[jjoonathan]

I have zero sympathy for the view that people who disagree with current social/economic/espionage policy should be removed from office on that basis alone. On the contrary, such disagreement is central to how democracy works and those who would threaten it are the true threats to our society.

That said, we continue to disagree about the numbers, and I would like to know the resolution. Could you expand on your claim that "KGB/NKVD archives reveal they had hundreds of agents in the executive branch in the 1940s"? Did McCarthy have a very high false negative rate (thereby finding only 9 of the hundreds of spies)? Are you counting "security risks" as "agents"? What gives?

[aurelian]

Communists, meaning people who were members of the Communist Party or identified as Communists and associated with other Communists, were more likely to have come into contact with Soviet agents and been persuaded to spy or subvert US aims. We are talking about security risks not security certainties. It's entirely reasonable to remove risky people from sensitive positions. Any organization that failed to do so would fail to achieve the objectives given to it through the democratic process; it would serve another master. This is entirely separate from the question of who should choose the objectives of the government.

Ironically, Communists wished to overthrow the US government and were anti-democratic.

[dalke]

What are the risks, what's the error rate, and what are the consequences?

To start, what defines a sensitive position?

For example, Pete Seeger was a member of the Communist party in the US. He's a singer. He was castigated for his association with Communists, subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and found guilty of contempt of Congress before an appeals court overturned it.

Is singing a sensitive position? What about screenwriting or directing movies?

We know that "Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly" (see http://www.newsweek.com/israel-wont-stop-spying-us-249757 ) . That makes Israeli citizens a risk, no? What about Israeli sympathizers in sensitive positions? At what point do we declare that any Americans with a pro-Israeli viewpoint are a security risk and should be barred from sensitive positions? (Including singing?)

You mentioned overthrowing the government. Should all people with such ideas be removed from any sensitive position? We know that various US citizens to this day 'demand the dissolution of the Federal government', as for example http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/adam-kokesh-and-pete-santil... , as just one example of people who call for a peaceful overthrow.

My answer to all of those is "no". Having a strongly held belief which happens to be aligned with a foreign power's stated goals does not immediately make one a security risk.

Consider that in South Africa during Apartheid, and after abandoning the Native Republic policy in 1948, the South African Communist Party was one of the few that called for the end of Apartheid and equality of the races. The Suppression of Communism Act in 1950 formally banned the party and all those who supported communists. In practice then, that power was used to prosecute anyone against apartheid, since after all their aims were aligned with the presumed aims of communism.

Mandela was a member of the SACP and served on its Central Committee. As he wrote, "There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"

[A_COMPUTER]

>I have zero sympathy for the view that people who disagree with current social/economic/espionage policy should be removed from office on that basis alone.

Why? They'll just do a shitty job anyway. People rightfully get up in arms when Republicans want to see an opponent of the EPA appointed to the EPA, or department of education, because they know why it's being done, to undermine it. HUAC was set up to rout out Nazi sympathizers before it started going after communism, should they have been left alone?