First Hearing on “Subversive List”

EIGHT YEARS AGO the Truman administration issued the first list of governmentally proscribed organizations in American history. At the time the Attorney General’s “subversive list” was published, the proscription was supposed to extend only to government jobs for persons who had been members of or “sympathetically associated” with the listed organizations. It was an administrative measure which formed the Corner-stone of the “loyalty and security” program.

Since then, the Attorney General’s list has become an effective blacklist covering wide areas of American life. Private industries doing “classified” work for the government use it to fire suspect workers. It is applied to university research projects subsidized by the government. Members of the armed forces with excellent military records have been denied honorable discharges solely because they had belonged to listed organizations before induction. The e...