Why does David Ogden's Justice Department transition team recall "The Ordeal of Otto Otepka"?
As deputy director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Security in the late 1950s and early '60s, Otto Otepka was tasked with screening State Department applicants for their reliability as government employees.
Shortly after the Kennedy transition team replaced Eisenhower's team, Otepka was defamed and fired by Kennedy's secretary of state, Dean Rusk, for not approving the political extremists the Kennedy administration wanted hired. Congress fully cleared Otepka of Rusk's charges, but he never was reinstated.
Despite the vicious media blitzkrieg unleashed on him, the admittedly choleric Sen. Joe McCarthy was right both na?ve and malevolent traitors were being given sensitive government jobs and endangering American security.
"The Venona Papers," declassified in 1995, shocked the world with the sagacity of Otepka's espionage concerns. Scores of famous government agents were American Soviet spies. In addition, the Cambridge Communist homosexual spy ring of Philby, Burgess and McLean in the 1950s proved that immorality was a similar threat to national security.
Immoral people are commonly liable to blackmail and bribery via alcohol, drugs, and/or illicit sex. On point, the U.S. Justice Department is charged with the prosecution of all cases of espionage and subversion. This brings us to Mr. Ogden's Big Pornography bosses and the "Executive Order 10450 Security requirements for Government employment."
The Executive Order (as of April 27, 1953) says that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the U.S. government, "shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States."
"American tradition [is] that all persons should receive fair, impartial, and equitable treatment at the hands of the government"; therefore those employed in any "departments and agencies" should be persons "clearly consistent with the interests of the national security."
The Executive Order says national security is at risk if a candidate reveals but is not "limited to" the following. I focused here only on four rules addressing morality in government.
Mr. Ogden's Big Pornography and other equally radical, even sexually revolutionary patrons strongly argue against his service as "trustworthy."
Fidelis, a Catholic-based pro-family, legal, research and educational organization, was the first to warn the public about David Ogden's history. Most interesting, in light of Executive Order 10450 is Ogden's "confirmation conversion" in which he allegedly abandoned his leftist career at the outside the Senate Judiciary Committee door. Ogden, Obama's nominee for deputy attorney general, answered questions before the committee earlier this month.
Fidelis' Brian Burch described Ogden's appearance as "a textbook example of an ambitious nominee saying whatever he needs to say to get the votes for confirmation." Fidelis says:
"Executive Order 10450 Security requirements for Government employment" shuts the door on government employment to someone who appears unreliable or untrustworthy, especially one who offers "deliberate misrepresentations, falsifications, or omissions of material facts." Fidelis reports that "pressed by senators on his views during his confirmation hearing," Ogden was transformed, reformed and rehabilitated.
Suddenly, after years arguing child pornography laws and Internet filters are unconstitutional, our Harvard Law School maven thinks the laws are vital and claims immaturity for his career of shilling for Big Pornography. He apparently couldn't recall if he was paid, or if he just pushed pornography "for the public good" (pro bono publico).
Said Fidelis' Burch, the immature "Ogden spent his entire life arguing for far-left extremist positions. And he expects us to believe he has matured and abandoned those views now that he is before the Senate? ... David Ogden is a hired gun from Playboy and the ACLU. He can't run from his long record of opposing common-sense laws protecting families, women and children."
As a Big Pornography advocate, what is Mr. Ogden anxious to hide? Executive Order 10450 would find Mr. Ogden highly vulnerable to "coercion, influence, or pressure which may cause him to act contrary to the best interests of the national security."
Mr. Burch says, "At a time when America's families are under increasing assault, Mr. Ogden is a dangerous choice for a position whose responsibilities include the enforcement of our nation's laws."
Dangerous? With Mr. Ogden leading President Obama's Justice Department transition team, I can hear Otto Otepka wondering, "What part of the word 'team' do we not understand?"