Because Senator Hennings and Congressmen Moss and Meader had pushed through the amendment to the Housekeeping Statute over Administration objections, they realized that reliance upon “executive privilege” could now become all the more stubborn and Congress would need to take further action.
“In the minds of most people in this country, governmental censorship probably is associated most closely with war or dictatorship,” Chairman Hennings said. “Official suppression of the truth generally is regarded as something alien to the American tradition of freedom and incompatible with our system of self-government. Yet, despite these national attitudes, censorship and suppression of the truth are slowly becoming more and more commonplace in our federal government, and secrecy threatens to become the rule rather than the exception.”
From the Republican side, the two Democrats were joined by Congressman Meader. “The net effect of the Attorney General’s statement,” said Meader, “is that the executive branch of the Government will give to the Congress or its committees such information as the executive branch chooses to give and no more. I wonder if the American people and their elected representatives in Congress appreciate the significance of this ... pronouncement of the executive branch of the Government.”
Meader declared that the Rogers doctrine “makes possible a rigged, distorted, slanted” picture of what is going on in a Government agency.
“The unlimited discretion in the executive branch of the Government over access to information in its possession asserted by the Attorney General, would vest in the departments the power by ex parte presentations of half truths to build a record which would permit only one conclusion.”
In an analysis that filled six pages in the Congressional Record, Meader pointed out that Rogers admitted there was “no judicial precedent governing this question” of “executive privilege.” “More study, not less, is required for intelligent policy making in these days,” he pleaded. “This asserts a doctrine of executive power which I believe is wholly out of keeping with our concept of democracy and self-government. It smacks of totalitarianism, and I hope it will never prevail in this country.”
But the nonpartisan plea for reason and law made little impression. The Eisenhower administration was smug in its popularity. Leaders of Congress were too busy with political chores to pay attention to any problem not connected with the business of getting re-elected. The press could not or would not think logically or consistently on the subject. Secrecy that stood in the way of an individual reporter or newspaper was deplored by that reporter or newspaper, but by too few others. For the most part the attack on secrecy lacked co-ordination, consistency, and enlightened concern.
CHAPTER XIII
Muzzling the Public’s Watchdog
Joseph Campbell had been treasurer and vice president of Columbia University while General Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of that institution. A pleasant and friendly relationship developed between the two men, and General Eisenhower was attracted by Campbell’s competency in accounting and finance. After General Eisenhower was elected President, he named Campbell a member of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1953.
A year later President Eisenhower named Joseph Campbell Comptroller General of the United States in charge of the General Accounting Office (GAO). It is an important fifteen-year-term office designed to serve the Congress as the “financial watchdog” of all spending in the executive departments and agencies. No single office in the United States is more vital to the task of forcing the sprawling federal government to administer the laws fairly and make expenditures according to the laws.