Mr. KIEB. Not necessarily so. The type of record that is kept, if there is correspondence, of course, it is kept; if the representatives are available to come down and sit at a conference, we do not keep minutes of those conferences. So, I don't think you will find anything like that in the record. But, there will be a record in the final determination, which I believe you have. Mr. MOLLOHAN. You know as well as I do that under the law the data with respect to negotiations of contracts must be maintained and preserved for a period of 6 years. But your position is that in the case of an oral discussion or oral negotiation it isn't necessary to maintain any sort of transcript or minutes of that discussion? Mr. KIEB. No; I don't maintain that it is not necessary. I maintain that where on the face of it a bidder cannot meet a specification, that we have kept no record of any oral negotiations with them to see if they could. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Well, I am not necessarily referring to Divco or International Harvester, Mr. Kieb. I am talking about now the general discussion which was preliminary to and Mr. KIEB. There is a record of the determination here, sir. Mr. KIEB. Yes. Mr. GOFF. I would suggest at this point if you care to go into it and if you are through with the other-now, Mr. Schlegel can answer some of these questions about vehicles. But, Mr. Kallio, the procuremenț officer, Mr. Wilho Kallio is present if you want to talke about the tiations. He is the one who made the actual procurement of these vehicles. And, he is here, and he will discuss it for you. nego Mr. MOLLOHAN. The thing, Mr. Goff, that we are interested in, or that I was interested in at this point, I had reference to your letter of March 30. And, I recall seeing this letter but I didn't remember exactly the language of it. But, you say here that a review of these files discloses no correspondence with or memorandum of, conferences with the Twin-Coach Co. pertaining to the vehicle contract negotiations. It appears that the negotiations were oral in nature, consisting of meetings and telephone contacts between departmental and company representatives. Now, that is in a letter dated March 30, 1956, from you. Mr. GOFF. We find-and I will check with Mr. Kallio again-we find there are two letters for the first two contracts that Mr. Kallio has copies of here today. That is why I suggest that you question Mr. Kallio. Mr. PLAPINGER. When were those letters found? Mr. O'DONOHUE. The committee representatives, I believe, had the opportunity to see the files of GAO, gotten from the Post Office Department. I believe those letters were in those files. Mr. PLAPINGER. Those were findings. We specifically asked for all data concerning negotiations. And, then, we received this letter from Mr. Goff. Mr. O'DONOGHUE. I understand that that letter was after you had seen these files. So, the Department assumed that you wanted anything that was above and beyond what you had already seen. Mr. PLAPINGER. What do you think-the only thing we saw at GAO were the findings Mr. O'DONOGHUE. You saw these letter that were in the files that the General Accounting Office picked up. There were two letters and they will be made available. Mr. GOFF. They are here. I had a careful recheck made. Let Mr. Kallio explain how this was purchased. I had not opportunity to talk to Mr. Kallio. Mr. CHRISTENSEN. I would like to get one thing straight, Mr. Chairman. We requested these files from the Post Office. We were unable to get them. We then went over to the General Accounting Office. And the General Accounting Office sent somebody down to the Post Office. And, they got them. I looked at them personally and Mr. Anderson looked at them. And, I don't recall these letters being in those files. Mr. PLAPINGER. What did you see? Mr. CHRISTENSEN. I saw the findings and the contracts. Mr. O'DONOGHUE. I think you will find that those letters were in there. Mr. CHRISTENSEN. Well Mr. O'DONOGHUE. Take a look at the letters and see. To my knowledge there were carbon copies of those letters. Mr. PLAPINGER. You mean a carbon copy of the letter of June 18? Mr. GoFF. I suggest we call Mr. Kallio. I will tell you: these files are scattered in a number of different offices also. I directed that they make the most careful search of these for any material in connection with it. Now, that we have been called up here, we have done a lot of scurrying and searching for any of the material that had to do with these contracts. And, we have Mr. Kallio here who is the procurement officer. I personally have never discussed this with Mr. Kallio myself. Now, Mr. Kallio is here. He is prepared to give you the full story about the procurement of these trucks. Mr. PLAPINGER. Will you make copies of these letters available to us? Mr. GoFF. He brought them up for that purpose today with his testimony. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Would you like Mr. Kallio to testify at this time? Mr. GoFF. Yes. Mr. Wilho Kallio. Mr. CHRISTENSEN. May I have a couple of questions with Mr. Kieb? Mr. MOLLOHAN. Yes. I was trying to defer to Mr. Goff. I have been unhappy with the fact that Mr. Goff wouldn't help me in trying to get this material for the staff. But I am trying to help him. Mr. GOFF. This may explain it. Mr. O'Donaghue says when he went in the search, he says these files were in the hands of GAO. Mr. O'DONAGHUE. When I first went down to check what files we had down in our accounting section, my recollection is that Mr. Taylor of GAO had already procured these files or a portion of these files of the Twin-Coach procurement. They were not returned to me so that I could look at them until sometime after we had the committee letter, I think-or possibly Mr. Kallio and I had come up and met with some of the committee members. We had some of the files but we didn't have all of them. Mr. PLAPINGER. It would have been easy to put a reservation in this letter that such documents were with the GAO. Mr. O'DONAGHUE. We can only assume that you wanted to see documents that you already hadn't seen. Mr. CHRISTENSEN. The law requires that copies of the findings and contracts be filed with GAO. I called Mr. Goff and was not able to get them from him. I then called GAO. And, they brought the files up. And, I looked at them. Later, Mr. O'Donaghue came up with the files. But, I don't recall seeing that letter. Mr. PLAPINGER. The law also requires that the findings and the data concerning the negotiations be preserved in the files of the agency. Mr. O'DONAGHUE. Those are in the files. But, we couldn't get at our own files at the time. Mr. MOLLOHAN. The only thing I do know is that we did not get the sort of information and cooperation from the Post Office Department, Mr. Goff, that I had expected on the basis of yours and my discussion on a prior occasion. And, I was very unhappy about it. And, I think the other members of the committee-if the other members of the committee had been familiar with it, they would have been unhappy about it too. I was unhappy too when you charged that the investigation was a political action. There has never been any interest on the part of this committee serving any political purpose whatsoever. And, I believe it was suggested that you contact some minority member of the committee if you felt there was any political interest here. So far as I know, you did not do that. I hope in the future that we can have a better working relationship. Because we have only one interest here in this committee. Mr. GoFF. Well, now, I will tell you. Anything that I have had to do with you personally we have gotten along fine. You must remember this: that this investigation business, with some of us that are swamped with every kind of an operating problem that we are going on with, we have to take care of the thing at hand. And, I have to delegate a lot of this work that I mean I can't personally go and make searches. I can only do the best we can to try to find it. And, since this committee has started, we have made a very careful search to get all of this material together. I have since talked to Mr. Kallio personally. And, we brought this material-we had copies made so that we could give you-I believe we have covered everything we have. Certainly, we gave you everything that we have available. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Now, the other point I am trying to make is that many of these hearings such as this could be-would be unnecessary or could be eliminated. Here we have 10 members of the Post Office Department here. And, we needed only a couple of men in the process of this investigation. This would never have been necessary. I am just expressing a hope. That is all. Mr. KIEB. Mr. Chairman, I am still here. And, in view of your conversation, I notice in the Mr. MOLLOHAN. Are you talking about my statement? Mr. KIEB. Your statement, yes. Your statement and the transcript I had an opportunity to read this morning. I noticed that such a charge of political meanings is charged also to me. I do not recall having made them. It could be that I did make them. But, I just want to assure the committee that in the event that I did, it certainly was not for any purpose of trying to persuade the committee not to fulfill its very proper obligations of controlling the checks and balances which are entirely proper, nor was it done for any purpose of blocking your investigation, nor of encouraging any lack of cooperation between our department and an investigating committee. I would like that to be on the record. Mr. MOLLOHAN. We are very pleased to have it on the record. Mr. Kieb, this committee is very proud of its position in matters such as this. And, the only thing I want at any time when any member of the executive department feels that we are trying to prosecute some political advantage or purpose here, I would suggest that they discuss it with Mr. Younger or Mr. Meader. And, I will be quite pleased with any answer they choose to give. Mr. KIEB. I am quite satisfied you and I understand each other. And, I want to assure you that the Department is pleased to cooperate with you. Mr. MOLLOHAN. My only regret is that it has not been earlier. Mr. GOFF. I am going to add one other thing: I want this understood and that was the statement that I made-I think as I remember the statement, that I did not want to have-I didn't want to have someone come in who had no responsibility for the operation and go through, paw through our files, for an investigation, a fishing expedition, with an effort to try to find something that they could dig up for some political purpose. I made that statement. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Of course, the invasions, if you want to choose to call it that, is established by statute, Mr. Goff. And I think I referred to it in my opening statement-the rights and prerogatives of the committees of Congress are established. We would like to suggest that we have responsibility, too. Mr. GOFF. You do have responsibilities. But there are certain communications between inferior and superior where the greatest candor must be exercised; and we want to know what you are going to see: We want to know what the file is. It is not to be on a basis that some investigator just comes down and goes through a mass of files. Mr. MOLLOHAN. I thought you usually accepted in the executive department that if an official of the staff member of the Congress, or a member of the staff of a committee of Congress, would come down, properly identified it would be accepted by you that he did have the right to represent that committee of the Congress in making his inquiries and investigations. Of course I may be at variance with your thinking on it. Mr. GOFF. Well, I will tell you. I am convinced that your attitude is personally with the sincerest efforts to get at the facts. I am convinced of that. And that is the reason that we made a strenous effort to get all this material together when we came up here. I believe we have done everything that can be found. Mr. MOLLOHAN. You probably have. I am not questioning that at all. I don't mean to suggest that I am questioning that you haven't brought everything today. My only concern is that we have 10 members of the Department and 3 or 4 Members of the Congress tied up here today which might not have been necessary if we had all the information earlier. I know time after time in similar situations we have not had the hearings at all. We have chosen it on a staff ex ploratory basis without any inquiry such as this. We like to save time, too. Mr. YOUNGER. I would like to put a statement in here: That in my brief experience on this committee, I want to say that our chairman so far as I know has never approached any of these investigations other than in an objective way. He is one member of our Govrnment Operations Committee, as a subcommittee chairman, who has not mingled in politics. And I would like to have that of record. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Thank you, Mr. Younger. Mr. MINSHALL. I would like to associate my remarks with those of Mr. Younger and say that as a new Member of Congress it has been very refreshing to see a chairman carry on his duties in the manner our chairman has. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Thank you very much. Mr. YOUNGER. Just as a matter of information, when you conducted the experiments with the 250 trucks, were they all in 1 or 2 or 3 cities; or did you spread them all over the country in different cities and different climates. Mr. KIEB. Yes. I think the record will demonstrate that, Congressman Younger. I think Mr. Gunther's testimony will mention 3 or 4 midwestern cities. To my knowledge, I know that carrying out additional experiments and going into other fields, we used them extensively in the Atlanta region. We used some in Florida. And we used some in other cities in order to get the kind of results which I related to you today. Mr. YOUNGER. We have some very hilly cities. And we have flat cities. And I should think, to make the experiment worthwhile, you would have to have these trucks in the various cities with different types of topography and climate. You say that information will come from Mr. KIEB. Well, part of it has been in the Gunther testimony, I believe. And Mr. Schlegel can tell you about additional areas. Mr. PLAPINGER. May I break in a second, Mr. Younger. Mr. YOUNGER. Yes. Mr. PLAPINGER. The experiment was confined to cities in northern Ohio. At one time there were four trucks in Atlanta. But there was some testing originally done in 1954 in Florida with one Twin Coach vehicle. But the experimenting as such as contended by the Department was principally in northern Ohio. Mr. YOUNGER. In the cities that are mentioned here in this report? Mr. PLAPINGER. Yes. Mr. KIEB. I think, sir, you are speaking of the hop-scotching and route studies, are you not? Mr. PLAPINGER. Of the 250 Twin Coaches. Mr. KIEB. The 250 Twin Coaches were used for other experiments. Mr. PLAPINGER. Where, sir? Mr. KIEB. They were used this-using them against vehicle hire. They were used to determine specifications, improved specifications. Mr. PLAPINGER. Where? Mr. KIEB. Mr. Schlegel can give you that. Mr. SCHLEGAL. Twelve of them were used in Philadelphia to determine the feasibility of using a right-hand drive vehicle in metropolitan areas. |