CHAPTER VIICongress Becomes Concerned
In late 1954 and early 1955, secrecy obscured the facts in a major controversy over administration of the government loyalty-security program. The Republicans had campaigned in 1952 on a charge that the Truman administration was “soft” on Communists and contended that an administration headed by Adlai Stevenson could be expected to be composed of many Communist “coddlers.” In the 1954 congressional election campaigns the Republicans used statistics compiled by the Eisenhower administration to continue to assert that Democrats were “soft” on Communists.
The Democrats contended that the Eisenhower administration was engaged in a vicious “numbers game” to pad the statistics and make it appear that Republicans were tougher about firing Communists or Communist sympathizers. The Democrats claimed that many loyal government officials were being arbitrarily forced to resign to build the numbers against the Democrats.
When the Democrats won the 1954 election—and thus captured control of the congressional committees, they were eager to investigate and document the Democratic contention that the communists-in-government issue was “phony.” Democratic committee members asked for records that they believed would prove their case, but they ran into a thick wall of secrecy.
The extreme campaign oratory and pledges had inflamedthe issue, and it was difficult to get it into perspective. Here was no doubt of laxity in the administration of the security programs by some agencies, and the conviction of Alger Hiss on a perjury charge had made it appear to some Republicans that they were fully justified in charging that the Democrats as a whole were “soft” on Communists. Hiss had certainly held a key role in the State Department under the Democratic administrations, prior to exposure of his communist connections by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948.
Most Republican political figures took a fairly balanced view of the communists-in-government issue. They regarded the administration of loyalty-security programs as a difficult problem for any political party. They saw the need for some personnel changes and a little tighter administration of loyalty-security matters.
But the Republican party also harbored a few overeager, inexperienced, and a few downright malicious men who tackled the job of personnel security with a wild, free-swinging vigor and little real judgment. There was a little evidence in 1953 and 1954 of Republican mismanagement of some security cases. However, no real tangible evidence surfaced until January 1955, when Senator Olin D. Johnston, the South Carolina Democrat, and his Committee Staff Director H. William Brawley started an investigation of the security program. Johnston was chairman of the Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee with jurisdiction over government personnel policies.
The investigation had barely started when the Eisenhower administration sought to hide the bungling and incompetence by claiming “executive privilege.” By the time the hearings had been concluded in the following fall, the secrecy wall of “executive privilege” had been used by the State Department, the Agriculture Department, the Civil Service Commission, and the White House. A conspiracy ofsilence hampered the investigation from start to finish, but I had obtained enough information on one celebrated security case to demonstrate the kinds of mistakes and mismanagement generally involved.
In December 1954 and January 1955, I had written a series of articles describing the Agriculture Department’s unjustified ruling on Wolf Ladejinsky. Ladejinsky, an agricultural attaché in Tokyo, was called a “security risk” by Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson without the slightest evidence that Ladejinsky’s loyalty was questionable. The State Department had previously cleared Ladejinsky following an exhaustive investigation under the new and tighter security standards established by the Eisenhower administration.
I had been able to verify that the Agriculture Department made its adverse ruling on the same evidence that had been examined by the State Department when it cleared Ladejinsky. Harold Stassen, then head of the Foreign Operations Administration, moved in quickly to clear Ladejinsky. His report on Ladejinsky’s file stated that there was no evidence that Ladejinsky had ever been sympathetic to any communist causes in the nineteen years he had been employed as an economist by the government.
Even with FOA and State on record clearing Ladejinsky, it took more than six months of congressional investigation to force Agriculture Secretary Benson to withdraw his finding that Ladejinsky was a “security risk.” Throughout the entire period of time, the investigating subcommittee was obstructed by the refusal of various agencies to submit reports and give testimony.
Philip Young, chairman of the Civil Service Commission, refused to comply with asubpoena duces tecum, for production of records. He cited the May 17, 1954, letter on “executive privilege” and commented:
“The President’s letter points out that it is essential to efficient and effective administration thatemployeesof the executivebranch be in a position to be completely candid in advising each other on official matters, and that it is not in the public interest that any of our conversations or communications or any documents or reproductions concerning such advice be disclosed....”
R. W. Scott McLeod, who then headed the State Department personnel security program, refused to tell the investigating subcommittee of his conversations with Milan D. Smith, executive assistant to Agriculture Secretary Benson. He claimed that to tell what he told Smith on the Ladejinsky case would reveal advice within the executive branch of the government, and would violate President Eisenhower’s instructions on “executive privilege.”
The report of the subcommittee of the Senate Post Office and Civil Service Committee released on July 22, 1956, devoted an entire section to the problem of obtaining information from the executive branch in the face of the arbitrary secrecy policies being used under a claim of “executive privilege.”
“At the outset and throughout the period of its existence the subcommittee and staff have been handicapped in their work by the refusal of the various executive agencies to submit files, upon written request or by subpena, which files had a bearing upon the operation of the Government employees’ security program, the very subject designated to the subcommittee to investigate,” the official subcommittee report stated.
“Must the Congress set up its own investigational staff with undercover men in various agencies so as to know what goes on?” the subcommittee asked.
The report continued: “The legislative function cannot be carried on in the dark. The Supreme Court has approved the comment of Woodrow Wilson who said:
“‘It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of Government and to talk muchabout what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. Unless the Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the Government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinize these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct.’”
The Johnston subcommittee declared that the interpretation being placed on the President’s May 17, 1954, letter was such “as to force the Congress to legislate in a vacuum. Each department or agency head is the arbiter of what he should disclose, and in some instances disclosures were made when they reflected a credit on the department or agency or discredit on a committee witness.”
Once again officials had testified freely on matters that made the political party or agency look good, but refused to produce records that might embarrass them.
The report cited the classic legal treatise,Wigmore on Evidence. In this work Professor Wigmore denies that the Chief Executive or any other officer has a testimonial privilege not to be a witness in court.
“The public (in the words of Lord Hardwicke) has a right to every man’s evidence,” Professor Wigmore wrote. “Is there any reason why this right should suffer an exemption when the desired knowledge is in the possession of a person occupying at the moment the office of the Chief Executive of a State?
“There is no reason at all. His temporary duties as an official cannot override his permanent and fundamental duty as a citizen and as a debtor to justice. The general principle ... of testimonial duty to disclose Knowledge needed in judicial investigations is of universal force. It does not sufferan exception which would be irrespective of the nature of the person’s Knowledge and would rest wholly in the nature of the person’s occupation....
“Let it be understood then, that there is no exemption for officials as such, or for the Executive as such, from the universal testimonial duty to give evidence in judicial investigations. The exemptions that exist are defined by other principles.”
The Johnston subcommittee report also made note of the act of the First Congress establishing the Treasury Department. This law made it the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to “report and give information to either branch of the Legislature, in person or in writing (as may be required) respecting all matters referred to him by the Senate or House of Representatives, or which shall appertain to his office....”
The subcommittee did not contend that it could force the President or cabinet officers to testify on any subject, but it did contend that cabinet officers must testify when there is a specific statute covering their responsibility.
Attention was called to the Supreme Court ruling in the famous case ofMcGrain v. Daugherty, handed down in 1927 in connection with the Senate investigation of the Teapot Dome scandals. The opinion written by Justice Van Devanter stated:
“We are of the opinion that the power of inquiry—with process to enforce it—is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.... A legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information respecting the conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change; and where the legislative body does not itself possess the requisite information—which not infrequently is true—recourse must be had to others who do possess it.... Thus there is ample warrant for thinking, as we do, that the constitutional provisions which commit thelegislative function to the two Houses are intended to include this attribute to the end that the function may be effectively exercised.”
According to the best authorities it seemed clear that Congress had the power to compel testimony when searching for facts within its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court had held that private persons could be compelled to testify, and it seemed equally clear that government officials could be compelled to give evidence. There was no way for Congress to force the President personally to give testimony or produce records except by impeaching him. Yet he was obligated, along with all other government officials, to give testimony or produce records for a proper congressional committee as long as the national security was not endangered.
Certainly the revelation of testimony of conversations between a State Department personnel officer and an Agriculture Department personnel officer on the Wolf Ladejinsky case would not endanger the national security of the United States. It is significant that the Department of Agriculture departed from precedent in previous security cases in making information on Ladejinsky available, but this was information derogatory to Ladejinsky. The Department used secrecy to hide its own faulty administration. The claim of “executive privilege” was simply being used to cover up, and everyone familiar with the record knew it.