<P> When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees . Hiram Bingham, Chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things ." The following year, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, was stripped of his security clearance after a four - week hearing . Oppenheimer had received a top - secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954 . </P> <P> Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation . In 1958, it was estimated that roughly one out of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review . Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, it could be very difficult to find other employment . "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board . "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job ." </P> <P> The Department of Justice started keeping a list of organizations that it deemed subversive beginning in 1942 . This list was first made public in 1948, when it included 78 items . At its longest, it comprised 154 organizations, 110 of them identified as Communist . In the context of a loyalty review, membership in a listed organization was meant to raise a question, but not to be considered proof of disloyalty . One of the most common causes of suspicion was membership in the Washington Bookshop Association, a left - leaning organization that offered lectures on literature, classical music concerts and discounts on books . </P> <P> FBI director J. Edgar Hoover designed President Truman's loyalty - security program, and its background investigations of employees were carried out by FBI agents . This was a major assignment that led to the number of agents in the Bureau being increased from 3,559 in 1946 to 7,029 in 1952 . Hoover's sense of the Communist threat and the standards of evidence applied by his bureau resulted in thousands of government workers losing their jobs . Due to Hoover's insistence upon keeping the identity of his informers secret, most subjects of loyalty - security reviews were not allowed to cross-examine or know the identities of those who accused them . In many cases they were not even told what they were accused of . </P>

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