get the benefit of your study, investigation, and experience; would you not? Mr. Blair. That is right. Mr. FASCELL. If that is true with respect to your operations, it ought to be true with respect to the other man's operations on the same subject matters. Mr. Poland has some questions, Mr. POLAND. On the matter of proceedings with respect to your draft report, is it accurate to say that your draft report is submitted to the commanding officer of the Defense Department for his comments and that draft report includes recommendations; does it not? What you send him includes recommendations and findings? Mr. BLAIR. That is correct. Mr. POLAND. His objections, if there are any, are attached to that report when it comes back to you? Mr. BLAIR. What he will do is to respond by letter in which his views are made known. Mr. POLAND. They become a part of the folder ? Mr. POLAND. That folder is returned to Washington with the draft report and Washington ultimately issues the final report; is that correct? Mr. BLAIR. That is correct. Mr. POLAND. On the basis of the letter from the commanding officer, which is included in that folder, Washington may strike out some of your recommendations? Mr. Blair. That is possible. They may disagree. Mr. POLAND. As a matter of fact-I refer to EU-230-6—my information is that the final report strikes out your fourth recommendation. Mr. BLAIR. Let me point out this factor. It may well be that when qur report goes into Washington, and it frequently happens, they will do additional development work at the departmental level. It can be that they will develop information at the departmental level or additional field work will show that our factual position was not correct. In other words, there would be no change except on the basis of factual information. It may be that they developed new information, Mr. POLAND. Washington might accede to the objections made by the Department and, to that extent, turn you down. Mr. Blair. That possibility exists, after consultation in significant Mr. FASCELL. They have review authority, there is no question about that. Mr. BLAIR. Yes. Mr. ROSENBERGER. The MAP, as you well know, is administered by OSD-ISA in Washington. We work at the level of the MAAG and EUCOM and they do not always know all the decisions that are being made back in Washington. That is understandable and our Washington staff could have come up with additional information that could have killed a particular point in the report. Mr. MICHEL. Is this the point where maybe some of these political considerations come into play? cases, CID or certain IG reports to go back to Washington to gain access to those reports. In other words, we can get a summary: Mr. FASCELL. Well you tell this committee what relationship should exist in order for you to carry out your responsibilities in this Branch with respect to this problem? Mr. BLAIR. Mr. Chairman, if I may correct a possible misimpression, our working relationship with, not only Army Audit, but the Air Force Audit, and Navy Audit, has been most excellent. It was not a matter of their attempting to impede our work. We have to work closely together. I am happy to say that we do enjoy excellent relationships with them. However, the departmental directives that precluded release of reports locally has not been a material impedance to our work here. You can work across the table with the man and get information from him, but the regulations will tell him no, that you cannot do it. Our men have been very successful in this area. Mr. FASCELL. This is all to the credit of the enthusiasm, initiative, and ability of your men. It does not change the basic problem? Mr. BLAIR. Correct. I would like to point out that I have been with the office since 1952 and Mr. Wootton advises that back in 1951, Comptroller General Warren agreed with the then Secretary of the Air Force when this problem came up. He agreed to their issuing this regulation; that when the General Accounting Office wanted an OSI report that they would obtain the prior authority of the Department. Mr. WOOTTON. It was a Secretary of the Air Force decision. Mr. BLAIR. It would appear that the regulation now on the books of the Air Force was entered with the consent of the Comptroller General. It was part of an effort to solve a problem of access to records that arose when the Comptroller General broadened the scope of his examinations. Mr. FASCELL. We appreciate the explanation and the fact that times change and perhaps that makes changes advisable. However, we get back to the basic problem. We want you to be effective in your work and unobstructed as possible. If there is a regulation, ruling, or agreement in effect which either causes duplication of work or wasted effort, we want to know about it and we want somebody to do something about it. Mr. Blair. There is no question that regulations of that type, in my opinion, have no justification in being on the books. We may be drawing a check from a different agency, but all of us have a common interest in the overall problem of effecting improvement in governmental operations. It only serves to impede our work and slow Mr. FASCELL. Let us turn this thing around, Mr. Blair. you have run across a matter in a military installation in which you have completed your work, would you not make that all available to the military commander for such action as he may see fit, for disciplinary or administrative reasons, or otherwise? "You would not give him a summary and force him to reinvestigate the entire matter to see if fraud had been committed, regulations violated, or some administrative procedure violated? You would not keep him guessing; would you? You would lay it all out for him so that he would it up. you not? get the benefit of your study, investigation, and experience; would Mr. BLAIR. That is right. Mr. FASCELL. If that is true with respect to your operations, it ought to be true with respect to the other man's operations on the same subject matters. Mr. Poland has some questions. Mr. POLAND. On the matter of proceedings with respect to your draft report, is it accurate to say that your draft report is submitted to the commanding officer of the Defense Department for his comments and that draft report includes recommendations; does it not? What you send him includes recommendations and findings? Mr. BLAIR. That is correct. Mr. POLAND. His objections, if there are any, are attached to that report when it comes back to you? Mr. BLAIR. What he will do is to respond by letter in which his views are made known. Mr. POLAND. They become a part of the folder ? Mr. POLAND. That folder is returned to Washington with the draft report and Washington ultimately issues the final report; is that correct? Mr. BLAIR. That is correct. Mr. POLAND. On the basis of the letter from the commanding officer, which is included in that folder, Washington may strike out some of your recommendations? Mr. BLAIR. That is possible. They may disagree. Mr. POLAND. As a matter of fact-I refer to EU-230–6—my information is that the final report strikes out your fourth recommendation. Mr. BLAIR. Let me point out this factor. It may well be that when our report goes into Washington, and it frequently happens, they will do additional development work at the departmental level. It can be that they will develop information at the departmental level or additional field work will show that our factual position was not correct. In other words, there would be no change except on the basis of factual information. It may be that they developed new information. Mr. POLAND. Washington might accede to the objections made by the Department and, to that extent, turn you down. Mr. BLAIR. That possibility exists, after consultation in significant Mr. FASCELL. They have review authority, there is no question about that. Mr. BLAIR. Yes. Mr. ROSENBERGER. The MAP, as you well know, is administered by OSD-ISA in Washington. We work at the level of the MAAG and EUCOM and they do not always know all the decisions that are being made back in Washington. That is understandable and our Washing; ton staff could have come up with additional information that could have killed a particular point in the report. Mr. MICHEL. Is this the point where maybe some of these political considerations come into play? cases. Mr. FASCELL. We will not require Mr. Blair to answer that since it is outside of the scope of his competence. Mr. MONTGOMERY. I would like to return a moment to the inquiry as to the access to, or availability of information to the General Accounting Office. Have you ever been refused access to information on the grounds of security classification? You might explain the basis for this problem of security information in connection with that question. Mr. BLAIR. Yes. Mr. FASCELL. On what do you base that statement, a regulation, order, directive, understanding, agreement, or what? Mr. BLAIR. Regulations of the Department involved. I have one right here for you. “Access to Classified Information"—this is a policy directive issued by Headquarters United States European ('ommand, May 18, 1955—"The operations of the audit or investigation to be performed by the General Accounting Office insofar as access to classified information is concerned will be on a need-to-know basis." Mr. MONTGOMERY. That is all classified. You said “Top secret" a while ago. Mr. BLAIR. That is right. It has only become a problem on the access to top secret. Mr. MONTGOMERY. They make that decision as to whether you need to know the information? They would refuse you on the basis that they thought you did not need to know that information? År. BLAIR. That is possible; sure. Mr. MONTGOMERY. You would have no means at your disposal to evaluate the accuracy of their decision? Mr. Blair. That is correct, but we can appeal to higher headquarters. Mr, MONTGOMERY. I had occasion in one of your field offices just recently, when I interviewed one of the top MAAG officials, to run into that. I had your chief auditor with me, and he was requested to leave the room at one point because they did not think he needed to know the information they were giving me. Have you ever heard of that happening? Mr. Blair. That is the first instance that that has happened to one of our staff members. Mr. FASCELL. We hope it is the last. Mr. MONTGOMERY. I personally, through my evaluation of the material, thought that it would have been very useful to the General Accounting Office man to have had access to it. He of course did not know its value because he did not know the nature of the information. Mr. FASCELL. Under the regulations he cannot tell the General Accounting Office. This is even more ridiculous because the very people you are investigating determine whether you need to know or whether you ought to investigate them. If that is not something! I would assume, of course, pursuing this directive a little further, that whoever issued it is doing it pursuant to regulations issued by his department. if a Mr. BLAIR. Mr. Chairman, it gets down to the problem of access of the legislative branch to the records of the executive. It is all wrapped up in that same ball of wax. Mr. FASCELL. It may be, but I do not see it that way, you do not mind my taking issue with you. It is one thing for an executive department to rear its back when they are talking to a congressional committee, by taking all kinds of exceptions, to give them the information, and they may have more reasons than one for doing it. All of them may be legitimate as far as the executive viewpoint is concerned, but when we are talking about auditing and the evaluation of program dealing with the expenditure of Federal funds I cannot see where that becomes a program which ought to be on the same basis as one dealing with legislation. You are actually checking into the use of the dollars. A congressional committee would be concerned with getting at the facts to determine what kind of legislation you might be interested in. I do not think there is any comparison at all. The rule that an internal working paper of the Executive does not begin to apply to the General Accounting Office is not valid. If it is, I think Congress would be very interested in knowing about it. Frankly, I am amazed at this last incident that we just discussed. We have a lot to go into yet, and it is time for lunch. Mrs. HardEx. Mr. Blair, I have read every word of the 56 pages in this report of March 31 by the Comptroller General, and no doubt you are very familiar with it, but it has been almost 7 months since this was issued. What effort, if any, is being made to carry out the recommendations in the report? Mr. BLAIR. Let me say that the March 31 date can be misleading. Our examination was cut off at that particular date. The report was not released until August 29, 1957. Mr. BLAIR. Yes. As a matter of fact, the interested agencies in Europe have not received their copy let. I was going to make it available after this hearing. They got a message from Washington that they were going to pouch one of them to them. We just did not have sufficient copies to deliver to them. Mrs. HARDEN. I just received it yesterday afternoon. I see it is dated August 29. Mr. FASCELL. That is the letter of transmittal to the Congress. Mrs. HARDEN. Is any progress being made in carrying out the recommendations from the time that you wrote the report? Mr. FASCELL. The point she is making is that the draft report has been available to the agencies since some time the early part of this year. Mr. Blair. That is correct. We have not conducted any followup examination to determine what implementation is being made. That |