In an effort to expel communists and their fellow travelers from working within or peddling influence to the United States Government, President Harry Truman signed into law Executive Order 9835. Unfortunately the President hadn’t issued a working definition as to what was “loyal” and what was “disloyal” and the results of the decree were predictable.
The attached 1948 editorial was written by Carroll Kilpatrick, a seasoned Washington journalist, who had collected scads of anecdotal evidence during the first year of its enforcement in order to illustrate the inherent difficulties created as a result of the order. He pointed out that Truman’s order simply granted carte blanche to the F.B.I., and called into question the rights of government workers and created a “Loyalty Review Board” that was cumbersome and bureaucratic.
On page five, the author presented his list of American organizations that he surmised J. Edgar Hoover dubbed “subversive”, “dubious” and “safe”; here are the names in the former:
• the Communist Party,
• American Youth for Democracy,
• the American League Against War and Fascism,
• German-American Bund,
• Ku Klux Klan
