Washington cover-up

by Clark R. Mollenhoff

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 of their 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 to withhold 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 these files 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.