The CHAIRMAN. Have any of the survey officials or agency co tacts given you specific reasons for their reluctance to disclose information on a task force operation?

Ms. KLEEMAN. It varied. We talked to the agency people by phone because we were trying to get this information as soon as possible. Their answers ranged from fairly complete discussions on what was going on in their agencies to one agency contact, the Under Secretary or Deputy Secretary of the Interior, who refused us any information.

The CHAIRMAN. Did they give you any reason for that?

Mr. SHORT. They stated concerns about our involvement and the committee's involvement in looking at the President's private sector survey.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee's involvement?

Mr. SHORT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Then have you detected any general reluctance to disclose information to the Congress or this committee?

Ms. KLEEMAN. That was the only instance where there was a direct statement of the committee's involvement. In the other agencies, the agency liaison, the names that they gave us, varied from the Secretary or Deputy Secretary or Under Secretary to just some lower level staff people. So we got all varieties of information. We cannot state across the board. We are preparing a summary of those agency interviews for you.

The CHAIRMAN. What about OPM? Have you been able to get the information from OPM with regard to the study?

Ms. KLEEMAN. We had several interview with the OPM task force when it was first organized. We met with Mr. Pranger and his group in our other role, as providing them information based on past GAO reports. We have worked with many of the task force people, giving them some information from past GAO reports. We did interview Mr. Nesterczuk, who at that time was the agency liaison, and he told us that the task force had the ability to collect any and all information; they were putting no restrictions on them. In the beginning we received several documents from Mr. Pranger's office in our role as investigators rather than as assistance to the task force. At a certain point, Nr. Pranger did ask us to put our requests in writing rather than a kind of oral discussion that we had had. We did that, and he forwarded those to the Executive Committee office. But we have had many contacts with the personnel task force.

We also did some more in-depth work, as you asked us to look at the personnel task force itself. Tom, do you have information on that?

Mr. SHORT. Yes. We are preparing information that will be summarized in our report.

Ms. KLEEMAN. We have had many contacts with the group. The CHAIRMAN. IS OPM cooperating with you in gathering this information?

Ms. KLEEMAN. Since they asked us to put it in writing, and Tom says we did not send the letter actually for the information, we have heard nothing from them.

Mr. SHORT. I just want to clarify it. We never wrote a request letter to Mr. Pranger in his role as project manager.

The CHAIRMAN. No, I am referring to what Mr. Devine's people are doing.

Mr. SHORT. We made a phone call to OPM, as we did to other agency contacts. Again, we talked to Mr. Nesterczuk. For the questions we asked, he responded as well as any of the other agency

contacts.

Ms. KLEEMAN. We did not have information on the work plans and the other detailed information that you asked for on the two task forces, the personnel task force and the social security task force. That was the information they originally asked us to put in writing, but then we had not followed up on that.

The CHAIRMAN. You indicated that you were called upon to provide assistance to the survey in giving what you had available in the way of existing GAO studies and at least a search paper for finding the kind of studies they might find interesting?

Ms. KLEEMAN. I personally have met with about 17 members of the OPM task force and other agency task forces that are looking at personnel issues. We are always delighted to share our recommendations and our interest in efficiency and economy in Government.

The CHAIRMAN. I have frequently been unhappy with the results in investigations, even some that I have asked for myself, but I cannot remember a time in recent history when anyone truly suggested that they could not share with the GAO any information that came into their possession.

Ms. KLEEMAN. I do not believe I have ever had that experience in my 9 years at GAO. I do not know about others.

The CHAIRMAN. There is one way to get the attention of all the chairmen around this place, and the subcommittee chairman, and that is to refuse to answer a question for GAO. There is something in the nature of our oversight responsibilities that just starts a little tingle here in the back of your neck when somebody does not want to answer what appear to be maybe innocuous but nevertheless relevant questions.

I want to thank you very much for your cooperation with the committee and for your statement and for the information you have been able to provide. I urge you to advise us if you have any difficulty. We are particularly interested in what the legal explanation is of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, for that preliminary ruling they have made over there.

Ms. KLEEMAN. We will continue to followup on the work you have asked us to do and report back to you.

The CHAIRMAN. I guess I am not sufficiently adept at the technical interaction of all of these various acts to judge just how reluctant someone can be. But I would find it very startling if indeed there was legal opinion that indicated that with the tremendous public criticism with this body over the years for our failure to exercise adequate oversight over "the bureaucracy"-and that means a lot of things to a lot of people-that anyone could seriously suggest that, other than criticizing us for being nosey and meddlesome, a committee had no right to look at anything anyone was doing within the Federal Government.

If we were to follow the reasoning of these folks at this point, there is actually no limitation on what kind of people you could

put inside the Government to ask any kind of questions they wanted to, with absolutely, from their point of view, no redress on behalf of the taxpayers to protect the integrity of everything up to and including our national defense. Short of those things that are in the Defense Department, there are many areas where the Government deals with the most sensitive kinds of information.

I became quite concerned when I saw the memorandum about the horror stories. Presumably horror stories will involve individuals or groups of individuals. Given the egregious generalizations that the chairman of the committee made a short time ago, leading to his public apology in Puerto Rico, we would not like to have that sort of thing show up on a list of horror stories characterizing an entire identifiable population of the country in the way in which his offhand remarks made before some group did that. While these are well meaning people, this committee certainly could embarrass a tremendous mumber of people if the kind of information that comes into our control with respect to individuals, when we are examining abuses of programs, makes us very sensitive to the idea that people should not be just wandering around, free to put anything they want in a report, with no criteria given to them in advance with respect to being careful about protecting the rights of privacy of people or groups of people.

It looks to me as if this has been just completely neglected in this endeavor. I hope fervently that it will not result in the embarrassment of either task force members or innocent American citizens. I am very fearful that, aside from something less than a clear understanding of what their mission is, we seem to have no understanding of what their responsibility is, as someone with access to this kind of information.

You could have a field day looking for horror stories over in the Office of Education, for example, that does not quickly occur to people. I was chairman of the Higher Education Committee during the years when we put great pressure on a previous administration to begin collecting student loans. I recall some of the ill-thought illconceived suggestions we had in their anxiety to respond to us about what they would do to people and how they would identify people and so on. They were all trying to do what we asked them to do but did not start out with the idea that Government agencies have to protect the people they are going after in the same way that they protect the interests for which they are going after them. So even in a relatively benign agency like that, it is not very difficult for them to get off on a tangent and stir up a lot of trouble. When you go over to HHS, it gets even more sticky. In fact, you could find information relatively easily raising questions of the legitimacy of children, the status of marriages, and anything you can imagine, the most private parts of people's lives that are fully disclosed under the law to agencies of that kind and available to anybody who has access to the record. We bend over backwards, and I am sure this President would be the very first to be concerned with any kind of governmental or quasi-governmental activity, that allowed people to get into the private lives of American citizens indirectly, and have big government further invade, even by volunteers, the privacy of the American public.

I have always believed that one of the things the President and I have shared in our philosophy is a very strong desire to restrain and restrict the Government in that respect. I see some real danger. Ever since I saw the memo about finding the horror stories, I have been waiting for a newspaper story with sufficient identification to embarrass people and places. It is only a cut away from-and I thought at first a cut above-the Golden Fleece Awards, but I think it is now something less than that. While the courts stepped in with respect to the Golden Fleece Awards, and imposed some restraints that probably should have been self-imposed, the same sort of thing can happen here.

There really do not seem to be very many pieces of protection. I really believe that when Jack Brooks was passing the statute back in 1972, he was very much concerned that you go back and think of what was driving people in the way in which Congress was reacting to public concern. We were in a period with great concern over privacy and public disclosure at the same time. If you look at the act, it is really designed to throw up in front of anybody given access to Government agencies a warning saying:

Whatever you are doing is going to become public. You are fooling around here now, creating public records, and you ought to be somewhat cautious about what you want to put on the public record.

If they take the position that what they are doing is not indeed going to be a public record, and they are not subject to that kind of restraint, then there is no natural built-in warning system to tell them when they cross the line. That is a concern that I did not start out with when we started looking at this. I was drawn to the serious problems of having a vigilante group make all these policy recommendations for us. But now it takes on dimensions that are even more serious, and I feel it is something that should be brought to the attention of other Members of Congress, who I am sure will share my concerns.

I thank you very much, again, for your cooperation and look forward to working with you in the future.

Ms. KLEEMAN. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Margulies, Deputy General Counsel; Department of Commerce, accompanied by Robert Ellert, Assistant General Counsel; and Joseph Levine, Deputy Assistant General Counsel. Now we have some lawyers.

Your prepared statement will be inserted at this point in the record, and you may proceed to summarize it, comment on it, or supplement it in any way you deem most helpful to the record of this committee.

[The statement referred to follows:]

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

STATEMENT OF

IRVING P. MARGULIES

DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON POST OFFICE AND CIVIL SERVICE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ON THE ESTABLISHMENT AND OPERATION OF THE

PRESIDENT'S PRIVATE SECTOR SURVEY ON

COST CONTROL IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

September 15, 1982

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee:

I am pleased to appear before you to testify on matters pertaining to the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control.

My testimony will describe the establishment and operation of the Survey.

On February 18, 1982 President Reagan announced intention to establish a Private Sector Survey on Cost

his

Control as a key item in the Administration's program to curb

runaway government spending.