ences every day, when we would ask him for information about what was going on in the Government prior to, say, a negotiation or prior to the presentation of a treaty to the Senate. He would tell us very properly to stay out of that. When the treaty went to the Senate, we would be able, as the Senate would, to criticize the treaty, to make any suggestions about it we would like, and report all of the facts about it. But now that this country is a member of a coalition, a total different sequence of events takes place. First of all, you have long and serious arguments within the executive branch of the Government to try to get a Government position to reconcile the differences concerning departmental policy. And in this phase, which sometimes goes on for months, we are told that we must stay out of this; this is not a proper area for enterprise by the press.

Then if it is a foreign-policy matter, and very few things are not these days, you go through a second stage, and that is the stage of trying to reconcile the American Government position with the position of all of our allies in the coalition. This sometimes goes on for many months. And again we are asked not to intrude into the policymaking, the policy-defining position; and, finally, when there is both a Government position and a coalition position, the paper is sent to the Senate, and they say, "For God's sake, do not touch this; it has taken us years to negotiate it out."

Now, I think that is a very serious-not just a newspaper problem-but it is a very serious national problem.

There are one or two other new things in the Government which I think have not been thought through and which causes all of the trouble. One is that since the Forrestal Act there have been added many arms to the President, such as the Budget, the National Security Council, agencies of that kind which demand for themselves all of the secrecy which surround the President. And yet we are finding more and more, as in the Dixon-Yates deal, that the Bureau of the Budget was indeed involved in political acts and was not merely acting as a private instrument of the President himself.

The other point, and I hesitate to get into this, but merely urge the committee to look into it privately, and that is the new problem created for the President and for the country by the development in our country of the great Secret Service. Here is an area which causes more and more trouble for the reporter who has been trained in the tradition of probing under and trying to get the news, trained in a system where the Congress has constant control over the executive agency of the Government. The news of the CIA and its operatives all over the world often confronts us with the most embarrassment that any reporter can be confronted with, the dilemma as to whether he is going to tell the truth or whether he is going to mislead the American people by putting out something put out by the Government which he knows not to be true.

That whole area of the CIA, Mr. Chairman, I think, is a growing problem for the press, and I would think it would merit some attention by your committee.

Mr. Moss. Thank you very much, Mr. Reston.

We will next hear Mr. Theodore F. Koop, director of the Washington bureau of the Columbia Broadcasting Service.

STATEMENT OF THEODORE F. KOOP, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON NEWS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SERVICE

Mr. Koop. Mr. Chairman, I am appearing today primarily on behalf of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, of which I am a board member.

This association, like other news organizations, maintains a committee on freedom of information, to help keep open and to help reopen channels of communication between the Government and the American people. Throughout this committee has received and is receiving complaints of suppression of news at all levels of government without valid reasons.

Now, what can be considered a valid reason for withholding news? Certainly not the fear of criticism, or of embarrassment of a public official. We believe that a Government official, weighing the release of information, may properly ask himself a single question: Would the release jeopardize the security of the United States? If the answer is no, obviously, the information should be made public. If the answer is yes, there is still a further question: Is it more important for the American people to have this information than it is to withhold it from foreign circulation? Here, again, in many cases the answer may be yes.

I can assure you that news broadcasting, like our colleagues in the press, will cooperate completely in withholding material of a genuine security nature. The patriotic records of the broadcasting industry in World War II in abiding by volunteer censorship is ample proof of this statement.

With that general expression, I would like to take up in a little bit more detail the specific problems of radio and television newsmen in obtaining Government information.

I am glad to report, on the one hand, that a number of official doors here in Washington gradually have been swinging open to admit radio microphones and television cameras. The most noteworthy example, of course, was President Eisenhower's decision to allow his news conferences to be filmed for television. The conferences previously had been opened for radio recording.

Secretary of Defense Wilson permits both radio and news film coverage of his news conferences. Secretary of State Dulles permits radio recording and after his meetings with newsmen, makes a film highlight statement of the points covered. On the other hand, I must report that many Government officials refuse or fail to recognize this comparatively new media of radio and television. The result is necessarily a partial censorship, a partial blackout of vital information. The American people will not have complete free access to the facts until all branches of the communications industry have equal rights to gathering news.

On behalf of CBS news, I recently wrote about this problem to the Department of State and the Department of Defense as follows:

On several occasions we have developed news stories in the Department for use on radio and then have asked the Department official to say the same thing before a news camera. Invariably our requests have been refused. I would like to point up our view that television news should have as complete access to information as do radio and the newspapers. Our news film camera is

simply a different tool, and it is difficult for us to understand why an official of the Department can speak for radio and the press and not before television. This discrimination is not limited to Washington. The Far Eastern chief of the CBS news, Mr. Robert Pierpont, recently wrote the Department of Defense that the American Military in the Far East provided better coverage for all other mediums than they do for television. He cited a number of examples which I will not take the time of the committee to bring up here, but I would like to read the concluding sentence of his letter:

While understanding the necessity for security of vital information, it seems to me that the necessity has been frequently abused. Often public-information officers and other military personnel as well, hide behind a security requirement in attempting to avoid controversial issues or to play down a story which might in some way put the military in an awkward light.

Mr. Chairman, although I realize what I am about to say is without the specific assignment of this committee, I cannot complete my report without noting that the biggest setback to radio and television news coverage in the Federal Government this last year has come from the House of Representatives itself. I need not remind you that Speaker Rayburn said under the House rules, only reporters with pencil and paper can be admitted to committee hearings. The RCA and other organizations protested, as you know, to no avail. And I might state further that I believe the committee has made request for radio-television for this particular hearing to no avail. I cannot help but call to mind the old proverb, "Physician, heal thyself."

Getting back to the broad question of improper suppression of Government information, I recognize that there is no easy way to correct existing faults, but I do believe that the situation cannot be improved merely by writing a new directive. Rather the solution, as Mr. Pope noted at the start of our discussion this morning, is in the proper frame of mind by Government officials. The problem is getting the officials into the state of mind where they do not ask themselves the question, How little of this information do we have to give out? Instead, they should ask, How much of this information can I possibly release? Perhaps each official should hang a copy of the Bill of Rights over his desk as a constant reminder that the American people are his sovereign and are entitled to full information regarding what their Government is doing.

Mr. Moss. Thank you, Mr. Koop.

Mr. Koop. Thank you.

Mr. Moss. I might say that the chairman is abiding by the rule.
Mr. Koop. I understand that.

Mr. Moss. We will next hear from Mr. Wade H. Nichols, editor and publisher, Redbook magazine.

STATEMENT OF WADE H. NICHOLS, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, REDBOOK MAGAZINE

Mr. NICHOLS. Mr. Chairman, observing that among the 14 persons invited to participate in today's discussion I am 1 of only 2, with Mr. Koop, who is not associated with a newspaper or a news-service organization, I have had to assume that almost everyone else here is better qualified than I to cite specific instances of the withholding of infor

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mation by Government agencies. I have hoped, however, that I might contribute something from the standpoint of the other types of media. In that connection, a question comes to mind: Are we in danger of accepting or implying that concern over access to Government information is somehow a monopoly of the daily press, not as equities in themselves any more than newspapers claim to be, but as other representatives of public interest in Government, what of the trade papers and business journals, the broadcasters, the motion-picture industry, the book publishers and, of course, most directly of interest to me, the magazines?

Out of this question, there arises at least two others which I submit for the subcommittee's consideration: First, can we be sure that there is no limitation by implication in our use of the term "information"? Can we be concerned not only with the fast-breaking news of the moment but also with the longer range sorts of information which are the business of the slower-moving media?

In other words, is it still the kind of Government information under discussion here when a book publisher seeks access to archives still classified in some degree of secrecy despite their lack of contemporary security implications; is it still such information when a producer seeks Department of Defense cooperation in the preparation of a motion picture which might be critical of some aspects of one of the military services, and is it the kind of information which a magazine writer might seek, and only sometimes find when he wants to evaluate a Government service over a period of time.

Second, I should like to invite attention to the thought that when we speak of "public access to information," the public itself is both a huge and somewhat incomprehensible mass on the one hand, while on the other it is a conglomerate whose parts and pieces may be identified. I believe that the public in its various segments may be easier to understand as a seeker and user of Government information. The manufacturer who reads Iron Age magazine, for example, is readily visualized as a consumer of information within a certain prescribed field, much of it originating in agencies such as the Department of Commerce; the grower who reads Progessive Farmer is clearly looking beyond the pages of that publication to the Department of Agriculture; the woman who reads McCall's magazine has an obvious and legitimate interest in information originating in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. And so, this question is: Can we delve into the mass called the public and define some of the special and unifying interests which it has? And, if so, might that in turn tell us something of why information is wanted, why it has to be available, and what forms it should take beyond the so-called hard news?

Magazines offer an approach to such an inquiry because, by and large, they tend to have rather specialized audiences and audience appeals. In this, of course, they differ from newspapers, since a proper newspaper appeals to the whole public.

I do not suggest that magazine people, as far as I know their thinking, are entirely content with their access to Government information. Indeed, I have heard a great deal of positive response to a news release by this subcommittee which indicated that executive departments had cited scores of reasons why information could not or should not be released to Congress, the press and/or the public. It is appar

ently believed that the mere publication of this fact will call attention to the problem and thus open a way for its solution.

While sharing in this hope, my own feeling is that much more needs to be done. The multiplicity of laws and regulations cited by various agencies suggests, more than anything else, the depth of the underlying reluctance to disseminate information freely; the strength of the desire to explain and justify secrecy.

If we presume perhaps on no other basis than this one that Government employees are too numerous to be unique or particular, and that they are therefore reasonable men in somewhat the degree that we are ourselves, it would seem to follow that this inclination toward secretiveness must originate in something having substance and reality. Why do people in the executive departments shun the openness which we seek?

Some answers, of course, are obvious: Administrators understand that information, even seemingly innocuous stuff at the moment, might become ammunition in the future for political opponents. They also seem to indicate by their attitude a conviction that the press and public are more interested in scandal than in accomplishment; that we accentuate the negative and ignore the positive. Politics and news being as immutable in their natures as they are, these realities are no doubt with us forever.

Perhaps it is not entirely unrealistic to suggest, however, that one effect of the present inquiry might be the institution with the executive branch of a personnel education program designed to remaind that public business is not, after all, private business; that government is not really the property of its custodians. It is even possible to imagine legislation which would attack the secrecy attitude at its source, by diminishing the motivation toward secrecy. Such legislation might operate rather negatively by providing penalties for the improper suppression of information, or on a somewhat sounder psychological principle by providing rewards for conspicuous contributions to public understanding.

Finally, I should like to express the hope that this inquiry into the sources of Government information will not have any effect, however indirect, of encouraging any greater flow of information for which there is no demand or need. There exists in some departments an apparent tendency to treat the information function in public service as if it were the publicity office of a commercial enterprise. Indeed, it might be that if some of the information offices could be legislated out of existence, the press and public-and perhaps Congress itself— would get more and better information through direct contact with the policymakers and workers of the executive departments, unimpeded by press agents whose instinct is to see every situation through their own rose-colored glasses.

Mr. Moss. Thank you, Mr. Nichols.

Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you.

Mr. Moss. I would like to reassure you, at least on your second point, that we are interested in all facets of information and we do propose later on to inquire directly into special types of information which are needed by special inquiry.

Now, I should like to call on Mr. Clark Mollenhoff, of the Des Moines Register and Tribune and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune.