Washington Cover-Up

CHAPTER I. Secrecy Solves No Problems

Secrecy Solves No Problems

No single factor is more important to the strength of our democracy than the free flow of accurate information about the government’s operations. The citizen in a democracy must know what his government is doing, or he will lack the soundest basis for judging the candidates and the platforms of our political parties.

Our elected officials are given only a temporary grant of power, and only a temporary custody of government property and government records. Neither the President nor those he appoints have any royal prerogative; they have only a limited right to steer our government within the framework of the Constitution and the laws.

It is well to remember that every withholding of government business from the public is an encroachment upon the democratic principle that government officials are accountable to the people. It follows that citizens should regard all governmental secrecy with some suspicion as an encroachment on their right to know.

The American citizen should reject all arbitrary claims to secrecy by the bureaucracy as sharply as he would reject any claims to a right of the executive branch to by-pass Congress in levying taxes. A wise citizen should be as outraged at arbitrary secrecy as he would be at arbitrary imprisonment. Logically he should insist on the same safeguards against arbitrary secrecy that he would against unjustified arrest or taxation. The public’s “right to know” is that basic.

Unfortunately, there is a general tendency to regard government secrecy as only a problem for the newspapers. And even within the newspaper profession there is a tendency to ignore government secrecy until it interferes with a story the individual reporter or editor wants to develop.

I am not interested in pleading for any special right of access to government information for newspapers or reporters. As vital as their function is, newspapers, magazines, television and radio for the most part merely provide an orderly process for disseminating information about government to the people who do not have the time, money, or technical facility to acquire the information for themselves. Transmitting information gathered at a government press conference or through a government press release does not necessarily answer the people’s right to know.

The public has a right to expect that its government’s press releases will be factually accurate, and for the most part they are. We also have a right to expect our highest officials to be factually accurate, but we must recognize realistically that it is only normal for them to color facts with opinions and conclusions that are most favorable to the political party in power.

This manipulation, shading, twisting, or omission of facts—often referred to as “managing the news”—will be limited only by the political fear of being exposed for having made erroneous or intentionally misleading statements to the public. As reprehensible as the practice can be, it is nevertheless a political fact of life and those who lament its existence would do better to bolster the one sure safeguard against it: the people’s right to know—through the press and through their elected representatives in Congress. News management, I repeat, can be controlled only by insisting on the public’s right to go behind the statements distributed by the government agencies or by high government officials.

Those who manipulate the news or try to cover their tracks with arbitrary secrecy are not likely to be pursuing totalitarian goals. Usually the only motivation is short-term political gain. Often it is rationalized on grounds that a few factual errors and overdrawn conclusions are not important when viewed in the total context of the achievements of the party in power. There is also the standard rationalization that a few distortions only serve to balance the distortions of the other political party.

No administration enjoys admitting errors or mismanagement of government. Because the criticism is usually initiated by the political opposition, it is often harsh and overdrawn. An instinctive defensiveness springs up within the defending political party, and the battle rages.

In the classic political controversy, the initial criticism has been followed by a demand for a full investigation. The press has already done some investigative work and has printed stories dealing with all available aspects of the controversy. However, when the probing by the press or by private citizens has not been conclusive, the Congress, throughout the history of the United States, has launched investigations to dig out the facts not otherwise available to the press or the public. And almost as often as the Congress has dug in, the executive branch has refused or been reluctant to co-operate.

A truly thorough investigation of the executive branch can be conducted only in the Congress. It is unreasonable to believe that an Attorney General, appointed by the President, will aggressively delve into an investigation of matters that might embarrass his own administration. For this reason, the right of the public and the press to government information is for the most part contingent upon the power of Congress to obtain documents and testimony from the executive branch.

If the committees of Congress, acting within the scope of their authority, cannot obtain access to all the facts on government activity, then the facts can be arbitrarily hidden for the duration of the administration’s power. Who would argue that any administration should be allowed to bury its crimes, its mismanagement, and its errors until a public, barred from full facts on these matters, decides to vote that party from power? Such a philosophy would put a premium on the Washington cover-up.

Properly authorized committees must have the power to compel government officials to testify and produce government records. If this power is lacking, the Congress, the press, and the public are dependent upon the information or half-information that the executive branch chooses to release. It should be obvious to even a novice in politics that politicians are not likely to voluntarily produce testimony or records that may harm their own aspirations.

Most congressional requests for information have been filled without trouble. The executive branch has resisted, however, whenever it seemed likely that congressional hearings would expose some political favorite or embarrass the administration. Invariably it has been claimed that the Congress was invading the executive branch and that some constitutional issue was involved.

In this book I will show how the executive branch, beginning with George Washington’s administration, has handled requests from Congress for delivery of information. And I will show how the tendency to withhold information has grown, particularly since World War II.

It is not my intention to argue that all government information should be made public immediately, for I am fully aware of the need for security on military matters as well as the need for some restrictions on release of information from personnel files and investigative files.

In practice, we must allow our elected officials the right to withhold some kinds of information from the public. War plans and other papers involving military security are the more obvious examples. But any withholding should be done under specific grants of authority from Congress or under specific grants in the Constitution, and the authority should be carefully limited. The broad right of arbitrary withholding of information is not something that any officials should be permitted to arrogate to themselves.

There is ample justification for laws that set out areas of military information to be withheld from the general public. There always has been. It would be especially foolhardy in these days of serious international tension to insist on a full public disclosure of our military posture. However, this does not mean that all persons outside the military establishment should be barred from access to military information. There should be no question about proper committees of Congress having access to nearly all information on military spending, for this is the only way the Congress can obtain sufficient information for passing laws and appropriating money. Also, the auditors of the General Accounting Office (GAO) must have access to all but the most highly classified Defense secrets, or they will be unable to carry out their duties of determining whether expenditures are being made in an efficient and lawful manner.

There might also be justification for withholding information from the public when it involves diplomatic negotiations with a foreign nation. However, barring the public should not bar the GAO or properly authorized committees of Congress except under the most unusual and most clearly delineated circumstances.

There are other areas of government in which secrecy is justified. These include the raw investigative files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and some parts of the government personnel files. There are clear reasons for barring the public from the FBI investigative files, for these files contain much unevaluated rumor and many unauthenticated documents. Also, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover has pointed out, much mischief could be done by the underworld and subversive elements if they had access to FBI files.

But while we are using a limited secrecy to guard our chief federal investigative agency, we must realize that law enforcement agencies can go wrong if there is not some regular scrutiny from the outside. This was demonstrated in the twenties, just prior to the time when J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of cleaning up the federal investigative agency. We have been fortunate to have a J. Edgar Hoover heading the FBI, but we cannot assume that the office will always be filled by one whose major ambition is creating and maintaining a skilled career investigative agency.

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