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Comment by rsmiller510 | Hacker News Reader

This is outstanding reporting requesting and staying on the request for information, and it's a fascinating look at Jobs and the government process of vetting White House appointments in 1991.

Note that they are still obsessed with the idea of anyone belonging to or contributing to the Communist Party and even checked if had relatives in foreign countries who might have been Communists (they couldn't find any).

I also particularly like the comments from people who knew him in the background check documents--not always a flattering picture, that's for sure (but we knew that).

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When I was applying for permanent residency in 2003, this question also came up as part of my interview. I had briefly been a member of a small radical left organization in Canada, back when I was 18 or so - and since I didn't know how in-depth the background check would be, I decided it'd be best to disclose it.

Paraphrasing from memory:

Interviewer: "So, tell me about this thing."

Me: "Stupid kid stuff. I was in college."

Interviewer: "So you don't believe this stuff any more?"

Me: "No, I've made my peace with capitalism."

And that was that.

I came away with the impression that (at least for people from countries lacking a near-term history of guerrilla warfare) this was largely a formality.

One of my favorite tidbits from "The Best And The Brightest" is that Dean Rusk, President Kennedy's nominee for Secretary of State, had to fill out a security questionnaire like this one, and to the question, "Have any of your relatives been part of an organization whose purpose was to subvert the government of the United States?" he answered "yes" because both his grandfathers had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

i portrayed Dean Rusk in a Model UN simulation of the Cuban Missile Crisis once upon a time, but was not aware of this. Good knowledge.

To expand on liber8's point, the "red scare" and such seems funny and unreasonable now, but it's important to remember that during the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union were very much enemies.

To put it in another way, would we think the FBI was out-of-bounds today if background checks today included determining if the person being vetted (or their family members) were associated with a terrorist organization? As much as most of us would consider the "terrorism" threat overblown, we'd accuse the FBI of gross negligence if an Al-Qaeda operative made it into a position in the US government.

It's not apparent these days with rose-coloured hindsight glasses, but when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was a very palpable fear that there would be a nuclear war, regardless of actual risk. Certainly there was in the west, a fear that 'those crazy russians' would start something because of ideology.

A russian friend of mine says the same was not true in Russia. They were aware of the cold war, obviously, but 'knew' that their leaders, no matter how incompetant or corrupt, would never initiate the exchange.

I think Americans did too, they just weren't sure about Russia's leaders.

The trouble is that "terrorism" inherently contains violence, whereas "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice. Terrorist organizations are always bad. Communist organizations can be completely benign, and were generally considered bad purely by association.

To put it slightly differently, it's not like asking if someone is associated with a terrorist organization, but more like asking if someone is associated with a Muslim organization.

"Communism" as a general philosophy may not be violent, but if you look in the Communist Manifesto, and the entity which calls itself the Communist Party, the stuff they're concerned about - advocating "armed overthrow of the US government" - was a present and real threat.

Not that I'd care to throw out a blanket justification for any and all anti-Communist measures out there, mind you. But it's possible to downplay the threat excessively too.

> "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice

Perhaps some forms of Anarcho-socialism could be argued to be both completely nonviolent (peaceful) and voluntary (nice). However any form of Communism calling for the abolition of capitalism, which asserts that others do not have the right to continue asserting claims to private ownership of capital independently, most certainly cannot be considered either.

By that measure, no political organization can be considered completely peaceful and nice, making it meaningless to say so about communism.

(Excluding full-on no-government libertarians from the above under the assumption that organizing would be contrary to their beliefs.)

Yes, that was my argument. I believe it stands until a semantic context for "completely peaceful and nice" can be proposed that is disjoint in meaning from "nonviolent and voluntary".

It seems so strange now, but remember, the Berlin wall only fell in November 1989. Even in 1991, the communist threat was still very much on people's minds.

Also, the people in charge of the FBI are old, and likely to have been the kind of people obsessing over this kind of stuff back in the day (during the cold war).

> Note that they are still obsessed with the idea of anyone belonging to or contributing to the Communist Party and even checked if had relatives in foreign countries who might have been Communists (they couldn't find any).

Their continued focus upon past drug use is also anachronistic. I have not yet read the the document all the way thought, but so far they have mentioned it no fewer than a dozen times.

The FBI's priorities seem to be... dated. I wonder if they are still thus.

They're looking for aberrant things that will lead them to compromising information. You get some leeway for the sins of the past -- provided that you disclose.

If you state that you don't abuse alcohol or use drugs, but individuals associated with you state otherwise, that will merit additional investigation. If you committed a crime and lied about it, what else did you do? Sell drugs? Grow weed in your apartment? Hang out with drug dealers?

Anachronistic or not, using drugs is illegal. If you're hiding some dark secret, that can be used to coerce or otherwise compromise you, it's relevant.

Do you want the US representative to some trade organization selling the country out, because he doesn't want someone to find out that did something stupid in his 20s?

> Do you want the US representative to some trade organization selling the country out, because he doesn't want someone to find out that did something stupid in his 20s?

No, I'd much rather they do it for a fist-full of money.

Maybe, but the whole point of these interviews are to try to determine how susceptible a person is to being "turned", that is, blackmailed/bribed/forced against their will to working against US interests.

Maybe the FBI is being stodgy, but if someone has been addicted to certain illegal drugs (I know, I know, use doesn't mean addiction) that's one additional angle an "enemy" could use to exploit this person.

I was told by the holder of a Secret clearance here in Aus that the interviews about background were largely about exposing potential blackmail levers and less about moral transgressions.

He also mentioned three general levels of clearance - classified, secret negative, secret positive. Negative is closer to a background check in style. Positive is the exhaustive fine-toothed comb.

Or even if they were particularly averse to friends/family members/church members/etc finding out about their use. I've known people who aggressively hid their (regular) weed smoking from their spouses. (Yeah, not exactly an optimal relationship, but it definitely happens...)

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