UNITED NATIONS: Expert Advice

From a special panel of three world-renowned lawyers this week came an air-clearing legal pronouncement on the cloudy questions of patriotism, Communism and loyalty among international civil servants of the United Nations. The lawyers—an American, a Briton and a Belgian—unanimously advised U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie that he not only may, but should, fire from the U.N. Secretariat any persons who are active members of the U.S. Communist Party.

The lawyers were called in by Trygve Lie to advise him on difficulties provoked by official U.S. investigations of subversives among the 2,000 Americans working for the U.N., and by the refusal of 17 American employees to testify whether they are or have been Communists (all have been suspended or fired). The lawyers' brief covered more than that; it promised to serve as a navigational chart for the relatively unexplored territory of obligations and privileges of an international civil service. Some of the lawyers' sharpest points:

¶Any employee who hides behind the U.S. constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination to avoid saying whether he has been a Communist or has engaged in subversive or espionage work should be fired. The exercise of this constitutional privilege, said the attorneys, creates in itself a "suspicion of guilt."

¶A U.N. employee whose country undergoes a change in government (as in Czechoslovakia when the Communists took over) should be allowed to keep his U.N. job, even if his own government objects, provided that he adheres to the laws of "the host country." Such employees, of course, should refrain from activities against their own government. This covers a particularly urgent question facing Lie, whose staff includes several anti-Communists from Iron Curtain countries, anti-Tito Yugoslavs and anti-Perón Argentines, whose governments would like to have them replaced by people of their own choice.

¶The U.N., since it is an international organization comprising Communist as well as non-Communist countries, must employ inside its U.S. headquarters persons "whose political, social, economic and philosophical outlook differs from the beliefs and sentiments of many American citizens." Americans must put up with that fact, said the lawyers. All such employees are obliged, however, to abide by the laws of their host country, even if some of those laws contradict their own beliefs and sentiments.

¶It "would be wrong" for the U.N. to send into a country with a Communist government U.N. employees who are "prepared to conduct activities regarded in that state as subversive." This amounts to saying that the U.N. should confine its staff appointments within Iron Curtain countries to Communists—a policy Lie has generally followed in his staffing of U.N. branch offices.

¶In cooperating with the U.S. in firing Americans suspected of subversive activities, Lie has a right to be shown the evidence, instead of just the accusation, against the employees in question. Then the decision becomes his to make.