The Vincent Case

Last week Dean Acheson flatly refused to dismiss Career Diplomat John Carter Vincent, the Old China Hand whose loyalty has been found in "reasonable doubt" by the President's Loyalty Review Board (TIME, Dec. 29). In a long memo to Harry Truman, the Secretary of State argued that he could not fire Vincent, as the LRB recommended, until he had "further guidance."

The LRB verdict, said Acheson, left him confused and disturbed. The board had neither "accepted nor rejected" but had "taken into account" 1) testimony by ex-Communist Louis Budenz who said that Vincent was a Communist, and 2) a finding by the Senate Internal Security subcommittee that Vincent was a fulcrum for pro-Communist influence in the State Department. "I am unable," said Acheson, "to interpret what this means."

Furthermore, continued the Secretary, the LRB had raised an issue that went to the heart of the Foreign Service: "The issue of accurate reporting." Acheson, who collaborated with Vincent in writing the directive for George Marshall's disastrous mission to China in 1945-46, implied that Vincent was being condemned for "reporting the facts as he saw them . . . We should not by inadvertence take any step which might lower the high traditions of our own Foreign Service to the level established by governments which will permit their diplomats to report to them only what they want to hear."

This was, in fact, something of a contrived issue. In the period of Vincent's China Affairs service, during the late '30s and early '40s, those in the Foreign Service or outside who dared disagree with State's proCommunist, anti-Nationalist line were the ones likely to suffer discrimination and disparagement.

Acheson proposed a special agency to review the Vincent case once more. For its membership he suggested: retired Federal Judge Learned Hand as chairman; John McCloy, ex-High Commissioner to Germany and now board chairman of the Chase National Bank; former Assistant Secretaries of State James Rogers and Howland Shaw; and former Ambassador to Turkey Edwin Wilson.

Truman okayed Acheson's memo.

Another career diplomat, Foy David Kohler, was sharply disciplined by the State Department last week. A competent veteran of 21 years' service, once director of Voice of America and recently assigned to the department's important Policy Planning Staff, Kohler was arrested for drunkenness by Arlington. Va. police early last month. He and his wife Phyllis, motoring home from a party, ran into an Arlington telephone pole; Mrs. Kohler, who was at the wheel, was charged with drunken driving. In the car was Kohler's briefcase, containing secret documents which he was carrying home to study; he had failed to get necessary permission to take them out of the State Department.

Kohler's punishment: an official reprimand for violating security rules, suspension without pay for 30 days (a loss of $1,133), demotion from the Policy Planning Staff to unspecified "other duties."

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