How to Win Appropriations

New Jersey's Representative J. Parnell Thomas knows that a good headline, come appropriation time, can do more than months of hard work. Last week, as his Un-American Activities Committee applied for a whopping, $200,000 allotment from the House, Thomas dug deep. What he fetched up was an old file on Dr. Edward U. Condon, director of the National Bureau of Standards. The bureau is the Government's chief research agency in physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering.

Dr. Condon, declared the report, was "one of the weakest links in our atomic security," an associate of "alleged Soviet espionage agents." The report said that Condon was an executive director of the American-Soviet Science Society, an affiliate of the Communist:front National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. The report cited a letter from the FBI dated May 1947, which declared that Condon had been "in contact as late as 1947 with an individual alleged, by a self-confessed Soviet espionage agent, to have engaged in espionage activities with the Russians in Washington, D.C., from 1941 to 1944."

Weakest Link. Dr. Condon answered sharply: "If I am the weak link in atomic security, then the nation need have no fear." He said that he had asked Thomas for a hearing last summer on the charges but had had no reply. Promptly the Commerce Department announced that only six days before the Thomas report was issued the departmental loyalty board had held, unanimously, that "no reasonable grounds exist for believing Dr. Condon is disloyal."

Thomas backed away a trifle. The committee had no evidence that Dr. Condon was "disloyal," he admitted, just that he had been "indiscreet." But, he added, he could not understand "how the loyalty board could have cleared Dr. Condon in view of the evidence." From his bed in Walter Reed Hospital, where he is recuperating from an attack of gastrointestinal hemorrhages, he issued a subpoena for the board's files. Secretary of Commerce Harriman refused to honor the subpoena, on the ground that it would be unfair to those who had testified in confidence, and would prejudice future loyalty probes. Blustered Thomas: "If they think they are going to get away with it, they are mistaken."

For scientists in the Government, already weary of being investigated, checked and rechecked, the Condon case seemed close to the last straw. The staid American Physical Society, of which Condon is a former president, warned that actions like these "will make difficult the collaboration between scientists and the Government on which so much of our future depends." Condon himself asked Senator Bourke Hickenlooper's Joint Atomic Energy Committee to hold its own investigation in the hope of "restoring conditions in which men of intelligence . . . will not be constantly harassed and harried by irresponsible attacks."

Watches & Sledge Hammers. Others made a point that the egregious Mr. Thomas had overlooked. His blundering tactics had undoubtedly aided the Communists. The Government's whole loyalty program would be jeopardized if confidential testimony given in a confidential inquiry were subjected to public review at the whim of a congressional committee. As the New York Herald Tribune said: "These blunderers and publicity-seekers are approaching a problem which is as subtle and delicate as a watch with a monkey wrench and a sledge hammer. The ineffable Mr. Thomas [is] our society's greatest single gift to Communist infiltration."

But the ineffable Mr. Thomas got what he wanted. The Committee on House Administration approved his request for $200,000.

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