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April 1964

May 1964

Calendar of Events
April Units
Annual Meeting
Nancy Dykes will be Our Delegate
Pre-Convention Caucuses
Two Delegates from Hawaii?
Continuing Responsibility - Loyalty Security
Report of the President (Jeannine McCullagh)
Report on Units (Nan Lowers)
Report on Finance or We Went Visiting (Lila Grossman)
Report on State Study Item (Iris Timmerman)
Report on Local Study Item (Anne Miller)
Report on National Study Item (Idell Brownlie & Nan Lowers)
Funds for I.D.A.

Continuing Responsibility - Loyalty Security

Support of standardized procedures, "common sense" judgment, and greatest possible protection for the individual under the federal loyalty-security programs: opposition to extension of such programs to non-sensitive positions."

Ever since there has been a League it has been concerned with the importance of individual liberty. During World War II our program included an item on "The preservation of the greatest degree of civil liberty consistent with national safety in war." At both the 1948 and 1950 Conventions there was concern over the "grave problems that have arisen, affecting our system of individual constitutional liberties. In 1951-1954 Leagues throughout the country held discussions on individual liberties as Voters Service work. In 1954 the Convention voted for a program of development of understanding of relationship between individual liberty and the public interest."

At that time we cooperated with other organizations in the Freedom agenda program (a series of community discussions of the Bill of Rights). The 1956 Convention chose "Evaluation of the federal loyalty-security programs with recognition of the need for safeguarding national security and protecting individual liberties." This study reviewed the scope, authority, basic regulation, standards, criteria, kind of clearance and degree of centralization in the five federal loyalty security programs. Criticisms of the programs were discussed pro and con, and after a year and a half of study most Leagues reached agreement in favor of a wide variety of improvements. The National Board formulated a statement of position in January, 1958. This was reaffirmed by the 1958 Convention, and retained as a C.R. in 1960 and 1962.

The League had high hopes for working for positive major improvement in the federal programs. This did seem possible when a Commission on Government Security was created in 1957; but their report was issued much later than anticipated, and was so complicated and varied that it never received serious attention in Congress. So our action has been to "hold the line" and work to prevent the undoing of the effects of two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that bear on our stand (1) scope of the programs, and (2) confrontation rights for the individual employee. It would seen as if the "consensus" taken this year brought out a feeling of the members that there is little we can do on this C.R. It has been dropped from the proposed program for 1964-66.

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