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Show BEHINEflll by Paul MaliaOnJS Released by Western Newspaper Union. STATE DEPARTMENT BEING CLEARED OF COMMUNISTS WASHINGTON. Not much attention atten-tion has been paid the invisible honeycombing hon-eycombing of the state department by some mysterious force which writers seem to find It difficult to describe. The figures have been published, j but not widely. I am an intense reader, yet I failed to see them. Maybe you missed them. At least ' you missed the only important part about them in the restricted way in which writers had to touch them. They wrote the story leaning backward back-ward as if the heat from the figures was too hot for them. At any rate, here are the figures see if they are : hot: The state department, our official of-ficial diplomatic headquarters of policy, the citadel of the world movement to establish freedom of the individual from dictatorships, dictator-ships, especially freedom to express ex-press himself this state department depart-ment has cleaned out 202 employees em-ployees from its midst in connection con-nection with its investigation of Communist tactics within. You cannot call the 202 Communists, sympathizers, or even describe them. Oh no! Some resigned at the mere threat of Investiga- tion. Sensitive souls, no doubt! Some qujt when asked by Investigators Inves-tigators about themselves. They were insulted, unquestionably! Others just ran at that particular particu-lar time. A desire to be free no doubt seized them like a spasm. Well, anyhow, 202 seem to have had a spasm to be free of government gov-ernment probers and left. Of the 3,000 suspects to spasm sensitivity originally coming into the department from the Office of War Information and two other bureaus, the investigators went after 314. Only 59 were given a clean bill of spasm resistance and 53 cases still are being investigated mind you, these 53 are still in the department. BYRNES KEPT IT QUIET Now, the Byrnes regime clearly I did not consider it advisable for any-i any-i one to talk about this fault any more I than necessary or to consider there might be spasm addicts in other i state bureaus. In fact, Byrnes denied de-nied frequently there were any Communists Com-munists in his department when congress con-gress pressed him. Actually he started weeding them out while denying deny-ing they were there. Repeatedly In this column he was told they were there long before congress pressed him, and repeatedly he denied it, finally chasing them privately. That seems to be the truth of the matter. In any event, the Important thing now is that only one of these chased 202 can be called a Communist by a legal and respectable re-spectable writer who desires to avoid the trouble of proving it. That single one was indicted. Of course he denied ardently he was a Communist, as they all do. However, the government investigators found he had been an organizer for the Communist party prior to his employment by our government, and so they decided to prove he was what they knew him to be. Certainly the other 201 must be caller5 "spasmists," no, not even that, but "some possibly sensitive to a certain type of spasm investi-; investi-; gation." That is what must be done under the sound rules of newspaper and radio libel and related established practice by a reasonably cautious person. Personally I think this kind of foolishness has gone about far ! enough. It represents really only our own sensitivity to accusations ol S unfairness and on a proposition which involves actually spies and foreign sympathizers in our own official of-ficial departments. THEY WOULDN'T TOLERATE US The Communist government would have no hesitancy similar to ours. They must consider us rather stupid. If Stalin found any of our Democrats Demo-crats or Republicans in his foreign office, they would be shot. The very existence of such a condition con-dition is unequivocally ridiculous and embarrassing to our diplomatic negotiations. While the Russians would not tolerate an outsider for a second, we welcomed them in during dur-ing the Roosevelt administration and we now cover up, deny and i avoid calling a Communist what he ! is after finding him in our own governmentand gov-ernmentand labor organizations like CIO cannot get rid of them. Communists should be granted no more equal rights. An act of congress con-gress should be passed, as I have advocated before. Whatever rights i are granted to our political parties ; in Moscow should be granted tc Muscovites here and not a single j right more. The negotiation of rights ! should be aimed toward reciprocity. Then with dictatorships we will have i the right of negotiating on an equal ! plane. The Communist party would I be put on the same plane a Demo-j Demo-j crat enjoys in Moscow. And above all there is no need to call a spade j a "spasm." |