Coming to this question of debate, it seems to me that is the distinguishing characteristic of our system as opposed to the kind of government that most of the people in the world are today governed by-authoritarian, whether it be the left or the right. They do not engage in debate. The value of debate, I would think, is the adversary discussion.

You said the Congress should be the focus of debate and discussion. Well, first, let me put it this way: Within the executive branch, from your experience, do you feel that the people engaged in formulation of policy ever had the benefit of what you would call adversary discussion of issues?

Mr. REEDY. Not really, Senator; this is one thing upon which I believe the "Pentagon Papers" are revealing. I have some rather strong reservations as to the value of those papers to history because they are only a small part of the available documentation. And also, there is no way of knowing which of those papers ever reached the President and which did not. But I think it is very valuable to study them because they give a picture of this blind man's buff game that goes on within the executive branch of the Government itself.

You see, the basic problem is that in the executive branch of the Government, what debate there is is staged only for the benefit of one man, who listens only to what he wants to listen to, who can reject what he wishes to reject, who does not listen to what he does not want to listen to, who is inaccessible to about 99 percent of thesay 99 percent of the White House staff, let alone to the great bulk of the executive branch of the Government, itself. And what happens, well, it is almost like a scene from what they call the Theater of the Absurd.

A man within the Executive branch of the Government will write a memorandum and he will put it in channels. He has no way of knowing whether that memorandum ever reaches its destination. He does not have any knowledge of what other memoranda are being written. He never, or rarely has the opportunity of confronting people that have contrary points of view and thrashing out the differences on the spot. These memoranda float around. Some of them get somewhere, some of them are tangential.

What has really happened to us is that first we eliminated public debate from the process and now, I really think we have eliminated internal debate from the Government itself. When the President makes a decision as the World today stands, I do not believe that any living human being could possibly trace the process through which that decision was made.

We can go through files, we can see papers. Perhaps they influenced the President, perhaps they did not. Perhaps he never even saw them. Perhaps the basis of the decision was a casual conversation he had with a friend. Perhaps the basis of the decision was the deeply weighted views of an experienced man. Perhaps the experienced man was completely canceled out by someone else who walked in 5 or 10 minutes later.

But there is at no point within the executive branch of the Government that I have been able to find a place where men really sit

down and thrash things out. Now, it is true, there are bodies within the Government that are supposed to supply this kind of debatesuch things as the National Security Council or the Cabinet itself. But as a man who has sat in, as a staff member, of course, not as a member-but as a man who has sat in on such meetings, these are no substitute whatsoever. What they become in effect-well, it is sort of like a poor teacher with a class sitting around him, everyone trying desperately to determine just what it is that the President wants to do. And once they find out what he wants to do, then they run as fast as possible to get there first with the suggestion of the best way to do it. And this is not really debate.

I have one very rigid contrast in mind that goes back, I imagine, to 1954-I have forgotten the precise date when the President asked for some sort of survey of the Senate

Senator FULBRIGHT. Did you say 1964?

Mr. REEDY. I mean 1954. For some sort of survey of the Senate Democrats to determine what would be the reaction of sending American forces to Dien Bien Phu to help the French. For that purpose, a meeting of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee was called. Now, that day, there was debate. I can still recall the passion that was in the voices of the men sitting around that table. There was fist banging, there was table slamming, there was some language that I do not believe would be used on the Senate floor. And this was quite proper, because an issue of life and death was being debated. And this is the way men react when they are really confronted with basic emotional important issues.

I contrast that with what I have seen in the National Security Council and in the Cabinet, where everything is very gentlemanly, or where whatever dissent takes place is a sort of official dissent that can always be anticipated. You know, the sort of thing where we finally reach the man who is supposed to dissent and you know who he is going to be, because he is the one who always dissents anyway; that is the role he has adopted. And he will make some remark such as, "well, all I can say, Mr. President, is that I really do not think we know where we are going." That makes everyone in the room feel happy because they assume they have heard both sides of the issue.

Well, Senator. I submit this is not genuine debate. I do not believe that men with any sincerity or any passion or any conviction really argue things out that way. Debate over issues of that size, debate over issues that decide whether our sons are going to go out and wade through a rice paddy in Vietnam with somebody shooting at them-I do not think people are gentlemanly about things like that. I believe that is bound to lead to some passion.

But instead, within the executive branch of the Government, what is the old saying, that one with God is a majority? Well, one is a majority in the executive branch of the Government. And the socalled discussions, so-called debates, are really monologues in which one man is getting reflections of what he sends out. This is not debate.

Senator FULBRIGHT. I would gather from that line of thought that the basic assumptions upon which policy is made are never really debated.

Mr. REEDY. No.

Senator FULBRIGHT. It is just how you carry it out; that is, you said people in the meeting try to find out what the President wants and then try to find out how to enable him to achieve that. They do not really question whether what he wants or not is correct; is that right?

Mr. REEDY. Right. That is quite correct; also, I have never been quite certain myself just where the basic assumptions arise; usually, of course, since the executive branch consists of people who are actively engaged in doing something, they very rarely go to the question of assumptions.

A person who is engaged in an actual operating task, a man who has been given an assignment to fulfill, seldom becomes philosophical about it or seldom says, what is the basis of this? Why am I doing this thing? His only questions are what is the best way to do this thing?

I think some very interesting studies could be performed on just where the basic assumptions of our policies arise. Possibly, they arise out of some of these elaborate studies made from time to time, although I cannot help having some skepticism about it. Possibly, they are things like Topsy, that just grow.

Possibly, they are simply accidental collisions of various personalities who happen to have inherited a certain set of circumstances and just assume that that set of circumstances is one that has to continue.

Basic assumptions are rarely questioned, Senator.

Senator FULBRIGHT. You mentioned the "Pentagon Papers" and others have also said they are not complete. It has been suggested most informally that the real decisions were made at the Tuesday luncheons. Do you know anything about that? Is that a valid statement?

Mr. REEDY. I do not know, Senator. I suspect they would have come more close to a point at which decisions would be made than any other. I was not privy to the Tuesday luncheons. I am not aware of the type of discussion that went on in there. But my general experience is sufficient to make me skeptical of any form of debate between any person and the President.

You see, the problem with the Presidency, is that it is one position that we have established which has no peers. It is a rather strange thing. We have perpetuated a form of monarchy in the Presidency. By that I do not mean a tyranny, because the founding fathers quite wisely safeguarded against that by withholding certain powers from the Executive that a truly tyrannical monarch would have, and to this day he does not have those powers. But nevertheless, he is a man without peers and the deference that is paid to him is a quite understandable thing. It is not a deference that arises out of fear, although it might, under some circumstances. It is not a deference that arises out of sycophancy, though it might under some circumstances. It is a deference that arises out of his unique position; that he is the President of the United States while he is in office.

The real mischief is we have provided that he is the one man who has a dual role in the U.S. Government in the sense that he holds

the position of a monarch and at the same time, operates the Government. When we put those two together, we have created

Senator FULBRIGHT. This is heresy. I agree with it. But we have come to believe that our safety depends on the man in the White House.

Mr. REEDY. Right.

Senator FULBRIGHT. Going back-since then, going back to the election of 1948, this office has undertaken to demean the position of the Congress. The main issue in 1948 was this do-nothing, good-fornothing Congress.

Mr. REEDY. Yes.

Senator FULBRIGHT. And today, it is very difficult to get across what I think is your message, that this is not just a matter of some quarrelsome Congressmen versus the Presidency, but there is within this question of participation by the Congress the essence of our system; that is, its virtue, if it has any, and I think it does. And the essence of that role is serious adversary discussion.

Mr. REEDY. Right.

Senator FULBRIGHT. As you have said, it cannot take place within the Executive, because there is nobody to discuss with. They are not equals. You said a moment ago that the word "cooperation" has no significance when it is not between people each with relatively the same power base. It is not cooperating with one who is subserving and one who assumes that he is dominant.

Now, just a word. Mr. Chairman, I apologize, but I wanted to take just a little more time about why it is, Mr. Reedy, that discussion, debate, adversary debate, in the Congress is valuable. I do not think the press does this deliberately but they have succeeded, I think, in making many of the people in the country think that Congressmen are a bunch of boobs. People like Mr. Acheson make no bones about it. They just say they are boobs and ought to have nothing to do with foreign policy or anything else. This has been going on for a long time. And he is not the only one. His successors in that office have taken the same attitude. And I cannot deny that they have made a great deal of progress in converting the country.

But why is it very important that this discussion take place, even though we are very ordinary people in the Congress? None of us presume to be great leaders. We are just ordinary representatives. I think that is fair to say, that we are neither better nor worse than the average people in this country. That being so, and contrasted to this great leader in the Executive, why is it significant and what is the value in having a debate take place and the focus of the attention of the people in the country being on it?

Mr. REEDY. I think it goes back to the basic essentials of the Government. Over the last 30 or 40 years-I think it began with the depression-our eyes became focused on one aspect of the Government and one only-that is, the problem-solving aspect. How are you going to get people back to work, how are you going to get some decent floors under farm prices, how are you going to get some decent floors under wages, how are you going to take care of health needs? I think because those problems were so great at that time,

we took our eyes off the other essential of government, which is that somehow, the Nation must be held together.

Now, holding a nation together is a very difficult art. It is really the art of politics. I have never despised the word "politics" and I am very unhappy that in the English language, at least as spoken in America, it has become a pejorative word, because I think it is one of the necessary professions.

I do not think any sort of decent orderly structure is possible without it. And the art of holding a country together in a democracy is the art of politics and that is the art of convincing everybody that he has had his say.

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You can hold a country together two ways: One way is to send out the rifles and the men in jack boots who pound on your door at 3 a.m. and make life uncomfortable or impossible for you if you are not in line with the prevailing view. This is, of course, the classic way in which unity is formed in a dictatorship.

The other way is that of convincing people that the Government has taken them into account. And you can never convince a person that he has been taken into account unless he has had his chance to speak his piece.

Now, it is true that a public debate can be a terribly disorderly thing. There are very few people in the nation that have had the opportunity or had the necessity of making deep studies of all the very complex problems that confront us in the modern world. Therefore, I think, this debate has to have a focus and that focus has to be in Congress, where I believe that every point of view, or even the points of view that will not stand up too well under logical analysis, even uninformed points of view, must be expressed and must be answered. Because what happens when you do not go through that rather painful process is that you lose the essential resource for any foreign policy.

I believe that what our foreign policymakers have forgotten over the last 30 or 40 years is that a nation must have resources and the most important resource is the people of that nation and the confidence they have in the government. By some abstract standards, it may be possible to determine a course that is absolutely imputably right, just as right as though it were handed down from the mount engraved on tablets.

I do not believe it, but let's assume that is possible. It still does not matter unless the people have confidence in it and they are not going to have confidence in it unless they have had a chance to talk it out. I think it is just that simple. I think our foreign policy, I think our country could be destroyed no matter how wise our policies if these policies are strange and mysterious things to the people.

Senator FULBRIGHT. Lastly, and this I bring up because it is current and I do not in anyway wish to prejudice anybody. But we have been asked not to speculate much on nor to discuss our China policy. I personally approve of this gesture of the President, that he is going to try to normalize our relations with China. I hope he can. But it does seem to me and I think it is consistent with what you say that there should be some debate as to what should be our policy. It does not have to obligate the policy. The President still