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affecting business; professional groups, like the Illuminating Engineering Society, draft lighting standards whose guiding principle seems to be to sell more electricity. As I recall, Senator, you were responsible for including that poignant example in the record of the earlier hearings.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that a few nights ago CBS ran a special entitled "The Corporation," featuring Mr. William Keeler of Phillips Petroleum. During the course of that program, Mr. Keeler was quoted on the benefits of his sitting on Government councils: "I could do nothing that would be involving our company, make any decisions any way involving our company. So it was clear that way. But by the same token, having gotten acquainted with so many people and knowing them on a personal basis it made it real easy for me to go into Government and discuss problems with them." Of course, that is the problem you have pointed out in the several years leading up to the Advisory Committee Act and now in connection with the oversight hearings.

I should point out that that program ended on a surprise note. Phillips Petroleum was one of several illegal contributors to the President's reelection campaign.

Senator METCALF. Maybe that was the result of his friendship.

Mr. RODGERS. That is a point I would like to address. I think it is important. That these advisory groups are synonomous with Government power hardly requires further documentation, Mr. Chairman, but I cannot resist mentioning this example, which is of some currency: political contributions.

Contributors to the President's re-election campaign included 87 individuals in the oil and gas industry who simultaneously exercised advisory roles through either the American Petroleum Institute (the trade association), the National Petroleum Council, or both.

I have counted over $1 million in contributions (some of the money was returned) flowing into the President's re-election campaign from individuals whose companies were represented on the National Industrial Pollution Control Council. Mr. Donald Kendall, for example, chaired NIPCC'c beverage subcouncil, and contributed $28,000 to the campaign. The chairman of NIPCC was Mr. Bert Cross of the 3M Company, which has admitted to an illegal $30,000 contribution. Another member of NIPCC came from a corporation which, coincidentally, was the recipient of a $2.3 million contract to explore the environmental effects of coal mining.

Mr. TURNER. Where did you obtain this information?

Mr. RODGERS. The information has been made public after the cutoff date of April 7, under the law, and before the cutoff date of April 7 through disclosures made by Common Cause. The backup information will be provided to the committee. I might add for the record that I was aided by Jack Schenendorf, who is my assistant at Georgetown Law Center.

Senator METCALF. The whole documenation will be incorporated in the appendix.

Mr. RODGERS. I would also like to submit for the record an article from the Minneapolis Tribune, which was reprinted a few days ago in the Congressional Record. This article points out how NIPCC was used simultaneously to lobby for industry on pollution issues and to raise campaign funds.

Senator METCALF. That will be incorporated, too.

Mr. RODGERS. It seems to me it is bad enough for politicians to shake down businessmen who deal with the government. It is worse to extract the quid while at the same time offering the quo in the form of governmental power shoved through advisory committees.

Before talking about a few problems in the act, I would like to leave the subcommittee with this positive note. There is reform in motion because of this legislation perhaps not exactly what Congress had in mind, but reform nonetheless. Most advisory committees are being publicly announced, some of them are opening up their deliberations, and public awareness of their activities is on the rise.

There is an opportunity to find out more about advisory committees and because of that, learning something more about the government to which they offer advice.

I think these committees are genuine windows into government policymaking. More and more people are coming to appreciate that.

In a few pages of my prepared statement, I give examples of substantive issues that are covered by these advisory committees. These are examples where I have received the minutes of the advisory groups and have noted interesting and important issues they discuss, such as transportation hardware for the handicapped, school bus safety, drinking water standards, and so on.

One particular group I would like to mention is EPA's Hazardous Materials Advisory Committee. I had some difficulty gaining access to both the minutes and several reports promulgated by that group. Senator Percy published early in the year my correspondence on the subject and the reactions I received.

When you read the minutes, you learn that when Monsanto discloses information about uses and quantities of hazardous products, it prefers to deal with a single government spokesman on a confidential basis; and that FDA "researchers have stated the (herbicide) silvex is as bad as 2, 4, 5-T and should have been considered along with the latter." In my prepared statement I give other examples of these substantive issues that, it seems to me, ought to be explored by people with an interest of the subject.

At the bottom of page six, I quote from the committee minutes to give you an idea of how hostile this group is to disclosure.

Yet another collection of advisory committees deserving close attention is the FDA's over-the-counter (OTC) drug products review panels, which will pass judgment on the safety, efficacy and adequacy of labeling of products ranging from deodorants to cold remedies to first-aid preparations. I will submit to the staff illustrations of the minutes of some of these FDA panels.

With that, let me turn to some of the problems I have observed under the act. My experiences are anecdotal, but I am afraid confirm unmistakable patterns of response.

One reaction is the problem of extermination of the committee. The classic in this category is the Coast Guard's decision to disband its Industry Advisory Panel on Oil Pollution because of the members' opposition to opening up the meetings. The official explanation was that the committee duplicated deliberations conducted elsewhere, notably through advisors to the Marine Safety Council. Needless to say, an effort to gain access to the deliberations of the Marine Safety

Council is barred by the invocation of the intra-governmental communications exception to the Freedom of Information Act.

I am happy to report, however, that I was given access to the minutes of the now defunct Oil Pollution Panel of the Coast Guard because the material was thought to be "innocuous." The minutes confirm a familiar pattern among advisory committees where Coast Guard members later turn up representing the American Petroleum Institute and the American Institute of Merchant Shipping. The metamorphosis between Government and industry is so complete as to require not so much as a change of nameplates for committee members.

It is very interesting that the Government members of the committee would later remain as members of the committee after they had resigned their positions in the Government, only later in the day representing these trade groups.

Mr. TURNER. Could we have the documentation on that case example?

Mr. RODGERS. Certainly.

Senator METCALF. It will be incorporated in the record.

Mr. RODGERS. This is documented. Here is another problem. I note, for example, no references in the annual report on advisory committees to the Department of Interior's Columbia River Technical Advisory Committee nor the Corps of Engineers' Task Force on Nitrogen. These groups are considering the problem of nitrogen supersaturation which has destroyed millions of fingerling salmon on the Columbia and Snake River system. I know this is a problem that reaches as far as the State of Montana. It seems to me the committees clearly deserve to be acknowledged.

The third problem, which Mr. Plesser touched on, is the outright refusal to comply. Regular readers of the Federal Register confront many announcements of closed advisory committee meetings, sometimes without so much as a pro forma attempt to comply with the act. The Department of Interior's General Technical Advisory Committee, which overseas the coal gasification research program at the Office of Coal Research, met with the Director in his office before the regular meeting on January 16, 1973, then met in a later executive session to consider the President's Fiscal Year 1974 Budget. Somebody who objected, that was me, got an invitation to join the next meeting in the Director's office. I doubt I would be welcome in the next meeting in the Director's office. This is another example of difficulty in gaining access to these meetings. I will also provide documentation on this. By the way, Mr. Chairman, while we're discussing problems of access, I understand that the members of one of the NIPCC subcouncils met on Mr. Evinrude's yacht.

Senator METCALF. You heard Mr. Plesser's analogy to the Florida Sunshine Law and the court said that was a meeting that was covered by this law. This would be the opposite situation, wouldn't it? Mr. RODGERS. Yes. Again, ultimately it raises a legal question. The National Academy of Sciences is a group that argues it is entirely exempt from the act. There is some legislative history for that.. but I think a strong case can be made that the Academy's committees should be covered.

Quite obviously, the committees of the National Academy are heavy policymakers.

Mr. TURNER. On that particular point, as to the Academy, because I happened to be around when some of that legislative history was taking place it was generally accepted as legislative intent at the Conference on the Advisory Committee Act that the National Academy of Sciences, when it meets as a group down the street to discuss things within itself and to develop whatever reports come to it, is in no different a category than the National Association of Manufacturers or the U.S. Chambers of Commerce. It is a private organization talking to itself. But when the National Academy of Sciences, by a contractural relationship, advises the Federal Government, it is in the capacity of a consultant, and subject to appropriate laws, not the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

If it advises the Federal Government directly in any other way, it is covered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. It is clear in legislative history and it was made very clear to Mr. Handler. I had thought, although I have not done any oversight on this, this was the way they were conducting their business.

Mr. RODGERS. There may well have to be litigation on this question. One example, in particular is a public interest group, called the Public Interest Campaign, which has made a request for full access to the deliberations of the Academy's Committee on Motor Vehicle Emissions, an obviously crucial policymaker with respect to auto

mobile makers.

The initial idea of the committee chairman has since been to make overtures to Mr. Louis Lombardo of the Public Interest Campaign, inviting him to participate in some respect. Whether or not we will have litigation is still an open question, but it may well boil down to a court test on the role of the Academy under the Advisory Committee Act.

Mr. TURNER. Do you know if the Academy itself has any guidelines itself for its own advisory committee?

Mr. RODGERS. I understand that Dr. Handler very recently has communicated some general guidelines to the various chairmen of the committees, I have been unable to secure a copy of that directive. Consequently, I am not sure of the details.

However, it is my belief that there are some guidelines. I don't know what they are.

At the bottom of page 9 of my prepared statement, I begin the discussion that, I think, was fully covered by Mr. Plesser; that is, the problem of the Freedom of Information Act exemptions. There are many examples. I note the Department of Interior's General Technical Advisory Committee invokes the trade secret doctrine to bar the public from discussion of coal gasification research projects while representatives of potential competitors and their trade association absorb the information behind closed dors. This case is identical to the case of the petroleum industry earlier mentioned.

In my statement, I go through additional problem areas under the Freedom of Information Act. I also deal with that omnipresent exemption of the intra-agency communication.

I believe Mr. Plesser, in the questions put to him, brought out the considerations surrounding that particular point. I would like to stress, however, two additional exemptions. One was thoroughly discussed by Mr. Plesser; the other one was not.

The first concerns the ad hoc, single purpose group that is not formally established by an agency but arrives to give advice because of the policy pressures of the moment. As you know, "off-the-record" briefing with Government officials are so popular that some firms regularly collect fees to arrange the contacts.

Obviously these meetings-unrecorded and secret-are fraught with many of the policy implications that attend the formal committees meeting on a periodic basis. All of these examples derived in one way or another from experiences that I have had or am aware of. The FTC's prolonged rulemaking on phosphates in detergents is compromised after a series of secret meetings between members of the agency and representatives of detergent manufacturers and their trade association. Congressman Reuss specifically intervened in that case and helped to pry the relevant documents looses.

High officials of the Department of Interior meet with the Grizzly Bear Committee of the International Association of Fish and Game Commissioners to explore issues affecting the grizzly bear and predator control. There is a woman, Mrs. Marth Shell, a free-lance writer, who had a great deal of difficulty gaining access to that meeting. I offer it as another example of an ad hoc meeting in which the agency officials consider that the Federal Advisory Commission Act does not apply.

Senator METCALF. Was this meeting noticed in the Federal Register? Mr. RODGERS. I am almost certain that it wasn't. I have not checked myself.

Senator METCALF. It was just a one-shot affair?

Mr. RODGERS. Yes.

Another example, and this is perhaps the most important of all, is for many years the Business Council, with membership spanning America's corporate leaders, actively functions "to submit to any branch or agency of Government a constructive point of view on matters of public policy affecting the business interests of the country." I understand in 1961 the Council severed its official ties with the Department of Commerce apparently to avoid the disclosure obligations of Executive Order 11007, which of course was a predecessor of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

By insisting that an advisory committee is not a committee, therefore, it is possible to hide the vast influence of the Business Council while we simultaneously smoke out the activities of such lesser groups as the Sawtooth National Forest Grazing Advisory Board.

Let me offer another example of some currency from the energy field. As you know, Senator, the AEC or at least a group under the direction of Chairman Ray, has prepared a very significant report with respect to energy research and development. I understand, although it is not public yet, it is clearly an influential document.

Here is the question. That report, at least in part, involved the collection of advice from technical advisers. Question: Are those advisers meeting on an ad hoc basis to prepare a report covered by the Advisory Committee Act? I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know the position of the Atomic Energy Commission. However, it is an example of a type of activity that, in many instances, is not covered, at least according to the view of a specific agency.

The other problem worthy of note has been touched on here. That is the informal subgroup problem. I mentioned particularly the difficul

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