Kennedy Makes a Wobbly Start
President John F. Kennedy had been in office only ten days when
he gave his “State of the Union” address on January 30, 1961. His
comments on making information available to Congress were general in
nature and seemingly consistent with his campaign pledges. President
Kennedy said:
“Our Constitution wisely assigns both joint and separate roles to
each branch of the Government; and a President and a Congress who
hold each other in mutual respect will neither permit nor attempt any
trespass. For my part, I shall withhold from neither the Congress nor
the people any fact or report, past, present, or future, which is
necessary for an informed judgment of our conduct or hazards. I shall
neither shift the burden of executive decisions to the Congress, nor
avoid responsibility for the outcome of those decisions.”
President Kennedy was not so specific on the subject as Candidate
Kennedy had been, nor was he as precise as the Democratic platform on
“Freedom of Information.” The Democratic platform said:
“We reject the Republican contention that the workings of government
are the special private preserve of the Executive. The massive wall
of secrecy erected between the Executive branch and the Congress as
well as the citizen must be torn down. Information must flow freely,
save in those areas in which the national security is involved.”
During the 1960 campaign, President Kennedy made a most forthright
declaration on the responsibility of the President to keep the
citizens fully informed so that democracy would flourish.
“An informed citizenry is the basis of representative government,”
he said. “Democracy—as we know it—cannot exist unless the American
people are equipped with the information which is necessary if they
are to make the informed political choices on which the proper
functioning of the democracy depends. An informed people—able to
examine, and when necessary, to criticize, its government—is the only
guarantee of responsible democracy.”
As a candidate, Kennedy also declared that the President had much
more than a negative duty.
“The President—who himself bears much of the responsibility for the
preservation of American democracy—has the affirmative duty to see
that the American people are kept fully informed. It is true that
in today’s world of peril some Government information must be kept
secret—information whose publication would endanger the security of
national security—the people of the United States are entitled to the
fullest possible information about their Government—and the President
must see that they receive it.”
Senator Kennedy said that the “executive privilege” should be
reserved for the exclusive use of the President. He added that when
information is not restricted by specific statute, security needs, or
the Constitution, “there is no justification for using the doctrine
of ‘executive privilege’ to withhold that information from Congress
and the public.”
On February 4—only two weeks after Kennedy’s inauguration—Secretary
of State Dean Rusk wrote Representative Porter Hardy.
“Just a note to let you know that we have not forgotten the question
on the availability of records. I am working with our new legal
adviser, Mr. Abram Chayes, and hope that he can be in touch with you
during the coming week. Let me assure you that we will move on this
matter as promptly as possible.”
Chairman Hardy was now optimistic about gaining access to the reports
and papers of the International Cooperation Administration programs
in Peru and six other Latin-American nations. Three days later,
Chayes called at Hardy’s office, and the following day Chairman Hardy
wrote a friendly little note to Secretary of State Rusk saying that
he trusted the access problem “will be resolved quickly.”
More than two weeks passed without action, however, and with each
day Chairman Hardy became more irritated. On February 28, he wrote
Rusk prodding him again on the need for the documents on foreign-aid
programs in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and
Colombia. The subcommittee has “directed the staff to examine
all executive branch documents and files relating to the U.S.
aid operations in the aforesaid countries and to interview such
department and agency personnel as may be necessary.”
There was still no action from Secretary of State Rusk, and ten days
later Hardy had reached the end of his patience. He wrote a letter to
President Kennedy and delivered it to the White House to President
Kennedy’s appointment secretary, Kenneth O’Donnell.
It was a Friday afternoon, and O’Donnell informed Chairman Hardy he
would put the letter in the President’s hands the first thing Monday
morning. Hardy said he felt this was important enough that it should
be delivered to President Kennedy that day, for he planned to conduct
hearings on the affair on Monday. O’Donnell said he would get the
letter to the President immediately.
Hardy’s letter informed President Kennedy of the background of
delays, and the promise of the new administration made to find a
speedy solution.
“Seven weeks have now elapsed since the inauguration and I have no
reason to believe that a workable solution is any nearer than it was
on December 9, 1960, under the former administration,” Hardy wrote.
“You may recall that it was on that date that the Comptroller General
prohibited further use of program funds for expenses of the office
of the Inspector General and Comptroller because of its failure to
furnish my subcommittee with requested documents in accordance with
... the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as amended.”
Hardy was polite but direct:
“I regret the necessity of bringing this matter to your attention,
and would be reluctant to intrude on your busy schedule if I
were not aware of the importance of this matter to you. In this
connection, I feel you should know that it is my present plan to hold
a meeting of my subcommittee on Monday of next week to discuss the
advisability of scheduling promptly a hearing to which Secretary Rusk
would be invited to inform the subcommittee concerning the extent
of co-operation which we can expect in securing the information
necessary for us to discharge our constitutional and statutory
responsibilities.
“As I am sure you are aware, I have made every effort to avoid the
necessity of seeking a solution to the problem in this manner.
However, I feel that the lack of success of other methods to date
leaves me no alternative.”
Before Hardy had reached his home, President Kennedy had called and
left a number. This wasn’t somebody calling for the President, but
the President himself. Hardy returned the call, and was assured by
President Kennedy that Secretary of State Rusk would be in touch with
him. Rusk called a few minutes later, and promised immediate action
on the information problem.
Hardy said that if he could be assured of getting some satisfactory
discussions on Monday, he would be glad to wait until that day for
official word from Rusk.
Rusk’s letter of Monday, March 13, stated:
“The Department shares with you a deep concern that the foreign aid
programs which are so important to the success of our foreign policy,
should be administered effectively and in a manner that is above
reproach.
“I have therefore directed the officers of the Department concerned
to co-operate fully with you and your staff to expedite your
investigation and to make available to you all information and
documents relevant to your inquiry which we properly can.”
Chairman Hardy took Secretary Rusk at his word and assumed that
records would be made available. The next morning Hardy called
Assistant Secretary Brooks Hays to inform him that a staff
investigator would be visiting the office of the Inspector
General and Comptroller with instructions to talk to personnel in
that office. He asked that Hays do what he could to assure that
Investigator Walton Woods receive a co-operative reception.
However, when Woods showed up at the office of Acting Inspector
General James E. Nugent and asked to speak with Investigator Michael
J. Ambrose he was refused permission. Nugent said that as far as he
was concerned the orders under the Eisenhower administration were
still in force, but that he would check with Legal Counsel Chayes
to see if there had been a change. Later Woods returned to Nugent’s
office and was informed by Nugent that no files or documents from
the Office of the Inspector General were to be made available to the
subcommittee.
Chairman Hardy was amazed that the same roadblocks continued to
exist. On March 16, 1961, he again wrote Rusk relating what had
happened and commenting:
“In spite of these developments I cannot believe that this
administration is disposed to adhere to the withholding policies of
the prior administration.”
Then Hardy let Rusk know that despite all the roadblocks put in the
way of the subcommittee, information had already been obtained that
raised serious questions about the operation of the ICA policing
system.
“The data which we have already assembled independently give us
reason to question whether either the Office of the Inspector General
and Comptroller or its predecessor organization has performed in a
satisfactory manner,” Hardy wrote.
“An office like this, exercising as it does an internal watchdog
function, is of particular concern to a subcommittee such as ours.
For when the Congress can be assured that such an office is doing a
good job, then the areas where independent congressional inquiry may
be required become fewer and smaller, and the work of Congress is
accordingly simplified. Certainly we cannot evaluate the work of this
office [OIGC] in any particular, if we are not permitted full access
to its files and interviews with its personnel.”
When Chairman Hardy called a hearing five days later on March 21,
the witnesses showed up with letters of instructions flatly barring
testimony. Secretary of State Rusk supplied each witness with the
form letter prohibiting free testimony “concerning the conduct of the
foreign aid program in Peru.
“I am writing this letter to instruct you that you are not authorized
to testify concerning the contents of any files of the International
Cooperation Administration or the Office of the Inspector General
and Comptroller in the Department of State which relates to an
investigation into charges of misconduct on the part of individuals
or corporate persons or, more generally, to testify concerning
any matter involved in such an investigation carried on by the
International Cooperation Administration or the Office of the
Inspector General and Comptroller in the Department of State.”
So this was what the Kennedy administration called “co-operation”
to “expedite your investigation and to make available to you all
information and documents relevant to your inquiry which we properly
can.” Chairman Hardy had hoped for better, but concluded that it was
time to end the polite letter writing and get down to tough talk.
“Until this morning,” he declared, “it was my sincere hope that we
would see some real improvement.”
Hardy had been frustrated for a full year in his effort to gain
access to the key documents on foreign aid in Peru. And the Kennedy
administration, in office already two months, had done nothing
to change the system that covered up for the dishonest and the
incompetent people who wasted foreign-aid funds. Worse yet, it
developed that twelve witnesses Hardy called in carried identical
letters of instructions from Rusk to refuse to testify or produce
records on any investigations conducted by ICA.
Hardy denounced the Rusk letter as “the most arrogant instruction”
ever given to government witnesses. Representative George Meader
declared that “a curtain had been rung down” on the operations of the
ICA.
Meader, the highest ranking Republican on the Hardy subcommittee,
demanded that Secretary Rusk should be brought before the
subcommittee to explain the barriers he was erecting against
investigations by Congress.
When Chairman Hardy agreed to call Rusk the very next day, State
Department officials said “it would be very difficult” for Rusk to
appear at that time for he was leaving the following evening for
Bangkok and a major international conference of the Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization nations.
Hardy declared that Rusk would be summoned before the subcommittee
when he returned from the international conference, and that in the
meantime he would be calling all other responsible State Department
officials in an effort to get to the bottom of the stalling.
For the record, he reviewed the long struggle to get information on
the Peru program from the Eisenhower administration. He also related
the details of the patient two-month wait to give the Kennedy
administration sufficient time to examine the problem carefully.
Then, to light a fire under the issue, Chairman Hardy disclosed
enough information to make it obvious that he was on the trail of
multimillion-dollar scandals in the handling of foreign aid in Peru.
He revealed that 2 million dollars in U.S. funds were spent on a
farm-to-market highway which led only to unarable mountainous land.
It was started before plans were completed, plans were changed while
it was being constructed, and the funds ran out when it was only half
finished.
He also told about an irrigation project built at Pampas de Noco. It
cost $125,000 of Americans’ money, but it didn’t work because there
simply was not enough water available in the area to make use of the
projected irrigation works.
John R. Neale, director of the United States Operations Mission in
Peru, had acquired a $200,000 interest in a ranching corporation that
received aid under the U.S. program. Although Neale had resigned
in 1958, there were indications that key ICA and State Department
personnel had protected him from a thorough investigation for months.
Hardy revealed widespread irregularities in the 14-million-dollar
drought relief program in Peru. He had testimony that as much as 60
per cent of the so-called “drought relief” went into unauthorized
channels and was no help to the drought victims.
Chairman Hardy made certain that President Kennedy was apprised
of the nature of the mismanagement and fraud being hidden by the
State Department. The reaction was fast, and the Rusk letter of
instructions was slapped down by the White House on direct orders
from President Kennedy.
Brooks Hays, the former congressman and Assistant Secretary of
State for Congressional Relations, assured Chairman Hardy that the
Rusk instructions would be rescinded, the documents released, and
witnesses freed to testify.
Witnesses called by Hardy a week later, on March 29, did testify
freely. These witnesses produced a letter from State Department Legal
Counsel Abram J. Chayes instructing them to forget the whole thing.
Chayes wrote:
“The instructions contained in the letter of March 21, 1961,
addressed to you by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, are hereby
withdrawn. In view of this fact, I would appreciate it if you would
return the letter to me and treat it as though it had not been sent.”
Nothing that Chayes could write, however, could erase from some
people’s minds the memory of this clumsy and arrogant effort
of the State Department to withhold. To ensure its perpetuity,
Representative Meader rose on the House floor two weeks later, on
April 17, to recite the story for the _Congressional Record_.
“In recent years, ambitious bureaucrats have concocted and promoted
the so-called doctrine of ‘executive privilege,’ which, in my
judgment, is a myth,” Meader said. “In my view, there is no right or
power in the executive branch of the Government to decide what facts
Congress needs concerning the conduct of the public business.... That
decision is clearly and properly a legislative decision.”
Meader declared that “the struggle between bureaucrats who wish to
hide their activities and committees of Congress insisting on access
to complete and accurate information concerning public business ...
has not received the attention it merits.”
The Michigan congressman was a Republican, to be sure, but he was one
of a handful who could not be accused of playing partisan politics
with this issue. No man in Congress insisted any more aggressively
than George Meader that the Eisenhower administration make records
available to the public, to Congress and the General Accounting
Office. When Meader quoted President Kennedy’s January 30 address on
the state of the Union, he did not do so in a malicious or partisan
manner.
Kennedy had said: “For my part, I shall withhold from neither the
Congress nor the people, any fact or report, past, present or future,
which is necessary for an informed judgment of our conduct and
hazards.”
“I wish this sentence could be printed in capital letters in the
_Congressional Record_,” Meader said. “Many of us welcomed that
clear, forthright statement as heralding a new policy in the
executive branch of the Government with respect to furnishing
information to congressional committees on request.”
Representative Meader was not critical of President Kennedy for the
delays on Peru, for President Kennedy had personally overridden his
Secretary of State. But Meader was wary of the future.
“As the bureaus and agencies in the executive branch of the
Government have grown in number, and in power,” he said, “there
has been a parallel growth in their efforts to shroud in secrecy
the manner in which they discharge their stewardship of the public
authority and moneys entrusted to them.”
Meader declared that “the question remained whether that laudable
generality [in President Kennedy’s address of January 30] would
be actually carried out in practice” or whether there would be
“procrastination and recalcitrance on the part of officials.”
Within two weeks of the March 29, 1961, showdown, the Hardy
subcommittee was receiving the documents on the U.S. aid program
in Peru. These were the documents, the release of which Attorney
General William P. Rogers had said “would gravely impair the proper
functioning and administration of the executive branch of the
Government.”
What the reports did do was to document fully the sloppy, wasteful,
and corrupt administration of foreign aid in Peru.
From the outset the Peru drought relief program had been riddled with
irregularities. There were shipments of 106,000 tons of grain meant
to be sold to help needy drought victims but which were sold, without
authorization, to pay administrative costs, port charges, and inland
transportation costs. Above all, the grain was not meant to be sold,
as it was, for the profiteering of grain millers in Peru. It wasn’t
to be sold to raise money to buy houses to be sold to influential
Peruvians at less than cost.
The mismanagement of the program was so raw that it hadn’t completely
escaped detection in Washington. A desk officer in 1957 had figured
that only 12,000 tons of the first 45,000 tons had been accounted for
and asked: “Who received the rest of the grain?”
No one answered his question, however, either in the Washington ICA
office or at the Embassy in Peru. When a Washington auditor was
finally sent to Peru, he found that no end-use checks had been made
by the United States Operations Mission (USOM). He stated:
“The lone USOM auditor, a local employee, stated that USOM officials
issued orders that no checks were to be made beyond the offices of
the committees selling [drought aid] foods. Thus, end users were
not contacted and no determination could be made as to the proper
utilization of food.”
Within the State Department and the ICA no aggressive action was
taken to find out whether there was any substance to the complaints
of conflicts of interest, waste, and major misuse of funds. Lethargy,
incompetence, excuses, and cover-up prevailed.
When Dr. Raymond C. Gibson, an employee of the Office of Education,
returned from an official visit in Peru, he called attention of high
officials of ICA to the activities of John R. Neale, head of the USOM
in Peru, who had a large interest in a farm receiving benefits of ICA
funds.
Instead of investigating Neale’s holdings, top ICA officials
characterized Gibson’s complaint as “character assassination.” The
officials did assign an investigator to the case but told him to
“assure Neale of our belief in his integrity.”
Within a few months, the case had become known within ICA not as the
Neale case, but the Gibson case. ICA started a full field background
investigation of Dr. Gibson, and one official pledged to hold Dr.
Gibson to “full accountability” for filing a complaint against Neale.
The ICA investigators overlooked information in the ICA files
which disclosed that Neale’s family had an interest in a Peru
ranch. Continued complaints finally forced ICA hearings on Neale in
1958, but even then his character witnesses included the American
Ambassador to Peru, Theodore Achilles, and Rollin S. Atwood, regional
director of the Office of Latin-American Operations of the ICA.
“When Achilles and Atwood appeared before the ICA hearing board as
character witnesses for Neale, they seemed more concerned with the
motivations of the complainants than they were with the truth of
their allegation,” the report of the Hardy subcommittee stated.
“The high position of Neale and the high position of his uncritical
supporters, Atwood and Achilles, somewhat cowed the investigators
assigned to this case.
“At the time of his removal, Neale had been affiliated with the Bazo
Corporation [the ranching operation] for over eight years, and for
at least four of those years ICA had in its possession sufficient
information to warrant an investigation which ... would have turned
up the basic facts.
“It was congressional intervention that precipitated the Guinane
investigation”—the final investigation that brought about Neale’s
resignation.
“All employees of ICA seem to know, without being specifically
instructed,” the subcommittee report went on, “that the preferred
policy of the agency, and the Embassy in this instance, is to brush
this sort of instance under the rug, with a quiet ‘resignation’ or
‘retirement.’”
“Although the old office of Personnel Security and Integrity in ICA
was primarily responsible for the ineffective investigation in the
Neale case, its successor, OIGC, did not perform with any more credit
in a related matter.”
The ICA had used “executive privilege” to cover up its failures for
several years. Instead of learning from past failures, the agency
continued its negligence with full confidence that “executive
privilege” could hide the failures from Congress, the General
Accounting Office and the public.
The details of the scandals had not been known to President
Eisenhower, nor had he known of the incredible laxity in the
investigative units in the ICA. However, by promoting a secrecy cloak
for the investigators of ICA he had allowed the ICA to hide the major
defects in a vital part of an agency administering approximately 4
billion dollars a year.