Have you found, as a result of your own experience, that you can always do that?

Have you found that you can give a witness such a statement and then confine your questions specifically within it, or do you find that information comes up and sometimes you have to go afield?

Mr. VELDE. I understand exactly what you mean now.

No; it would be impossible, I feel, to give a prospective witness the questions that he is to be asked or the specific subject matter he is to be asked about because, invariably, some other phase of the investigation comes up. That would be an impossible matter.

Now, we do have a rule that somewhat covers that, that before we have any investigations the chairman must announce the general purpose of the investigations. That rule reads:

The subject of any investigation in connection with which witnesses are summoned or shall otherwise appear shall be announced in an opening statement to the committee before the commencement of any hearings, and the information sought to be elicited at the hearings shall be relevant and germane to the subject as so stated.

Of course, you must recognize, Mr. Berkovitch, not even in a court of law do they tell a witness what questions are going to be asked of him before he gets on the stand.

I might say further along that line I know your subcommittee does, Senator Jenner, give the right to have counsel and, as I have stated before, our subcommittee always gives the right, the privilege of the witness to have counsel at his side. That is a little bit more than is given to him in a court of law, where, when he gets up on the stand to testify, he is on his own. He doesn't have his attorney there to whisper the answers to questions into his ear.

We, I think, in the legislative department of the Federal Government, go further than they do in courts of law in that respect.

The CHAIRMAN. And, furthermore, in the practice of the Internal Security Subcommittee, as followed, we permit the witness at any time he wants to confer with his counsel before he even replies to a question, which is something that is never permitted in a court of law. Mr. VELDE. And I think probably you have the same experience we do. We know that the attorney is putting words into the witness' mouth or the answer into the witness' mouth, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions of Congressman Velde?

Mr. MORRIS. Senator, I have some more questions, but I would like to refer them to Mr. Kunzig rather than Mr. Velde.

The CHAIRMAN. I see Senator Ferguson here and he has another appointment.

Mr. Kunzig, would it be possible for you to stand by until we hear from Senator Ferguson?

Mr. KUNZIG. Certainly.

The CHAIRMAN. And then we will call you as a witness.

Mr. KUNZIG. Certainly.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Congressman Velde. We appreciate your testimony.

Senator Ferguson, will you be sworn to testify?

Senator, do you swear the testimony given in this hearing will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Senator FERGUSON. I do.

The CHAIRMAN. You have a prepared statement, Senator?

Senator FERGUSON. I do not have a prepared statement. I merely have

The CHAIRMAN. Senator, I ask all the witnesses that question because, under the Reorganization Act, since we are studying a code of procedure and ethics for congressional committees, it says:

Each such standing committee shall, so far as practicable, require all witnesses appearing before it to file in advance written statements of their proposed testimony and to limit their oral presentation to brief summaries of their argument. The staff of each committee shall prepare digests of such statements for the use of committee members.

Senator FERGUSON. I have given the committee a copy of the suggested change in rules.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Senator FERGUSON. I gave that to the committee some week or 10 days ago.

Mr. MORRIS. Senator Jenner

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Senator FERGUSON. I was going to comment today from that copy. The CHAIRMAN. All right; you may proceed, then.

Mr. MORRIS. May I say, Senator, Senator Ferguson's statement did arrive at the offices of the subcommittee some day last week—at least some day last week.

Senator FERGUSON. I wasn't going to add anything new.

The CHAIRMAN. We want to compliment you and fo thank you, because you are one of the few.

Proceed, Senator.

TESTIMONY OF HON. HOMER FERGUSON, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Senator FERGUSON. These proposed Senate rule changes were drawn up and prepared by the Senate majority policy committee. The purpose of this set of rules is to give to the Senate, and through the Senate to the committees, authority over proceedings before committees.

There is a feeling that the committee as a whole should, wherever it is possible, attempt to function as a committee; that witnesses who are brought before the committee, subpenaed, or are required to be sworn and give sworn testimony, should have certain rights, and therefore, certain rules should be laid down as far as possible in advance.

We have gone along many years without overall committee rules, and I think one of the reasons was that proceedings to cross-examine witnesses or rules could be so dogmatic that you couldn't operate under them.

Courts discovered that, and that is why we have established what is known as rules of evidence, which govern there in order that we can proceed and get the evidence as near as possible to bring out the facts.

My first experiences as a Member of the Senate, in relation to an investigating committee, was on the Truman committee. I have spent

10 years out of my 12 in the Senate connected directly with investigating committees, and one of the things that has happened to make it difficult for committees to function is communism. As soon as committees went into the field of communism, they discovered it was no longer as easy to conduct investigative hearings as it was in the ordinary procedure of taking care of a bill or a normal action before the committee.

Communism reacts to anything that would bring out the facts and it reacts as is sometimes done in court in some criminal cases. They start out to try the judge; and if that doesn't work so well, they try the district attorney, the prosecutor; and if that doesn't work, they try to try each one of the witnesses.

So, the same technique is used by communism, and it makes cominittee work very difficult; but what the Policy Committee is trying to do here is to lay down some rules, nine of them, under which we thought committees could operate and bring all of the facts out in the course of its work.

Now, I am one of those who believes that Congress cannot function unless it has the right and the ability to get facts. If you were ever going to try to legislate in a vacuum, you would find that you could not legislate to take care of the people's business.

I preface my discussion of the suggested rules with these remarks because I think that we must face a situation here and not just a theory. It is too bad we have to face this Communist issue, and that some of the committees have the task of investigating it.

In the Appropriations Committee or in the Foreign Relations Committee we go into normal legislative matters, as you are proceeding here, and there is no trouble either with the witnesses or the members of the committee. The public accepts the investigation without a word.

Now, let me start with suggested rule No. 1, and I think that is for the benefit of the Senate as well as the committee itself. We have used the word "subcommittee" and "committee" here as we go along because when a subcommittee functions it is acting in place of the committee. I have had the legislative counsel draft these proposals in legislative form, and he has eliminated the word "subcommittee" in almost all the places because he would then say that "the following rules would apply to the committees as well as subcommittees." I will file that draft with the committee a little later because it really puts the language of the Senate Republican majority committee in the legislative form.

This first suggestion is that:

A subcommittee of any committee may be authorized only by the action of a majority of the full committee.

I think that is an established fact. It should be followed, and I think it is followed in all of the cases. I don't know of any subcommittee that is acting that has assumed authority that hasn't been created by the whole committee; but you will notice that we say "authorized by the action of the majority of the full committee." That would take away from a chairman alone the right to create all kinds of subcommittees and have them into all kinds of work without the majority of the committee actually acting on the matter, and I don't know of any cases at the present time that has happened in; but I

49144-54-pt. 5—5

think it is one of those precautionary measures that we should take, so that a chairman would understand when he takes the chairmanship what his rights are.

Then the next rule relates to the number to hear the evidence, and you will note in that No. 2 we only speak about hearings in connection with subpenaed witnesses or taking sworn testimony.

In a great many of the normal bills that are brought before a committee, interested citizens come forward to testify or give a statement. It would not necessarily follow that this rule would be used because the rule is limited to cases where you compel people to testify and you compel them to submit to an oath.

No. 2 reads:

No committee or subcommittee is authorized to hold a hearing for the purpose of hearing subpenaed witnesses or taking sworn testimony unless a quorum of the members of the committee or subcommittee is present: Provided, however, That the committee or subcommittee by a majority vote may authorize the presence of a majority and a minority member to constitute a quorum.

What we have suggested here is that a quorum of the committee or subcommittee be present.

I note today there is only one member of the committee sitting here taking this sworn testimony today. Here I come back to this question of communism, because I think that is what is causing all of the trouble in the committee work, or practically all of it that we have to cope with. We have to be so constituted that the great public, the American public, who always want to be fair, will approve of what we are trying to do. For that reason we suggest here that for subpenaed witnesses, sworn testimony, a quorum of the committee or subcommittee be present.

Now, we knew how difficult it was to get that quorum, and, therefore, we provided that the committee or subcommittee may, by a majority vote of that committee, or the subcommittee, authorize the presence of or the taking of this testimony by a majority and a minority member.

I go back to the time of the Truman committee, and I would say on many, many of the occasions we tried to have both a majority and a minority member present. I happened to be on the minority during that time, and I know how difficult it is and how hard the work was to be present at all of the hearings, in order to comply with this idea. I don't suppose there is anyone in the Senate who has held more oneman committee hearings than I have personally, but, notwithstanding that, I still think, for the good of the Senate, the good of the committee, and to cope with the situation that we have before us, that we ought to have either a majority of the subcommittee, or the committee present, or one from both sides.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, there is a question, Senator, about that.
You don't mind an interruption on these various points?
Senator FERGUSON. No; I wish you would.

The CHAIRMAN. On this particular point here I have had the staff do research on hearings that have been held in the Senate in the last several years. I picked out the Internal Security Subcommittee as an example. Since 1951-and that is when the Internal Security Subcommittee was created by a Senate resolution-the subcommittee had a total of 416 1-man hearings. The total number of hearings where

there was more than 1 member present was only 267. The total number of hearings held since 1951 was 683.

Now, you were a member of that committee for 2 years.

Senator FERGUSON. I probably violated that idea more than anybody else.

The CHAIRMAN. And you alone during that 2-year period held 102 1-man sessions-29 of them were public sessions and 73 of them were executive sessions.

Now, that brings up the point you mentioned a while ago, because you were dealing with the internal security of the United States, which primarily at this particular juncture in history has to deal with communism.

Now, Senator, communism is certainly not a controversial issue between the two major parties. Therefore, when you say a majority and a minority member in your point No. 2 here, it looks like you are trying to have two parties determine something.

The Democrats are just as much interested in stamping out communism as the Republicans, and right here is a record that would show, if you would require a majority and minority member to be present at these sessions, that you would stop the work of that committee. It couldn't function.

Senator FERGUSON. I can't agree with that assumption.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the history of this, Senator.

I don't mean to argue about it. That is the history, and that is the record.

Senator FERGUSON. I believe that we would be better off in the end if we would not have the one-man hearings.

Now I realize how difficult it is. I know the burden that is being put on the Senate every day. I know that each Senator has more work than he can possibly do; but, notwithstanding that, what we have tried to do and what I say here today is that I think for this Senate-I think for the House-that we would be better off to have the people realize that there is a quorum present of the committee or subcommittee, or we have this bipartisan idea, and it relates to communism as well as other cases.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, Senator, as Congressman Velde just testified, and you didn't hear all his testimony, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has already adopted that rule, that there must be at least two members present at a hearing.

Senator FERGUSON. This is for subpenaed witnesses.

The CHAIRMAN. But their problem is a little bit different in this respect: Each Member of the House serves on only one committee, and his work is confined to a limited number of counties in the congressional district he represents; while we have Senators serving on these committees, particularly in the Communist field that I happen to know about, who belong to three standing committees, plus the fact they are representing an entire State.

I just point this record out again, that you would close up the work, particularly of investigating committees in the Communist field, if you make these rules too rigid, and certainly there is nothing political about investigating subversion and the internal security of this country.