Security v. Security

To guard against spying and subversion in defense plants, the U.S. launched a security clearance program in 1941 that, with modifications, now covers some 3,000,000 workers. Last week the Supreme Court jolted the program to its underpinnings by challenging the right of the Defense Department's Industrial Personnel Security Board to act on the basis of confidential information. In a strong 8-1 decision, the court ducked the constitutional issue but held that neither Congress nor the President had ever authorized a program that denied a suspect the opportunity to confront and cross-examine his accusers.

Before the court was the case of William L. Greene, who lost his $18,000-a-year job as an aeronautical engineer and was reduced to working as a $4,700-a-year draftsman when the Navy revoked his security clearance in 1953. The Navy charged association with Communists and Communist-fronters in 1943-47. Greene denied the charges and contended that Security Board procedures violated his constitutional rights. In keeping with its longtime practice of sidestepping constitutional questions whenever possible, the court decided the case on the narrower ground of authorization. But in an opinion shared by Associate Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan and Potter Stewart (Justices Felix Frankfurter, John Marshall Harlan and Charles Evans Whittaker wrote a more limited concurrence). Chief Justice Warren seemed to warn that any authorized program that did not contain some provision for confrontation and cross-examination might violate "certain principles relatively immutable in our jurisprudence," i.e., be unconstitutional.

The lone dissenter was Justice Tom Clark, who disagreed so strenuously that Justice John Marshall Harlan chided him for succumbing to the "temptations of colorful characterization." Argued Clark, from the perspective of a longtime (1945-49) U.S. Attorney General: "Surely one does not have a constitutional right to have access to the Government's military secrets . . . No one reading the [majority] opinion will doubt that ... its broad sweep speaks in prophecy. Let us hope the winds may change. If they do not, the present temporary debacle will turn into a rout of our internal security."

In the Senate, Connecticut Democrat Thomas J. Dodd, New York Republican Kenneth Keating and Maryland Republican John M. Butler called upon Congress to pass "explicit authorization" for the Defense Department to use confidential information.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.