[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 7 (Thursday, February 5, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S459-S460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          PAYMENT OF AN EQUITABLE CLAIM TO DR. BEATRICE BRAUDE

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today with good news. We 
have at long last seen a measure of justice in a case which brings back 
memories of an awful time in our nation's history.
  In 1953 Dr. Beatrice Braude, a linguist, was wrongfully dismissed 
from her position at the United States Information Agency and was 
subsequently blacklisted by the Federal government as a result of 
accusations of disloyalty to the United States. The accusations were 
old. Two 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.'' Despite this, her name was not 
cleared.
  Dr. Braude was terminated one day after being praised for her work 
and informed that she would probably be promoted. She was told that her 
termination was due to budgetary constraints, but the truth was that 
she was selected for termination because of the old--and answered--
charges against her. Because she did not know the real reason for her 
dismissal, she was denied certain procedural rights, including the 
right to request a hearing.
  Over time she grew suspicious. When she was unable, over the course 
of several years, to secure employment anywhere else in the Federal 
government--even in a typing pool despite a perfect score on the typing 
test--she became convinced that she had been blacklisted. The Privacy 
Act of 1974 enabled her to obtain her government files and confirm her 
suspicions. She invested much time and energy fighting to regain 
Federal employment and restore her reputation. She was partially 
successful. In 1982, at the age of 69, she was hired as a language 
instructor in the CIA. Sadly, 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 have reviewed the charges against Dr. Braude before 
on the floor of the Senate, but I think that they merit repeating 
because they are illustrative of that dark era and are instructive to 
us even today. There were a total of four charges. 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 counter-intelligence 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.
  Judith Coplon was a spy. Beatrice Braude was not. We know that Judith 
Coplon was not alone as a Soviet spy; though there were not as many as 
one might have imagined given the American response. In 1956, Edward A. 
Shils captured the overreaction to Communist activities in the United 
States in his fine, small study, The Torment of Secrecy: The Background 
and Consequences of American Security Policy. ``The American visage 
began to cloud over,'' Shils wrote. ``Secrets were to become our chief 
reliance just when it was becoming more and more evident that the 
Soviet Union had long maintained an active apparatus for espionage in 
the United States. For a

[[Page S460]]

country which had never previously thought of itself as an object of 
systematic espionage by foreign powers, it was unsettling.''
  The larger society, Shils continued, was ``facing an unprecedented 
threat to its continuance.'' In these circumstances, ``The fantasies of 
apocalyptic visionaries * * * claimed the respectability of being a 
reasonable interpretation of the real situation.'' A culture of secrecy 
took hold within American government, while a hugely divisive debate 
raged in the Congress and the press.
  The public now divided. There were those who perceived of treason on 
every hand, and so we witnessed the spectacle of Senator Joseph 
McCarthy making such accusations of George C. Marshall. Charges and 
counter-charges of Communist conspiracies proliferated.
  A balanced history of this period is now beginning to appear, but at 
the time, the American government and the American public was 
confronted with possibilities and charges, at once baffling and 
terrifying. A fault line appeared in American society that contributed 
to more than one political crisis in the years that followed.
  The first fact is that a significant Communist conspiracy was in 
place in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, but in the main those 
involved systematically denied their involvement. This was the mode of 
Communist conspiracy the world over.
  The second fact is that many of those who came to prominence 
denouncing Communist conspiracy, accusing suspected Communists and 
``comsymps,'' clearly knew little or nothing of such matters. And in 
many instances, just as clearly were not in the least concerned. And so 
while there were spies like Coplon who were caught, there were also 
innocent people who, having been accused, were unable to remove the 
stain. Dr. Braude is one such.
  My involvement in Dr. Braude's case dates back to early 1979, when 
she 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 in November 1995 and on March 7, 1996 Judge 
Roger B. Andewelt issued his verdict that the 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 was due. 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.
  Justice Department attorneys reached a settlement with lawyers 
representing Dr. Braude's estate concerning the monetary damages. In 
due time, $200,000 in damages were appropriated by Congress.
  I am happy to report that Beatrice Braude's estate has just received 
a check from the Department of Justice. Fully forty-five years after 
her wrongful dismissal and ten years after her death, Beatrice Braude's 
reputation has been restored and the United States government has paid 
her estate for the damages it inflicted during a dark period of our 
history. The money will be donated to Hunter College, the institution 
from which Dr. Braude received her bachelor's degree. Happily, students 
at Hunter College are now learning a more balanced history of the Cold 
War. We are now not in the least concerned about the infiltration of 
the government by ideological enemies. With the end of the Cold War we 
are able to learn much more of the facts of the Communist threats we 
faced. Our response to that threat was certainly mixed and I am pleased 
that we have been able to set the matter of Beatrice Braude to right.
  Senator D'Amato and I wish to express our profound gratitude to Joan 
L. Kutcher and Christopher N. Sipes of Covington & Burling, two of the 
many lawyers who have handled Dr. Braude's case on a pro bono basis 
over the years. It is thanks to their tireless dedication that history 
has been made and Dr. Braude's name has been cleared.
  I ask that an article appearing in the January 26, 1998 issue of the 
Washington Post, ``45 Years Later, U.S. Pays Up,'' be printed in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 26, 1998]

                           Update on The News

                            (By Cindy Loose)


                      45 years later, u.s. pays up

       It has taken awhile for the $200,000 U.S. government check 
     for Beatrice ``Bibi'' Braude to show up--45 years, reckoned 
     from the time she was fired from the United States 
     Information Agency, where she translated French newspapers.
       It has been 23 years since the Freedom of Information Act 
     opened government files and she was able to confirm her 
     suspicions: that the Office of Security recommended that she 
     be fired, citing a report from an FBI informant that Braude 
     was in contact with a communist in November 1946 and that she 
     had visited a leftist book store.
       A decade has passed since Braude died at the age of 75. 
     Most of the government officials involved in her firing are 
     also dead.
       Braude was among 1,500 federal employees dismissed for 
     similar associations and accusations from 1953 to 1956, and 
     6,000 others resigned under pressure of security and loyalty 
     inquiries, according to experts. No one, however, fought back 
     as long and as hard as Braude.
       A lawsuit she filed bounced around various courts for years 
     until the U.S. Claims Court ruled that the statute of 
     limitations had run out. She then persuaded New York Sens. 
     Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D) and Alfonse D'Amato (R) to 
     sponsor legislation that mandated review of the case by the 
     U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
       The Justice Department fought the case, saying that the 
     government should not be judged by today's standards and that 
     perhaps Braude had failed to find employment for years 
     because she was a woman, and over age 40.
       However, Judge Roger B. Andewelt ruled about two years ago 
     that Braude was a loyal American who had been unlawfully 
     persecuted and that she had an ``equitable claim'' based on 
     tort law, which recognizes moral wrongdoing. He ordered the 
     Justice Department to negotiate an award with attorneys from 
     Covington and Burling, a D.C. law firm that continued to 
     fight Braude's case pro bono after her death.
       The lawyers settled on $200,000, and in November, Congress 
     approved the funds as part of a spending bill for the Justice 
     Department. Braude's brother, 79-year-old Theodore Braude, 
     said he was told last week that the check to be paid to 
     Braude's estate is in the mail.
       ``Immediately on receipt it will be copied and framed,'' 
     Braude said. ``The most important thing is that her name was 
     cleared, that the government admitted an injustice. That 
     makes a whole lot of us feel better.''

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