[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 91 (Wednesday, June 19, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6509-S6512]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   DR. BEATRICE BRAUDE AND JUSTICE DELAYED BUT NOT ULTIMATELY DENIED

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, this past Monday, the Washington Post 
reported that Justice Department attorneys have reached a settlement 
with lawyers representing the estate of Dr. Beatrice Braude concerning 
monetary damages equitably due for the wrongful dismissal of Dr. Braude 
from her Federal job in 1953 and subsequent blacklisting. The estate 
will receive $200,000 in damages. Family members have announced that 
the funds--which Congress must now appropriate--will be donated to 
Hunter College, the institution from which Dr. Braude received her 
bachelor's degree.
  This settlement stems from the enormously gratifying decision of U.S. 
Court of Federal Claims Judge Roger B. Andewelt on March 7, following a 
hearing last November, that the United States Information Agency (USIA) 
had wrongfully dismissed Dr. Braude and intentionally concealed the 
reason for her termination. He concluded that such actions constituted 
an equitable claim for which compensation is due.
  Dr. Braude's suit was made possible through legislation then-Senator 
Javits and I originally introduced in 1979 and which Senator D'Amato 
and I continued to press. When finally enacted, it lifted the statute 
of limitations, enabling the Court to hear Dr. Braude's case and hand 
down its decision. I know Senator D'Amato shares my gratification with 
the settlement announcement.
  With Judge Roger B. Andewelt's decision and this negotiated 
settlement, we have finally seen a measure of justice which brings back 
memories of an old and awful time. Dr. Braude, a linguist fluent in 
several languages, was dismissed from her position at the USIA in 1953 
as a result of accusations of disloyalty to the United States. The 
accusations were old; 2 years earlier, the State Department's Loyalty 
Security Board had investigated and unanimously voted to dismiss them. 
The Board sent a letter to Dr. Braude stating ``there is no reasonable 
doubt as to your loyalty to the United States Government or as to your 
security risk to the Department of State.''
  Dr. Braude was terminated 1 day after being praised for her work and 
informed that she probably would be promoted. USIA officials told that 
her that the termination was due to budgetary constraints. Congress had 
funded the USIA at a level 27 percent below the President's request. 
The Supplemental Appropriation Act of 1954 (Public Law 83-207) 
authorized a reduction in force commensurate to the budget cut. Fair 
enough. As Dr. Braude remarked years later, ``I never felt that I had a 
lien on a government job.'' But what Dr. Braude did not know is that 
she was selected for termination because of the old--and answered--
charges against her. And because she did not know the real reason for 
her

[[Page S6510]]

dismissal, she was denied certain procedural rights (the right to 
request a hearing, for instance).

  The true reason for her dismissal was kept hidden from her. When she 
was unable, over the next several years, to secure employment anywhere 
else within the Federal Government--even in a typing pool despite a 
perfect score on the typing test--she became convinced that she had 
been blacklisted. She spent the next 30 years fighting to regain 
employment and restore her reputation. Though she succeeded in 1982 (at 
the age of 69) in securing a position in the CIA as a language 
instructor, she still had not been able to clear her name by the time 
of her death in 1988. The irony of the charges against Dr. Braude is 
that she was an anti-communist, having witnessed first-hand communist-
sponsored terrorism in Europe while she was an assistant cultural 
affairs officer in Paris and, for a brief period, an exchange officer 
in Bonn during the late 1940's and early 1950's.
  Mr. President, I would like to review the charges against Dr. Braude 
because they are illustrative of that dark era and instructive to us 
even today. There were a total of four. First, she was briefly a member 
of the Washington Book Shop on Farragut Square that the Attorney 
General later labeled subversive. Second, she had been in contact with 
Mary Jane Keeney, a Communist Party activist employed at the United 
Nations. Third, she had been a member of the State Department unit of 
the Communist-dominated Federal Workers' Union. Fourth, she was an 
acquaintance of Judith Coplon.
  With regard to the first charge, Dr. Braude had indeed joined the 
Book Shop shortly after her arrival in Washington in 1943. She was 
eager to meet congenial new people and a friend recommended the Book 
Shop, which hosted music recitals in the evenings. I must express some 
sensitivity here: my F.B.I. records report that I was observed several 
times at a ``leftist musical review'' in suburban Hampstead while I was 
attending the London School of Economics on a Fulbright Fellowship.
  Dr. Braude was aware of the undercurrent of sympathy with the Russian 
cause at the Book Shop, but her membership paralleled a time of close 
U.S.-Soviet collaboration. She drifted away from the Book Shop in 1944 
because of her distaste for the internal politics of other active 
members. Her membership at the Book Shop was only discovered when her 
name appeared on a list of delinquent dues. It appears that her most 
sinister crime while a member of the book shop was her failure to 
return a book on time.
  Dr. Braude met Mary Jane Keeney on behalf of a third woman who 
actively aided Nazi victims after the war and was anxious to send 
clothing to another woman in occupied Germany. Dr. Braude knew nothing 
of Keeney's political orientation and characterized the meeting as a 
transitory experience.
  With regard to the third charge, Dr. Braude, in response to an 
interrogatory from the State Department's Loyalty Security Board, 
argued that she belonged to an anti-Communist faction of the State 
Department unit of the Federal Workers' Union.
  Remember that the Loyalty Security Board investigated these charges 
and exonerated her.
  The fourth charge, which Dr. Braude certainly did not--or could not--
deny, was her friendship with Judith Coplon. Braude met Coplon in the 
summer of 1945 when both women attended a class Herbert Marcuse taught 
at American University. They saw each other infrequently thereafter. In 
May 1948, Coplon wrote to Braude, then stationed in Paris and living in 
a hotel on the Left Bank, to announce that she would be visiting 
shortly and needed a place to stay. Dr. Braude arranged for Coplon to 
stay at the hotel. Coplon stayed for 6 weeks, during which time Dr. 
Braude found her behavior very trying. The two parted on unfriendly 
terms. The friendship they had prior to parting was purely social.
  Mr. President, Judith Coplon was a spy. She worked in the Justice 
Department's Foreign Agents Registration Division, an office integral 
to the FBI's counterintelligence efforts. She was arrested early in 
1949 while handing over notes on counterintelligence operations to 
Soviet citizen Valentine Gubitchev, a United Nations employee. Coplon 
was tried and convicted--there was no doubt of her guilt--but the 
conviction was overturned on a technicality. Gubitchev was also 
convicted but was allowed to return to the U.S.S.R. because of his 
quasi-diplomatic status.
  I bring all this up because, as I mentioned earlier, it is 
instructive. The world is a dangerous place. On July 11, 1995--6 days 
before the 50th anniversary of the first successful detonation of an 
atomic bomb--the National Security Agency released 49 of some 2,200 
coded messages sent by the KGB and decrypted between 1943 and 1980. The 
decoded messages have been kept classified until now. They are known as 
the VENONA intercepts.
  The existence of a Soviet spy ring and the active involvement of 
American communists--fellow countrymen was the KGB code word for them--
has long been established. Of late, details have been flooding in from 
Moscow. But this is the first American archive to be opened.
  At the onset of the Cold War, in Edward Shils' memorable phrase, the 
American visage began to cloud over. Some saw conspiracy everywhere. 
Recall, that in 1951, Senator Joseph McCarthy published America's 
``Retreat from Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall.'' Some 
denied any such possibility and accused the accusers. Loyalty oaths and 
background checks proliferated, and all information became Top Secret. 
A culture of secrecy took hold within the American government, whilst a 
hugely divisive debate raged in Congress and the press.

  We got through it. But the world remains a dangerous place, and it is 
just possible that we might learn something from the VENONA files. Had 
they been published in 1950, we might have been spared the soft-on-
communism charge that distorted our politics for four decades. We might 
have been spared the anti-anti-communist stance that was no less 
unhelpful.
  The fact is, there were spies in this country and they did awful 
things--Coplon among them. But there were innocent people, too, like 
Dr. Braude, who were caught in a hall of mirrors.
  My involvement in Dr. Braude's case dates back to early 1979, when 
Dr. Braude came to me and my colleague at the time, Senator Javits, and 
asked us to introduce private relief legislation on her behalf. In 
1974, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request and finally 
learning the true reason for her dismissal, she filed suit in the Court 
of Claims to clear her name and seek reinstatement and monetary damages 
for the time she was prevented from working for the Federal Government. 
The Court, however, dismissed her case on the grounds that the statute 
of limitations had expired. On March 5, 1979, Senator Javits and I 
together introduced a bill, S. 546, to waive the statute of limitations 
on Dr. Braude's case against the U.S. Government and to allow the Court 
of Claims to render judgment on her claim. The bill passed the Senate 
on January 30, 1980. Unfortunately, the House failed to take action on 
the bill before the 96th Congress adjourned.
  In 1988, and again in 1990, 1991, and 1993, Senator D'Amato and I re-
introduced similar legislation on Dr. Braude's behalf. Our attempts met 
with repeated failure. Until at last, on September 21, 1993, we secured 
passage of Senate Resolution 102, which referred S. 840, the bill we 
introduced for the relief of the estate of Dr. Braude, to the Court of 
Claims for consideration as a congressional reference action. The 
measure compelled the Court to determine the facts underlying Dr. 
Braude's claim and to report back to Congress on its findings.
  The Court held a hearing on the case last November and Judge Andewelt 
issued his verdict in March. Forty-three years after her dismissal from 
the USIA and 8 years after her death, the Court found in favor of the 
estate of Dr. Braude.
  Senator D'Amato and I wish to express our profound admiration for 
Judge Andewelt's decision in which he absolved Dr. Beatrice Braude of 
the surreptitious charges of disloyalty with which she was never 
actually confronted. The Court declared that Dr. Braude ``cared about 
others deeply and was loyal to her friends, family and country.''
  We are equally grateful to Christopher N. Sipes and William 
Livingston, Jr. of Covington & Burling, two of

[[Page S6511]]

the many lawyers who have handled Dr. Braude's case on a pro bono basis 
over the years. Mr. Sipes quite properly remarked that the decision 
represents an important page in the annals of U.S. history: ``The Court 
of the United States has said it recognizes that this conduct is out of 
bounds. It tells the government it must acknowledge its wrongs and pay 
for them.''
  Anthony Lewis wrote about Dr. Braude's case on March 15 in his 
regular New York Times column, Abroad at Home. He properly warns us 
that the cause of the injustice to Beatrice Braude and other loyalty 
victims--secret proceedings--is not ancient history. The anti-terrorism 
bill had a provision to allow for the deportation of aliens on secret 
evidence. It was stripped, fortunately, during floor consideration in 
the House. But the provision is likely to reappear in some fashion. We 
must remain vigilant.
  Now that the parties to the Braude case have reached an agreement on 
the monetary damages equitably due to Dr. Braude's estate, Senator 
D'Amato and I will be offering legislation soon to release the $200,000 
to her estate. When that time comes, I hope that we will have the 
unqualified and unanimous support of our colleagues.
  Ann Kirchheimer, a friend--now 80--who carried on Dr. Braude's fight, 
recently commented that Dr. Braude's life following her dismissal from 
the USIA could have been taken from the opening lines of Franz Kafka's 
book, The Trial: ``Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without 
having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning.'' Indeed.
  What happened to Dr. Braude was a personal tragedy. But it was also 
part of a national tragedy, too. This nation lost, prematurely and 
unnecessarily, the exceptional services of a gifted and dedicated 
public servant. Stanley I. Kutler, a professor of constitutional 
history at the University of Wisconsin, estimates that Dr. Braude was 
one of about 1,500 Federal employees who were dismissed as security 
risks between 1953 and 1956. Another 6,000 resigned under the pressure 
of security and loyalty inquiries, according to Professor Kutler, who 
testified as an expert witness on Dr. Braude's behalf last November. It 
was, as I said earlier, an awful time. We had settled ``as on a 
darkling plain, Swept with confused alarm of struggle and flight, Where 
ignorant armies clash by night.'' It mustn't happen again.
  I ask unanimous consent that an article appearing in the June 17, 
1996, issue of the Washington Post, ``$200,000 Repayment Agreement for 
Estate of McCarthy-Era Victim'', Mr. Lewis's March 15, 1996 column, 
``Secrecy and Justice,'' from the New York Times, and a letter dated 
June 19, 1996 from Mr. Sipes to my legislative director, Gray Maxwell, 
be printed in the Congressional Record following my remarks.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, June 17, 1996]

     $200,000 Repayment Agreement for Estate of McCarthy-Era Victim

       The estate of Beatrice ``Bibi'' Braude, who was fired from 
     the U.S. Information Agency and blacklisted 43 years ago 
     during a spasm of anti-communist zealotry, should be paid 
     $200,000, according to an agreement between the U.S. 
     government and attorneys for her estate.
       Funding the settlement is up to Congress.
       Braude fought for decades to clear her name after her 
     firing in 1953. By the time she was in her seventies, she 
     seemingly had exhausted all court remedies. After her death 
     nearly nine years ago, her friends and relatives took up her 
     cause and persuaded Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) 
     and Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.) to sponsor legislation that 
     mandated review of the case by the U.S. Court of Federal 
     Claims.
       Attorneys for the Justice Department argued earlier this 
     year that there was insufficient proof that loyalty concerns 
     prevented Braude from being rehired for decades. The reason 
     might have been, they argued, because she was a woman and in 
     her forties. Judge Roger B. Andewelt disagreed, saying Braude 
     was a loyal American persecuted ``during a dark era in 
     American history.''
       He ordered the Justice Department to negotiate an amount to 
     pay Braude's estate. Christopher Sipes, of the law firm of 
     Covington & Burling, who handled the case without a fee, said 
     lawyers considered what Braude would have earned during the 
     period of her blacklisting. The case, Sipes said, represents 
     a rare acknowledgment of the wrongs committed by the 
     government during the era associated with Sen. Joseph R. 
     McCarthy.
       Braude's niece, Ericka, responding to the agreement, said 
     she was nearly speechless. ``It's unbelievable,'' she said, 
     ``and it's about time.''
                                                                    ____


                [From the New York Times, Mar. 15, 1996]

                  Abroad at Home; Secrecy and Justice

                           (By Anthony Lewis)

       The case before him, the judge said, ``harks back to a dark 
     era in American history when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a 
     powerful political force in this nation, when promising 
     careers in the public and private sectors were arbitrarily 
     cut short based on innuendo, unsubstantiated allegations and 
     irrational fears. . . .''
       That was the opening sentence of a remarkable opinion by 
     Judge Roger B. Andewelt of the United States Court of Federal 
     Claims. It told a story of long ago, but one with a moral for 
     today.
       Beatrice Braude came to Washington to work for the 
     Government during World War II. She had college and graduate 
     degrees, and she won lots of praise at work. In 1951 she went 
     to the new United States Information Agency. On Dec. 30, 
     1953, she was told she was going to get a pay raise. The next 
     day she was fired.
       Why? They told her that Congress had cut the U.S.I.A. 
     budget. But when she applied for other government jobs over 
     the next several years, she got nowhere. She was even turned 
     down for a position as a typist, although she had a perfect 
     score on the Civil Service typing exam.
       Ms. Braude went on to other work. She got a Ph.D. and was a 
     tenured teacher at the University of Massachusetts. But she 
     never again felt the exhilaration she had in government 
     service, and her exclusion from it was a troubling mystery.
       Then, when the Privacy Act became law in 1974, she got her 
     records from the Government. They showed she had been fired 
     as a security risk.
       She had been investigated by the State Department Loyalty 
     Board in 1951 because of casual past associations with two 
     people considered suspect. The board cleared her, finding 
     that there was ``no reasonable doubt'' as to her loyalty. But 
     the U.S.I.A., on the same evidence, decided to fire her--and 
     to conceal the reason.
       Mr. Braude sued, but the courts held that she was too late. 
     In 1982 she finally went back to work for the Government--as 
     a language instructor at the C.I.A. She died in 1988.
       But her family, still angry at what had happened, persuaded 
     Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alfonse D'Amato to 
     sponsor a bill to compensate her for any wrongdoing. It was 
     referred to the Court of Claims for a finding on whether she 
     had a claim in law or equity.
       Judge Andewelt said there was no basis for saying that Ms. 
     Braude ``was a security risk or was sympathetic to any 
     political philosophy not within the mainstream.'' Indeed, he 
     said, the record showed her to be ``a rather typical 
     American. She cared about others deeply and was loyal to 
     her friends, family and country.''
       The judge found that the U.S.I.A. had ``intentionally 
     concealed'' the reason for her dismissal and had 
     ``blacklisted'' her thereafter. That was wrongdoing, he said, 
     and gave Ms. Braude's heirs an equitable claim. The lawyers 
     will work out the amount due, and the court will send that to 
     Congress for action.
       So, 43 years she was fired, 8 years after she died, 
     Beatrice Braude got a kind of justice. I asked her lawyer, 
     Christopher N. Sipes of Washington, why the effort on her 
     behalf had been so persistent.
       ``She was happy,'' he said, ``she served her country--and 
     in a flash it was gone. In time, bewilderment turned to anger 
     and frustration. She had friends and family who cared so much 
     that they had the same burning desire to see justice done.''
       It would be nice to think that the cause of the injustice 
     to Beatrice Braude and other loyalty victims--secret 
     proceedings--is ancient history. But it is not.
       The Clinton Administration has pressed for a so-called 
     antiterrorism bill allowing the deportation of aliens on 
     secret evidence. An unusual combination of civil libertarians 
     on the right and left has just deleted that and other 
     dangerous sections from the legislation. But the same 
     proposals will be back on the floor next week as part of an 
     immigration bill.
       The National Rifle Association, in its criticism of the 
     antiterrorism bill, made the case as well as anyone. ``The 
     constitutional right to confront one's accusers is a 
     necessary safeguard against government abuses,'' it said. 
     ``Our nation has survived for 200 years without resorting to 
     the use of secret evidence in criminal trials or deportation 
     proceedings. Congress must not set a dangerous precedent by 
     abandoning the right to confront evidence against you.''
                                                                    ____

     Re Estate of Beatrice Braude v. United States; Congressional 
         Reference No. 93-645x.


                                          Covington & Burling,

                                    Washington, DC, June 19, 1996.
     Gray Maxwell,
     Legislative Director,
     Hon. Daniel P. Moynihan,
     Russell Senate Office Building,
     Washington, DC
       Dear Mr. Maxwell: It was a pleasure speaking with you 
     yesterday. As we discussed, I am writing now to update you on 
     the status of Dr. Braude's case. As you may

[[Page S6512]]

     recall, on March 7, 1996, Judge Andewelt of the Court of 
     Federal Claims ruled that Dr. Braude had been blacklisted by 
     the Federal Government during the 1950s and 1960s on the 
     basis of spurious allegations of disloyalty and that her 
     state therefore had an equitable claim for compensation from 
     the United States for the wrongs she suffered.
       In its opinion, the court left open the amount of 
     compensation due. Following negotiations with the Justice 
     Department, the parties stipulated to $200,000 as the 
     appropriate amount of compensation. On June 3, 1996, Judge 
     Andewelt issued his final report, ``recommend[ing] to 
     Congress that plaintiff's equitably entitled to $200,000 from 
     the United States .'' For your convenience, I have attached 
     copies of the March 7 and June 3 rulings.
       The next, and final, step in the Congressional Reference 
     regarding Dr. Braude's case is submission of the final report 
     issued by Judge Andewelt to a review panel composed of three 
     judges of the Court of Federal Claims. See 28 U.S.C. 
     Sec. 2509(d). This review should complete the Congressional 
     Reference and result in transmission of a final report on Dr. 
     Braude's case back to the Senate. See 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2509(e).
       It is unclear how long the review panel will take with Dr. 
     Braude's case. However, both the Justice Department and 
     plaintiff have submitted a notice of acceptance of the 
     hearing officer's report, and therefore neither party is 
     seeking review or otherwise raising any objections or issues 
     for the review panel to address. It is our hope that, in the 
     light of both parties' acceptance of Judge Andewelt's report, 
     that report will be adopted by the review panel expeditiously 
     and without modification. It is thus our hope that the Senate 
     will shortly be receiving a final report on Dr. Braude's case 
     indicating that she is equitably due $200,000 as a result of 
     her wrongful blacklisting from government employment.
       It is our understanding that payment of Dr. Braude's claim 
     requires an appropriation from Congress. (In the alternative, 
     it may be possible, if funds are already available, for her 
     claim to be paid pursuant to a directive of Congress). For 
     this reason, we urge you to discuss her case, and Judge 
     Andewelt's favorite report, with members of the 
     Appropriations Committee, and, more specifically, with the 
     Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and State. We understand 
     that the Subcommittee has not yet scheduled a mark-up of its 
     FY 1997 Appropriations Bill. We would be happy to accompany 
     you to any meeting with the Staff and urge you to request 
     that the Subcommittee bill include funding for Dr. Braude's 
     claim.
       Thank you again for your interest and assistance in this 
     matter. Please feel free to call me or Joan Kutcher if we can 
     be of any further assistance in this matter.
           Sincerely yours,
     Christopher Sipes.

                          ____________________