Five percent of a sample of top-ranking Federal officials named by the Kennedy Administration were reported today to be Jewish, in a survey conducted by Protestants and Other Americans United.
The survey found that 80 percent were Protestants and 15 percent of the officials were Roman Catholics, indicating that, “religion-wise,” the appointments to the more important jobs of this administration are generally commensurate with the religious percentages of the population, the POAU declared. The survey was made of a selection of 1, 000 of the top-ranking officials as the sample.
The report also covered recent appointments to Federal judgeships and found the percentages, on a religious breakdown, roughly equivalent to those for the high-ranking agency positions. Eighty percent of the judges named were Protestants, 17 percent were Roman Catholics and three percent were Jewish.
The POAU said, however, that it found complaints of “sectarian orientation” in the area of United States foreign policy, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The organization said it found certain divisions in the Federal Government where, “as a result of seeming collusion between directors of personnel procurement and division or section heads, various forms of religious, racial and geographical bias have been exhibited” and suggested the need for a “more detailed study in depth” of this problem.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
