Wright Commission
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Commission on Government Security, commonly known as the Wright Commission, was a bipartisan group established by a statute of the United States government in 1955 to investigate government policies with respect to secrecy. It was named for its chairman Loyd Wright, a former president of the American Bar Association, whom the Commission's 12 members elected to that position.
History
President Dwight D Eisenhower and the two houses of Congress each named four members. Those appointed by Vice President Richard Nixon on behalf of the Senate were Senators John C. Stennis and Norris Cotton, Loyd Wright, and Susan B. Riley, a Tennessee professor of education and the only woman. The Speaker of the House named Representatives William M. McCulloch and Francis E. Walter, James L. Noel Jr., a Texas attorney, and Edwin L. Mechem, former Governor of New Mexico. President Eisenhower named former Attorney General James P. McGranery, Franklin D. Murphy, chancellor of the University of Kansas, Assistant Secretary of Defense Carter L. Burgess, and Under Secretary of Commerce Louis S. Rothschild.
Senators Stennis and Hubert Humphrey authored the resolution that established the Commission. Representative Walter sponsored it in the House of Representatives.
The Commission called its report "the first complete and detailed study" of the government's restrictions on access to information and the prosecution of those found to violate those restrictions.
Its report made a distinction between offenses based in disloyalty and lapses in security:
All loyalty cases are security cases, but the converse is not true.
The public source identifies “Wright Commission” as open-knowledge reference entry. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wright, Commission and Open-knowledge.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Wright Commission”, the useful work is to connect “open-knowledge reference entry” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17113000. The Library of Congress control number is n85088187. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Wright Commission”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Wright Commission primary sources, Wright Commission archive and Wright research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wright Commission”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Wright Commission” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.