Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Senator Millard Tydings

Hand grow 4 th Strator Original delevent" 419-K depended 9:30Am 200.21 personally by m 4/3/50 Howhs At Key West, Florida April 3, 1950 FILED BY MR. HOPKINS Dear Senator Tydings: X 4-5-50 The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission have referred to me the matter of the suppoenas which have been served on them, directing them to appear on April 4, 1950, before the Subcommittee established by the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, pursuant to S. Res. 231, 81st Congress, and to produce various documents and papers relating to a number of persons x252 whose names appear on a confidential list attached to each subpoena. x550 In my letter to you of March 28, 1950, I stated the reasons why the confidential loyalty files of Gov- ernment employees should not be produced. I should like at this time to re-state those reasons briefly. The disclosure of these files would seriously prejudice the future effectiveness and usefulness of x10-B the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an investigative agency; the embarrassment, and even danger, to those who have given confidential information cannot be over- emphasized. Disclosure would not only deprive the Fed- eral Bureau of Investigation and other investigative agencies of the Government of the availability of those confidential informants in the future, but would also gravely impair their ability to gather confidential in- formation from other sources as well. The employee loyalty program depends upon the investigative services of the Federal Bureau of Investi- gation. The disclosure of the files would, therefore, result in serious harm to that program. Such disclosure, instead of helping to keep disloyal people out of the Government service, would impair the very effective means we now have for accomplishing that purpose. The investigative files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation do not contain proven information x252-K