Housekeeping Problem

The United Nations ran into new troubles last week in its attempt to keep its big glass house to the satisfaction of its host. From a seven-man U.N. tribunal came a ruling that eleven Americans, fired from the U.N. staff because their loyalty to the U.S. was questioned, had been dismissed "illegally."

In the case of seven, the tribunal ordered U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to pay legal fees of $300 each and damages ranging from $6,000 to $40,000 (for an "anthropologist and African specialist" whose field, the tribunal said, was so narrow he would be hard put to find a job elsewhere). The other four Hammarskjold was told to reinstate in their jobs. Ten of the eleven were Americans who had retired behind the Fifth Amendment last year when congressional probers asked them whether they were or had been Communists, and whether they were or ever had been engaged in espionage against the U.S. The eleventh was a woman who admitted to having been a Communist for one year in the '30s.

Of some 40 fired in the past year (all but one by Hammarskjold's predecessor, Trygve Lie), ten others had appealed for similar redress, but nine temporary employees were turned down by the tribunal, and another case was referred to the lower U.N. Board of Appeal.

The tribunal's ruling brought protests in the U.S. The American Legion passed a resolution condemning the tribunal. Senator William Jenner, involved in the investigation that inspired the original firings, warned that the U.S. could withdraw its financial contribution to U.N.--some 331% of the U.N.'s $41 million budget --and Illinois' Representative Noah Mason was all for pulling out of the U.N. entirely.

But Dag Hammarskjold satisfied cooler U.S. minds by announcing that he would not rehire the four singled out by the tribunal, would award them damages instead. In all, the procedure may cost the U.N. between $135,000 and $185,000. But the U.S. Government, at any rate, seemed to feel it was worth that to keep such critters out of the international woodwork.

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