Robert Donovan, in his book The Inside Story, related that President Eisenhower “told the Cabinet he wanted it clearly understood that he was never going to yield to the point where he would become known as a President who had practically crippled the Presidency.” This determination accounted for President Eisenhower’s frequent use of the comment that he was merely reiterating a principle used by Presidents “back to the time of George Washington.”
The “historic precedents,” as I have indicated earlier, did not stand up under close investigation. In an article for the Federal Bar Journal of January 1959, J. Russell Wiggins, executive editor of the Washington Post and Times Herald, told how the historic background—as President Eisenhower understood it—was first described. It appeared in the Federal Bar Journal on April 1949, in an article by Herman Wolkinson, a Justice Department lawyer. Wiggins pointed out that an almost identical copy of the Wolkinson memorandum accompanied the May 17, 1954, letter written by Eisenhower to Defense Secretary Wilson. An expanded version of the same material was used by Attorney General Rogers in testimony before Congress.
Wolkinson’s article had stated:
“In the great conflicts which have arisen in the administrations of Washington, Jackson, Tyler, Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover, the Executive has always prevailed.”
Wiggins’ painstaking research had convinced him quite otherwise. “This contention is simply not supportable even on the basis of the historical episodes to which Mr. Wolkinson alludes and which the Department of Justice has incorporated in its memorandum.”
Getting down to the specific episodes, Wiggins told how Congress, in March 1792, had passed a resolution to initiate an investigation of the disastrous expedition into Indian territory by Major General St. Clair. The investigating committee had asked for all records and papers dealing with the expedition. President Washington did call a cabinet meeting to discuss whether the papers should be given to Congress but finally concluded “to make all the papers available” to Congress. (See Chapter II.)
“If this case is precedent for anything,” wrote Wiggins, “it is a precedent to show that the first President was in favor of disclosure, as a principle of government, and as a constitutional matter, except in some possible instances which might later arise, but which in this affair did not exist.”
There was one time when President Washington did refuse to send papers to the Hill. This was when the House of Representatives asked him for the instructions and papers furnished our ambassadors in negotiating the Jay treaty. “But,” said Wiggins, “this no more sustains the claim to sweeping powers of non-disclosure than the first episode. Here, President George Washington refused the papers on the sound and specific constitutional ground that the Senate and not the House was entrusted with authority to advise and consent on the making of treaties.”
After reviewing most of the so-called “withholding precedents” used by Wolkinson and President Eisenhower, Wiggins pointed out that President Jackson and President Tyler had bitterly opposed giving papers to Congress but in the end had forwarded all records requested.
Concluded Wiggins: “In most of Mr. Wolkinson’s examples, the Congress prevailed, and got precisely what it sought to get.”