WASHINGTON COVER-UP
WASHINGTON COVER-UP
CHAPTER ISecrecy Solves No Problems
No single factor is more important to the strength of our democracy than the free flow of accurate information about the government’s operations. The citizen in a democracy must know what his government is doing, or he will lack the soundest basis for judging the candidates and the platforms of our political parties.
Our elected officials are given only a temporary grant of power, and only a temporary custody of government property and government records. Neither the President nor those he appoints have any royal prerogative; they have only a limited right to steer our government within the framework of the Constitution and the laws.
It is well to remember that every withholding of government business from the public is an encroachment upon the democratic principle that government officials are accountable to the people. It follows that citizens should regard all governmental secrecy with some suspicion as an encroachment on their right to know.
The American citizen should reject all arbitrary claims to secrecy by the bureaucracy as sharply as he would reject any claims to a right of the executive branch to by-pass Congress in levying taxes. A wise citizen should be as outraged at arbitrary secrecy as he would be at arbitrary imprisonment. Logically he should insist on the same safeguards against arbitrary secrecy that he would against unjustifiedarrest or taxation. The public’s “right to know” is that basic.
Unfortunately, there is a general tendency to regard government secrecy as only a problem for the newspapers. And even within the newspaper profession there is a tendency to ignore government secrecy until it interferes with a story the individual reporter or editor wants to develop.
I am not interested in pleading for any special right of access to government information for newspapers or reporters. As vital as their function is, newspapers, magazines, television and radio for the most part merely provide an orderly process for disseminating information about government to the people who do not have the time, money, or technical facility to acquire the information for themselves. Transmitting information gathered at a government press conference or through a government press release does not necessarily answer the people’s right to know.
The public has a right to expect that its government’s press releases will be factually accurate, and for the most part they are. We also have a right to expect our highest officials to be factually accurate, but we must recognize realistically that it is only normal for them to color facts with opinions and conclusions that are most favorable to the political party in power.
This manipulation, shading, twisting, or omission of facts—often referred to as “managing the news”—will be limited only by the political fear of being exposed for having made erroneous or intentionally misleading statements to the public. As reprehensible as the practice can be, it is nevertheless a political fact of life and those who lament its existence would do better to bolster the one sure safeguard against it: the people’s right to know—through the press and through their elected representatives in Congress. News management, I repeat, can be controlled only by insisting on the public’s right to go behind the statements distributed by the government agencies or by high government officials.
Those who manipulate the news or try to cover their tracks with arbitrary secrecy are not likely to be pursuing totalitarian goals. Usually the only motivation is short-term political gain. Often it is rationalized on grounds that a few factual errors and overdrawn conclusions are not important when viewed in the total context of the achievements of the party in power. There is also the standard rationalization that a few distortions only serve to balance the distortions of the other political party.
No administration enjoys admitting errors or mismanagement of government. Because the criticism is usually initiated by the political opposition, it is often harsh and overdrawn. An instinctive defensiveness springs up within the defending political party, and the battle rages.
In the classic political controversy, the initial criticism has been followed by a demand for a full investigation. The press has already done some investigative work and has printed stories dealing with all available aspects of the controversy. However, when the probing by the press or by private citizens has not been conclusive, the Congress, throughout the history of the United States, has launched investigations to dig out the facts not otherwise available to the press or the public. And almost as often as the Congress has dug in, the executive branch has refused or been reluctant to co-operate.
A truly thorough investigation of the executive branch can be conducted only in the Congress. It is unreasonable to believe that an Attorney General, appointed by the President, will aggressively delve into an investigation of matters that might embarrass his own administration. For this reason, the right of the public and the press to government information is for the most part contingent upon the power of Congress to obtain documents and testimony from the executive branch.
If the committees of Congress, acting within the scope oftheir authority, cannot obtain access to all the facts on government activity, then the facts can be arbitrarily hidden for the duration of the administration’s power. Who would argue that any administration should be allowed to bury its crimes, its mismanagement, and its errors until a public, barred from full facts on these matters, decides to vote that party from power? Such a philosophy would put a premium on the Washington cover-up.
Properly authorized committees must have the power to compel government officials to testify and produce government records. If this power is lacking, the Congress, the press, and the public are dependent upon the information or half-information that the executive branch chooses to release. It should be obvious to even a novice in politics that politicians are not likely to voluntarily produce testimony or records that may harm their own aspirations.
Most congressional requests for information have been filled without trouble. The executive branch has resisted, however, whenever it seemed likely that congressional hearings would expose some political favorite or embarrass the administration. Invariably it has been claimed that the Congress was invading the executive branch and that some constitutional issue was involved.
In this book I will show how the executive branch, beginning with George Washington’s administration, has handled requests from Congress for delivery of information. And I will show how the tendency to withhold information has grown, particularly since World War II.
It is not my intention to argue that all government information should be made public immediately, for I am fully aware of the need for security on military matters as well as the need for some restrictions on release of information from personnel files and investigative files.
In practice, we must allow our elected officials the right towithhold some kinds of information from the public. War plans and other papers involving military security are the more obvious examples. But any withholding should be done under specific grants of authority from Congress or under specific grants in the Constitution, and the authority should be carefully limited. The broad right of arbitrary withholding of information is not something that any officials should be permitted to arrogate to themselves.
There is ample justification for laws that set out areas of military information to be withheld from the general public. There always has been. It would be especially foolhardy in these days of serious international tension to insist on a full public disclosure of our military posture. However, this does not mean that all persons outside the military establishment should be barred from access to military information. There should be no question about proper committees of Congress having access to nearly all information on military spending, for this is the only way the Congress can obtain sufficient information for passing laws and appropriating money. Also, the auditors of the General Accounting Office (GAO) must have access to all but the most highly classified Defense secrets, or they will be unable to carry out their duties of determining whether expenditures are being made in an efficient and lawful manner.
There might also be justification for withholding information from the public when it involves diplomatic negotiations with a foreign nation. However, barring the public should not bar the GAO or properly authorized committees of Congress except under the most unusual and most clearly delineated circumstances.
There are other areas of government in which secrecy is justified. These include the raw investigative files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and some parts of the government personnel files. There are clear reasons for barring the public from the FBI investigative files, for thesefiles contain much unevaluated rumor and many unauthenticated documents. Also, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has pointed out, much mischief could be done by the underworld and subversive elements if they had access to FBI files.
But while we are using a limited secrecy to guard our chief federal investigative agency, we must realize that law enforcement agencies can go wrong if there is not some regular scrutiny from the outside. This was demonstrated in the twenties, just prior to the time when J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of cleaning up the federal investigative agency. We have been fortunate to have a J. Edgar Hoover heading the FBI, but we cannot assume that the office will always be filled by one whose major ambition is creating and maintaining a skilled career investigative agency.
Under unusual circumstances, arrangements have been made for examination of an entire FBI file by the chairmen of the Judiciary committees of the House and Senate. On occasion, the ranking minority member of these committees has taken part. Since this procedure provides for examination by a Democrat and a Republican, it has the strength of being bipartisan. It has the disadvantage of depending on the character and personality of the majority and minority representatives for true bipartisanship. The procedure is a touchy one that the press, the public, and the Congress must scrutinize periodically. Certainly the FBI must have a right to keep its files secret from the public, but it should never be forgotten that some limited bipartisan congressional group must have authority to examine these files if we are to remain secure from possible abuse of power.
President Truman wrapped government personnel files in secrecy on the theory that making them available to a Republican-dominated committee of Congress could result in the use of rumor and hearsay to “smear” government officials. Certainly it is laudable to try to protect government employeesfrom baseless charges. But this “protection” for the government employees has its drawbacks. Such secrecy has been used to prevent government employees from gaining access to their own medical records which were material to a defense in an ouster action. It also shields government personnel administrators from criticism and thereby encourages arbitrary actions.
I learned once of a case in which the secrecy surrounding personnel files made it impossible for a woman to find out why she had been discharged by the government. I will refer to the woman as Mrs. A, for there is no necessity of stirring up more problems for her now if she has been able to find a job after being out of work for several years.
Mrs. A was a woman of about fifty with more than twenty years of service with the Civil Service Commission as a shorthand reporter. She had had some problems with an employee in the same section and some disagreement with a supervisor. She was asked to go to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for a physical examination.
Mrs. A took the physical examination and shortly afterwards was forced to resign. She was given no reason except that something in the physical examination made her unqualified to continue as a government employee. Mrs. A went to a private physician and had a thorough examination to try to find out why she was unqualified to hold her job with the government. The doctor could find no reason for her discharge.
At this point Mrs. A hired a lawyer. Neither the doctor nor the lawyer could obtain access to the records of the physical examination given to Mrs. A at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The lawyer hired by Mrs. A found himself tilting with a ghost. He could not find out why his client was discharged, and yet he was faced with trying to establish proof that whatever was alleged was not true.
I could not believe the story Mrs. A told when she firstcame to my office, but I said I would examine it and see what I could do. It checked out in every detail. I was informed at the Health, Education and Welfare Department that the physical records of all government employees were confidential. There were no exceptions. I pointed out that this confidential status was set up for the purpose of protecting the government employees against public intrusion, but that it certainly couldn’t be meant to keep a government employee or her private doctor from examining her records. Officials at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare disagreed. I made repeated calls to see if I could get the policy changed, but to no avail.
Mrs. A was a little more distressed each time she came by the office, for I was unable to interest anyone in her case. She was not important. She was not the center of a big political drama.
Was it a wrongful discharge? I could not answer the question when it was raised by lawyers for committees of Congress. It was possible the file would have shown justifiable grounds for the discharge. I could only argue that it was wrong to bar this woman, her lawyer, and her doctor from examination of a file giving the results of her government health examination.
Despite the inequity in this case and others similar to it, a general belief prevailed in Washington that secrecy on government personnel files and loyalty-security files was an unmixed blessing. The fallacy of this contention was impressed on me every time I saw Mrs. A. She was defeated in appearance, and she was deeply hurt.
There is a sharp cruelty in secrecy that results in such injury to an individual, and there is great damage to our government—and to people’s faith in it—when secrecy is used to cover up mismanagement and corruption. I am gravely concerned over any obstructions put in the way of congressional committees’ investigating the abuses of secrecy. Wherewould we be if Congress had not looked into such nefarious schemes as the Teapot Dome scandals of the Harding administration or the tax “fixes” in the Truman administration?
Have we, a self-governing people, learned anything from these black marks on our history? I am afraid that we have not learned enough yet. I am afraid that the people as a whole, and many persons in the press and Congress, tend to disregard the danger signs and accept the self-serving declarations of virtue from their Presidents or other high officials. A few newspapers, a few diligent investigators for congressional committees, a few senators and a few congressmen have had to take the whole responsibility for breaking through unjustified secrecy and uncovering the truth.
In my twenty years as a newspaper correspondent I have been concerned with this problem of information policies at every level of government—starting in a local police station, city hall, county courthouse, and state capitol. For the past eleven years I have been covering the federal government for the Washington Bureau of Cowles Publications. I have been fortunate to have the freedom to follow any investigations that interested me, as well as the enthusiastic support of several newspapers. My position has afforded me the privilege of a day-to-day acquaintanceship with every major investigation in Washington since 1950.
The problem of the Washington cover-up became a major interest to me in connection with the scandals in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and the Internal Revenue Service beginning in 1950. The investigations of the RFC were of a reasonably short duration. The pattern of “political favoritism” in administering this government loaning agency was ended when W. Stuart Symington, later a United States Senator, was named by President Truman to restore order. Symington instituted the “fishbowl policy” that brought most of the RFC operations out in the open.
The problems with secrecy in the Internal Revenue Serviceremained a major news story for more than two years. The Internal Revenue law provides that it is unlawful to disclose the information on the tax returns submitted by U.S. taxpayers. It was a secrecy established in a specific statute, and the purpose was to protect the privacy of the finances of individual taxpayers. However, investigations by Senator John J. Williams, the Delaware Republican, and a House subcommittee, headed by Representative Cecil King, the California Democrat, showed that the secrecy was used to shield crooked tax agents and tax collectors from exposure and prosecution.
The Alcohol Tax Unit (ATU), a division of the Internal Revenue Service, had even set up procedures to provide for secret settlements of criminal law violations. Also, ATU provided secret hearings on applications for a federal license to wholesale liquor or beer. A racketeer found it possible to go into a secret hearing, give perjured testimony, and obtain a license with the help of weak or corrupt ATU administrators.
The lesson was clear in each case: secrecy corrupts. It allowed government officials to dispense favors behind closed doors. When decisions were secret, there was no need to provide any consistency in decisions or in penalties. It was impossible for the public or the press to obtain enough information to register an informed objection.
During fights to open records in the Internal Revenue Service, I became acquainted with James S. Pope, executive editor of the LouisvilleCourier-Journalwho was then chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. We worked together in forcing the Internal Revenue Service to open certain “compromise settlements” of tax cases as well as the ATU hearings.
In exploring these and other information problems, I worked closely with the late Harold Cross, former specialcounsel for the American Society of Newspaper Editors; J. Russell Wiggins, executive editor of the WashingtonPost and Times Herald; Herbert Brucker, editor of the HartfordCourant; and V. M. (Red) Newton, managing editor of the TampaTribune.
We shared a deep suspicion of government secrecy and also resented what it did in corrupting our system of government. I was privileged to serve as a member of the national Freedom of Information Committee of Sigma Delta Chi (the journalism fraternity) and handle the Washington phase of the reports for Red Newton for a period of more than five years. For a longer period I have worked with the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Freedom of Information Committee. I have testified before committees of the House and Senate.
My testimony before the Moss subcommittee in November 1955 was the first testimony on the scope of the problem of “executive privilege” advanced by the Eisenhower administration. I have kept in touch continuously with Representative John Moss, the California Democrat, and the members of his staff from the time their subcommittee was established. I am particularly indebted to Staff Administrator Sam Archibald, Staff Consultant Paul Southwick, and staff lawyers John Mitchell and the late Jacob Scher.
Others who were particularly helpful and co-operative over these years were the late Senator Thomas Hennings (Dem., Mo.); Charles Slayman, counsel for the Hennings Judiciary Subcommittee; Senator John McClellan (Dem., Ark.), and Robert F. Kennedy, who was his chief counsel; Herbert Maletz, chief counsel for a House Judiciary Subcommittee; Representative Porter Hardy (Dem., Va.); John Reddan, chief counsel for the Hardy Government Operations Subcommittee; Representative F. Edward Hebert (Dem., La.); James Naughton, chief counsel for the Fountain Government Operations Subcommittee; and John Courtney,chief counsel for the Hebert Armed Services Subcommittee; Arthur John Keefe, counsel for the Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee; and Representative George Meader (Rep., Mich.).
The knowledge of the secrecy problem gained by most of these lawmakers and lawyers has been understandably confined to their experiences with one or two committees, whereas I have had the opportunity to become aware of the day-to-day activities of nearly all the committees. For that reason, and because of my alarm at the public apathy over government secrecy, I have decided to set the whole story down in one place. Most of the story is taken from the official records of congressional committees—the sworn testimony, the correspondence with government agencies, and the official reports of Senate and House investigators. As much as possible, I have put it together in chronological, narrative form so that the reader may discover, as I did, how the abuse of government secrecy has spread and just how vast and serious the scope of it has become. At the end of the book I will make some recommendations that I hope may serve as a guide to eliminating this serious threat to our democratic form of government.