MAJORITY MEMBERS JACK BROOKS, TEXAS, CHAIRMAN JOHN CONVERS, JR, MICHIGAN HENRY A. WAXMAN, CALIFORNIA TED WEISS, NEW YORK MIKE SYNAR, OKLAHOMA STEPHEN L NEAL NORTH CAROLINA JARNEY FRANK, MASSACHUSETTS TOM LANTOS, CALIFORNIA ROBERT E. WISE, JR., WEST VIRGINIA MAJOR R. OWENS, NEW YORK JOHN M. SPRATT, JR, SOUTH CAROLINA JOE KOLTER, PENNSYLVANIA DEN ERDREICH, ALABAMA GERALD D. KLECZKA, WISCONSIN ALBERT G. BUSTAMANTE, TEXAS MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA THOMAS C. SAWYER, OHIO LOUISE M. SLAUGHTER, NEW YORK BILL GRANT, FLORIDA NANCY PELOSL, CALIFORNIA The Honorable John Herrington Secretary of Energy Washington, D.C. 20585 Dear Mr. October 14, 1987 I am in receipt of a letter from Troy Wade, II, indicating that the Department of Energy has granted me a "Q" Access Authorization. According to Mr. Wade, the Department of Energy's Office of Congressional Affairs requested that I be processed for such an access "in connection with [my] responsibilities as a Representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Texas and specifically in connection with [my] interest in the General Accounting Office's report on home porting. Please be advised that I have not requested a "Q" clearance and, as a Member of Congress, do not need Executive Branch clearances to carry out my legislative responsibilities. The concept of an Executive Branch bureaucrat determining whether elected members of the Legislative Branch of our government should be granted clearance to receive access to government-held information deeply offends the basic constitutional framework of separation of powers. It would be impossible for me, as Chairman of the Government Operations Committee, to carry out my oversight responsibilities over the Executive Branch agencies if those very agencies could determine what I can and cannot have access to. To compound the problem further, Mr. Wade's letter asks me to sign a Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement (Standard Form 189). DOE wants me to agree, in a contract, to get approval from the Department of Energy before I can discuss matters which are classified or "classifiable" in the eyes of the agency I am obligated to oversee. For obvious reasons, I believe it is inappropriate to suggest that Members of Congress "contract" with the Department of Energy. Furthermore, in my opinion, such a contract is incompatible with the First Amendment to the Constitution regardless of who is asked to sign it. While I can appreciate the Department's desire to protect sensitive information, I believe you would agree that respect for our country's basic Constitutional institutions is preeminent in this instance. I, therefore, respectfully decline to sign the nondisclosure agreement and I do not acknowledge the granting of a "Q" clearance as a precondition of my access to Department of Energy information. With best wishes, I am Sincerely, BLACK BROOKS In connection with your responsibilities as the Representative of the Ninth Since my office is responsible for processing access authorizations, I have been asked to advise you that pursuant to Section 145.b of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, a DOE "Q" access authorization was approved. Your DOE file number is WA-70751. Enclosed for your information and retention is a copy of DOE's "SECURITY EDUCATION HANDBOOK." To assist in meeting our mutual responsibilities of ensuring the protection of classified information, you are urged to request a DOE security briefing, which can be accomplished in your office in approximately 15-20 minutes. Arrangements for this briefing can be made by contacting Gordon Vander Till, Office of Congressional Affairs, 586-4771. I also ask that you complete the enclosed Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement (Standard Form 189) and return it to DOE in the enclosed preaddressed envelope. When you no longer require access to Restricted Data, please complete the enclosed Security Termination Statement (DOE Form 5631.29) and forward it to this office. In the meantime, if I can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me. Enclosures Sincerely, ChaSuale Troy E Wade II Acting Assistant Secretary Mr. Chairman, in its zeal to prevent leaks, the administration has not weighed the value of free speech. There is no balance. The administration is accepting the practices of our adversaries in adopting censorship as a tool of the national government. I hope today's hearing will fully expose the continuing and growing vitality of NSDD 84 and the serious danger it poses to our republic. I thank you for being here. If there are any questions I can answer, I will try. Mr. SIKORSKI. Thank you. In this administration this is not new. The reaching to silence federal employees has gone beyond anything attempted before, but in this administration apparently this process began when the President announced he was up to his keister in leaks. Some have suggested that the leaks were not the problem. It was concern for protecting the keister that this all evolved from. Mr. BROOKS. That is one of the basic rules, to protect your own keister. Mr. SIKORSKI. That is right. If you listen to the arguments in favor of this nondisclosure form and the pre-publication paragraph in it and the rest and the other polygraph activity that is continuing on, one would believe that we are awash in leaks of classified information by public employees, warranting a nondisclosure agreement form that goes beyond classified to classifiable information and deals with indirect, unauthorized leaks. Are you aware if we awash of leaks here? You are Chairman of the Government Operations Committee. Are you aware of a huge list of leaks of classified information? Mr. BROOKS. I am not. Most of the classification, in my judgment, is not to keep our enemies from finding out information. It is to keep the American people and the Congress from finding out what in God's world various agencies are doing and how they are throwing away money, wasting it. They preach economy, and they throw away money like dirt, and lie and cheat and hide and dissemble to keep Congress from finding out, and for God's sake, they do not want the American people to find out. Now, that is what their real complaint is, that the people and Congress might find out what they are doing. Reprogramming money, wasting money foolishly, not enforcing the law, not enforcing safety provisions, all sorts of things, and they just do not want anybody in a position to know to say publicly that, yes, this did happen. They want those people to shut up and to go away. Mr. SIKORSKI. Selling arms to Iran was one thing. Mr. BROOKS. Oh, they loved that. They did not want the American people to find out that. It was terrible for them to find out. They never believed in trading with the enemy. They would never trade with terrorists. No, sir, they would not, until you caught them. Mr. SIKORSKI. Mr. North signed a nondisclosure agreement. Mr. BROOKS. As you recall, the President signed off on the finding himself, which authorized the selling of arms to the Iranian terrorists. And then they had their people down there proud of doing it. North and Poindexter said, yes, they should have done it and wanted to do it and that they were proud to have lied to Congress, lied to the American people, and lied to individual members of the administration. They cut out of the loop the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense Weinberger, and whoever fought the program. I do not want Mr. Fitzgerald to get upset, but Weinberger even had enough sense and judgment to know that you should not be selling arms to the terrorists in Iran and was not for it. So they just went right around him. Mr. SIKORSKI. Now, Mr. North had signed a nondisclosure agreement. Mr. North disclosed to the Iranians, as I understand the public testimony, classified information. Mr. BROOKS. Well, that was part of the deal. He was giving them classified information about Iraq, probably picked up off of the satellite, and he was feeding them the data. That was wonderful, wasn't it? But they love him. They love him. He is one of Reagan's heroes, but he is not one of mine. Mr. SIKORSKI. It will be interesting how the administration is treating that disclosure of classified information, contrary to the laws, the statutes, and any nondisclosure agreement. Mr. BROOKS. They will probably have that great defender of the faith, Mr. Meese, prosecute him. [Laughter.] Mr. SIKORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. BROOKS. It is a pleasure to be here with you and I am proud of you. Mr. SIKORSKI. It is a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. We will return to our panel of Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Brase, accompanied by his attorney, Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Fitzgerald, did we have anything more to talk about in this Poindexter letter? Mr. FITZGERALD. I think, Mr. Chairman, I had made my major point on the matter. There was another document that I referred to. In my September 10, 1987 memorandum to General Watts, another classified document that I asked be declassified, and not having heard from that, I resubmitted it yesterday to the Secretary's office and asked that it be forwarded to you. Now, my impression is that since you are a member of Congress and have a security clearance, that could be forwarded to you with or without clearance. I do not know whether that has been done or not. I was hoping, first, that it would be declassified so that we could discuss it publicly; if not, that they would simply send it to you so that we could discuss it perhaps privately. But that document was another case of something that in my opinion is improperly classified. It essentially was a chart that depicted what amounts to two sets of books for the Pentagon, for the Air Force part, and the whole Pentagon has the same problem. In the so-called out-years, the last three years of the five-year defense plan, the sum of the detailed budget estimates greatly exceeds the President's fiscal guidance by tens of billions of dollars. Now, this is a particular problem related again to the PoindexterPackard matter because under Poindexter-Packard and the laws that they got Congress to pass, we will not do a five-year defense plan next January. We failed to do a proper one this past January, which is reflected in the document I wanted to have declassified, and so the consequence of that, Mr. Chairman, is that the first person who will see a properly reconciled five-year defense plan will be the new President, whoever he or she may be. In January 1989, he will have dumped on his desk a requirement for perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars of extra money. Again, I can understand why bureaucrats and politicians who have been negligent in doing their duty would want to cover this up, but I cannot see why it would be a legitimate national security matter, especially to conceal it from members of Congress. Mr. SIKORSKI. The memorandum to General Watts from you, dated September 10, 1987, is not classified; is that correct? Mr. FITZGERALD. The cover memorandum is not, Mr. Chairman; only the attachment. Mr. SIKORSKI. We are going to place that in the record at the appropriate point and expect that we will place the chart in with it, since we fully expect General Watts will be responsive to the subcommittee. We fully expect that the appropriate non-secret classification will be attached to it because once again, the classification of this material points to classification of political strategy, cooking books and double accounting for purposes of defeating Congress constitutional responsibility and prerogative dealing with oversight of taxpayer expenditures. [The above-referenced material follows:] |