“If Congress is to discharge its constitutional legislative and policymaking functions, it must have reliable information about the public business.”
To allow the executive branch to pick and choose what the Congress would be allowed to examine “can, and frequently does, result in giving Congress a distorted picture,” the report said.
Then it suggested the use of two existing powers of Congress to oppose this abuse of power by the executive: the power of subpoena, and the power of the purse.
“The power of subpoena, however, should be used only as a last resort. Utilizing the power of the purse, the Congress can and should provide, in authorizing and appropriating legislation, that the continued availability of appropriated funds is contingent upon the furnishing of complete and accurate information relating to the expenditure of such funds to the General Accounting Office and to the appropriate committees of Congress at their request.”
A week after the report was issued, Chairman Hardy sent a letter to the ICA, State Department, and the Development Loan Fund asking for all documents on programs for seven Latin-American countries. His staff had already obtained considerable information from sources outside ICA indicating mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and other corruption in the program in Peru.
A month later, on October 11, 1960, President Eisenhower issued a formal order denying access to the records Hardy had requested.
Three weeks later, on October 31, 1960, Chairman Hardy made a formal request for specific ICA documents from the Office of Inspector General and Comptroller. This set the groundwork for shutting off funds to the Office of Inspector General and Comptroller under the provisions of the 1960 Amendment to the Mutual Security Act cited earlier in this chapter.
President Eisenhower followed up a month later, on December 2, with a certification denying access to these OIGC documents and eighty other documents requested.
Here was the showdown to determine how far President Eisenhower would go in overriding the express provisions of the 1959 law establishing the Office of Inspector General and Comptroller. Chairman Hardy notified the GAO of the OIGC refusal to produce records. And Comptroller General Joseph Campbell, as head of GAO, filed notice that unless the documents were made available the funds for OIGC would be shut off on December 9.
By so doing, Campbell ruled that the refusal to produce the documents on foreign aid to Latin-American countries was a violation of the law even if the orders were issued by his one-time close associate, President Eisenhower.