few members, particularly the executive branch, I find a certain air of unreality. They come before the committee with the assumption that there are categories of information which are definitely secret, which should be kept secret, and which, in the interest of the public, should be withheld from the public. Then they seem to believe that there is another category of information which it is perfectly all right to make public. Usually, this is information that they are volunteering themselves.

I do not think that is the real picture of the world as we see it today. I think the reality is that it is quite possible to make some sort of a case, which in some respects will be very good, for the withholding of certain types of information, and in other instances, you can make a case which would make it appear very bad to withhold any information. The practicality is that there are two sides to every coin and that no matter what the information is, our Nation as a democracy pays a certain price for withholding it. And I think the price that we pay and have been paying over the past 20, 30, 40 years is far too high, because the price is an actual loss in public confidence in the Government itself.

One of the insidious factors about secrecy is that even in the cases where the secrecy is clearly justified, the mere fact that secrecy exists in some sectors leads the public to a suspicion that many other things are being withheld and that they can no longer trust their Government, because if some areas are being blocked out, why not other areas about which the people do not know at all?

Now, this particular bill of Senator Fulbright's touches on a very sensitive nerve in terms of the executive branch. In observing the two major divisions of the Government, the legislative and the executive, it seems to me that one of the principle differences is that within the executive branch, there exists a virtual horror of public debate on issues.

I do not think this is a question of venality; I do not think it is a question of executive officials who feel that they have to play fast and loose with the public trust and if Congress knows too much, it is going to catch them in wrong doing.

I think it is a feeling which has arisen over a long period of time that if the public debates these issues, then the debate is going to make government impossible.

Now, on the other hand, the legislative branch of Government is one which basically exists on the need for public debate. I think that is one of the principal functions of Congress.

In terms of this bill, Senator Fulbright has already outlined, and I think outlined very well, the difficulties that Congress encounters. in transacting its business when it does not have sufficient information. But there is one other aspect of this that I would wish to raise. That is the impossibility of Congress serving as a focal point for public debate if the Congress itself does not have the information. upon which these issues should be debated and I believe that public debate on the major issues is one of the most important functions in sustaining the unity of the United States. If people feel that there has been a legitimate opportunity to discuss issues in advance of the actual commitment, if they believe they have had their say, then I think they are going to be quite willing to support their Govern

ment even when it makes mistakes. If, however, they suddenly find themselves plunged into the midst of tremendous things such as the Vietnamese War or any one of a number of other crises that have taken place throughout the world, in the last few years, with no advance preparation, with no opportunity to really talk it through, then I think they are going to be very mistrustful of their Government; that is, they are going to be mistrustful of their Government unless their Government has succeeded in following policies that are always successful and that work in every single instance. And that is a rather slender basis upon which to operate a Government.

I think that most governments are doing quite well if they succeed on a 500 batting average. But if you are going to operate by secrecy, the only way you can keep the people content is to be right 1,000 percent of the time. And I think that a tremendous amount of the disaffection that we have in our country today--and this is a very real disaffection-a tremendous amount of the division that we have in our country today arises not quite so much because of what we have done. I think that our policies have gotten us into some pretty bad messes, but I think it arises even more out of the feeling that these things were done without any consultation with the people whatsoever.

In the executive branch of the Government there is a general philosophy that particularly in the field of foreign and military affairs, the people's business is literally none of the people's business. This is one of those things which they express very eloquently-their horror that some information will leak that will be used by either a Senator or a House Member for what they term a political purpose; or the feeling that unless they can operate within normal bounds of secrecy, unless they can engage in all of these delicate negotiations without having to face the tough realities of politics, everything is going to blow sky high. Now, I think that the reality there is quite different. There is no question whatever that it really is a tremendous task for the executive agencies of the Government to dig up the information being requested of them. There is no question whatsoever that it is more difficult to operate in an atmosphere where everything that a person does must be subjected to critical comment, must be subjected to critical debate, but I think that democracy itself is a rather difficult thing. And I think that this is one of the prices that we definitely must pay if we are to sustain any type of national unity.

Now, up to about 30 or 40 years ago, I really do not believe that the kind of legislation that is being advocated here was necessary. But in the past 30 or 40 years, a whole new situation has arisen which has changed the fundamental character of our Government. And I think that that goes basically to the character of the White House staff. When I look at this question of executive privilege, I, myself, cannot see any real objection to assuming that a President is a person who cannot be touched, cannot be summoned. I do not know whether this is a constitutional or a legal question; I am not a lawyer. But I do know that as a practical matter, there is nothing that can be done about it anyway. He is the head of an equal and coordinate branch of the Government and if a President wants to

be stiff-necked about it, if he himself really wishes to withhold information, I think Congress can make his life uncomfortable, but I do not think that Congress has the ultimate power to compel him to act; whether for good reasons, for bad reasons, arbitrarily, capriciously, or wisely, or any other way. I think this is one of the things that just must be accepted as a fact of life, as a farmer must accept hail, as a businessman must accept the vagaries of the market and as a working man must accept the fact that sometimes he simply cannot get a job. But I think it is a different thing to say that this type of privilege is something that should be extended to all of the other members of the executive branch.

Now, at one time, up to about the last 20 or 30 years, when we were looking at the White House, we really were looking at the President and a few personal advisors. I hear mentioned quite frequently such names as Colonel House or Harry Hopkins, people of that caliber. Now, those men really were personal advisers in a genuine sense. They had no staffs, they had no legal mandate, they did not have clear-cut, specific duties. They really were there to give the President personal advice and personal evaluation.

When we look at the White House today, we are looking at an extremely large organization. I have no way of knowing precisely how large. I could not have told you how large even when I was there as one of the President's special assistants. I have, however, had a few surveys made. Some friends of mine have made some head counts. I have discovered that the press staff, if you combine both Mr. Klein's operation and Mr. Ziegler's operation, is about three times the size of the staff that I had. I have been told that Mr. Kissinger's staff is about three times the size of the staff that Mr. Rostow had. I notice that Senator Fulbright has some figures now which are much later than mine which, I assume, indicate that even that staff has grown.

Now, I do not think that a man who is in control of some 140 people, with 40 of them being very substantive people indeed and the others being various types of clerical help and clerical support, is any longer a personal adviser. He is a man who is administering policy, who is administering it on the somewhat impersonal staff level that at one point we would have expected from the State Department or we would have expected from the Defense Department, or we would have expected from the CIA. And I think as things now stand that this trend to expand the White House staff and to rely upon it more and more and more for the substantive moves in foreign policy is going to continue. And there is a very logical reason for it.

It is going to continue because this is a large body of reasonably capable technical experts over whom Congress has no control whatsoever. The controls that Congress has exercised over the regular agencies of the Government have never been too strong at best, because I think it has been a very well accepted principle that the Cabinet officers are agents of the President and that to a certain extent, Congress quite properly does not want to interfere too much in the day-to-day running of an agency. But at least there has been the power to confirm appointments and at least there has been a

very real opportunity to exercise much of the appropriation authority and also to exercise much of the enabling legislation authority. Those are all agencies which have little things that they want done. It is quite possible if they become too recalcitrant, if they become too obstreperous, if they become too arrogant in withholding information, for Congress to counter with other types of moves. The White House is quite a different thing.

Here is a tremendous staff composed of people who occupy quite a high position. After all, it was Mr. Kissinger and not Mr. Rogers who went over to meet the Foreign Minister of the Chinese Government. If he were merely acting as some sort of messenger, that might be one thing; but quite obviously, he was acting in the capacity that normally we would have expected out of our Foreign Minister, the Secretary of State.

Under these circumstances, I think there will be more and more of a tendency of Presidents to rely upon this White House staff, because it is something that they can control with a far higher degree of certainty.

As things now stand, it is virtually impossible to get a White House staff member to appear before a congressional committee and answer questions. Now, obviously, a Secretary of State can come before a committee and be quite close-mouthed. But while it happens on some occasions, at least there are always some times in the year when the Cabinet officers, the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense do appear before congressional committees. It is expected of them, this is tradition. And ultimately, of course, they have certain things that they have to get out of Congress. These are not things that are expected out of the White House staff.

I believe what is happening here is that we are creating in Washington almost a new department of Government, something that I find quite common in Latin American governments, what they call the department of governacion, in which really you have one agency that runs the government for the president, whoever he is, and the other agencies that carry on the normal functions that we anticipate out of our State Department, our Defense Department, and the other Cabinet agencies. As long as the President has this kind of group at his beck and call, people that can keep secrets with a tenacity that is impossible to keep within the executive agencies, people that really feel no responsibiilty to Congress whatsoever, people that do not have to worry about dealing with Congress on a day-today basis to that extent, you have a greater separation between the two branches of the Government.

Now, most of the executive witnesses that have appeared before you or will appear, have, and I think will continue in the future, stressed the principle of cooperation and claimed that the ideal relationship betwen Congress and the executive agencies is a relationship of cooperation. That is a rather interesting word. It can become something like motherhood. It can become something like "exciting" or "progressive" or "forward-looking," generalizations that we all like. But when we start pinning down what cooperation really means, we receive a different picture altogether. I suppose a person could have some rather bitter reflections on how we cooperated our

selves into the war in Vietnam and how we appear to be cooperating ourselves into quite a few other adventures throughout the world. But to look at the word more seriously, I really do not believe that there is any such thing as cooperation unless both of the parties to the cooperation have some form of power. Unless you have two people who must take each other into account, two people who must come to some kind of agreement, then cooperation merely becomes a question of the executive exercising the power of the initiative which is inherent in the executive-there is not much that can be done about it and Congress going along after the fact. And Congress, as long as it cannot get information, is fairly well reduced to a position of going along after the fact and also going along with this psychology that arises in the executive branch of assuming that they have some sort of a truth that comes out of their technical expertise and that this truth is nobody else's business, that is not something to be discussed, it is not something to be debated.

I believe that you will find this in almost all of the witnesses you call before you who will have had experience in the executive branch, in the making of foreign policy over the last 20 or 30 years, this feeling that it does not belong in the realm of public debate.

Now, of course, it is inconvenient to have foreign policy in the realm of public debate. I heard one of your witnesses this morning add up the number of man hours that his agency has spent in compiling information for Congress, the number of requests he has had, those they have responded to, and the time spent in looking for alternative methods. And of course, to them, there is always this feeling that this is a complete waste of time; why should they have to bother with it? Well, I think there is a very good reason why they should have to bother with it. I think one of our principal troubles is we have not had public debate over the past few years on the great issues which have meant so much to our people.

I go back to the period of World War II, when I was a newspaperman covering the Capitol. It seems to me that in those days, the debate was extremely bitter. I can recall types of things happening then that make some of the actions of the last few years seem rather soft and tame.

I was here the day that one howling mob hung Senator Claude Pepper in effigy across the street, when you had people marching in the Capitol and women with death skulls sitting up in the gallery. And really, there was about as bitter and divisive a debate as you can imagine. But the mere fact that it was held meant that when we did get into that war, there was a solid public support that was based upon a feeling that everyone had had an opportunity to have his say..

Now, true, it is convenient to withhold this information from Congress. It is convenient to make foreign policy on the basis of secrecy and of restricting it solely to a few experts. But the price that is paid is a lack of public confidence in the policy once it starts to operate.

Now, true, as I said before, if policy is successful, I doubt if very many people will question it whether it was made in secrecy or not. One of the unfortunate aspects of humanity is that very few people

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