How I became a suspect

Sam Smith

In 1960, in the course of applying for Coast Guard Officer Candidate School, I found myself embroiled in a situation not unlike that which opens the film, "Good Night and Good Luck" albeit I lacked the assistance of Edward R. Murrow.

One day after my 23rd birthday and In military jargon, replete with passive voice and numbers and letters in parentheses, the Commandant of the US Coast Guard wrote to questioned my loyalty to the United States and indicated that he thought I might be a traitor.

My stunned eyes quickly darted to the accusations. Not one word concerned anything I had allegedly done, said or believed. I stood accused, in brief, of having been born to, and raised by, the wrong parents. My father - who worked in the New Deal - had belonged to the National Lawyers' Guild, my mother to the League of Women's Shoppers, a nefarious group boycotting nylon stockings on behalf of the organizing efforts the ILGWU. My parents had sent contributions to several organizations that later turned up on the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations, had known Alger Hiss and been good friends of his brother, Donald.

My father also worked for several men who would later become Supreme Court justices, had a key position in the Justice Department and was involved in the top secret Operation Safe Haven, a precursor to the efforts of the Monument Men. None of this was mentioned in the letter I received.

Since most of what was cited was well underway before I had reached three years of age I thought it a bit unfair that they should blame me for it.

Further, they asked questions such as:

10. Have your parents ever discussed with you their participation in these organizations which were dominated by Communists and supported the Communist cause?

11. State the names and addresses of Communist Party members and sympathizers with whom you and your parents have associated.

12. To what extent have your parents indoctrinated and influenced you concerning the politics of these and other Communist groups?

14. Did your parents ever make any books, documents or periodicals of the Communist Party or Communist front organizations available to you?

15. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? If so, who recruited you and what type of indoctrination were you given?

16. List all contributions made by you to the Communist Party, USA or any of its front organizations, and any remuneration you may have received for services rendered by you to it.

17. What are your views on Communism and the Communist Party?

I was only momentarily relieved by the lack of personal accusations because in those days disloyalty was considered an inherited trait. The gods, said Euripides, "visit the sins of the fathers upon the children."

I further knew, though shame's iron no longer literally branded, that I had been indelibly marked. With the letter I held in my moistening fingers, I had become one of the permanently suspect.

Nothing, even vindication, could remove the brand. It would be hidden away in official cabinets, waiting for someone to flip through the S files until they came across mine. Would there be a special color on the tab or would one actually have to read the contents to find out that I was not to be trusted?

I knew precisely what had happened to me and felt a sucking out of the soul of the sort that I imagined would precede death. Suddenly, I was only a person playing myself; a pit had opened into which had fallen all real joy, hope and passion. Now they were only things vaguely remembered.

The notion that my parents were communists or anything close was madness. The fact that the US government could take the notion seriously was worse. But before me lay the task of either defending, denouncing, or denying them and, on the slim record of 23 years, proving that I, too, was not what my government feared.

In part of my reply to the letter, I wrote:

In processing my application for Officer Candidate School, officials of the USCG passed favorably upon my intelligence, capability and physical soundness, all qualities any reasonable man has self-doubts about from time to time. Yet it is the things of which I was certain -- my loyalty to my country, my opposition to all ideologies that would deny to men the freedoms granted by my country, and my desire to defend both my freedoms and my country -- that was being questioned. It pains me that his should be so, but I do not shun the opportunity to reply with confidence. When this matter is completed, I hope it will be a confidence in which you will share.

In the end, the government could find nothing more damaging in my past than a poor choice of nativity. The actual security hearing was not only anti-climatic, it was therapeutic. I found myself not in a room of Kafkaesque tormentors but with Coast Guard officers on temporary assignment to a job they didn't enjoy that much and glad, in this case, that it was over. The chair of the security board was a Lieutenant Commander who had been buoy tender skipper and his only question was, "Do you think you have had enough math for the navigation course, Mr. Smith?"

Instead of talking about Alger Hiss, I found myself speaking of my teachers Miss Darnell and Mrs. Breuneger, not of my love of country but of my enthusiasm for numbers. The men around the table shook hands with me and wished me good luck. I held no grudge against them; all I wanted to do was to join them as soon as possible.

It was over and yet even as I left the room I knew it wasn't. Somewhere forever there would be that file. Somewhere forever there would be someone who might remember that once something wasn't quite right. Even then I knew what it meant. I had gotten in, but just. If I were to make a career of government, it would undoubtedly come up again -- maybe years later when the job was something really important or something that I really wanted. If I were to run for public office, it might be irresistible bait to an opponent. And if I were to become prominent in the media, it might also come back. My life had changed forever.

And the scars weren't only in my mind. When I had taken my first physical I had passed without a single problem. When I returned for a checkup after finally being accepted, my eyesight, blood pressure and blood sugar levels had all deteriorated beyond acceptable levels. I was no longer a security risk, but in the course of a only a few months had become a physical wreck. I knew then how bad it had really been. Thanks to a forgiving Public Health Service doctor, my true state was ignored and I was assigned to the February 1961 class at Officer Candidate School in Yorktown VA.

Over the years, it would stop mattering that much. I promised myself never again to humiliate myself in self-justification. I would avoid anything like this happening again. Now it was I who could not trust my government rather than the other way around. Strangely, a program designed to secure allegiance to the government had profoundly alienated me from it. Henceforth, whatever I did, I knew I would be on my own.

I was in a file.