The Key West citizen., 1954-09-27


AS for Flanders, Mccarthy said
the Vermonter had used much
stronger language about him.
Charge 3-That Mccarthy invit
ed and urged federal employees to
furnish him with information to
aid in his Investigations even il
they would be violating the law,
presidential orders and their oaths
of office.
This was based on statements
Mccarthy made during the tele-
ed McCarthy-Army hearings,
such as:
That the oath taken by govern
ment employees to protect and de-
fend the country 'towers far above
any presidential secrecy direct
i've" II have instructed a
vast number of these employees
that they are duty bound to give
me information even though some
little bureaucrat has stamped it
secret to protect himself .
Explains Info Request
In answering this charge, Nc
Carthy said he was not asking fed
eral employees for general classi-
fled information" but for informa.
ton ION graft, corruption, commu-
niSm and wrOngdoing" in the ex.
ecutive branch.
He maintained that employees
have duty to give such informa-
ton under law making it crime
to conceal knowledge of felony.
He called completely false" the
charges that he had invited fed
eral employees to violate their oaths
of office.
! On the contrary, he said, in urg-
ing them to disclose "wrongdoing" il,
he was asking them to conform to
their oaths and to the law.
Charge LThat Mccarthy re-
ceived and made use of confiden-
tial information unlawfully OBJ
tanned from an FBI document and
offered it in the form of a spur
ious" letter at the McCarthy-Army
hearings.
Part of this charge was that Nc
Carthy was in possible violation
of the Espionage Act in receiving
and keeping the document and that
he had allowed it to fall into the
hands of a "gossip columnist" =,
Walter Winchell.
At the Mccarthy y-Army hearings,
Mccarthy said to Secretary of the
Army Stevens, "Mr. Secretary, l
would like to give you a letter
from the FBI."
The pa page document, marked
personal and confidential via liai-
SON., was in the form of a letter,
dated Jan. 26, 1854, from FBI
chief J. Edgar Hoover to Mai.
Gen. A. R. Boiling, chief of army
intelligence.
Atty. Gen. Brownell wrote SEN
ators conducting the Mccarthy
Army probe that the PA page doc
ument constitutes an unauthor-
lied use of information which is
classified as confidential and
should not be made public" He
also wrote that it was mot authen-
tic in that no such letter was writ
ten by Mr.. ]. Edgar Hoover"
Testimony at those hearings
brought out that the language of
the "letter" was identical in part
with 15-page memorandum which
Hoover had sent to Army intelli-
gence about possible subverSives
at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, Army Sig
nal Corps center.
Army" Document
Mccarthy told the censure COM
mittee the ''letter" showed on its
face that security information had
been deleted. He also said that at
the time he offered it at the Nc
Carthy Army hearings he did
not know of the 15-page FBI
memo and thought the letter was
bona fide paper.
He said he has every reason to
believe it was and is COPY of
a document in Army files. He de-
MED he had given a copy to Win
chell and said that so far as he
knew, no member of his staff had.
Mccarthy said the pa page let.
ter contained evidence of the
harboring of Communists in one
of the top-secret radar laborator-
les. :. and | felt | had to use
the document would have
been derelict in my duty if
hadn't used the information in my
Investigation
He said he didn't think the typed
words personal and confidential
via Gaison" meant that the letter
had any secrecy classification.
Clifford ]. Nelson, Justice De-
partment securitv officer, testified
that the word confidential" was
an officially recognized method of
designating FBI reports in Janu-
airy. 1851, and was the only classi-
fication the FBI used at that time.
Charge 5-that Mccarthy, with
out justification, impugned the 10y
atty. patriotism and character of