The American Jewish Congress today requested “a comprehensive revision” of the entire security program for Federal employees, so that the program should “serve its legitimate purposes and prevent the free play of anti-Semitism and bias, the harassment of men of courageous and independent views and the imposition of a sterile conformity on the public service.”
In a telegram to the Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, charged that the program was being “perverted because of the vagueness of criteria defining disloyalty, the lack of appellate procedures and the absence of any central supervisory agency.”
Dr. Goldstein charged that the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Wolf Ladejinsky, American agricultural attache in Tokyo, strongly reinforced the suspicion aroused by the earlier cases of Abraham Chasanow, U. S. Navy Department employee, who was reinstated after being suspended on unsubstantiated security charges, and the 24 Fort Monmouth scientists, who were also recently cleared, that anti-Semitism and prejudice were operating at various levels of the employee security program.
Present procedures, the AJC statement asserted, “both invite and sanction abuse, unfounded suspicion, bigotry and downright stupidity, and security officers are hiding behind the plea of the need for secrecy to act like little dictators in their own private Kremlins.”
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