Senator Mike Monroney, the Oklahoma Democrat, explained his opposition to the Strauss nomination thus:
“Both the people and the press are entitled to expect from the legislative branch of Government the vigilant protection of the people’s right to know. For the Senate to seek to give protection in the exercise of its power of confirmation is not only proper, it is obligatory.
“I conceive it to be basic to democratic government that the people and their elected representatives in the Congress, are entitled to receive from the officials of the executive branch, not merely literal truth, but full information, freely given without design to soothe, to confuse or divert.”
When the Strauss nomination was defeated in mid-June, I had hopes that the Congress was on the way to recognizing the problem of “executive privilege” for all that it was. But by the end of the year it was apparent that most of the members of Congress had gone back to their little personal problems and had left Moss, Hennings, Hardy, and a few others to wrestle with the big problem of how to obtain an adequate GAO audit of spending that involved more than half the total national budget.
CHAPTER XV
Defiance to the End, Above the Law
From the investigation of the aid program in Laos, Representative Porter Hardy and his subcommittee staff moved on to the aid programs in Latin America. The subcommittee had examined some Latin-American aid programs as early as 1955 and unearthed several deficiencies. But the Eisenhower administration had claimed that the shortcomings were due largely to the newness of the programs and suggested that the subcommittee examine them again five years later.
The five years had now elapsed, and on April 28, 1960, Chairman Hardy notified Secretary of State Christian Herter and ICA Director Riddleberger that he was initiating an investigation of the aid programs to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia.
Several new laws were on the books to facilitate the investigation. The 1959 law establishing the office of Inspector General and Comptroller (OIGC) in the State Department provided that:
“All documents, papers, communications, audits, reviews, findings, recommendations, reports, and other material which relate to the operation or activities of the Office of Inspector General and Comptroller shall be furnished the General Accounting Office and to any committee of the Congress, or any duly authorized subcommittee thereof.”
The Congress in 1960 amended the Mutual Security Act providing the GAO could shut off funds to the OIGC if that agency did not furnish records requested in a reasonable time.