Washington cover-up

WASHINGTON COVER-UP
Clark R. Mollenhoff
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 1962
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 62-13288 COPYRIGHT © 1962 BY CLARK R. MOLLENHOFF ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
WASHINGTON COVER-UP
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 unjustified arrest 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.