Wanted: A Fresh Inquiry

...Eisenhower has not been the first Presidential offender...

...The record, for example, shows that Sherman Adams, President Eisenhower's chiefof-staff, assisted Murray Chotiner, California lawyer-lobbyist who was Vice President Richard M. Nixon's campaign manager, to secure help from the Civil Aeronautics Board in behalf of Chotiner's client, North American Airlines...

...it would include a serious inquiry into the nature of the system itself—how it works, who are the men who make public policy, what are the criteria tor determining the public interest, what are the pressures and where do they come from, and to what extent flagrant lobbying and executive interference have corrupted what is essentially a judicial process...

...Senator Morse has proposed such an inquiry...

...It was only the bizarre tactics of a runaway counsel that stampeded the Subcommittee into looking where it preferred not to look...

...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Wanted: A Fresh Inquiry The clumsy efforts of the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight to shed reluctant light on the curious conduct of the Federal Communications Commission emphasizes the urgent need for a new and full-scale investigation of all the independent agencies of government...

...This Congress has not done...

...A genuinely courageous investigation would seek, most of all, to get to the bottom of the community of interest between politics and business which has made a sham of regulation and enabled those special interests that are supposed to be regulated to make captives of the commissions that are supposed to regulate them...

...Thus, in 1949, he selected his old pal Mon Wallgren, former Senator and former governor of Washington, to sit on the Federal Power Commission...

...Without going into the merits of the North American case, it is worth pointing out that Chotiner wrote Adams and that the latter replied in two letters written on White House stationery, one of which was inscribed "Personal and Confidential...

...It is the Senate which confirms appointments to these commissions...

...But the latter set up such a tremendous howl—and a documented howl it was—that the Subcommittee was obliged to hunt for some of the dirt it had preferred not to find...

...Two years later Wallgren retired to an estate near Palm Springs, Calif., where he has date and grapefruit groves...

...Even though he was engaged in a desperate effort to keep the investigation from being embalmed at birth, it was unprincipled of Schwartz to leak unsupported charges to the press before those accused could be given an opportunity to answer, to resort to the shabby use of a secret recording device in interviewing a witness, and to abscond with the Subcommittee's files...

...The Federal Power Commission, for example, exercises enormous authority in the utility field, involving water power sites, the clash between public and private development, the licensing of hydro-electric projects on government lands and navigable waters, regulation of the natural gas industry, utility finances, and other significant sectors of the national economy...

...We hope the Senate heeds him—for once...

...But the independent commissions, functioning for the most part behind closed doors, have largely escaped public scrutiny because the press has made only the feeblest effort to cover them—and then only their more spectacular activities...

...A genuinely courageous investigation would range far beyond what Speaker Sam Ray-burn has called "fly-specking...

...One that stands out starkly is the relationship of the White House to these theoretically independent agencies...

...It would seem under the circumstances that Congress itself would long since have established a committee to keep these quasi-judicial agencies, which it created, under constant surveillance, dealing as they do in billions of dollars worth of rates, franchises, and values...

...Recently the House of Representatives voted a $250,000 appropriation to a curiously named Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight to investigate six of the agencies—the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Federal Power Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Federal Trade Commission—all of them charged with policing vital sectors of the national economy...

...The Progressive believes that both the Subcommittee and Schwartz have behaved badly, the Subcommittee because of its inexcusable conduct in subjecting Schwartz to tactics of delay, harassment, and concealment, and Schwartz by retaliating with methods that can be sanctioned only under the immoral doctrine that the end justifies the means...

...It seems clear enough from the way the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight has conducted itself up to now that we can count on it to pursue no such deep-going inquiry...

...But Mack, a weak tool of far more powerful interests, is small fry...

...But it was clear from the outset that powerful forces in and out of the government were determined to keep the investigation from developing into an objective quest for the truth...

...Fitfully over the years it has turned its attention to one or another of the independent commissions, but has avoided for the most part a full-scale investigation of the operation of the whole system...

...It is the Senate whose members—or two-thirds of them—will not soon be involved in reelection campaigns and can therefore give the necessary time to such an investigation...

...The first agency marked for investigation—the FCC—was known to be poorly administered, battered by internal strife, and subject to extraordinary pressures, from public officials and private interests alike, in the award of television channels and other favors...

...Although the spotlight has played mostly on the FCC, there are other agencies of equal or greater importance handing out even more valuable prizes than TV channels...

...Wallgren cast the deciding vote, in the Phillips Petroleum case, against retaining Commission jurisdiction over gas at the well-head—a decision subsequently reversed by the United States Supreme Court...

...A genuinely courageous investigation would explore the background of the appointment of limited men like Mack to major positions...

...The result up to now has been the resignation of Commissioner Richard A. Mack for his shoddy performance in connection with the granting of a Miami television channel...

...They have broad powers, both administrative and judicial, which are aimed at the single objective of protecting the public against abuses by special interests...

...There are many questions that would be raised—and perhaps answered—in any purposeful investigation...

...The Subcommittee grew increasingly annoyed at Schwartz's determination to step on official toes, if need be, to get at the truth, and proceeded to fire him...

...Even more shocking has been the President's habit of choosing men who are opposed to the very programs they are appointed to administer...

...He was used and then discarded when he was caught...

...A CAB regulation bars private communication about a pending case "between any member of the CAB and any person in public or private life...

...The appointments to these commissions exercising quasi-judicial authority in critical fields have gone, for the most part, to political hacks with little or no competence in the fields they were chosen to regulate...

...Bernard Schwartz, professor of administrative and constitutional law at New York University and a registered Republican, was thought to be a safe scholar who could be kept on a leash...

...There is far greater game involved in a truly objective investigation of FCC and the other regulatory agencies—game the Subcommittee shows little or no intention of hunting...

...One revelation bound to emerge from any objective investigation of the independent agencies is the extent to which appointments have come to be regarded as political plums to be handed out by the President to the party faithful, however lacking in qualifications...

...He turned out to be a rip-roaring, rambunctious firebrand—an amateur crusader who fought helplessly for a time against a group of professional cynics...

...President Eisenhower's appointments to these regulatory agencies have been shockingly bad, as The Progressive has pointed out on several occasions during the past five years...

...There are countless unanswered questions that would be raised in a thorough investigation of the kind for which the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight has shown that it has no stomach...

...The three constitutional arms of government function under a pitiless glare of publicity which enables the public to have some idea of what they are doing and how they are faring...

...See Miles McMillin's article on Page 12 of this issue...

...These commissions, constituting, as they do, a fourth and powerful arm of government, exercise an enormous impact on the lives of most Americans...

...With kind regards, Sincerely, Sherm...

...Schwartz did succeed in shaming the Subcommittee into looking into some of the charges against the FCC...

...In his letters, Adams reported that he had gone over the case "carefully" with the CAB chairman, and added: "Is there anything further in this matter that I can do to be of assistance...

...The Senate should undertake the task—and the sooner the better...

...But the FPC, along with the other regulatory agencies, has escaped scrutiny by Congress or the press for many years...

...Some authorities have argued that their influence on the day-to-day lives of the populace is greater, and more direct, in fact, than the impact of the other three branches of government, for these independent agencies regulate a wide variety of rates and fares, determine public power policy, govern air, rail, and bus transportation, control labor-management relations, grant radio and television franchises, determine communications policy, supervise the securities markets, oversee the banks, and police advertising and merchandising methods...

...But the House Subcommittee approached its inquiry as though its purpose were to learn little and reform less...

...President Truman occasionally appointed political hacks or personal cronies to regulatory commissions—to the debasement of the public interest...