“I think we all appreciate the fact that under the precedent that when the President has matters up with his Cabinet that he wants to withhold them from public inspection, he has that right; but we find here on numerous occasions when the arms of Congress—the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and various and sundry agencies set up by the Congress to administer laws which our Congress has the prime responsibility for administering—they, themselves, are asserting the privilege and they are deciding whether they want to withhold the information or not—things the President does not even know anything about—so that committees of Congress are being hampered in their effort to get information.”
Senator Kefauver started to read from a report of the House Government Operations Committee: “The most flagrant abuse of the so-called legal authority is the misuse of the May 17, 1954, letter from the President to the Secretary of Defense at the time of the Army-McCarthy controversy.... It seems inconceivable that 19 Government departments and agencies would cite this letter as a shadowy cloak of authority to restrict or withhold information from the Congress and the public. This flimsy pretext of so-called legal authority only serves to demonstrate to what extent executive departments and agencies will go to restrict or withhold information.”
Senator Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, interrupted to emphasize that it was a House committee report Senator Kefauver was reading, and that “I want to have that clear.”
Senator Kefauver continued: “We had a case here [meaning among Senate committees], where the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission pled privilege to his conversation with Sherman Adams, when apparently Mr. Adams was trying to get a hearing postponed in a quasi-legislative agency.
“We have a report by Senator Olin Johnston’s committee in which they take great exception to the pleading of privilege by Mr. [R. W. Scott] McLeod in the Ladejinsky case with which you are familiar. We had the Al Sarena [mining land grant] plea of privilege. We had some pleas of privilege in connection with Mr. Gordon Gray when he was dealing with rapid tax amortization, so it is getting to the point, Mr. Rogers, where not the President but any of these agencies ... anybody who does not want any information to be made public, just pleads privilege.”
Senator Dirksen intervened to volunteer comment “before the Attorney General replies, because I was a part of the proceeding on the McCarthy committee, and I was a part of the proceeding involving the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
“If it is all the same to Senator Dirksen, I had rather ask my questions, and you may ask them in your time,” Kefauver replied.
“I do not think there has been any great tendency [to secrecy] in the last few years,” Rogers said. “I was counsel for committees in ... 1947, 1948, and 1949 ... and I do not believe that the problems are much different now and then.”
Then Rogers sought to postpone further discussion. “I would like, I think maybe in the interest of time, to delay a full discussion of this, because I have agreed with Senator Hennings to appear before his committee to discuss this whole matter.”
Senator Kefauver said he would be glad to see the whole matter examined thoroughly by Senator Hennings, but added: “I do think at this time on such an important matter that you should give us some expression of your position, or what your position will be.”