The Associated Press, in a story published less than a week ago, related that 13 of the 14 years this gentleman has served in the House have been devoted to developing the bill before us today.I join my colleagues in recognizing that effort, and I ask unanimous consent to include that Associated Press article in the Record. 

The SPEAKER. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California? 

There was no objection. 

From the Los Angeles (Calif.) Times, June 12, 1966 

Washington--A battle most Americans thought was won when the United States was founded is just now moving into its final stage in Congress. 

It involves the right of Americans to know what their government is up to.It's a battle against secrecy, locked files and papers stamped "not for public inspection." 

It's been a quiet fight mainly because it has been led by a quiet, careful congressman, Representative John E. Moss, Democrat, of California, who has been waging it for 13 of the 14 years he has been in the House. 

Now, the House is about to act on the product of the years of study, hearings, investigations and reports--a bill that in some quarters is regarded as a sort of new Magna Carta.It's called the freedom of information bill, or the right to know. 

It would require federal agencies to make available information about the rules they operate under, the people who run them and their acts, decisions and policies that affect the public.Large areas of government activity that must of necessity be kept secret would remain secret.

House approval is believed certain, and since the Senate has already passed an identical bill, it should wind up on President Johnson's desk this month. 

How it will be received at the White House is not clear.In 1960, as vice president-elect Mr. Johnson told a convention of newspaper editors "the executive branch must see that there is no smoke screen of secrecy."But the 27 federal departments and agencies that presented their views on the bill to the Moss government information subcommittee opposed its passage. 

Norbert A. Schlel, assistant attorney general, who presented the main government case against the bill, said the problem of releasing information to the public was "just too complicated, too ever-changing" to be dealt with in a single piece of legislation. 

"If you have enough rules," he said, "you end up with less information getting out because of the complexity of the rule system you establish…." 

"I do not think you can take the whole problem governmentwide, and wrap it in one package.That is the basic difficulty; that is why the federal agencies are ranged against this proposal." 

Another government witness, Fred Burton Smith, acting general counsel of the Treasury Department, said if the bill was enacted "the executive branch will be unable to execute effectively many of the laws designed to protect the public and will be unable to prevent invasions of privacy among individuals whose records have "become government records." 

Smith said the exemptions contained in the bill were inadequate and its court provisions inappropriate.In addition, he said, persons without a legitimate interest in a matter would have access to records and added that the whole package was of doubtful constitutionality.

Far from deterring him, such testimony has only strengthened Moss's feeling that Congress had to do the job of making more information available to the public because the executive branch obviously wouldn't. 

The bill he is bringing to the House floor, June 20, is actually a series of amendments to a law Congress passed in 1946 in the belief it was requiring greater disclosure of government information to the public.And that, for Moss, takes care of the constitutional question. 

"If we could pass a weak public information law," he asks, "why can't we strengthen it." 

The 1946 law has many interpretations.And the interpretations made by the executive agencies were such that the law, which was intended to open records to the public, is now the chief statutory authority cited by the agencies for keeping them closed. 

The law permits withholding of records if secrecy "is required in the public interest," or if the records relate "solely to the internal management of an agency." 

If a record doesn't fit those categories it can be kept secret "for good cause found."And even if no good cause is found, the information can only be given to "persons properly and directly concerned." 

Between 1946, when that law was enacted, and 1958 the amount of file space occupied by classified documents increased by 1 million cubic feet, and 24 new terms were added to "top secret," "secret," and "confidential," to hide documents from public view. 

They ranged from simple "nonpublic," to "while this document is unclassified, it is for use only in industry and not for public release." 

The law has been used as authority for refusing to disclose cost estimates submitted by unsuccessful bidders on nonsecret contracts, for withholding names and salaries of federal employees, and keeping secret dissenting views of regulatory board members. 

It was used by the Navy to stamp its Pentagon telephone directories as not for public use on the ground they related to the internal management of the Navy. 

S. 1160, as the bill before the House, is designated, lists specifically the kind of information that can be withheld and says the rest must be made available promptly to "any" person. 

The areas protected against public disclosure include national defense and foreign policy secrets, investigatory files of law enforcement agencies, trade secrets, and mediation efforts, reports of financial institutions, personnel and medical files and papers that are solely for the internal use of an agency. 

In the view of many veterans of the fight for the right to know, its most important provision would require an agency to prove in court that it has authority to withhold a document that has been requested.Under the present law the situation is reversed and the person who wants the document has to prove that it is being improperly withheld. 

The bill would require--and here is where an added burden would be placed on the departments--that each agency maintain an index of all documents that become available for public inspection after the law is enacted.To discourage frivolous requests, fees could be charged for record searches. 

Moss bumped his head on the government secrecy shields during his first term in Congress when the Civil Service Commission refused to open some reports to him. 

"I decided right then I had better find out about the ground rules," he said in a recent interview."While I had no background of law, I had served in the California legislature and such a thing was unheard of." 

(California is one of 37 states that have open records laws.) 

Moss was given a unique opportunity to learn the ground rules in his second term in Congress when a special subcommittee of Government Operations Committee was created to investigate complaints that government agencies were blocking the flow of information to the press and public. 

Although only a junior member of the committee, Moss had already impressed House leaders with his diligence and seriousness of purpose and he was made chairman of the new subcommittee.His characteristics proved valuable in the venture he undertook. 

The right of a free people to know how their elected representatives are conducting the public business has been taken for granted by most Americans.But the Constitution contains no requirement that the government keep the people informed. 

The seeds of the secrecy controversy were sown during the first session of Congress when it gave the executive branch, in a "housekeeping" act, authority to prescribe rules for the custody, use and preservation of its records.They flourished in the climate created by the separation of the executive and legislative functions of government. 

Since George Washington, Presidents have relied on a vague concept called "executive privilege" to withhold from Congress information they feel should be kept secret in the national interest. 

There are constitutional problems involved in any move by Congress to deal with that issue, and S. 1160 seeks to avoid it entirely.

Moss, acting on the many complaints he receive, has clashed repeatedly with government officials far down the bureaucratic lines who have claimed "executive privilege" in refusing to divulge information, and in 1962 he succeeded in getting a letter from President John F. Kennedy stating that only the President would invoke it in the future.President Johnson gave Moss a similar pledge last year. 

Until the Moss subcommittee entered the field, the battle against government secrecy had been borne mainly by newspapermen. 

In 1953, the American Society of Newspaper Editors published the first comprehensive study of the growing restrictions on public access to government records--a book by Harold L. Cross entitled, "The People's Right to Know." 

The book provided the basis for the legislative remedy the subcommittee proceeded to seek, and Cross summed up the idea that has driven Moss ever since when he said, "the right to speak, and the right to print, without the right to know, are pretty empty." 

World War II, with its emphasis on security, gave a tremendous boost to the trend toward secrecy and so did the activities of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Republican, of Wisconsin, as intimidated officials pursued anonymity by keeping everything they could from public view.Expansion of federal activities in recent years made the problem ever more acute.

In 1958, Moss and the late Sen. Tom Hennings, Democrat, of Missouri, succeeded in amending the old "housekeeping" law to make clear it did not grant any right for agencies to withhold their records. 

Opposition of the executive branch blocked any further congressional action.Moss, hoping to win Administration support, did not push his bill until he was convinced this year it could not be obtained. 

Moss feels S. 1160 marks a legislative milestone in the United States. 

"For the first time in the nation's history, " he said recently, "the people's right to know the facts of government will be guaranteed." 

There is wide agreement with this view, but warnings against too much optimism are also being expressed. 

Noting the exemptions written into the bill, a Capitol Hill veteran observed, "Any bureaucrat worthy of the name should be able to find some place in those exemptions to tuck a document he doesn't want seen."