501.AC/7–2148
The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate (Vandenberg) to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I am shocked to read the enclosed U.P. dispatch in last night’s newspaper asserting that—
“The State Department has informed Congress that subversive agents in an alarming number have entered this country through the United Nations.”
The dispatch further attributes to State Department officials the statement that—
“This Government is powerless to do anything about it.”
Finally, a State Department official (Robert C. Alexander, Assistant Chief of the State Department’s Visa Division, Security Unit) is quoted as saying that—
“These subversives include Moscow-trained terrorists, espionage agents, aliens who foment discord and others trained in undercover activities contrary to the peace and good order of this country.”
I am sure you will join me in agreeing that if any such situation exists, it requires summary attention. I respectfully suggest that there can be no delay. This brings the “cold war” directly home to the internal United States. Still worse: if these quoted statements are true, it means that the very instrumentality (the United Nations) upon [Page 64] which we depend for peace and security is a serious threat to the very protections which it is presumed to serve.
The situation as described in this U.P. dispatch is so unbelievable that I am not accepting it until it is officially confirmed. But I respectfully submit that confirmation or categorical denial is immediately imperative. The publication of this charge will do the United Nations incalculable harm in the United States. I do not need to wait for the reactions to know that it will produce a flood of angry and anxious protests from the country in general and from Congress in particular. Nothing could be better calculated to undermine the United Nations in American public opinion. If true, the situation is insufferable. If untrue, the charges are intolerable.
A Special Session of Congress starts next Monday.1 Its agenda should include the U.N. Headquarters Loan. Favorable action on the loan will be seriously if not permanently jeopardized if the U.N. Headquarters in New York City is an unlimited port of entry for “Moscow-trained terrorists, espionage agents, aliens who foment discord and others trained in undercover activities contrary to the peace and good order of this country.”
If this is not the fact,—(I certainly thought we had protected ourselves fully against any such hazard)—I should be able to say so with decisive finality at once. But if this is the fact the first legislation introduced in the Special Session next week should be an amendment to the U.S. Participating statute which will give the Government of the United States complete and unequivocal authority to stop any such subversive invasion. We have no right to control entry into the United Nations Headquarters. But we have every right and duty and obligation to control entry from the U.N. Headquarters into the United States.
I cannot overemphasize my feeling that this U.P. dispatch poses a question of imminent importance. I shall reach Washington next Sunday. I will greatly appreciate it if at least a preliminary memorandum on this subject may be waiting for me at the Wardman Park Hotel at that time. I regret to intrude upon your other desperately critical problems at the moment, but I see so much potential trouble flowing from this dispatch that I feel we owe it to our United Nations allegiance to clarify the situation without a moment’s delay.
With sentiments of great respect, and with warm personal regards, I beg to remain
Cordially and faithfully,
- In fact it was a reconvening of the Second Session of the 80th Congress, which had not adjourned sine die but only recessed on June 20, 1948. The prolongation of the Second Session began on July 26 and continued until August 7 when a second recess took effect. The 80th Congress was never again reconvened however.↩