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BS 100-35505 "The disappearance of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., has brought from the Department of Justice the same denial of its own powers that it has made again and again these past three years while murders, beatings, and other violations of constitutional rights have taken place in Mississippi and elsewhere in the deep South. "Constitutional experts have pointed repeatedly to the flaws in the Justice Department argument, but now there is a special urgency in the demand that the government begin to act. "aAttormey General Robert Kennedy and Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall have constantly denied that the Federal government can act as a 'tpolice force,' or that it can take effective preventive action against violence in places like Mississippi. "But the Constitution specifically gives the President the responsibility to see that the laws of the nation are faithfully executed, and since 1886 these laws include provisions (Title 18, Sections 241 and 242) which made it a Federal crime for either an official to wilfully deprive a person of his constitutional rights, or for private parties to conspire to do so. "That the Federal government in the past has not been behaving like a policeman in enforcing these laws is simply a sign of negligence, not of lack’:of legal authority. "Messrs. Kennedy and Marsall need to be reminded that the 14th Amendment changed the relationship of the Federal government to the states and ended the virtually absolute authority of local police forces. "Tt was precisely the intent of the 14th Amendment to create Federal rights, enforceable by Federal action. "Would Kennedy or Marshall claim that officials of the state of Mississippi are successfully protecting the constitutional liberties of civil rights workers (or Negroes generally) there? ~ 3