RIGHTS IN CONFLICT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200590001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 4, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 19, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

CPYRGH'I proved For Release 2000/0c0~5ober
Rights in Conflict
On September 13, by a vote of 79
to 4, the Senate passed a bill that
had been introduced by
Ervin, Jr. (D., North Carolina , to
protect "It be privacy and the rights
of Federal employees." The bill,
which faces an uncertain future in
the House, is intended to eliminate
some of the more outrageous prac.
tices of the Federal government so
far as psychological testing, political
pressures, and abusive interrogations
are concerned. "When was the first
time you had intercourse with your
wifor' an applioant for n National
Security Agency fob wag asked. "Did
you have intercourse with her be-
fore you were married? How many-
times?" One issue that may com-
plicate the fate of the bill in the
House is the same as that which led
to its being amended in the Senate,
namely, whether or not certain of
its restrictions on the Federal
government as a whole should be
waived in the cas_ o t IA~and
tle_N$A. This cloak-an -agg ewe-.
went, combined with the more lurid
aspects of the problem as they were
developed in subcommittee hear-
ings, has quite naturally taken at-
tention away from another provision
of the bill-that which would forbid
the government to ask its employees
to disclose their race, religion, or
national origin.
Until fairly recently, questions
about race on applications or other
government forms-or requests for
photographs which made such ques-
tions unnecessary-were taken by
civil-rights organizations as prima
facie- evidence of intention to dis-
criminate. Indeed, some of the more
important civil-rights victories in the
past were those which resulted in
the elimination of any identification
of individuals by their race, and it
was in this spirit during the 1940's with its employees. In Hawaii there
that the Civil Service Commission was outrage and refusal to respond.
enjoined the government from Even though the response was
father use of employee forms that. - supppposed to be voluntary. Feder
Approved For Release 2000/U5/05 : CIA-RDP75-0u149R08u200590001-8
Themselves by race.
Thus, in the past few years as
Washington set about encouraging
its far-flung departments to hire
more Negroes-a project requiring at
least some racial breakdown of its
present employees-it faced some
rather tricky problems. And although
it has been able to minimize these
through its special skill at obfusca.
tion by bureaucratese ("Each inspec.
tion should be characterized by: 1)
In-depth factfinding which probes
deeply into all phases of equal em-
ployment opportunity ... 2) Mean.
i igfui evaluations wlhioh Coro in on
speciftc problem areas and recognize
program achievements ") the
question remained of the legitimacy
of the government's making any ra-
cial classification whatever of its
employees.
~N 1962 the Civil Service Com-
mission, at the Kennedy admin-
istration's request, did its first
government-wide racial census. For
this project, which it repeated an-
nually, the Commission used a
technique known at the time as
the "supervisory head count" and
since renamed, more delicately, the
"visual survey." It entailed 'agency
officials' filing reports on the num-
ber of members of various racial
and national groups they employed
at different civil-service grades.
The trouble came when the Com-
mission decided to change its tech-
nique. In 1966 it sent out a card
called the "minority status question-
naire" to some 1.7 million Federal
workers asking them to identify
themselves as "Negro," "Spanish
American," "Oriental," "American
Indian," or' "none of these." The
hullabaloo was immediate. From
the outset, the Army refused to
permit the new system to be used
workers comp acne o coercion
and intimidation; and even though
the results were incarcerated in
the anonymity of a gigantic locked
computer, it was apparent that the
Commission had crossed a line and
that it was now not only requesting
identification of individuals by race
but was also asking them to attest
to information about themselves
that many, for whatever reason,
preferred to withhold. White gov.
ernment workers began to complain
to Ervin's subcommittee that they
suspected quotas were going to be
anforood and they would b@ ?ho
{ victims; Negro government workers
complained to the subcommittee
that the reintroduction of the ques-
?tionnaire was discriminatory. The.
American Civil Liberties Union testi-
fied that it even had doubts about
the propriety of the "head count"
method, let alone the questionnaire,
"except only where rigorous justi-
fication is required for such action."
And people began to make merry
in filling it out: white workers
called themselves Negroes, Negroes
claimed to be "none of these," and
a suspiciously high percentage of
American Indians began turning
up in unlikely places. It was testi-
mony to how well the earlier
efforts of civil-rights groups had
worked.
A few months ago the Commis-
sion announced that it was abandon-
ing its card and going back to its
"visual survey." Nonetheless, there
was some' objection that Ervin's
provision in the rights-and-privacy
bill would make it inordinately,
difficult for any administration to
pursue its Equal Employment Op-
portunity program. If ' the House
fails to act on the bill, the ques-
tion will become academic, but
at this point the line-up on the
race provision gives some meas-
ure of how confused all the -old
and new pieties have become. S