But get them out of the key spots in this Government. That is what we want."

Two days later Assistant Secretary of State John Peurifoy announced that ten State Department Civil Service employees had been fired for security reasons--"in the interest of the U.S." This week State, War and Navy Departments and the Atomic Energy Commission asked Congress for permanent authority to fire any employee "in the interest of national security." Congress would no doubt grant it. But the Senators still needed convincing. The most they would give George Marshall for his OIC was an extra $400,000.

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