Dr. COLEGROVE. I would like to see more studies on the question of what leadership is and the part that morality and ethics play in leadership. I think the codes of political ethics that are springing up over the United States are making some contribution in this way. I do not know any of the foundations that are making a study of these codes of political ethics.

Mr. HAYS. One foundation was going to set up a fund to study Congress, I understood, with the idea of suggesting some improvements. And immediately that was met with a barrage of criticism. Some people questioned: Who are these people that are going to question the integrity and the sacredness of Congress?

Personnally, it is to me a little bit like the old newspaper story of the man biting the dog. I mean, Congressmen are investigating anybody. I have no objection if somebody wants to investigate Congress. But it caused a lot of criticism.

Dr. COLEGROVE. I think probably most of these studies should begin at the grassroots.

The CHAIRMAN. My constituents have been investigating Congress for a long time.

Mr. HAYS. I, again, because of my great affection for the chairman, will not comment on that either.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions?

Mr. GOODWIN. No question. I want to make a statement a little later.

I want to make a brief statement, Mr. Chairman. After I have made it, I will ask unanimous consent that it be placed in the record of today's proceedings at the point in the morning session immediately after reference to the number of institutions of learning in the several States.

Mr. HAYS. May I ask unanimous consent that in deference to our colleague from Massachusetts we have deleted the remark that came along in there somewhere that the Harvard College was the second most left to Columbia. I think we ought to just take that out, so that there will not be any reflection on Massachusetts at all.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Professor Colegrove, for your presentation today.

The committee is deeply appreciative of your generosity in coming down here and giving us the benefit of your experience.

It is now 3:35. I question whether we ought to proceed any further. Mr. HAYS. I would like to agree with you, and I want to say that if we are going to take up this monumental piece of empirical research, I hope you can wait until morning.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will adjourn, then, until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning in this same room.

(Whereupon, at 3:35 p. m., the hearing was adjourned until 10 a. m., Wednesday, June 9, 1954.)

TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1954

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE

TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS,

Washington, D. C.

The special committee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to recess, in room 304, House Office Building, Hon. Carroll Reece (chairman of the special committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Reece, Goodwin, Hays, and Pfost

Also present: Rene A. Wormser, general counsel; Arnold T. Koch, associate counsel; Norman Dodd, research director; Kathryn Casey, legal analyst; John Marshall, chief clerk.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

Mr. Koch.

Mr. Kocн. Mr. McNiece would like to continue.

The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed. The oath is continuing during the course of the proceedings.

Mr. KOCH. That is right. May he continue reading his supplement before we ask him questions, or would you rather ask him questions with respect to his first installment?

Mr. HAYS. I have a few more questions I would like to ask. It seems we have left enough things hanging in midair.

Mr. KоCH. Very well.

TESTIMONY OF THOMAS M. McNIECE, ASSISTANT RESEARCH DIRECTOR, SPECIAL COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS-Resumed

Mr. HAYS. On your first report, Mr. McNiece, on page 9, you talk, near the bottom of the page, about centralized places, which seems to imply that somebody had a motive or desire to plot this thing. Do you have any specific evidence of that?

Mr. MCNIECE. I don't at the moment find the item.

Mr. HAYS. It is in the last paragraph down about the fifth line: "It does, however, seem to confirm".

Mr. MCNIECE. I have it. The excerpts from the final report from the American Council of Learned Societies, plus the evidence which continues on through on the influence of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies in preparing a directory, if I may call it that, of men qualified to advise Government in its various fields. I take that as evidence of the flow of what might be called a central or main stream of influence. I believe it is in this next and short section of my report that I mention, merely as

factual evidence, the number of people from the field of social science who are employed, at least in part, by Government today. That is, we have letters in which they advise us of the names of those people and the fields of work in which they are occupied.

Mr. HAYS. What do you read into that? The Government has need apparently for these people. Where would you more logically turn than to these societies who would have lists of people?

Mr. MCNIECE. I am not in any way questioning either the need or the source, except as it comes from a firm and compact group of what might be called, and has been referred to here, as the intellectual elite. They might be defined by another term as the mental aristocrats. I believe all of the testimony that has been given here, and without any attempt on the part of any of us to tie in the testimony of the various professors that have appeared here, seems to indicate the same thing, that there is, let me call it, a preferred group which is called upon for advice. It is a highly concentrated corps, I think I used the term in my previous appearance on the stand.

Mr. HAYS. If you were doing the calling, you would call upon the best brains you could get, would you not? You don't mean to put some term of opprobrium by calling them the intellectual elite?

Mr. MCNIECE. No, but neither would I know how to define best brains. I would call on people in my judgment that would be fitted for that. I am not doing the calling. The Government is doing that.

Mr. HAYS. I understand that, but if you were doing the calling, and you had to find somebody in a certain field, we will say social science or for that matter any exact scientific field, how would you go about finding them?

Mr. MCNIECE. The first thing I would do is to look into their background and training and find the particular types of views held or expounded before I would do anything else. I take it here that Government does not do that, but relies upon the recommendations of the very central group to which I have referred previously. That was the very purpose of the $65,000 grant in total made by the Rockefeller Foundation. That apparently is accepted as final by the Government. I have to assume that. I do not know it. But that was the purpose of organizing the list.

Mr. HAYS. What was the purpose again in organizing the list? Mr. MCNIECE. As I have stated previously, the purpose was to supply a list of individuals qualified in the judgment, and I don't say this in a disparaging way, of the intellectual group from which this list emanated.

Mr. HAYS. Maybe I am being a little thick at this point, as the Irish put it, but I don't see anything wrong with the Learned Society or the Historical Association or the Society of American Chemists, or anybody else furnishing a list of qualified people.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you permit an interjection there?
Mr. HAYS. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. We have in the United States the colleges and universities which, while large in number, are very accessible to be advised about the requirements of Government. While there is nothing wrong in asking one of the societies to furnish a list of names, as I see it, do we not know from practical experience that when a council such as the Council of Learned Societies is put in the position of furnishing a list of scholars to advise the Government, that list will be pretty

much the recommendation of the man who happens to be administrative officer of the council that makes up and supplies the list. Insofar as that is the case, that puts in the hands of one man a tremendous influence. If he happens to be a man that has certain inclinations, he is in a position to give very wide effect in those inclinations, if he is put in a position where he furnishes the list of the experts the Government calls into the service as advisers. That is the angle that I see that becomes, to my mind, Mr. Hays, very important.

It is the concentration not only in one organization, but ultimately largely in the hands of one man.

Mr. HAYS. Of course, theoretically that could happen, but if you want to carry that theoretical idea out to its ultimate conclusion, it could happen in the university in the case of whoever is the executive officer there. Or if you want an even greater illustration of one man picking and choosing, how about the President? He has the power to appoint literally thousands of people. Theoretically he does it himself. But actually in practice, it is the culmination of a lot of

recommendations.

I would guess, without knowing and having any evidence offered to the contrary, that in these various organizations they operate the same way.

Do you have any evidence, Mr. McNiece, that one individual in the American Council of Learned Societies is in control of this whole thing, or is it the thought of a group of men or officers?

Mr. MCNIECE. It is both. By the time I have finished with my testimony, I think the answer to your question should be a little more obvious, because we can take the end results and draw certain conclusions from them.

I have said in the sentence immediately prior to the one you quoted: In itself there should be no criticism of this objective.

In other words, I start out with that premise. It is the end results that cause us to raise some questions. We have not touched the end results as yet as they affect this side of the triangle.

Mr. HAYS. You are going to bring in some conclusive facts later on of something bad in the end result? If you are, I will defer any questioning along that line.

Mr. MCNIECE. All right. I had not expected to do it at this moment. As a matter of fact, I was not sure I would do it at all. But here is a quotation which I might insert. It does not appear in any of my studies.

When we see a lot of framed timbers, different proportions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, and when we see those timbers joined together and see that they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tennons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the length and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

That is from Abraham Lincoln in a talk made in 1858. It has been certified to us by the Legislative Reference Division of the Congressional Library which can give you further details on it if you are interested.

Mr. HAYS. I assume you are saying now that you are comparing this to the framework of a building, and saying all these people who