National Affairs: THE MEANING OF SECURITY

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ONE of the nation's stormiest political debates swirls around a series of digits: Ten-Four-Fifty, officially Executive Order 10450, issued by the President on April 27, 1953, establishing broad new security standards for federal employment. Critics say that Ten-Four-Fifty results in a cold reign of terror among Government workers, that no man is safe from his neighbor's malice. Defenders say that Order 10450 is necessary to protect the U.S. from the infiltration of its Government by enemies.

The U.S. got along for more than 150 years without a security system for federal employees: Is Order 10450, therefore, a sign of hysteria? Or is the system justified by the threat posed by a clever and implacable enemy?

THE BASIC CHANGE

BEFORE the 20th century, only a few people in any government shared in its secrets and its decisions. They could be bound to the rules and the state in various ways; their personal weaknesses were known; they could be watched. Most of the people who could hurt the government by treachery or indiscretion had been tested for years in the crucibles of political or military careers.

The overriding characteristic of the 20th century is the division of work and responsibility into minute parts. In this respect, government parallels industry and science. Every piece of information now involves scores, often thousands, of people. Less than a century ago, a decision could be locked in the breast of one man, e.g., in planning his Valley campaign, Stonewall Jackson withheld nearly all information even from his top subordinate, Major General Richard S. Ewell, who was heard to complain, "I tell you, sir, he's as crazy as a March hare. He has gone away; I don't know where." Today Jackson would have to parcel out his secret among hundreds of helpers, most of them unknown to him, and some of them untested by their careers on the points of loyalty and discretion.

This basic change is what brings a security system into being. The system is a clumsy, fumbling effort to adjust to an entirely new situation in governmental life, the dependence of the national security on the loyalty and discretion of tens of thousands of men and women, some of whom are not even aware that they can affect the safety of the country.

It has taken the U.S. a long time to realize the nature of this problem. In the early days of the New Deal, Paul Appleby, then an Agriculture Department official* and a pundit among public administrators, said: "A man in the employ of the Government had just as much right to be a member of the Communist Party as he has to be a member of the Democratic or Republican Party." This attitude, modified and veiled, still persists. At the opposite extreme is the view that since Government employment is a privilege and not a right any employee may be fired—and his career blasted—on the shadow of a doubt. The argument over Ten-Four-Fifty comes down to how well the order and its administration avoid these two extremes.

THE NEW RULES