The Foreign Service Journal, March 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2014 27 perhaps by refusing to be interro- gated on the basis of such clearly illegal evidence. We took the point of view that when the loyalty of a pub- lic officer is involved, we were not going to make an issue of whether or not the evidence was obtained in a proper way. In a court of law, of course, it would not have been admissible. They had a terrific hassle in the Senate as to whether or not they would accept [the final report], and split on strict party lines. Tydings went after McCarthy hammer and tongs. The conclusion of the report was very favor- able to me. v I n the November 1950 elections, Tydings was defeated and a nonentity was put in. This really added greatly to McCarthy’s political threat. After the election [the State Department] became very much more cautious. The State Department [Loyalty Security] Board [which had conducted its own investigation] had told me in June, when they finished the case, that they were satisfied. But new information kept being produced. New accusations would come in. Every time this happened, the case had to be reopened. It was very difficult to ever bring anything to a close. Then the standards were changed. Originally, there had to be a reasonable basis to consider you dis loyal. That was changed to reasonable doubts as to loyalty. All cases had to be reconsidered under the new rules. [The department] decided that I would have to be kept in Washington. [It] publicly announced in December 1950 that I had been cleared. But this was only provisional. [As Service explained in his interview, there were two levels of boards under the Loyalty Security program set up by President Truman in 1947. Each department had its own board, called the Loyalty Security Board . Then up above, nominally under the Civil Service Commission, was the Loyalty Review Board . All cases were decided by the department boards and then went up to the LRB for this review process, usually called “post audit.”] v O n Oct. 11, 1951, we got a letter rather surprisingly from the Loyalty Review Board saying that they were going to hold their own hearings on Nov. 8. [On July 31 the State Department had reaffirmed its findings that Service was neither disloyal nor a security risk; then on Sept. 4 it referred the case to the Loyalty Review Board for “post-audit.”] A staff member of the Loyalty Review Board asked some silly questions. He was a real know-nothing type. The only one of his questions I recall was to the effect that I had referred to “C-C” many times in reports, to the “C-C Clique,” and did this mean Chinese Communists? Well, of course, the C-C Clique is well known to anybody involved in Chinese affairs. It meant the Chen brothers, Chen Kuo-fu and Chen Li-fu—the right-wing clique of the Kuomintang. This was the expertise of the staff of the Loyalty Review Board. We said later on that we would like to submit a memorandum, and they said we could. We got a delay until we could get the tran- script. As soon as I read the transcript it was clear to me that they had in their minds quite different charges. The original charge [at the Department Loyalty Security Board] was that I was a commu- nist or associated with communists in such a way as to betray the security interests of the United States. The charge that they had in mind was about “willful disclosure of confidential information.” What to do about the mixup in the charges? [The board] said, “Well, we can have hearings all over again if you want.” But they didn’t think it would make any difference. v A bout this time, my friend [FSO and China expert Raymond P.] Ludden had received an interrogatory. Many people were beginning to receive interrogatories. Ludden was very concerned about how to handle it. There was some question of the proce- dural details. I said to him, “Well, let’s go down to the Loyalty Security Board’s office.” So we walked in, and [the fellow at the desk]’s face froze. “How did you know so soon?” he said. “Know what?” I said. “The Loyalty Review Board has ruled against you.”They told us about it. The secretary had red eyes. She obviously was upset. John Service answers a question at his loyalty hearing in 1950 on the cover of Lynne Joiner’s book (Naval Institute Press, 2009) about his experience as a Foreign Service China Hand and a target of the McCarthy witch hunt. In the lower image, Service (center) meets in 1944 with, from left, Zhou Enlai, Chu Teh, Mao Zedong and Ye Jianying in Yenan. Chris Gamboa-Onrubia, Fineline Graphics LLC