Evening star., 1948-12-09
Exit the Red Herring

The sensational disclosures of the past
few days amount to something more than
q feather in the cap of the House Com
mittee on Un-American Activities.
This committee has been subjected to
a great deal of criticism Some OF It, be-
cause of the committees eXceSSeS, has been
fully deserved. More of it, however, has
been sheer propaganda, intended to dis
credit the committee and all its works. 1t is
in this latter connection that the events OF
recent days should prove most instructive.
On last August Whitaker Chambers
first voiced his accusation against Alger
Hiss and others as having been leaders of
an underground organization having as its
primary purpose Communist inf1ltration
of the Government This charge was made
before the House committee. Two days
later President Truman, hitting back at
the House group and somewhat similar
Senate committee, issued formal state
ment saying: "The public hearings now
under way are serving no useful purpose.
On the contrary, they are doing irrepa-
rable harm to certain persons, seriously
impairing the morale of Federal employees
and undermining public confidence in the
Government"
In the light of subsequent events, that
was rash statement. For the public
hearings of the House committee have
now established beyond any reasonable
doubt, or have been responsible for the
establishment, of this fact: At the time
to which Chambers referred, some one in
the State Department, and perhaps per-
sons in other departments, were divulging
highly confidential information, some of
which may have enabled foreign govern
mentS to break one of our most secret
codes.
Only the preliminary chapters of this
story have been made public. Many cir
cumstances which tax credulity remain
unexplained. 1t may or may not be shown
that Hiss who denies all, was responsible,
as Chambers says, for giving him the
secret information. But there is no getting
around the central fact that the House
hearings, as Of today, have served the
highly useful purpose of establishing that
there was dangerous leakage of secret
information from the State Department
decade ago. 1t is highly doubtful that
this would have been discovered if the
matter had been left to the President or
to the Department of Justice. Mr.. Truman,
evidently accepting at face value the
criticism of the House committee, was
thinking more in terms of attacking it
than of cooperating with it. The Depart
ment of Justice spent much time with
an investigation of Communist activity
through a special grand jury. But there
is reason to wonder how much of an
effort was made to unearth the informa-
ton which Chambers has now disclosed
If these things can reasonably be
described as failures on the part of the
administration, they were not due, GER
tainly, to any desire to protect Communists
or to any lack of desire to safeguard the
interests of the United States. Instead
the probability is that they were attrib-
utable to state of mind, to a cumulative
spirit of hostility engendered, and not
always without reason, over a period of
years. If this is fair appraisal, however,
there ought to be an end to that sort
of thing. 1t is time to abandon the "red
herring" psychology in favor of a deter
mination to go thoroughly into all of the
ramif1cations of this affair. The people of
this country have every right to know how
important documents were taken from the
State Department and who took them.