April 22, 1971
Page 11561
J. EDGAR HOOVER
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under previous order of the House, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. BOGGS) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. BOGGS. Mr. Speaker, on April 5, before this House, I spoke briefly, expressing certain personal views regarding activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the threat which I believe those activities present to both the spirit and the letter of the Bill of Rights.
On the following day, April 6, in a statement to the press, I amplified the previous remarks, announcing that it was my personal conclusion the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, should resign from the position which he has held continuously since the administration of President Calvin Coolidge.
As my statement said, that conclusion was reached only "with a great deal of sorrow." For years I have numbered myself among the admirers of this dedicated and able public servant. Under his direction, the Bureau has earned the reputation as one of the most effective investigatory agencies in the world. Mr. Hoover's own patriotism and dedication have never been – and are not now – in the slightest question. Having said these things, however, I went on to say in my prepared statement that "the time has come for Mr. Hoover to retire and make way for younger men, equally dedicated to the goals he has set."
That is why I speak at this hour. Under the order granted on Monday, April 19, I have come before this House to renew my request for Mr. Hoover's resignation, and to set forth before the Members the basis on which that request is regretfully made.
At the outset, permit me this personal word.
Although I serve as majority leader of this body, I am speaking only for myself. I have not asked and do not ask that Members of my own party associate themselves with either my request or my remarks, except as their own private convictions may move them to do so. Other Members, of both my own party and others, may wish to ally themselves with Mr. Hoover and with the defense of the activities which I shall discuss. For each Member, that is a matter of personal choice.
Although Mr. Hoover was first appointed by a Republican Attorney General, and although he is presently serving under a Republican administration, 60 percent of his tenure has been with Presidents and Attorney Generals of the Democratic Party.
The past, therefore, offers no promise of partisan profit.
Whatever our judgments, they should be and must be taken on the basis of the relevant present, with the national interest transcending any thought of personal or party interest.
On this occasion, as on the occasion of my prior remarks before the House, I am frank to say that I speak from the stirrings of a newly awakened and aroused sense of responsibility.
Over the 26 years of my service in this body, I have concerned myself with what seemed to be the great issues of these trying and traumatic times. Coming here in the year of Pearl Harbor, I have deemed it my first responsibility to devote my energies to those things required for the support of freedom and the keeping of peace around the globe. I should also stress that I have never asked for the resignation of a high Government official.
In addition, I have concerned myself with the strength and success of the economy, with the expansion of our system of personal financial security, with the effective response of the National Government to the infinite needs of a growing nation.
Furthermore, in recent years, I have proudly and willingly given my own best efforts toward securing for all our people those rights as Americans to which the Constitution entitles each of us equally.
For these priorities, I have no apologies or regrets.
They remain my active priorities still. In common with many of you, I believed it inconceivable that so long as we still lived under a government of laws, rather than men, there would be or could be any serious or concerted effort to abridge the inalienable rights guaranteed from the beginning of our Government.
In common with many of you, I believed that those who forewarned us of the directions we were taking were, in some instances, more dangerous than the dangers they warned against. I responded with impatience to their cries of peril. I was not moved to bestir myself with any great sense of responsibility.
It is apathy, though, that waters the roots of tyranny.
Today I see what until now I did not permit myself to see.
Our apathy in this Congress, our silence in this House, our very fear of speaking out in other forums has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny which is ensnaring that Constitution and Bill of Rights which we are each sworn to defend and uphold.
That is why I have chosen to break my own silence and speak as I believe it is the responsibility of all who serve the American people to speak.
Almost 200 years ago, soon after the birth of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson wrote that–
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
Over the years since the mid century, we have seen that wisdom fulfilled in our midst.
While America's sons have faithfully manned the watchtowers of freedom around the globe, the liberty of our own lives has been yielding steadily before the power, prerogatives, and privileges of government.
I point no fingers and place no blame elsewhere.
What has occurred could not have occurred without our consent and complicity here on Capitol Hill.
Congress by Congress, session by session, vote by vote, we have been surrendering our duty of oversight over those bureaus, agencies, and organizations within the Federal Establishment which are most sensitively involved with the lives and liberties of the people.
The postwar years do not make a proud procession.
Over this period, we have authorized and permitted the bureaus and agencies to assume powers that belong to Congress.
We have established the rule of the dossier.
We have conferred respectability upon the informer.
We have sanctioned the use of bribes and payments to citizen to spy upon citizen.
We have consented to the accused being denied the right to confront his accuser.
But, this is not all.
Our consent to these abridgments of our own heritage has emboldened the bureaus and agencies both to seek and, at times, simply to assume exemption from review by the people's representatives.
More and more of the public money expended by the American Government to monitor the American people is subject to no effective accounting.
More and more of such clandestine activities are subject to no meaningful reporting.
More and more of the devices employed and premises used for the conduct of such activities are off limits even to Members of this body where the power of the people reposes.
More and more of the governing guidelines and policies for such enterprises are withheld not only from the Congress but from even the appointive departmental officials charged with responsibility for oversight of the bureaus and agencies in question.
No Member of this House knows – or can know with any certainty – what the bureaus and agencies involved with the liberties of the American people may be doing.
Furthermore, no Member of this House knows – or can know with any certainty – which or how many such bureaus and agencies may be involved in such activities – where, against whom, or for what purpose.
This is the result – these are the fruits – of our own silence.
Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people. At the request of the trusted and respected heads of those forces, and on their appeal to the necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting and strict surveillance. And history has run its inexorable course.
Liberty has yielded.
The power of government has gained commanding ground.
Today, as we in the Congress undertake to recover and restore the people's liberty, we find that it is ourselves who are called to account, ourselves who are under surveillance, ourselves who are prisoners of the power which our silence permitted to come into being.
It is in this context that I want to relate to the Members certain of those things which have occurred in regard to my statement on the floor of the House of Representatives 2 weeks ago.
That statement, as you recall, was very brief.
I will repeat it in its entirety–
When the FBI taps the telephones of Members of this body and Members of the Senate, when the FBI stations agents on college campuses to infiltrate college organizations, when the FBI adopts the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler's Gestapo, then it is time – it is way past time, Mr. Speaker – that the present Director thereof no longer be the Director.
The greatest thing we have in this Nation is the Bill of Rights. We are a great country because we are a free country under the Bill of Rights. The way Mr. Hoover is running the FBI today, it is no longer a free country.
The response to those remarks has run a revealing course.
Forthwith, the Attorney General of the United States, John N. Mitchell, issued a statement to the press announcing that I "had no factual basis whatever" for my remarks. Further, he demanded that I retract my own statement, saying additionally of me–
He has made a reckless and cruel attack upon a dedicated American and an organization of loyal and devoted men and women.
This was followed by another public statement from the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Mr. Richard Kleindienst.
Mr. Kleindienst denounced my statement as "slanderous, false and irresponsible." 'Then he went on to make a slanderous statement of his own, suggesting to the press that the majority leader "must have been sick or not in possession of his faculties."
The results of such leadership were as calculated.
Within 24 hours, my office began receiving hate mail from every part of the country, impugning my patriotism, loyalty, and character. Letters of support now outnumber letters of opposition.
Within 48 hours, my office was being telephoned by prominent newspaper columnists to whom had been released what they describe as the bureau's "standard smear sheet" – a dossier of scurrilous accusations against me which was compiled, reproduced, and distributed at taxpayers’ expense through the Department of Justice and elsewhere in the first hours I spoke.
There was a second line of response, however, which is of significance. Immediately after my statement to the House, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation chose to reply. He did not challenge or deny my statement that the Bureau is stationing agents on the campuses to infiltrate student organizations. He did not attempt to refute my statement that the Bureau is adopting tactics associated with the secret police of totalitarian regimes. He did not mention the Bill of Rights.
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation carefully chose to direct his entire rebuttal to the first 17 words of my statement. Through the offices of the minority leader of the U.S. Senate, the Director released the following unqualified statement:
I want to make a positive assertion that there has never been a wiretap of a Senator's phone or the phone of a member of Congress since I became Director in 1952, nor has any Member of the Congress or the Senate been under surveillance by the FBI.
Two terms employed in the Director's statement have very precise meanings. "Wiretap," refers to a mechanical interconnection with a telephone wire and it is a procedure which everyone in Washington must know has been rendered unnecessary and obsolete by technological advances.
The term, "surveillance" also has a precise Webster's dictionary meaning of "keeping a close watch on a person or group. "
On April 7, in a national network news interview, the Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Kleindienst, found it necessary to qualify the Director's statement. There have been instances, he conceded, where Congressmen accused of committing specific illegal acts have been under what would properly be called "surveillance."
However, the Deputy Attorney General went further, saying:
But the issue here is whether or not the Bureau has used electronic surveillance or the tapping of telephones of Senators and Congressmen even in a case like that, and the Bureau has not done so.
One week later, on April 14, a Justice Department spokesman was asked whether the Bureau had ever engaged in electronic eavesdropping on any Congressman, and he answered:
The FBI has never installed an electronic listening device of any kind in the home, office, or on the telephone of a U.S. Senator or Congressman.
On the following day, April 15, another inquiry was made. A reporter asked if the Federal Bureau of Investigation had ever used an electronic listening device to monitor the private conversations of a Congressman without actually installing the device.
The Department of Justice refused to answer the question.
At about this time, I realized that I had made what might be regarded as a mistake. My statement before the House was, of course, supported both by personal experience and by information which had come to me regarding the Bureau's activities toward another Member. The mistake which I made was to continue discussing the information which I intended to present to the House on this occasion today.
On the evening of April 16, while watching the Walter Cronkite news program, I came to a better understanding of both present day Washington and the reason that the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had chosen to answer only such a narrow portion of my original remarks.
CBS White House correspondent, Dan Rather, presented this report from which I quote in part:
The White House calls criticism of the FBI "blatantly political" . . . saying it is "designed to create a feeling of fear and intimidation among the public."
As for Boggs, the FBI has told the President Boggs found a wiretap on his phone but has no way of proving whose wiretap it was.
Boggs' case is the one where proof is lacking. Thus the White House is trying to focus as much attention on it as possible ... Then saying in effect to all those who question FBI tactics: Put up or shut up.
The information reported by Dan Rather is substantially correct. It is information which I had not reported to anyone within the administration or the White House. The information is this:
In the summer of 1970, my family, members of the staff and myself became suspicious of interference on the telephone lines at my private residence. The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. was asked to investigate. The investigator determined that a tap had been placed on my private telephone lines but that it had been removed in advance of the inspection. Some time later, the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. transmitted to me its official report on the matter. That report stated categorically that there was no tap on my lines. Subsequently, I learned that it is the policy of the Washington company and of the regional companies throughout the Bell System to give such reports, denying the existence of a tap, if the tap has been placed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Apart from that information, it was also my intention to present to the House on this occasion an account of the Bureau's activities with regard to Congressman JOHN DOWDY.
On the eve of the return of Congress, when it was expected that I would be addressing the House, selective information regarding the DOWDY case hastily became available. Following the strategy which had been decided upon to silence "all those who question FBI tactics," the Department of Justice frantically undertook to demolish my presentation in advance by redefining their own actions in their own terms.
Members are fully aware now of the ludicrous results.
First. Congressman DOWDY's telephone conversations, we were told, had not been "tapped," they had been "taped." Taped by FBI agents sitting with an informant whom they had intimidated into calling the Congressman for the express purpose of attempting to incriminate him.
Second. Congressman DOWDY's personal conversations, conducted in the privacy of his office here on Capitol Hill, had been recorded on an electronic device, but we were told by the Department that the Bureau's hands were clean. The electronic recording device had not been "installed" in the Congressman's office; it had only been carried in and out of the Congressman's private quarters strapped to the back of an informant in the service of the FBI.
The fact that the Congressman did not know did not make any difference. As a matter of fact, I was rather amused at the reaction of one of the FBI – or one of the Department's or Bureau's favorites, a little fellow over in Baltimore named Sachs. He had denied the week before that there had ever been any tap on Congressman DOWDY, or any type of surveillance. So when a reporter confronted him with it he said this, and I will read it. He said:
You said last week that no wire taps had been used on the Dowdy investigation, for the last week no wire taps had been used on the Dowdy investigation
Obviously you cannot believe any of these people–
but said nothing about tape recordings. You said yesterday that the entire surveillance operation was legal.
Then he criticized the Justice Department for their semantics – semantics – how do you like that?
And I will give you a quote:
One of the problems of the last ten days has been the fact that the Justice Department has its own glossary which he has not shared with the rest of the world over what it means by electronic surveillance.
Boy, I can say that over and over again, they really do have their own glossary, and it is a very interesting glossary.
Third. Most astonishingly, we were told that none of this constituted "surveillance" in the Department's definition of the terns because the informant knew, if the Congressman did not, that the FBI was taping the telephone calls, and the informant knew, if the Congressman did not, that the FBI had strapped the electronic recording device on his back and that the FBI agents had accompanied him to the door of the Congressman's office and were waiting outside in the corridor.
Fourth. Finally, the Department of Justice denied that this practice in any way contravened Mr. Hoover's traditional assurances that the Capitol and the House and Senate Office Buildings were sanctuaries – sanctuaries which FBI agents were not to enter when following any person under surveillance. The agents were not following the informant and conspirator to the Congressman's office, we were told; they were accompanying him.
Mr. Speaker, I submit that 1984 is closer than we think.
This has been a sorry and saddening spectacle of a great department of this Government caught up in 2 weeks of slander, falsehood, irresponsibility, evasion, and doublethink.
By its own actions, the Department of Justice has now supported and proved every aspect of the statement which I made before the House on April 5.
The account which I have unfolded challenges each of us.
A single voice breaking the silence has drawn back the curtain. Secret policies of which we were unaware have been revealed. Secret practices repugnant to American standards have been disclosed. Secret papers on file with American courts have been opened to public scrutiny.
Because of a single challenge, raised in this House of all the people, we know far more now than any of us knew 2 weeks ago about just how much liberty has yielded while the power of government has gained ground, unchecked and unchallenged.
I take no credit. I should have spoken sooner.
Over my 26 years in this Chamber, I have been aware – as each of you has been aware – of the directions in which we have been moving.
I have been aware that in the reality of postwar America the character of the Department of Justice has changed, from an agency solely devoted to the quest for justice into an organ with great potential for political control of the American people.
I have seen every postwar President, Democrat or Republican, except Lyndon Johnson, tacitly acknowledge this new character of the Department by installing their campaign managers or political party chairmen as Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General.
I have seen the size and sweep of the Federal Bureau of Investigation grow and widen and steadily move into closer and closer surveillance of not only the deeds, but the words and thoughts, of the American people.
I have seen the Federal Bureau of Investigation build its legions of informers and spread them through the structure of our society's vital private institutions.
I have seen the Bureau penetrate the labor unions and the corporations and the colleges and the churches and the private organizations, worthy and unworthy, of private citizens.
I have seen the Bureau awaken reporters in the middle of the night to demand their notes on confidential conversations with leaders of America's largest corporations.
I have seen the Bureau harass, intimidate and blackmail the most honored leaders of the black community's struggle for equal rights.
I have seen these things – and many more – but I have remained silent.
Two years ago, though, it became evident to me that the nature and character of the Bureau was undergoing conspicuous change. That change was apparent by what I saw on the Hill and in this Capitol.
I saw – as many others saw – the Bureau lay seige to one of the most honorable and most honored men ever to serve his country in this Congress – John McCormack of Massachusetts.
They showed no compassion for age, no respect for position, no honor for the patriotism and loyalty of a grand American. The records of his telephone calls were seized. His time was taken in endless hostile interviews.
I served at that time as majority whip. I made no secret of my outrage and indignation at what was being done to the career of a good and faithful public servant. I told many of my colleagues that if this could happen to the Speaker of the House of Representatives – the man second in line of succession to the Presidency itself – it could happen to any of us, to any citizen, public or private.
The accuracy of the prophecy was soon brought home to me.
Late in 1969, an employee of the House came to my office and made this report. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had appeared at the Capitol, and, without my knowledge, demanded the records of all telephone calls placed from my private office for a period of 4 years. The records were not released, but this did not matter. The agents promptly obtained the records they sought from the telephone company.
I did not know what information was being sought or why. I soon learned the answer.
Over a period of 2 months, at the beginning of the election year of 1970, the constituents in my district with whom I talked began receiving telephone calls from the Bureau's agents. Identifying themselves as "FBI agents," they went down the list, one by one, asking those with whom I spoke if on such and such a day they had received a telephone call from Congressman BOGGS.
As Members can well imagine, the result was to sow seeds of suspicion and to create a climate of fear in my home district.
The political power of this tactic is beyond measuring.
With no charges, no accusations, no hint of their purpose, the agents of the Bureau were able to create a climate of their own choosing within my own district, as the same tactics could do in the district of any Member.
The effect on me, I readily admit, was as intended.
I said nothing before this House or any other forum.
The Bureau had accomplished its aim of silence simply by letting me know that I was under surveillance.
Months later I learned of the tap which had been on my residence telephone. Again the result was intimidation that assured my silence.
It was this personal experience, however, which caused me to reconsider and reevaluate my own responsibilities. If a bureau or agency of the Government could with impunity intimidate the Speaker of the House and the majority whip of the House, what Member of either body of the Congress was free of this control.
In this perspective, the events of these past 2 years acquired a new meaning. I had heard before, as each of you had heard, of various episodes relating to Members of the House and Senate.
I knew that former Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas had been critical of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and found an electronic surveillance device in the intercom system on his desk.
I knew that former Senator Stephen Young of Ohio delivered a speech critical of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and promptly found his telephone lines being monitored.
I knew that former Senator William Benton of Connecticut was critical of the Director's friend, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, and was shortly advised to use care in speaking over his telephone.
But I realized that where these cases through the years were individual and isolated, the concern for surveillance on Capitol Hill had escalated to a new dimension over the past 2 years.
Senator JOE MONTOYA of New Mexico, engaged in a contest for reelection, had reason to believe his telephone was under surveillance.
Senator BIRCH BAYH of Indiana, engaged in leadership of the confirmation contest over Judge Haynesworth, had reason to believe his private office was under surveillance. He received in his office an official of the Government critical of the Haynesworth appointment. The Senator and the official talked privately and confidentially at the Senator's desk. When the official returned to his office, he was advised that he was under suspicion of having expressed his views to Senator BAYH.
On that evidence, Senator BATH called in a private expert to search his office in the Senate
Office Building for electronic listening devices. The expert located a radio transmission emanating from beneath the carpet of the Senator's office. As an expedient, the expert beat against the spot where the transmission was detected until the radio transmission stopped. It was several days, however, before the Senator's staff could secure the services of the necessary labor to raise the carpet.
When this was finally done, the device transmitting radio signals was gone.
Senator CHARLES PERCY of Illinois related his experience at a hearing on March 22 of the Senate Appropriations Committee. His neighbor discovered that a highly sophisticated listening device – capable of monitoring telephone calls from the Senator's home without direct interconnection to telephone lines – had been installed underneath the chassis of the automobile which was normally parked each night in front of Senator PERCY's home. The device was removed.
Almost immediately thereafter, Senator PERCY's wife discovered two technicians at work on the telephone lines entering the Senator's home. When Mrs. Percy asked their purpose, they would only explain curtly that their activities were for "safety purposes."
When Senator Wayne Morse was in the Senate he was told by a newsman that there was a listening device in his office. He discounted the report whereupon the newsman quoted to him remarks he had made critical of the administration in conversation in the office with his administrative assistant. The newsman said he had been told this by a Government source.
The episodes are too many, occurring too frequently, to be ignored or disregarded.
Today, there are Members of this body so imprisoned by the climate of fear that they will not use their telephones for the conduct of normal business with constituents or fellow Members.
Today there is not a Member of the U.S. Senate currently active in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 who has not publicly expressed his belief that his telephones are under surveillance.
And today we know that Senator MUSKIE and others were the subject of surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Earth Day, 1970.
There is no question here of standards. The Constitution expressly makes clear that Members of the Congress shall not be exempt from accounting before the law for any violations. But that same document embodies in it for the protection of the people the provisions of article 1, section 6. Those provisions provide that Senators and Representatives shall "be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from same." That same section also provides that "for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place."
These provisions exist in our Constitution because all the experience of representative government through the ages has demonstrated that those elected to represent the people must be protected against the vengeance of a hostile crown.
It is clear, however, in the pattern now in evidence, that for the views expressed in their respective Houses and other forums, Members of the Congress are being questioned in another place – the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The sham is being stripped away. Until the Dowdy case, it has been the public contention of the Department and the Bureau that all telephone conversations employed as the basis for criminal prosecutions of Members were intercepted inadvertently on surveillance devices installed for purposes of national or international security.
This was the pleading made by the Department in the prosecution of former Maryland Senator, Daniel Brewster.
This was the pleading made by the Department in the prosecution of the Voloshen case, involving Speaker McCormack's office.
Yet, now we find that the Department and the Bureau are engaged in a far more insidious activity which has no real limits.
Furthermore, we learn from the Department's own filings in the Brewster case appeal that the supposed protection of a court authorization for such surveillance is only meaningless. In that case, the Department has argued that the court cannot deny – but can only approve – any request for such authorization.
Let me read one sentence from the Department's petition:
Since the Executive Branch alone possesses both the expertise and the factual background to assess the "reasonableness" of such a surveillance, the courts should not question the decision of the Executive Branch that such surveillances are reasonable and necessary to protect the national interest.
The net is very clear. If the executive chooses to invoke the national interest, neither courts nor Congress should, or under this doctrine, could question its surveillance activities.
Mr. Speaker, not long ago, in a published interview, the Attorney General of the United States, Mr. Mitchell, dismissed what I am describing by saying that Senators and Congressmen are becoming paranoid.
If that is so, however, it is exactly what is intended.
Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedoom of acting for men in public life can be compromised quite as effectively by the fear of surveillance as by the fact of surveillance.
We have learned recently that this is a standard objective and tactic of the Bureau.
Formal memoranda of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have disclosed the Bureau's strategy in establishing surveillance on one campus community, to make the citizens believe that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
By making the Members of Congress believe that there is an FBI agent listening to every telephone call, the Bureau and the Department are elevating paranoia to the level of calculated national policy.
Our society can survive many challenges and many threats.
It cannot survive a planned and programed fear of its own Government bureaus and agencies.
Mr. Speaker, this is not a court of evidence, and I shall not detain the Members longer with accounts of the many episodes which illuminate this dark passage through which we are traveling.
What moved me to speak as I did 2 weeks ago was none of these concerns which I have repeated today. It was, rather, a far more personal experience.
Several days before I spoke, two highly placed career officials of the Department of Justice came to see me here at the Capitol. Their coming was itself an act of courage. But they spoke with me without fear and their petition was this.
Over long and unquestioned careers, they had worked in and with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They respected and trusted the organization. They believed it to be one of the great assets of our society's freedom and liberty. But their sad conclusion was that the Bureau was being destroyed – being turned into something it had never been – all because it was being used not to perform its mission but to protect the position of its Director.
I will not relate the information which they brought to me about the perverting of this once splendid organization into an instrument of one man's will. But I do ask you to consider with me the evidence which abounds on every hand.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation today is not the Federal Bureau of Investigation of film and fiction. The organization of which we were once so justly proud – and which inspired among us all a sense of security and serenity – no longer exists. The Bureau and the Director of the Bureau must be judged by the present, not the past.
In my mind, in the minds of most of my contemporaries, it has long been fixed that agents of the Bureau were all men who held degrees in law or accounting. That is what we were told and that is what we have believed. Yet the reality is very different.
Only one-third of the agents are lawyers or accountants.
For a decade, the standards have been failing.
This ought not to be.
In my mind, in the minds of most of my contemporaries, it has also been fixed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is an organization of young men, directed by young men, overseen by young men. Youth itself is no assurance of effectiveness or direction. But it has been reassuring that this was an organization of fine young Americans in touch with their times and giving the Bureau those qualities which youth provides. Yet the reality is very different.
Around the oldest head of any agency in Government there is clustered a small and unchanging guard of old cronies and old friends whose positions are dependent solely upon their relationship with the Director himself.
For a decade, the brighest talents within the organization have been leaving, unable to secure or to expect advancement in their careers.
This ought not to be.
In my mind, in the minds of most of my contemporaries, it has long been fixed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the standard to which all other law enforcement agencies should aspire. That lingering legend has, in fact, been the basis of many decisions made here to permit the Bureau to be the center of instruction and training for all the police organizations in the land. Yet the reality is very different.
For a decade, we have seen instance after instance of the Director himself, conducting himself in ways in which no responsible law enforcement executive would permit himself to emulate. He has vented the spleen of personal vendetta against a great Negro leader. He has denounced the Justices of the Supreme Court. He has turned upon his lawful superiors once they and their party were out of office. He has, furthermore, in recent months, seriously compromised the workings of justice by prejudicing grand jury proceedings with proclamations of guilt of defendants 4 months before sufficient evidence was taken to permit the return of indictments.
This ought not to be.
Mr. Speaker, in this country, it ought not to be that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is devoting itself to surveillance on the children of Members of Congress as this organization has done in the case of the lovely daughter of Congressman HENRY REUSS.
Mr. Speaker, in this country and in this age, it ought not to be that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation should be rummaging through wastepaper baskets to collect evidence incriminating another agent of having failed to report on the classroom views of a law professor, as was the case with Agent Shaw. It ought not to be that a loyal agent, such as Mr. Shaw, should be preemptorily and punitively transferred to a distant outpost in Montana to appease the Director's personal petulance. It ought not to be that the Director of the Bureau – or the Director of any agency in the Government – should be permitted to demand that a college dismiss a professor for views expressed in the classroom critical of the Director himself.
Mr. Speaker, in this country, with crime rampant on the streets, with organized criminals penetrating our, cities and our corporations and other corners of our life, it ought not to be that the most intensive investigation in the Bureau's recent history is being directed against orders and individuals of a major church. The conduct of the Bureau in its current harassment and intimidation of Catholic liberals is itself demanding of appropriate investigation. Agents have been entering the sanctuaries of convents and holy orders, searching under beds, searching through luggage and personal belongings of nuns and priests, questioning and intimidating servants – all without proper warrants.
Mr. Speaker, in this country, it ought not to be that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is unloosing paid informers and conspirators on campuses to organize and encourage the very demonstrations which its agents are reporting to demonstrate the Bureau's alertness and effectiveness.
Mr. Speaker, in this country, none of these things should be.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is vital and imperative to our security and to the safety and stability of our society. The existence of the Bureau is not in the slightest question. But that Bureau cannot be what it ought to be – and what it must be – so long as it runs as it is presently run, beyond the oversight, beyond the control, beyond the accountability of our American system.
We here in Congress cannot disregard the challenge to us.
We have before us the testimony of three successive Attorneys General that they had no effective control over the Bureau under its present Director.
We have before us the testimony of the facts that duly constituted committees of Congress no longer are able to secure answers from the Bureau in response to lawful and orderly requests.
We have before us the testimony of the Bureau's own declining competence in service to the Executive. I refer, of course, to the fact that President Nixon himself took a very "bum rap" on both his Haynsworth and Carswell appointments.
In both instances, Senate committees – with their far more limited resources – discovered important and critical information regarding both appointees which the Federal Bureau either did not find or withheld from the Chief Executive.
Mr. Speaker, I repeat: The Federal Bureau of Investigation today is not the Federal Bureau of Investigation we once knew or that most Americans assume it still to be.
The reason is very clear. The Director of that Bureau has clearly overstayed the proper limits of his service. In saying that, let me emphasize that age is not a basis for criticizing Mr. Hoover; on the contrary, age exempts him from criticism that a younger man with the same recent record of performance could not escape.
In no country in the world could a. director of a nation's secret police escape censure and removal for what is happening now. The offices of the Bureau have been burglarized and the files of the Bureau have become common knowledge.
The system of informers has turned on its master and is filling the stream of public dialog with disclosures and revelations which only serve to undermine the Bureau's future and further effectiveness. The agents of the Bureau are demoralized and in fear of the pettiness and wrath of the man under whom they work. The standards for recruitment are falling. These are all symptoms of internal disarray and decay which would be acceptable in no other organization, public or private.
Facing this, as we and the Nation must, it is no reassurance to read and hear, as we do, that the White House and the Department of Justice know that change must be made but that they are fearful of acting in what is clearly the national interest.
Has the power of one man become so great that the American system is in paralysis before him?
That question can only be answered by the President himself.
Mr. Speaker, let me say, history has come full circle.
The last time there was a change in the Directorship of the Federal Bureau of Investigation it occurred because of that Agency's disregard of the constitutional separation of powers.
Forty-seven years ago, malfeasance of the worst sort was occurring among officials of the Department of Justice. Voices on Capitol Hill were raised demanding investigations to bring the wrongdoers to justice. What happened then has been described well by one journalist and I would like to read a single paragraph:
When Senators and Congressmen continued to probe, they themselves became targets of the Bureau of Investigation. The names of Congressional critics of the Bureau were placed on a "suspect list," and detectives were turned loose to trail them, to bribe their servants, to ransack their offices, to dig up some scandal that might be used to silence a critical voice in Congress.
Today we see the pattern repeating once more. Slanderous statements are directed against leaders of the Congress. Smears are circulated to the press.
Members are placed under surveillance at home and office with fine disregard for both the traditions of our system and the meaning of our language. Even the ugly threat of bribery of employees is openly raised.
Only last week, Mr. Speaker, United Press International carried a statement from a Department of Justice attorney who presides over enforcement of the act prohibiting electronic eavesdropping.
The statement by the attorney, James R. Robinson, deserves the attention of all Members.
Mr. Robinson said:
The idea of the government going to all the trouble of tapping Congressmen's phones is ridiculous. It's much easier to pay off an Administrative Assistant. There's always someone in an office with information.
Then, he added:
Of course, the Executive Branch would never resort to such tactics, but others have in the past.
Mr. Speaker, so long as this spirit and these attitudes pervade the Department of Justice there must be doubt – there must be fear – here on Capitol Hill, at the heart of the system.
Only the President himself can act to reassure the country. The President can demonstrate that the system still functions by instructing his Attorney General to request and to accept the resignation of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But the questions raised go beyond that solution.
The events now coming to the surface from many quarters clearly reveal that we have permitted to come into being a power and a force with the Government for which no one is accountable and of which no one is knowledgeable.
This is a power which threatens and places in jeopardy those rights and those liberties essential to the survival of our system.
On this matter, as on many other grave matters which have confronted the Nation in the past, there is a need and a demand for a presidential commission to go to the core of this cancer and remove it before the poisons spread further.
Such a commission could review the overall activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and establish rules of accountability for the future. I would hope that the President would include Members of the Senate and of this body on the commission.
Mr. Speaker, our liberties have yielded too much.
We must know – we must be able to assure the American people that we do know – what the powers of Government are being used for, how they are being used and by whom they are being used in this ugly business of surveillance on the people and their representatives.
I want to thank all of you for your attention and for listening to me. Thank you very much.