RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR SENATE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEES 4 OCT 4 49144 HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES OF THE COMMITTEE ON Copy-----1954 RULES AND ADMINISTRATION UNITED STATES SENATE EIGHTY-THIRD CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON S. Res. 65, S. Res. 146, S. Res. 223, S. Res. 249, RESOLUTIONS RELATING TO RULES OF PROCEDURE JULY 6, 1954 PART 3 U.S. Congress. Strat Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules and Administration UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1954 CONTENTS Will Maslow, general counsel, American Jewish Congress, and di- rector of its Commission on Law and Social Action__. Francis S. Harmon, representing the National Council of the Churches RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR SENATE INVESTIGATING COMMITTEES TUESDAY, JULY 6, 1954 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION, SUBCOMMITTEE ON RULES, The subcommittee met at 10:33 a. m., pursuant to recess, in room 318 of the Senate Office Building, Senator Frank Carlson presiding. Present: Senators Carlson (presiding) and Hayden. Also present: Boris S. Berkovitch, counsel to Subcommittee on Rules; W. F. Bookwalter, chief clerk of the Committee on Rules and Administration; Darrell St. Claire, professional staff member, Committee on Rules and Administration; and Judge Robert Morris. Senator CARLSON. The committee will please come to order. I have a statement from Senator Earle Clements, of Kentucky, which has been submitted for the record in regard to some suggestions he has on procedures for investigations by Senate committees. If there is no objection it will be made a part of the record. (The statement of Senator Clements is as follows:) STATEMENT OF HON. EARLE C. CLEMENTS, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF KENTUCKY I want to thank the Chairman and the committee for receiving this statement. Possibly I am somewhat presumptuous in presenting this statement, since you are studying a subject which relates closely to legal procedures and I am not a member of the legal profession. Nevertheless I take this opportunity to express my views, based on observations gained during 30 years of public service, which include 10 years as a legislator in my own State and in both Houses of Congress. It is my firm conviction that the vast majority of congressional hearings and investigations held each year are conducted with decorum, fair play, and not in the interest of personal fame and glory, newspaper headlines, or with the view to injure any individual. Committees and subcommittees sometimes must necessarily go afield in their efforts to obtain all the information necessary to legislate intelligently and to carry out their other duties. Their work, in this respect, cannot be compared with a court of law. It is more in the nature of the work of the journalist, the author, or the research writer, who explores all around the edges of a subject, as well as in the middle. For this reason, it is my opinion that to regulate the investigative powers of the committees of Congress by rules which are too rigid would be disastrous. In fact, it would appear that in many cases already the chairman of the hearing body has the rules at hand to adequately conduct an investigation if he would vigorously enforce them. The daily record of Congress shows that an average of about 25 hearings and investigations are conducted each day by the various committees and subcommittees. Thus, during the course of any session of Congress, several thousand meetings of committees are held. Less than a hundred of these make |