The setting often enhances the diamond.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

Internal Security System Growing

What has happened to the government's internal security system?

The public appeared to lose interest in the whole business, an over-reaction to the hectic McCarthy years, and it continues to be difficult to get even Congress worked up enough to discover, for instance, the reasons why the State Department's William Weiland, whose record during the pre-Castro years raised doubts in some minds about his reliability, is not a security risk; whereas the State Department's Otto Otepka, who blurted out some information to a congressional committee concerning the State DepartBUCKLEY, JR. ment's carelessness in security matters, is a security risk.

WILLIAM F.

A highly intelligent informant, buried deep inside government, advises me that the internal security system is, notwithstanding the lack of general interest and the harassments of the Supreme Court, growing indeed, as all bureaucracies tend to do. The trouble is, it is growing in such a way as to expand the definition of security in ways that were hardly intended by Congress. The new security risk in Washington is: the man who voted for Goldwater.

A LEARNED DISCUSSION has gone on for roughly three-quarters of a century, on the general subject of what kind of loyalty the leader ought to be in a position to demand from His bureaucrats. The Civil Service Law sought to professionalize government by putting an end to the greater abuses of the spoils system, and protecting most government workers from losing their jobs every time a new leader heaves in with his hungry army of predators. The opposing argument is that a new president must be able to fill enough jobs to give him effective control over executive policy. The considerations of both sides should be weighed in devising a workable system.

What is happening now in Washington seems to be of a different character. The idea is not so much to replace Jones, who voted for Goldwater, with Smith, because Smith's father gave $5,000 to the last presidential campaign. But to remove Jones merely because he voted for Goldwater, i. e., to punish Jones for past heresies

--that is different from punishing him (with regret) because, after all, something has to be done for good old Smith. The easiest way to get Jones out is to find him, after a considerable stretch of imagination, a security risk.

THERE ARE THREE accepted categories of security risks at the moment. One is the Communist, or the loyalty risk. Another is the homosexual, who is considered especially susceptible to blackmail. A third is the alcoholic who, in moments of high inner warmth, is liable (hic) to tell something to somebody which isn't any of somebody's business.

A fourth category is the man who isn't loyal to the leader. Disloyalty means, among other things, that he might just possibly not cooperate in the suppression of information on bureaucratic error. The kind of loyalty to cover up the mistake of one's fellow bureaucrats has become so highly esteemed an attribute of a high civil servant that it is getting more and more difficult to monitor the work of bureaucracy.

ALL OF WHICH, my friend writes me, is "a wholly predictable consequence of a security program. The situation that leads to suppression is perfectly evident: the purposes of government become subtly identified with those of bureaucrats and their personal interests in a way such that any kind of information that adversely affects the bureaucrat is a breach of security because it adversely affects the work of government. It is the principle that the interests of government and those of government servants are indivisible.

"Under LBJ, the bureaucrat is running scared-from McGeorge Bundy down to the meanest illiterate in the ICC. He reacts. His security is disturbed, and the security of the security officer is disturbed, and the security of the security officer's boss is uncertain. Under Ike, there was perfect security among security officers; underLBJ they are running scared in any case because of the LBJ image, but they are running even more scared because their bosses are running scared.”

Congressman John Moss (D.-Calif.) of the subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Government Information has promised to look into the general problem. Meanwhile, be loyal to your leader.