Washington cover-up

No single factor is more important to the strength of our democracy than the free flow of accurate information about the government’s operations. The citizen in a democracy must...

An Indian uprising along the Indiana-Ohio border in 1791 set the stage for the first investigation by Congress of decisions in the executive branch. President Washington, then i...

Before Congress completed its investigations of the Harding administration scandals, cabinet officers had been found to be involved in the maladministration or corruption. Secre...

On the morning of May 17, 1954, the klieg-lighted Senate Caucus Room was jammed with spectators. Near the end of the huge table at the front of the room, Senator Joseph R. McCar...

When the Eisenhower administration took office in January 1953, I had had high hopes that arbitrary government secrecy would be ended. As a candidate, the President had talked m...

Not until the summer of 1955 did it become apparent that the May 17, 1954, Eisenhower letter would be used on matters unrelated to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Throughout the fal...

In late 1954 and early 1955, secrecy obscured the facts in a major controversy over administration of the government loyalty-security program. The Republicans had campaigned in...

By the spring of 1955, enough executive agencies were refusing records to Congress that Representative William Dawson, the Illinois Democrat who served as chairman of the House...

While the Moss investigations continued, the Senate Permanent Investigating Subcommittee was accumulating evidence that showed how a relaxation of government controls over shipm...

The final reports from the four congressional investigations—a House Government Operations Committee, the Senate Dixon-Yates investigating subcommittee, the McClellan subcommitt...

The Justice Department, Commerce Department, Agriculture Department, Defense Department, and State Department had all used the arbitrary secrecy of “executive privilege” without...

William Pierce Rogers was nominated to be United States Attorney General in the fall of 1957. He had served as Deputy Attorney General under Herbert Brownell from the time the E...

Joseph Campbell had been treasurer and vice president of Columbia University while General Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of that institution. A pleasant and friendly relati...

By the summer of 1959, Representative Porter Hardy was fed up with arbitrary executive secrecy. The lanky Virginia Democrat was getting a double dose of “executive privilege” an...

From the investigation of the aid program in Laos, Representative Porter Hardy and his subcommittee staff moved on to the aid programs in Latin America. The subcommittee had exa...

President John F. Kennedy had been in office only ten days when he gave his “State of the Union” address on January 30, 1961. His comments on making information available to Con...

In its first year, the Kennedy administration had tackled the problem of secrecy with noble thoughts and brave deeds. President Kennedy could not have spoken more clearly on the...

History establishes that any administration may be afflicted with laxity, incompetence, and even outright fraud. History has also taught that any administration can harbor men w...