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Government information policy and the Reagan administration: An overview and assessment
A Symposium
Government Information Policy and the Reagan Administration: An Overview and Assessment
Ronald Reagan came to the presidency with an electoral mandate that was commanding and decisive, if not stunning. The campaign, however, had revealed little, if anything, about the new Chief Executive’s views regarding information policy. He was a political conservative and had long stood in that quarter of the American right where anti-communism is a dominant ideological tenet. Yet, Ronald Reagan was an experienced Governor, a practical executive, and, as the campaign revealed, something of a populist. Were there any clues here concerning his information policies? The departing President, Jimmy Carter, had come to Washington knowing very little about the intricacies of many aspects of Federal government operations, including those in the information sector. In his successful bid for the White House four years earlier, Carter had also worn the populist mantle. While he had pledged himself to open government in his campaign speeches, he had seemed to be unaware of the newly enacted Government in the Sunshine Act or the canon of related Federal law that awaited his faithful administration. As President, he issued a new executive order on security classification policy and practice which contained some idealistic reforms, but he failed to follow-up by committing himself or additional resources to their actual realization. Indeed, during his tenure, there was little change in Federal information policy and practice. As he departed, however, Carter left the new regime a package of proposals for modifying the Freedom of Information Actsome of which, if enacted, would limit the effect of the statute-and a new law, the Paperwork Reduction Act, which awaited implementation. In formulating his information policies, the new President, like his predecessors, would have to contend with Congress. During the prior two decades, Congress had been very carefully and actively attending to information considerations in both its legislative and Government Information Quarterly, Volume 6, Number 4, pages 341-343. Copyright 0 1989 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved, ISSN: 0740-624X.
342
GOVERNMENT
INFORMATION
QUARTERLY
Vol. ~/NO. 3/‘l989
oversight capacities. Through an exchange of letters with a House subcommittee on govemment information, pledges were extracted from President Kennedy and his successors that they would assert constitutional power to withhold information from the other branches only after personally giving judicious consideration to the matter. Beginning in 1966 with the Freedom of Information Act, Congress developed and maintained, usually in the face of Executive Branch opposition, a series of information access and open government laws. Members of Congress soon came to appreciate the value and importance of oversight. The House Select Committee on Committees began raising member’s consciousness of this function in 1973. Subsequent examinations of the Watergate incident, the precarious national emergency powers situation, and intelligence misdeeds convinced most congressional leaders that such reviews should be pursued across a broad variety of programmatic and operational fronts. In the House, most committees established oversight subcommittees, and, by 1977, both chambers had created permanent committees on intelligence. Congressional forecasting and evaluation capabilities were strengthened during the 1970s. The Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress was updated in 1970, given an expanded mandate and increased resources, and renamed the Congressional Research Service. The Office of Technology Assessment was created in 1972, and the Congressional Budget Office was established in 1974. “Congress also carefully broadened the operations of its general investigatory and oversight agency, the General Accounting Office, which made twice as many reports on Executive Branch activities in 1976-1980 as in the 1966-1970, testified before committees five times as often, and attempted far more comprehensive program evaluations than before.“’ The Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations were not pleased with a more inquisitive Congress. “The executive response to this situation was to expand a secrecy and clearance system in which information was classified and placed off limits not only to members of the public but also to members of Congress.“* Information requests from congressional committees and subcommittees were sometimes ignored in the hope that there would be no pursuit. On some occasions, requests were denied for constitutional reasons-assertion of the so-called “executive privilege.” When congressional panels were assertive and persistent, however, they usually got the information they wanted, sometimes in a brokered form. Indeed, even in a few “executive privilege” cases-ones involving Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of Commerce Morton in 1975 and Secretary of Energy Duncan in 1980-congressional overseers were ultimately successful. One long-time observer of Congress summarized the situation this way on the eve of the arrival of the Reagan administration: By the end of the decade, the Congress appeared to have won its point. There could be no more secret wars, no more secret covert operations, not even secret scandals. The release of internal documents to investigating committees would still be negotiated case by case, as it always had been, but the attitude of defiance toward the legislature’s claims that characterized the latter years of the Nixon administration was gone. During the Carter years both branches sought accommodation. Whether this represented a durable change in relations would not be tested until the next time that the executive and legislative branches were controlled by opposing parties?
As a result of the 1980 election, of course, the White House and the Senate came under the control of the same political party. This situation certainly contributed to the breakdown of longstanding bipartisan support for the Freedom of Information Act within the congres-
Introduction
343
sional institution. It may also have emboldened the administration to pursue policies of secrecy and polices in secrecy, particularly for reasons of “national. security.” To effect greater official secrecy, the President issued an executive order expanding security classification protections and directed that thousands of Federal personnel be required to sign nondisclosure agreements. The implications of these restrictions were not lost on many congressional overseers. As for the pursuit of policies in secrecy, the dangers and pitfalls are evident from the Iran-Contra Affair. Moreover, the Reagan administration’s distaste for the F.O.I. Act and penchant for secrecy detracted significantly from its supposed populism. Indeed, secrecy is the headmaiden of elitism. When secrecy was defeated by leaks or investigative journalism, the defense was to question loyalty, threaten prosecution, or pursue punishment. Anti-communism could become irrational. Even the traditional communication of some kinds of scientific and technological knowledge by campus-based and other private sector scientists and engineers was perceived to be patriotically unadvisable and otherwise warranting increased “national security” control. In its overview and assessment, this symposium considers various aspects of the information policies and practices of the Reagan administration. The result is a critique. These assessments were completed in the early days of yet another new presidency, one seemingly imbued with a considerable amount of admiration and affinity for its immediate predecessor. The question remaining is what enduring information policy legacy did Ronald Reagan leave for his successor, the nation, and history? Harold C. Relyea Guest Editor
NOTES 1. 2. 3.
James L. Sundquist. 7he Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1981), p. 327. Lawrence C. Dodd and Richard L. Schott. Congress and the Administrurive Srufe (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1979), pp. 180-181. Sundquist, l&e Decline and Resurgence of Congress, p. 332; also, generally, see Ibid., pp. 324-332.
Government Information Policy and the Reagan Administration: An Overview and Assessment
Ronald Reagan came to the presidency with an electoral mandate that was commanding and decisive, if not stunning. The campaign, however, had revealed little, if anything, about the new Chief Executive’s views regarding information policy. He was a political conservative and had long stood in that quarter of the American right where anti-communism is a dominant ideological tenet. Yet, Ronald Reagan was an experienced Governor, a practical executive, and, as the campaign revealed, something of a populist. Were there any clues here concerning his information policies? The departing President, Jimmy Carter, had come to Washington knowing very little about the intricacies of many aspects of Federal government operations, including those in the information sector. In his successful bid for the White House four years earlier, Carter had also worn the populist mantle. While he had pledged himself to open government in his campaign speeches, he had seemed to be unaware of the newly enacted Government in the Sunshine Act or the canon of related Federal law that awaited his faithful administration. As President, he issued a new executive order on security classification policy and practice which contained some idealistic reforms, but he failed to follow-up by committing himself or additional resources to their actual realization. Indeed, during his tenure, there was little change in Federal information policy and practice. As he departed, however, Carter left the new regime a package of proposals for modifying the Freedom of Information Actsome of which, if enacted, would limit the effect of the statute-and a new law, the Paperwork Reduction Act, which awaited implementation. In formulating his information policies, the new President, like his predecessors, would have to contend with Congress. During the prior two decades, Congress had been very carefully and actively attending to information considerations in both its legislative and Government Information Quarterly, Volume 6, Number 4, pages 341-343. Copyright 0 1989 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved, ISSN: 0740-624X.
342
GOVERNMENT
INFORMATION
QUARTERLY
Vol. ~/NO. 3/‘l989
oversight capacities. Through an exchange of letters with a House subcommittee on govemment information, pledges were extracted from President Kennedy and his successors that they would assert constitutional power to withhold information from the other branches only after personally giving judicious consideration to the matter. Beginning in 1966 with the Freedom of Information Act, Congress developed and maintained, usually in the face of Executive Branch opposition, a series of information access and open government laws. Members of Congress soon came to appreciate the value and importance of oversight. The House Select Committee on Committees began raising member’s consciousness of this function in 1973. Subsequent examinations of the Watergate incident, the precarious national emergency powers situation, and intelligence misdeeds convinced most congressional leaders that such reviews should be pursued across a broad variety of programmatic and operational fronts. In the House, most committees established oversight subcommittees, and, by 1977, both chambers had created permanent committees on intelligence. Congressional forecasting and evaluation capabilities were strengthened during the 1970s. The Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress was updated in 1970, given an expanded mandate and increased resources, and renamed the Congressional Research Service. The Office of Technology Assessment was created in 1972, and the Congressional Budget Office was established in 1974. “Congress also carefully broadened the operations of its general investigatory and oversight agency, the General Accounting Office, which made twice as many reports on Executive Branch activities in 1976-1980 as in the 1966-1970, testified before committees five times as often, and attempted far more comprehensive program evaluations than before.“’ The Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations were not pleased with a more inquisitive Congress. “The executive response to this situation was to expand a secrecy and clearance system in which information was classified and placed off limits not only to members of the public but also to members of Congress.“* Information requests from congressional committees and subcommittees were sometimes ignored in the hope that there would be no pursuit. On some occasions, requests were denied for constitutional reasons-assertion of the so-called “executive privilege.” When congressional panels were assertive and persistent, however, they usually got the information they wanted, sometimes in a brokered form. Indeed, even in a few “executive privilege” cases-ones involving Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of Commerce Morton in 1975 and Secretary of Energy Duncan in 1980-congressional overseers were ultimately successful. One long-time observer of Congress summarized the situation this way on the eve of the arrival of the Reagan administration: By the end of the decade, the Congress appeared to have won its point. There could be no more secret wars, no more secret covert operations, not even secret scandals. The release of internal documents to investigating committees would still be negotiated case by case, as it always had been, but the attitude of defiance toward the legislature’s claims that characterized the latter years of the Nixon administration was gone. During the Carter years both branches sought accommodation. Whether this represented a durable change in relations would not be tested until the next time that the executive and legislative branches were controlled by opposing parties?
As a result of the 1980 election, of course, the White House and the Senate came under the control of the same political party. This situation certainly contributed to the breakdown of longstanding bipartisan support for the Freedom of Information Act within the congres-
Introduction
343
sional institution. It may also have emboldened the administration to pursue policies of secrecy and polices in secrecy, particularly for reasons of “national. security.” To effect greater official secrecy, the President issued an executive order expanding security classification protections and directed that thousands of Federal personnel be required to sign nondisclosure agreements. The implications of these restrictions were not lost on many congressional overseers. As for the pursuit of policies in secrecy, the dangers and pitfalls are evident from the Iran-Contra Affair. Moreover, the Reagan administration’s distaste for the F.O.I. Act and penchant for secrecy detracted significantly from its supposed populism. Indeed, secrecy is the headmaiden of elitism. When secrecy was defeated by leaks or investigative journalism, the defense was to question loyalty, threaten prosecution, or pursue punishment. Anti-communism could become irrational. Even the traditional communication of some kinds of scientific and technological knowledge by campus-based and other private sector scientists and engineers was perceived to be patriotically unadvisable and otherwise warranting increased “national security” control. In its overview and assessment, this symposium considers various aspects of the information policies and practices of the Reagan administration. The result is a critique. These assessments were completed in the early days of yet another new presidency, one seemingly imbued with a considerable amount of admiration and affinity for its immediate predecessor. The question remaining is what enduring information policy legacy did Ronald Reagan leave for his successor, the nation, and history? Harold C. Relyea Guest Editor
NOTES 1. 2. 3.
James L. Sundquist. 7he Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1981), p. 327. Lawrence C. Dodd and Richard L. Schott. Congress and the Administrurive Srufe (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1979), pp. 180-181. Sundquist, l&e Decline and Resurgence of Congress, p. 332; also, generally, see Ibid., pp. 324-332.