Chapter XXIII: Appendix: E

_Executive Privilege Correspondence between President Kennedy and Congressman John E. Moss_

February 15, 1962

_The Honorable
John F. Kennedy
The President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D.C._

Dear Mr. President:

In your letter of February 8, 1962 to Secretary McNamara
you directed him to refuse certain information to a Senate
Subcommittee. The concluding paragraph of your letter stated:

“The principle which is at stake here cannot be automatically
applied to every request for information. Each case must be
judged on its merits.”

A similar letter from President Eisenhower on May 17, 1954 also
refused information to a Senate Subcommittee, setting forth the
same arguments covered in your letter. President Eisenhower did
not, however, state that future questions of availability of
information to the Congress would have to be answered as they came
up.

I know you are aware of the result of President Eisenhower’s
letter. Time after time Executive Branch employees far down the
administrative line from the President fell back on his letter of
May 17, 1954 as authority to withhold information from the Congress
and the public.

Some of the cases are well known—the Dixon-Yates matter and the
investigation of East-West trade controls, for instance—but many
of the refusals based on President Eisenhower’s letter of May 17,
1954 received no public notice. A report of the House Committee
on Government Operations covering the five years from June, 1955
through June, 1960 lists 44 cases of Executive Branch officials
refusing information on the basis of the principles set forth in
the May 17, 1954 letter.

I am confident that you share my belief that your letter of
February 8, 1962 to Secretary McNamara should not be seized upon
by Executive Branch employees—many of them holding the same
policymaking positions of responsibility they did under the
Eisenhower Administration—as a new claim of authority to withhold
information from the Congress and the public. A Subcommittee staff
study indicates that during the year between the time you took
office and February 8, 1962 the claim of an “executive privilege”
to withhold government information was not used successfully once,
compared to the dozens of times in previous years administrative
employees held up “executive privilege” as a shield against public
and Congressional access to information.

Although your letter of February 8, 1962 stated clearly that
the principle involved could not be applied automatically to
restrict information, this warning received little public notice.
Clarification of this point would, I believe, serve to prevent the
rash of restrictions on government information which followed the
May 17, 1954 letter from President Eisenhower.

Sincerely,
/s/ John E. Moss
Chairman

THE WHITE HOUSE
_Washington_

_March 7, 1962_

Dear Mr. Chairman:

This is in reply to your letter of last month inquiring generally
about the practice this Administration will follow in invoking the
doctrine of executive privilege in withholding certain information
from the Congress.

As your letter indicated, my letter of February 8 to Secretary
McNamara made it perfectly clear that the directive to refuse
to make certain specific information available to a special
subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee was limited
to that specific request and that “each case must be judged on its
merits.”

As you know, this Administration has gone to great lengths to
achieve full co-operation with the Congress in making available to
it all appropriate documents, correspondence and information. That
is the basic policy of this Administration, and it will continue
to be so. Executive privilege can be invoked only by the President
and will not be used without specific Presidential approval.
Your own interest in assuring the widest public accessibility
to governmental information is, of course, well known, and I
can assure you this Administration will continue to co-operate
with your subcommittee and the entire Congress in achieving this
objective.

Sincerely,
/s/ JOHN F. KENNEDY

Honorable John E. Moss
Chairman
Special Government Information
Subcommittee of the Committee
on Government Operations
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 27 Changed: political figures organized a constuction
to: political figures organized a construction

pg 57 Changed: records or testify even when suppoenaed
to: records or testify even when subpoenaed

pg 81 Changed: effective administration that employes
to: effective administration that employees

pg 164 Changed: and Hardy decided to to try
to: and Hardy decided to try

pg 238 Changed: executive privilege in withholdng
to: executive privilege in withholding