It was, of course, relatively easy to take a broad view at this time when opening records could only expose crimes or mismanagement that had developed when the Eisenhower administration was in power. It would take more courage and great understanding of government to open records that might expose a trusted Kennedy subordinate or embarrass the Kennedy administration.
Barely more than a year after the Kennedy administration had taken office, a situation arose which raised grave question as to what its long-range policy would be. In February 1962, during the hearings on alleged muzzling of military officers, President Kennedy invoked the claim of “executive privilege” at the request of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. McNamara wished to avoid identifying for the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee the Pentagon officials who had censored specific speeches by high military officers.
President Kennedy’s letter to McNamara of February 8, 1962 (see Appendix D), set out an ill-defined claim that the national interest was at stake. The letter contained some terminology that seemed to claim an absolute right to bar testimony before Congress by any subordinate career officials. It was attacked by Senator Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Democrat, as a “dangerous” precedent that would have barred Congress from investigating the Pearl Harbor disaster or obtaining information on a wide variety of scandals.
Many political writers excused President Kennedy. Some pointed to language in the letter they said indicated that he was not setting a broad precedent but was merely shutting off an investigation they considered to be senseless. Representative Moss declared that the Senate subcommittee had the legal right to ask the questions to determine which censors had blue-penciled which speeches.
It was not clear immediately whether the February 8 letter was to be an isolated incident or a troublesome broad precedent for more arbitrary secrecy in the tradition of the May 17, 1954, Eisenhower letter.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Solution
History establishes that any administration may be afflicted with laxity, incompetence, and even outright fraud. History has also taught that any administration can harbor men who want to hide mistakes and corruption.
It is true that no President has been directly involved in fraudulent activity, and it seems unlikely that any ever will be. Holding such a high office would inspire almost any man to rise above the desire for personal enrichment, particularly if the cost might be damaging to his place in history. But any President might be tempted to hide records on a claim of “executive privilege” if he felt he could save some trusted subordinate from the slings of the opposition political party.
In varying degrees, our Presidents have been dependent upon a palace guard. The nature of the position, with all its vast responsibilities, makes a circle of close advisers inevitable. Thus Presidents of the past have sought information about alleged improprieties or corruptions from the very men who have been accused of perpetrating them. Instead of facts and a clear analysis of the problem—whether it was Teapot Dome, tax scandals, or Dixon-Yates—the Presidents have received misinformation and excuses. The accusations have been explained away to our Presidents as partisan complaints from politicians maliciously bent on destroying the administration’s programs. Such explanations from palace guards unfortunately have been all too effective and have obscured the facts that would have alerted our Presidents to conflicts of interest, favoritism, and fraud.
President Kennedy and future Presidents will face the same kind of pitfalls. Regardless of their own integrity, they cannot be expected to conduct personal investigations of each of their subordinates. The Presidents and the people must therefore depend upon investigations from outside the executive branch—by the Congress and the General Accounting Office—for an aggressive search for the facts.