To do so the government would have to reveal what it knew.3 On 29 May 1946, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a high administration official a memorandum reporting "an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington."
Acheson's inclusion at the top of the list automatically discredited other accusations which were on target, Alger Hiss and Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.
[1] In late August or early September 1947, the Army Security Agency informed the FBI it had begun to break into Soviet espionage messages.
The Venona project materials would have been conclusive in establishing the cast of characters in the Soviet spy networks.5 Government secrecy allowed critics of the Rosenberg and Hiss cases to construct elaborate theories about frame-ups and cover-ups.
The Commission Report quotes Max Weber, Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret ...
While abolishing the Truman Order program, including the Loyalty Review Boards within the Civil Service Commission, the new Order also made clear that "the interests of national security require that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government, shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States."
The political pressure had increased with the passage of legislation in 1950 "[t]o protect the national security of the United States by permitting the summary suspension of employment of civilian officers and employees of various departments and agencies.
During the 1952 presidential campaign, Dwight D. Eisenhower promised to root out Communists and other security risks from government and defense industry employment— suggesting that their presence had been tolerated too easily by the Truman administration despite the existence of rules to address "loyalty" concerns.