 In 1942, Dodd became an assistant editor with the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, a branch of the Federal Communications Commission.His responsibilities included reading transcripts of foreign broadcasts to pick out items that would be of interest to various government departments.On February 1, 1943, Congressman Martin Dies, then chair of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, made a speech on the floor of the House that "attacked thirty-nine named government employees as 'irresponsible, unrepresentative, crackpot, radical bureaucrats,' and affiliates of 'Communist front organizations,'" and urged that Congress refuse to appropriate money for their salaries.