“A quick review of our files last night disclosed no other papers or documents to be added to the somewhat voluminous releases already made, but we shall make a full and careful search in the next few days to confirm this or to pick out material, if any, which should be added to that previously released.”
Hughes had left the Eisenhower administration an “out” on any omissions of material. Next he sought to absolve Wenzell from any connection with the Dixon-Yates contract.
“We have also reviewed the report which Mr. Wenzell made as an adviser in September, 1953, and find that that had nothing to do with the Dixon-Yates contract and, as a confidential document under the general ruling [of “executive privilege”], therefore cannot be made available to your committee.”
Although Hughes concluded with a promise to “co-operate where we can do so properly,” he made it clear the Eisenhower administration was still going to use the “executive privilege” claim to secrecy if it wanted to refuse testimony or records.
Up to this time, high administration officials had deleted information, twisted the record, engaged in half truths and full deception to obscure the story of the Dixon-Yates contract. Now they were seeking to use the name of President Eisenhower, and give the impression that some constitutional principle was involved in hiding the records.
Senator Kefauver took to the Senate floor to lash out at the concealment of records and testimony in the Dixon-Yates investigation. At the presidential press conference on June 30, 1955, Frank Van De Linden, of the Nashville Banner, forced the issue with President Eisenhower:
“Senator Kefauver charged on the Senate floor yesterday that the Budget Bureau was trying to conceal what he called a scandal in the Dixon-Yates contract negotiation regarding the employment of Mr. Adolphe Wenzell, of the First Boston Corporation,” Van De Linden said. “Senator Knowland says there is no corruption in it, and that he thinks you were just trying to help the Tennessee Valley get some power. I wonder if Mr. Hughes, of the Budget Bureau, had cleared with you his refusal to give Mr. Kefauver the information he was asking down there?”
President Eisenhower answered: “Mr. Hughes came to see me, went over the situation, and I repeated the general instructions—I think that I expressed some in front of this body—that every single pertinent paper in the Yates-Dixon contract, from its inception until the final writing of the contract, would be made available, I think I said, at that time to the press, much less to any committee.”
After seeming to approve an open record, he then qualified it: “Now, I do stand on this: Nobody has a right to go in and just ... wrecking the processes of Government by taking every single file—and some of you have seen our file rooms and know their size—and wrecking the entire filing system and paralyzing the processes of Government while they are going through them.”
The President rambled on: “There are—these files are filled with every kind of personal note—I guess my own files are filled with personal notes from my own staff all through; they are honeycombed with them. Well, now, to drag those things out where a man says to me, ‘I think so-and-so is a bad person to appoint, to so-and-so, and you shouldn’t have him,’ all he had was his own opinion. You can’t drag those things out and put them before the public with justice to anybody, and we are not going to do it.”