Congressional Investigations Quotes
He lost the vote on this issue, and the Congress created the first committee to investigate and oversee military affairs.
Sparta, an ancient Greek city-state, trained all its young men for war. One “test” was each youth was to sneak into the countryside and murder someone’s slave and not get caught. The murder was against the laws of the society, but if the young man was caught he was punished severely, not for murder or attempted murder, but for getting caught.
He was asked to comment on the poor initial response of the Federal Government during the Hurricane Katrine crisis.
He won the debate and the Congress created the first committee to investigate and oversee military affairs.
In 2015, a group of hyper-partisan Republicans initiated yet another investigation of the attack on an American Consulate in Libya where the U. S Ambassador was killed. The incident had occurred when Hilary Clinton had been Secretary of State some time earlier. However, she was then the leading Democratic Candidate for President, and some Republicans wanted to question her under oath in the hopes that they could find something to embarrass her and derail her surging campaign. Hanna and a few other Republicans admitted the truth as they were opposed to the abuse of the Congressional power to investigate for partisan purposes. However, the reaction against Hanna by some members of his own party was extremely harsh. The theory of the Hanna critics was that telling the truth was in this case highly embarrassing to the Party and damaged the credibility of many accusations made against Mrs. Clinton who turned the tables on the investigators in when they questioned her for over 11 hours straight, and despite the total absurdity of the hearing and the questions—all of which had been asked before, she comported herself with Presidential dignity and pretended to take the hearings very seriously and answered the same loaded questions repeatedly. See {582957} for his earlier statements.
Americans had never had the opportunity to see this committee in action before. While many Americans were intimidated, many were also very distressed to see how a Congressional Committee was abusing its power. And although the frightened Hollywood and network executive executives were intimidated into blacklisting Lawson and others, more and more Americans were lining up against this committee and Senator McCarthy’s committee in the Senate. This culminated in the Senate sanction of McCarthy and the discrediting of HUAC which never again had the influence that they had before this hearing.
Compare this quotation with {632899}. Most members of Congress had limited management experience and the only solution to an organizational problem was to fire people. The referenced quotation has people fired for the purpose of inspiring public trust; in this quotation, it is to trigger reform and change. Ironically, there is no evidence in the management literature that suggests that firing for either of these reasons will have the desired objective.
Goodpaster served as Staff Secretary and Defense Liaison Officer to President Eisenhower from 1954–1961. McCarthy accused many competent, loyal Americans of disloyalty, incompetence and treason. The reason that this particular quotation was noteworthy was that it particularly offended President Eisenhower and galvanized him into action to stop McCarthy’s excesses. See {632334}.
In a celebrated case involving the right of the U. S. House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee to "expose" someone as a Communist, Mr. Justice Brennan wrote:
The investigations were by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. At the time we were in the midst of the Red Scare and McCarthyism was rampant.
When his Republican political opponents controlled Congress, they had constant Congressional investigations of the President and his wife. Tens of millions of dollars were spent, and the President was constantly diverted from the important problems to deal with the investigations. For all that time and money all they came up with was the fact that Clinton was having a sexual liaison with a White House intern and lied about it to keep the information away from his wife, daughter and the public. The Republican majority impeached Clinton late in his second term, and when a trial was held in the Senate, the Republicans could not even get 50% of the Senators to vote “Guilty.” Clinton began to joke about the ineffectual Republican efforts.
He was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee where he was accused of being a Communist which he eloquently denied starting with this statement. He died of a heart attack 3 days later. However, most historians agree that White passed classified information to the Russians. He was accused of being a Communist, but there was never any evidence of that. Some people believe that he was a spy for the Russians and committed espionage, but others disagree observing that White was very much his own man and felt that much information that was classified never should have been. White substituted his own judgment, it is believed, about what could be given to the Russians for the security system. He was an admirer of what Russian socialism had accomplished economically, educationally and medically since the 1917 revolution deposing the Czar. Russia had been a valuable military ally, which had taken the brunt of both military and civilian casualties in WWII. White’s economics were certainly not Marxist but very much Keynesian.
Seeger had been a member of the Communist Party and had left it in 1950. See {635866}. He was later called before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and asked to reveal the names of others who had been members. In those days of the red scare and McCarthyism, most people asked to name names and not wanting to do so “took the 5th Amendment” and could not be legally forced to reveal the names. Seeger as a matter of principle refused to plead the 5th Amendment because he was not afraid of incriminating himself and had done nothing criminal anyway. So he, a war veteran of WWII, instead refused to answer citing his First Amendment right of freedom of association. There was no legal precedent for this, and he was indicted and convicted for Contempt of Congress. However, his conviction was overturned as unconstitutional by the U. S. Federal Appeals court. Seeger had prevailed legally. But in retaliation Seeger was blacklisted and none of the radio of TV networks or Hollywood Studios would allow him (and other blacklisted artists) to appear. See {642545} Today most Americans view what McCarthy, The Congressional Committee, the networks, and Hollywood studios had done as contemptible.
