This Week in History
March 16-22, 1947
Truman's Loyalty Oath and Obama's Precedent
By Edward Spannaus
March 2014
National Archives
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On March 21, 1947, a puppet of the Anglo-Dutch empire interests, President Harry S Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating for the first time a general "loyalty" program in the United States--which has been revived in President Obama's "Insider Threat" program today.
This was never designed to be “loyalty” to the US Constitution, and contrary to popular opinion, Truman's purpose was not to root out “Communism”—communism was never a credible threat to the nation in the post-war period. The intent was to completely eradicate the policies and legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by terrifying the population, and cynically conflating the New Deal with Soviet Communism.
Crucial to this project was Winston Churchill's March 1946 Fulton, Missouri speech, which turned FDR's vision of an anti-imperial and anti-colonial post-war world on its head, by proclaiming “a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States,” against their wartime ally, the Soviet Union.
In the Summer and Fall of 1946, in the campaigns for the 1946 midterm elections, many Republican candidates combined their opposition to the New Deal with rabid anti-Communism. Many Republican candidates campaigned on opposition to the New Deal, combined with anti-Communism, with some of the more unscrupulous among them claiming that New Deal liberalism of the Democratic Party was nothing but a form of Communism. Truman's response to these attacks, was try to out-do the Republicans with his zealous displays of opposition to Communism.
After the elections, Truman sought to seize the reins of the anti-Communism fervor, with his establishment of the Federal Loyalty Board program, covering Federal employees, in March 1947. More than anything else in this period, Truman's Loyalty Campaign was responsible for a horrific reign of terror--and the general retreat from politics--which held sway in the United States in the late '40s and early '50s, and was only alleviated when President Dwight D. Eisenhower took decisive steps to do so in 1954.
Disregard for Due Process
The Federal Loyalty Boards became the model for state and local governments, and even private institutions, which created their own loyalty programs--with equal disregard for due process. There were no rules of evidence. Gossip or innuendo, or association with someone who was associated with someone who was suspected of sympathies to a Communist-front organization, was enough to cause someone to lose his job and be blacklisted from getting another one. Many of those who were fired from their jobs were never told what the accusations against them were, much less who or what was the source of the adverse information.
Truman's Justice Department initiated the breaking-up and driving underground of the Communist Party (CP) and its sympathizers, with the Smith Act prosecutions of top CPUSA leaders that began in 1948. Top CP leaders, and then the second-string and others, were sent to prison or went underground. Industrial unions deemed to be under CP control or influence were driven out of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1949.
And Truman appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court ensured that the highest court upheld the Smith Act convictions in June 1951, in a climate of hysteria which was fed by the outbreak of the Korean War.
All of this, except for some of the Supreme Court's ratification of the Truman witch-hunt, took place before Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin emerged on the scene to lend his name to the witch-hunt phenomenon which were better called “Trumanism.”
... And today
On Nov. 21, 2012, in a move which received little attention, Anglo Dutch puppet President, Barack Obama, revived the Truman loyalty program, using modern technology, by establishing an "Insider Threat Program" in every Executive Branch department and agency, targeting potential whistle-blowers and anyone else deemed to represent a “threat to national security.” The program creates a police-state atmosphere in Federal agencies, in which everyone is expected to spy on his colleagues, and report his suspicions under the cloak of anonymity--just as the Truman Loyalty Program was based on anonymous charges, often just office gossip.
White House/Pete Souza.
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Obama's 21 three-paragraph covering memorandum for Federal department and agency heads, was entitled “National Insider Threat Policy and Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs.” The still-secret detailed policy and standards document was transmitted with it.
The purpose, Obama stated in the public memorandum, is to promote the development of “insider threat” programs “to deter, detect and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security.” These threats are defined as encompassing “potential espionage, violent acts against the Government or the Nation, and unauthorized disclosure of classified information....”
That last item is clearly aimed at whistle-blowers--not only those disclosing information about wrongdoing and corruption to the press, but also, disclosures to Congress.
Obama's Justice Department, just in his first term, had already used the 1917 espionage laws to press criminal charges in cases of national-security leaks--more than all other previous administrations combined.
With little notice, the Obama program has grown and spread into all federal agencies and private contractors. As the Washington Post reported just recently, on March 7, 2014: "After years of focusing on outside threats, the federal government and its contractors are turning inward, aiming a range of new technologies and counterintelligence strategies at their own employees to root out spies, terrorists or leakers. Agencies are now monitoring their computer networks with unprecedented scrutiny, in some cases down to the keystroke, and tracking employee behavior for signs of deviation from routine."
Truman would be proud of his fellow British-lackey Obama -- and jealous of the technology available to Obama today to track down any deviations from the Obama party line.
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The above is adapted from the following articles:
Edward Spannaus, "It Didn't Start with Joe McCarthy," EIR, Dec. 9, 2005 http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2005/2005_40-49/2005_40-49/2005-49/pdf/56-59_47_nat.pdf
"Obama Revives Truman 'Loyalty Program'," EIR, Dec. 7, 2012 http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2012/eirv39n48-20121207/39-40_3948.pdf