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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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newspapers, and so forth. It was a matter of just having to sit firm again. I was not going to have this thing aired in the press, or aired at all, except what she chose to tell them. We were dismissing her for the good of the service and that was enough for anybody to know. It was equally important that the world shouldn't know just what it was she was working on, or that such work was done at all. A true spy might have been planted there if they had known.

I thought she was just guilty of bad judgment. I never charged her with handing information to the enemy, nor was there the slightest evidence that she ever had. I didn't charge her with even being a member of the Communist Party, which was perfectly legal. There was no rule at that time against it. There is, of course, the oath that they take, and did take then, that they do not believe in the overthrow of the government by force and violence. At that time it hadn't been established by the courts that membership in the Communist Party ipso facto made one a believer in the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence. So that would have been a foolish proceeding. All I charged her with





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