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Show journalism Group Rakes GOP Administration For Withholding News The Eisenhower administration's administra-tion's widespread bungling has extended into the field of press censorship as the recent report of the Advancement of Freedom of Information Committee of Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism honorary fraternity shows. In its report the committee scolded Mr. Eisenhower on nu- merous occasions and found in-1 stances in which many of his aides had violated press freedom. No such investigation was necessary when Democrats were in power in Washington. j The report, in part, charges: "Bureaucratic secrecy attained new heights in federal government govern-ment during 1957. It engulfed i virtually all of the executive branch of the government and in many areas deprived the people, peo-ple, the Congress and the press of legitimate information of the 1 records of government, and the ' (Continued on page 4) Journalism Group Rakes GOP Administration For Withholding News (Continued from Page 1) actions of our public servants. "There are three basic problems prob-lems underlying this widespread secrecy and they must be solved if the inherent American right to know about government is to J be preserved. Thay are: ' "1. The Eisenhower Security Order 10-501, which gives the heads of 17 federal agencies the privilege of censoring information informa-tion in the sacred name of national na-tional security, has been widely abused and has done nothing to stop 'over-classification' of documents doc-uments of government that has threatened the effectiveness of the whole classification system. Therewas no effective declassification declassifi-cation under the Eisenhower order, and one Department of Defense committee openly admitted ad-mitted the things were in a mess. "2. Executive agencies have twisted and tortured the so-called so-called 'housekeeping statute' (5 USC 22) and the 1946 administrative adminis-trative Procedures Act (5 USC 1002) into authority for withholding with-holding information from the government records. They insist tha t non-security information should be withheld on grounds of "right of privacy," "public interest" in-terest" or "administrative feasibility." feasi-bility." They insist also that they have need for the three lines of defense which they are now using us-ing so effectively in barring the press, the public and Congress from finding out how they are handling the people's business. "Their first line of defense is the secrecy classification on the grounds of national security. This has been stretched to hide anything that could conceivably be associated with national security, se-curity, and a good many things where such a classification is ludicrous. Government commissions commis-sions have admitted the abuse of "over classification" and failure to declassify government papers. This misuse of "national security" secur-ity" has resulted in a democracy throttling secrecy, and expensive accumulation of paper in government gov-ernment storage. "The Eisenhower administration administra-tion has refused to change its order or its attitude." press, the public and Congress. These agencies are actively opposing op-posing legislation which would prevent use of these laws as authority au-thority for arbitrary secrecy. "3. The broadest and most offensive of-fensive secrecy claim continues to be the policy that the executive execu-tive branch of government can hide anything but final decision on grounds that it is 'confidential executive business." This policy was set out in President Eisenhower's Eisen-hower's May 17, 1954 letter to Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson and the administration has refused to back down from this position. It is used for the ultimate in 'managing the news' in that the executive department can pick and choose which information in-formation to make available. Executive agency heads do not even given very good lip service to the principle of free and open |