JOHN SERVICE 5

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SERVICE

Continue

INT: Yes, that was my fault, I interrupted you. I was thinking more also in terms of freedom of speech. Do you think it damaged freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of dialogue?

JS: Well, it did for the time. I'm not sure how permanent it is. American politics have become venomous certainly in recent years, but I'm not sure we can blame it all on McCarthy. There'd always been periods of intolerance and so on, periodic recurrences of this sort of thing. It certainly, for a while, made people in the State Department more cautious. I would guess nowadays, the State Department is operating reasonably. The main thing about the State Department, of course, is that we don't know how many good people never came and tried to enter the Foreign Service during the McCarthy days. I mean, certainly they were discouraged from joining this career, taking up this career, so we probably lost a lot of people. But I think the Foreign Service has gotten back to being a attractive career.

INT: What were they mainly frightened of, do you think?

JS: Well, of things like being thrown out for reporting and so on.

INT: Could you say they were mainly frightened of being thrown out for reporting, 'cos my question's not going to be in it. So what were they mainly frightened of?

JS: Oh, well, frightened of not having full independence to express their own views and make their independent reports, objective reports.

INT: Why would they be frightened of that? What was the danger? Was it that they would be accused of being Communists?

JS: Yes, that's right.

INT: So what was the danger? You say the danger was...

JS: Well, I think that they were accused... they were afraid of being accused of improper political beliefs, being pro-Communist or pro whatever was unpopular at that time, that their freedom was compromised to report and perform as they thought best.

INT: Great, thank you very much. That's terrific.

JS: OK.

(End of tape)