It was fruitless for me to try to stand up and tell him what was happening in his administration. So I sat still and took it. The support that came later from editors over the country was most gratifying.
V. M. (Red) Newton, Jr., managing editor of the Tampa Tribune, wrote to President Eisenhower:
“Mr. Mollenhoff’s question at the press conference about your administration’s ‘secrecy policies’ had to do with the House of Representatives provisions in the foreign aid bill that would force the bureaucracy to give information of this foreign aid to the Congress.
“Both the Congress, which votes the expenditure, and the American people, who pay the tax funds, are entitled to full information.”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch in an editorial entitled “Does Eisenhower Understand?” commented: “Somebody is going to have to explain to President Eisenhower that the ‘executive privilege’ dogma, which originated in his first term five years ago, is being perverted into a device for ‘covering up’ and denying the public the facts concerning the government.”
The editorial commented on the “corruption, profiteering and mismanagement in Laos” in the ICA, and the fact that the Teapot Dome scandals would never have been uncovered if such a principle as “executive privilege” had been invoked.
“So it would be advisable for Mr. Eisenhower to look into this ‘executive privilege’ thing much more carefully than he has done so far. He will find that it carries within itself the seeds of scandal, and offers needless temptation to department heads. It should be abolished.”
The Wall Street Journal editorialized on the “Misplaced Anger” of President Eisenhower. It gave President Eisenhower full credit as a “man who believes that public office is a public trust.” But the Journal in its usual fair but solid way called attention to the entire problem of the GAO’s obtaining access to government records so it could fulfill its responsibility.
“If he [the President] were to inquire into the extent of secrecy,” said The Wall Street Journal, “we have an idea the President would be far more angered at some of his own bureaucrats than at the reporter who brought the secrecy to his attention.”
The Hartford Courant, edited by Herbert Brucker, carried an equally fine editorial. Brucker was chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and was one of a handful of the editors who knew the subject thoroughly.