“There exist in the United States and elsewhere in the world terrorist groups. Many are part of international terrorist networks. These networks and groups engage in kidnappings, extortion, and other acts of violence” (Littman 1975:33-34). Surprisingly, that declaration was not made in the aftermath of the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It was made half a century earlier by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Such rhetorical declarations inspired fear among the populous, extracted attention from the media, and furthered the ambitions of politicians sitting on the committee. Representatives Karl Mundt of South Dakota and Richard Nixon of California engineered a House bill that extorted national paranoia for personal gain. Nixon was hailed by some of his colleagues, such as Representative Ben F. Jensen, as “one of the greatest patriots in all American history” (Congressional Record 1951:A4295-A8014). James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 41 that, “Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society” (Littman 1975:19). In light of Madison’s remark, Nixon and Mundt were merely indulging in their civic duty. But perhaps they should have listened to different echoes from the past, such as the apparently faint voice of Benjamin Franklin who wrote in 1759, “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” (Ignatief 2001:21). As we enter a new era of national insecurity, it becomes imperative that we listen to the past; that we do not ignore the wise voice of Franklin.
Of course it was not al Qaeda who sponsored and funded these alleged terrorist organizations in the 1950s, but Marxist-Leninists governments. On May 21, 1948, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Mundt-Nixon bill. It was the product of mass hysteria, an imaginative media, and unscrupulous politicians hoping to capitalize off public sentiment at the expense of others’ civil liberties. The Mundt-Nixon Bill, or the Subversive Activities Control Bill, embodies the essence of how the Cold War affected domestic public policy in the United States. But perhaps more importantly, it has come to symbolize policy making in the United States when under the duress of an internal threat and the resolve of a shaken public. In such circumstances, the line between civil liberties and security bends, fractures, and occasionally even disappears. A poll taken after the September 11 attacks reinforces this idea – seventy percent of Americans are willing to give up some of their civil liberties in exchange for greater security (Morin 2002: A7).
Nixon learned from the Russian Revolution that a minority of dedicated revolutionaries could effectively usurp the government’s authority. Nixon helped investigate a union that had been on strike for ten months against the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in Milwaukee. He examined how a small group of communists came to dominate an 8,700-member union “by clever parliamentary tactics, violence, intimidation, and dishonest ballot counting.” In actuality, communists in leadership positions in various unions had more to do with their initial interest in creating them with the intention of improving working conditions and wages. Yet, “Nixon became convinced that small numbers of Communists were capable of controlling large unions,” and perhaps capable of controlling larger organizations altogether (Gellman 1999:115). His solution was legislation to force Communists into the “sunlight” and destroy the subversive philosophy by selling democracy and the American way of life (Gellman 1999:115).
The bill symbolically declared, “That anyone who wanted to establish a totalitarian government in the United States under a foreign power was guilty of a crime” (Gellman 1999:115). Members of the Communist Party were required to register with the Attorney General. Federal employees could not participate in the Communist Party and could not “knowingly hire” any of its members. Furthermore, the U.S. government denied passports to its members in an effort to restrict their travel. There were no benefits for Communists to register with the government; their liberties would be revoked as a result of their political associations. Under the Mundt-Nixon Bill, Communists became less inclined to emerge into the sunlight and more inclined to clandestinely conduct their operations and meetings. Nixon wrote years later in his memoirs that he did not want to outlaw the Communist Party. “I believed that this approach would be inefficient and counterproductive. The practical effect of outlawing the party would only be to drive the hard core of true believers underground. I thought it made more sense to drive the Communist Party into the open so that we could know who its members were” (Nixon 1978:46). But Nixon was not driving anyone into the open – he failed to see that requiring Communists to register with the Attorney General would also drive them underground.