From Washington Straight

A major security scandal is expected to explode into the headlines in the near future. And right smack in the line of fire is the State Department.

Shortly after the Kennedy Administration took over, the State Department’s Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs—once one of Washington’s most efficient gumshoe agencies — underwent a series of reorganizations that left it in a mess. First, the Bureau was placed under the charge of a political boss whose background — all other considerations aside—gave him none of the technical competences necessary for heading the security bureau of the highly sensitive State Department. After his rather hasty departure—which followed a public outcry against the appointment—the Administration reorganized the Bureau, reportedly along lines suggested by old Cuba hand, William Wieland. (Wieland, you may recall, was one of the Foreign Service Officers who helped sell Fidel Castro to the U.S. Government as a sort of Cuban Robin Hood despite reports on Castro’s Communist associates and leanings by Ambassador Earl T. Smith and others.) Security was split off from Consular Affairs with the result that security in the Department came to be regarded as a formality—to be ignored when possible and evaded when not.

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A major security scandal is expected to explode into the headlines in the near future. And right smack in the line of fire is the State Department.

Shortly after the Kennedy Administration took over, the State Department’s Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs—once one of Washington’s most efficient gumshoe agencies — underwent a series of reorganizations that left it in a mess. First, the Bureau was placed under the charge of a political boss whose background — all other considerations aside—gave him none of the technical competences necessary for heading the security bureau of the highly sensitive State Department. After his rather hasty departure—which followed a public outcry against the appointment—the Administration reorganized the Bureau, reportedly along lines suggested by old Cuba hand, William Wieland. (Wieland, you may recall, was one of the Foreign Service Officers who helped sell Fidel Castro to the U.S. Government as a sort of Cuban Robin Hood despite reports on Castro’s Communist associates and leanings by Ambassador Earl T. Smith and others.) Security was split off from Consular Affairs with the result that security in the Department came to be regarded as a formality—to be ignored when possible and evaded when not.