PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

sums of money are involved anyway. The trust fund might cover the
overhead and capital charges for a certain minimum staff, the sliding
scale might cover the enlargements. At any rate the appropriation
should be put beyond accident, like the payment of any long term
obligation. This is a much less serious way of "tying the hands of
Congress" than is the passage of a Constitutional amendment or the
issuance of government bonds. Congress could repeal the charter. But
it would have to repeal it, not throw monkey wrenches into it.
Tenure should be for life, with provision for retirement on a liberal
pension, with sabbatical years set aside for advanced study and
training, and with dismissal only after a trial by professional
colleagues. The conditions which apply to any non-profit-making
intellectual career should apply here. If the work is to be salient,
the men who do it must have dignity, security, and, in the upper ranks
at least, that freedom of mind which you find only where men are not
too immediately concerned in practical decision.
Access to the materials should be established in the organic act. The
bureau should have the right to examine all papers, and to question
any official or any outsider. Continuous investigation of this sort
would not at all resemble the sensational legislative inquiry and the
spasmodic fishing expedition which are now a common feature of our
government. The bureau should have the right to propose accounting
methods to the department, and if the proposal is rejected, or
violated after it has been accepted, to appeal under its charter to
Congress.
In the first instance each intelligence bureau would be the connecting
link between Congress and the Department, a better link, in my
judgment, than the appearance of cabinet officers on the floor of both
House and Senate, though the one proposal in no way excludes the
other. The bureau would be the Congressional eye on the execution of
its policy. It would be the departmental answer to Congressional
criticism. And then, since operation of the Department would be
permanently visible, perhaps Congress would cease to feel the need of
that minute legislation born of distrust and a false doctrine of the
separation of powers, which does so much to make efficient
administration difficult.
5
But, of course, each of the ten bureaus could not work in a watertight
compartment. In their relation one to another lies the best chance for
that "coordination" of which so much is heard and so little seen.
Clearly the various staffs would need to adopt, wherever possible,
standards of measurement that were comparable. They would exchange
their records. Then if the War Department and the Post Office both buy