Washington cover-up

by Clark R. Mollenhoff

“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 much about 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 suffer an 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.”