PARTISAN REVIEW
clear about this. He feels, as I do, that the provision of the McCarran
Act which calls for the internment of all Communists known to the
F.B.1. immediately upon the outbreak of war is sound and necessary.
It involves a violation of principle (though a less serious one than that
involved in the internment of Japanese-Americans in the last war, for
it would be based on the logic of politics rather than on the illogic of
race), but the stakes would be high and the action would meet the test
of clear and present danger.
In general, it happens that the most effective means of combating
Communists in their role as conspirators are ones that do not involve
civil liberties in any important way. The most effective means have
been counter-espionage and due process of law. In every case but one,
Communist spies have been apprehended by the F.B.1. F.B.1. agents
provided most of the evidence by which the Communist leaders were
convicted under the Smith Act. Some of us may regard the Smith Act
as bad law, but it has stood up in the courts so far, and certainly
no one can say that the Communists convicted under it were denied
their rights. The conviction of Alger Hiss was a triumph of due
process, but his exposure was a triumph of the House Committee on
Un-American Activities-its one significant triumph in fourteen years.
Of the Hiss case, though, it can be said that if the Committee regularly
conducted itself as it did then, no one could raise any reasonable
objection to it. It subjected Whittaker Chambers to rigorous tests of
credibility and gave Hiss a full, fair, prompt hearing and the op–
portunity to confront his accuser.
It
was solicitous in the extreme of
Hiss's rights, allowing him to become almost tha classic example of the
man hoist by his own petard. But in every other case, the detection
and punishment of Communist espionage agents has come about
through the use of techniques whose legitimacy was recognized long
before there was a Communist problem. Meanwhile, the loyalty and
security programs have served as sieves through which Alger Hiss and
Judith Coplon could easily pass. They have accomplished nothing but
the harassment of government clerks, most of them in jobs that have
no connection with national security, and have hugely magnified the
timidity and irresoluteness that are occupational ailments of bureaucrats
even when the atmosphere is not fouled by liars, bullies, and Holy
Willies. The loyalty and security programs are not only ineffective and
an affront to intelligence but have kept the F.B.1. so busy checking
up on the political pasts of people whose political pasts don't matter
--one thinks of a recent prolonged investigation of an elderly hedge–
clipper at a National Historic Site hundreds of miles from Wash-
