“Those who are concerned with the possibility of legislative abuse ignore the overriding peril of the present century, that [of] the superstate with its omnipotent administration, unrestrained by any checks on its all-pervasive regulatory activities, so vividly pictured by George Orwell in his novel 1984.
“The great danger today is 1984, not Senator McCarthy. If the elected representatives of the people assert their right to lay bare all that goes on within the Executive, that danger may be avoided. An Executive whose abuses and inadequacies are exposed to the public eye can hardly become a menace to constitutional government.”
There had never been any doubt in my mind about the basic problems involved in the executive claim of an unlimited right to withhold information. But it was comforting to be supported by the exhaustive legal studies of Fulton, Cross, and Schwartz.
This was only the start of an interesting association with Professor Schwartz, who later became a headline figure as a result of his controversial investigation of the independent regulatory agencies.
CHAPTER IX
Secrecy Curtain on Iron Curtain Deals
While the Moss investigations continued, the Senate Permanent Investigating Subcommittee was accumulating evidence that showed how a relaxation of government controls over shipments of vital and strategic materials had resulted in a sharply increased flow of these materials to the Soviet-bloc countries. In February 1956, Chairman John L. McClellan, the Arkansas Democrat, opened public hearings on the relaxation of controls over East-West trade.
McClellan announced that his staff—headed by Chief Counsel Robert F. Kennedy and Investigator LaVern Duffy—had discovered “evidence that merchants of the free world are helping to build up Russia’s military potential by furnishing it items which are indispensable in constructing or maintaining a war machine.”
In August 1954, representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, plus Japan, had met in Paris in a Coordinating Committee known as COCOM. This committee had downgraded, or otherwise decontrolled, approximately 150 out of 450 strategic items. Items removed from the embargo list included heavy metal-working machinery, electric power generating equipment, minerals, metals, transportation equipment, and petroleum products and equipment.
“Such downgrading and removal [from embargo lists] has been harmful to the security of the non-Communist world,” Chairman McClellan said.
Chief Counsel Kennedy tried to push into the U.S. Government agencies to find out how this relaxation had taken place, and to pin down the responsibility for the action. Excuses of security were given to refuse information, and there were claims that testimony by U.S. officials might interfere with our relations with our allies. When such excuses failed to stand up, the blanket arbitrary secrecy of “executive privilege” was invoked to hide disputes that had taken place in government on the revision of the strategic materials list.