Washington cover-up

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 relationship developed between the two men, and General Eisenhower was attracted by Campbell’s competency in accounting and finance. After General Eisenhower was elected President, he named Campbell a member of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1953.

A year later President Eisenhower named Joseph Campbell Comptroller General of the United States in charge of the General Accounting Office (GAO). It is an important fifteen-year-term office designed to serve the Congress as the “financial watchdog” of all spending in the executive departments and agencies. No single office in the United States is more vital to the task of forcing the sprawling federal government to administer the laws fairly and make expenditures according to the laws.

The GAO was established in the Budgeting and Accounting Act of 1921 as an arm of the legislative branch of government. Once the Comptroller General has been appointed by the President, he becomes an agent of the Congress. To assure the independence of the office, the Congress established the long term and provided that the incumbent could be removed from office only by joint resolution of Congress or by impeachment.

The Budgeting and Accounting Act also gave the GAO the power to examine all information and reports in order to determine whether money was being spent in a legal manner. The section on access to records states:

“All departments and establishments shall furnish to the Comptroller General such information regarding the powers, duties, activities, organization, financial transactions, and methods of business of their respective offices as he may from time to time require of them; and the Comptroller General, or any of his assistants or employees, when duly authorized by him, shall for the purpose of securing such information, have access to and the right to examine any books, documents, papers, or records of any such department or establishment.”

The law allowed but one exception to the Comptroller General’s legal right to demand and obtain access to “records of any such department or establishment.” That one exception gave the Secretary of State the power to determine whether there should be a publication of expenditures of funds used in dealings or treaty making with foreign nations.

The law should have been clear to anyone. The GAO auditors were to be given access to all papers and all records dealing with the expenditure of federal funds. It was the only way they could carefully examine contracts and determine whether any frauds or illegal procedures were involved.

But through the years, as might be expected in a bureaucracy, some officials had been reluctant to put all the cards on the table for the GAO. The reluctance increased in proportion to the bungling, mismanagement, or fraud that might be uncovered by prying GAO investigators.

In the first years of Joseph Campbell’s tenure as Comptroller General, his office faced some of the normal bureaucratic reluctance. But, on the whole, the holding back was spotty. Usually the departments produced the records demanded when the inspection provisions of the Budgeting and Accounting Act were pointed out to them.

By 1958, however, the use of “executive privilege” had become so widespread that it was interfering with the work of the GAO. The interference gradually came to light through the work of an Armed Services subcommittee headed by Representative F. Edward Hebert, the Louisiana Democrat. Chairman Hebert had asked Comptroller General Campbell to do a thorough study of the multibillion-dollar Air Force ballistic missile program. He had also set the GAO on the trail of a dozen other smaller projects where it appeared that influence, favoritism, incompetence, or fraud had cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in excess costs.

To Chairman Hebert this unjustified secrecy was serious business. For nearly ten years he had been engaged in important investigations which had proved that the military services could not be relied upon to police their own spending. It was vital that there be an adequate policing job on a Defense budget that totaled about 40 billion dollars a year—approximately half of the entire federal budget. Year after year, Chairman Hebert and Chief Counsel John Courtney had conducted hearings showing incredible waste and inefficiency. The staff of the Hebert subcommittee was small, and Chairman Hebert was forced to rely on the GAO for the major part of the auditing work and legal studies.

The Defense Department could not avail itself of the claim of “national security” when the GAO auditors started an investigation because the GAO auditors were cleared to handle “Secret” and “Top Secret” classified material in the same manner that Defense officials were. Lacking the “national security” claim, the military services latched onto the claim of “executive privilege.” One directive followed another, gradually pulling down the secrecy curtain. The periodic, quiet protests by Campbell went unnoticed by the public until the usually mild-mannered Comptroller General fired off a letter to Defense Secretary Neil McElroy.

“These restrictions,” Campbell wrote, “could seriously hamper the General Accounting office in performing its statutory responsibility and will impede the performance of our work.”

He pointed out to McElroy that his GAO auditors could not do their job in the face of directives that prohibited them from examining the Inspector General reports, and allowed them only a summary of reports as approved by the Secretaries of the various armed services.

In a letter to Chairman Hebert, Campbell made his complaint more specific:

“Any information or factual data directly bearing on a program of activity subject to audit by the General Accounting Office should not be withheld or subjected to procedures designed to screen official documents, papers, or records, by the authority or activity being audited.”

Later, in a letter to the Moss subcommittee on Government Information, the Comptroller General stated that he was seeking to make a study of the activity of the Inspector General of the Air Force to determine how effective the internal investigations had been.

He stated that to conduct such an investigation, the GAO inspection must include:

1 A survey of the Air Force procurement methods (advertising versus negotiation).

2 A survey of procurement quantitative and qualitative program changes.

3 A survey of contract cost overruns.

“It is essential that such reports be made available to the General Accounting Office in order that we can evaluate the effectiveness of the department’s system of internal control and to preclude unwarranted and unnecessary duplication of effort in the internal audit and the independent reviews made by this office,” Campbell wrote.

“There is no basis why reports on the subject of the types pointed out above should not be made available to the General Accounting Office unless the purpose is to delay or hamper the efforts of the office to disclose all facts bearing upon the activity or area under audit.

“We believe that any departmental regulation denying to the General Accounting Office access to any report relating to ‘internal audit and control’ is contrary to the law.”

It should be remembered that this was not a Democratic congressman or senator accusing a Republican administration. This was Joseph Campbell, long-time friend of President Eisenhower, charging that the Eisenhower administration was acting “contrary to the law” in the claim of an “executive privilege.”

Congressman John Moss subsequently declared that President Eisenhower was not discharging his duties under the Constitution. Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the President is obliged to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed....” In this instance, President Eisenhower was not only disregarding the Budgeting and Accounting Act but also supporting those acting “contrary to the law,” Moss said.

Although the fuss had started over GAO access to a sixty-two-page Air Force inspector general report on the ballistic missile program (see Appendix C), the real issue was whether the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, or any other executive agency could arbitrarily refuse to give reports, papers, and financial records to the GAO.

It was difficult to follow President Eisenhower’s thinking. This was a period of time when President Eisenhower and members of his administration were emphasizing that financial problems could be one of the nation’s big worries. One of the major problems, they believed, was making sure the government was getting its money’s worth from military spending.

Even in times past, when GAO investigators were given maximum access to records, serious scandals had been unearthed. Most of them were not discovered by the military establishment but came to light only after the GAO or the congressional committees went to work. Chairman Hebert and Campbell had a long record of fruitful hearings to back them in questioning the wisdom (to say nothing of the legality) of allowing our military spenders to erect more barriers for the GAO auditors—the only independent outside check on the billions spent on military matters.

At the presidential press conference on November 5, 1958, I raised the question of the right of the General Accounting Office to examine reports of the Air Force and the Defense Department.

“Mr. President,” I said, “you have mentioned the spending in the Defense Department here as one of the important issues, and the General Accounting Office, which is the watchdog on frauds and extravagances in the various agencies, has been barred from reports over in the Air Force and the Defense Department generally, and on this they [the Air Force and Defense Department officials] claim that they have authority from you to withhold reports if it is ‘expedient to do so.’”

I tried to make the question conform as much as possible to the precise trouble area between the GAO and the Defense Department.

“I wonder,” I continued, “if you have given that authority [to withhold] and if you feel that the GAO should have a full rein to go in and investigate all indications of fraud and extravagance?”

Replied the President: “You are obviously talking about some special thing that I would have to study before I could make—give an answer. I have stated this time and time again: I believe that every investigating committee of the Congress, every auditing office, like the GAO, should always have the opportunity to see official records if the security of our country is not involved.”

President Eisenhower was now saying that the GAO should have all records unless the security of our country was involved. I tried to pin him down on it.

“Will they claim this, Mr. President, under ‘executive privilege—’” I started my question.

President Eisenhower cut in before I had finished to avoid any further comment. “No, that’s all I have to say—I told you that is all I had to say for the moment.”

Representative Clare Hoffman, the wily Michigan Republican, noted that President Eisenhower’s answer seemed to bar use of “executive privilege” in refusing reports to the GAO. A few days after the press conference, he wrote President Eisenhower to call attention to the press conference exchange and to ask:

“Did you mean to imply by your comments that the complete text of Inspector General reports, including recommendations, be made available to Congress and the General Accounting Office?”

President Eisenhower’s letter to Representative Hoffman on the same day again barred the GAO from the full reports of inspectors general. The President said that “facts” in the reports would be made available to the GAO, but that “recommendations and other advisory matter” were not to be released (see Appendix C).

The whole situation landed right back where it had started. The Air Force, Navy, or Army officials would still screen the Inspector General reports, eliminate material they didn’t want to fall into the hands of GAO auditors, and pass out their own self-serving summary to the investigators. Law and logic had fallen by the wayside. The Budgeting and Accounting Act might as well not have been written for all the good it was doing in forcing departments to produce all pertinent documents.

The next big test came with the Navy. In February 1959, Comptroller General Campbell wrote to the Moss subcommittee stating that the secrecy curtain made it impossible for him to fulfill his responsibility to audit Navy financial affairs.

“We consider it illogical, impractical and contrary to express provisions of the law for public officials to withhold, in their discretion, information concerning the discharge of their public trust,” Campbell wrote.

“We are advising the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy that we are unable to properly discharge our statutory responsibility if information needed in our work is denied to our representatives in the performance of our audits.”

Representative William L. Dawson, chairman of the parent House Government Operation Committee, instructed Moss to prepare for public hearings. He wrote Campbell:

“I am sure everything possible will be done to overcome the repeated arrogance of Federal executive officials whose denial of information to the General Accounting Office flouts the clear law of the land.”

Comptroller General Campbell said that the “executive privilege” claim was being made by the Secretary of the Navy on grounds that “he believes full disclosure of rank opinions, advice and recommendations from persons at lower levels ... would not be in the public interest.

“This same reasoning is now being applied by the various bureaus and offices in the day-to-day work of their employees.

“We believe that sound management practices require that observations, opinions, and recommendations by subordinates and any other matters considered in making a decision should be a matter of record.

“All of these are matters upon which judgments are founded and subsequent decision and actions are based. Such documentation serves as a protection to the individual making the decisions or taking the action as well as furnishing a sound basis for subsequent appraisal of their timeliness, effectiveness and honesty.”

Campbell complained that under Navy procedure at that time “the individuals having custody of the materials are required to screen the material and remove from the official files any data they or their superiors feel we should not have.

“These actions provide a means by which the Department could conceal substantive evidence of waste, extravagance, improvident management, poor procurement practices, or other adverse conditions.”

By March of 1959, Campbell had full proof that he could not rely on the summary reports submitted to him by the Navy. He declared that the Navy had submitted two reports on one subject that were “incorrect representations” of the government’s action. “The second version of the report, while containing twice as many pages, is also incomplete and inadequate because of the use of self-exercised censorship.”

Campbell said that the secrecy was not only illegal and bad government but that it was mighty expensive. He explained that the secrecy deprived the GAO auditors of information already accumulated at the taxpayers’ expense. This meant that the GAO was forced to go out and duplicate work already done if it was to make any effort to fulfill its responsibility.

Comptroller General Campbell put no price tag on the extra cost for a GAO audit of the Navy. However, the GAO did estimate that lack of access to the Air Force Inspector General reports made that audit cost at least $125,000 more than necessary. Though the cost of the audit could have been avoided with the proper co-operation of the Air Force, the audit ultimately disclosed millions of dollars in bungling and waste in the Air Force missile program—all covered up in the name of “executive privilege.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch commented:

“The amazing thing about this situation is that President Eisenhower backs the armed services in withholding vital information from the GAO. He has been told by his legal advisers that ‘executive privilege’ has some validity, where it is in essence nothing but the determination of bureaucrats to keep the GAO from seeing their books.

“This bogus doctrine forced the GAO to spend an extra $125,000 in making its inquiry into Air Force mismanagement.... Just how much longer is the public going to put up with this sort of thing?”

I knew that Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, was fed up with this expensive and undemocratic secrecy. So was J. Russell Wiggins, executive editor of the Washington Post and Times Herald; James Pope, executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal; Herbert Brucker, editor of the Hartford Courant; V. M. (Red) Newton, managing editor of the Tampa Tribune; and Harold Cross, the special counsel for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The Chicago Daily News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Wall Street Journal were among the other top papers firmly opposed to the secrecy cover-up. But despite several excellent editorials, the problem just wasn’t flamboyant enough to catch the attention of the public or even most reporters. Too many news stories and editorials in other papers merely repeated the self-serving justifications of the Eisenhower administration without determining whether the assertions were true.