 Soon thereafter, his security clearance was revoked, and he was fired by Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, who considered Ladejinsky a "security risk" despite admitting a lack of hard evidence against him .A public statement charged that Ladejinsky "required clearance from the Communist Party" to work for Amtorg Trading Corporation, for whom he served briefly as a translator in 1930.At that time he also had three sisters living in Soviet Russia, which was cited as making him "subject to coercion" .