2 Landing at PSI

A legislative body cannot legislate wisely or effectively in the absence of information respecting the conditions which the legislation is intended to affect or change; and where the legislative body does not itself possess the requisite information— which not infrequently is true—recourse must be had to others who do possess it. Experience has taught that mere requests for such information often are unavailing, and also that information which is volunteered is not always accurate or complete; so some means of compulsion are essential to obtain what is needed.

The Supreme Court was careful to note that Congress’ authority to investigate was not limitless. It had to be “in aid of the legislative function.” The Court prohibited Congress, for example, from inquiring into the “private affairs” of individuals without a legislative purpose. Nor could Congress take on the judicial branch’s role of adjudicating specific disputes, or the executive branch’s role of prosecuting wrongdoers.8 Instead, Congress had to design its investigations to inform and guide its legislative duties.

The Supreme Court dismissed a claim that the Senate’s inquiry was invalid because it had essentially put the Attorney General on trial, which was a “judicial function.” The Court stated that the investigation provided “no warrant for thinking the Senate was attempting … to try the Attorney General … for any crime or wrongdoing. Nor do we think it is a valid objection to the investigation that it might possibly disclose crimes or wrongdoing on his part.” The Supreme Court ruled instead that a congressional inquiry could proceed even if it disclosed wrongdoing that might merit law enforcement or court proceedings, so long as it was founded upon a legislative function.

The 1927 Supreme Court case made it crystal clear that Congress possessed inherent authority under the Constitution to conduct investigations tied to a legislative purpose. While Congress had no authority to prosecute crimes or resolve specific disputes, the Supreme Court confirmed Congress’ broad authority to engage in fact-finding to support its legislative function. It also made clear that Congress could use the federal courts to enforce congressional subpoenas compelling testimony or documents. While later cases added nuance and detail, the broad principles laid out in McGrain v. Daugherty provided an unshakable foundation for congressional oversight over the ensuing decades.

Compelling Information

My congressional education also led me deep into the laws and rules controlling when Congress could compel information, a key issue in every investigation. I learned that Congress had enacted statutes that explicitly granted the

Senate and House the right to conduct inquiries, issue subpoenas, and compel compliance with their information requests.9 Equally important, the courts had given Congress the ability to brand anyone who defied a congressional subpoena as a wrongdoer in “contempt” of Congress. The Supreme Court held that Congress possessed inherent authority to hold such persons in contempt reasoning that, otherwise, Congress would be “exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice or even conspiracy may mediate against it.”10 Not only that, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could force an individual accused of contempt to appear before the House or Senate, undergo a trial, and upon conviction, to be imprisoned at a place of Congress’ choosing.11 Strong stuff.

Over time, Congress moved away from conducting its own contempt trials and enacted criminal and civil contempt statutes, enabling it to use federal courts and prisons to compel compliance with its subpoenas.12 The criminal contempt statute authorized Congress to send a convicted person to “a common jail” for up to one year. To invoke the statute, the offended committee and house of Congress each had to vote to hold the individual in contempt and then send the case to a federal judge to order the person’s imprisonment.13 The Senate also enacted civil contempt statutes authorizing the Senate to file civil suits to enforce its subpoenas. In such suits, the federal district court could order defiant individuals to be imprisoned or pay a civil fine, in order to compel their cooperation with the Senate or punish ongoing contempt.

I also learned that, to show respect and deference to a co-equal branch of government, the courts made it fairly easy for Congress to prevail in a contempt proceeding, setting standards that made it hard for targets to defy a congressional subpoena.

First, the courts held that a subpoena recipient could not ask a judge to prospectively overrule or invalidate a subpoena. Instead, the recipient had to refuse to comply, get cited for contempt by Congress, and then raise objections during the contempt proceedings.14 Not a comfortable legal posture for the person challenging Congress.

Second, when gauging the validity of a congressional subpoena, the courts typically used a three-part test, promulgated by the Supreme Court, whose minimal requirements seemed to favor Congress. The key case involved a hearing witness whom the House had voted to hold in contempt for refusing to answer a question about whether he was a member of the Communist Party. The Supreme Court sided with the House, holding that the witness had to answer the question, because the House Committee’s inquiry had met three basic criteria: (1) it involved matters that the committee was “authorized” by Congress to investigate; (2) the investigation had “a valid legislative

purpose”; and (3) the requested information was “pertinent to the subject matter of the investigation.”15 The three-part test, which required a relatively minimal showing, made it easy for lower courts to enforce congressional subpoenas.

Jurisdiction

The first prong of the test focused on congressional authority to investigate a particular subject matter. To evaluate that issue, the court looked to the “jurisdiction” assigned to the committee or subcommittee making the information request.

Committee jurisdictions were routinely disclosed at the beginning of each new Congress. Since the U.S. Congress first convened in 1789, each subsequent “Congress” has had a duration of two years, with each component year referred to as a “session.” For example, the Congress first employing me was the 99th Congress. Its first session was in 1985; its second session was in 1986. The two-year period corresponded with the terms of the members of the House of Representatives, all of whom had to be re-elected every two years. Each time the House members were elected, they constituted an entirely new body and started a new Congress. In contrast, in the Senate, only onethird of its members faced election every two years. That meant, unlike the House, the Senate had a continuous existence. Nevertheless, the Senate used the same two-year timeframe as the House to identify each Congress.

At the beginning of each new Congress, the House adopted a set of rules and resolutions to govern its operation. The Senate, as a continuing body, didn’t have to adopt new rules, but could choose to amend its rules at the start of a new Congress or at some other time. The House and Senate rules, as well as resolutions passed by each body at the beginning of a new Congress, were used to assign subject matter jurisdiction to each of their standing, select, joint, and ad hoc committees. The jurisdictional assignments were typically broad and often overlapped.

The committee names were indicative of their jurisdictions such as the Committee on Agriculture or Select Committee on Intelligence. Over time, many of their names and jurisdictions changed to adapt to new issues and needs. For example, the committee where I worked would undergo four name changes over the span of 100 years. From 1921 to 1952, it was known as the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments. In 1952, its name changed to the Committee on Government Operations. In 1977, the name changed again to the Committee on Governmental Affairs. In 2005, it would change once more to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.16

When I was hired in 1985, the Committee on Governmental Affairs served as the Senate’s chief investigative body, and its assigned jurisdiction was one of the most sweeping in the Senate. It included the authority to investigate “the efficiency, economy, and effectiveness” of all federal agencies, including any instance of fraud, mismanagement, corruption, or unethical practice; all instances of waste, extravagance, or “improper expenditure of Government funds”; any corporate or individual “noncompliance” with a federal regulation or law; all “organized criminal activity” that crossed state lines; and “all other aspects of crime and lawlessness,” including “investment fraud schemes, commodity and security fraud, computer fraud, and the use of offshore banking and corporate facilities to carry out criminal objectives.”17 Whoa.

Despite that already mind-blowingly broad mandate, in 2005, when the committee name changed to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Senate added a raft of new homeland security issues to the committee’s plate. The result was that jurisdiction wasn’t much of a limiting factor for subpoenas issued by our committee or its subcommittees.

Legislative Purpose and Pertinence

The final two prongs of the courts’ three-part test to evaluate congressional subpoenas were equally easy to meet. They required Congress to show that a subpoena was tied to “a valid legislative purpose” and was “pertinent to the subject under inquiry.” The courts interpreted both requirements broadly. For example, the courts ruled that the phrase, “valid legislative purpose,” justified subpoenas aimed at determining whether a law was working or a new law was needed, whether appropriated funds were being spent wisely or should be spent otherwise, whether federal agency actions or presidential orders were acceptable, whether nominations of federal office should be approved, and a host of other matters tied to Congress’ legislative functions. The courts gave Congress a lot of leeway.

The courts also made it easy for Congress to show that a subpoena was “pertinent” to an investigation. As one court explained in upholding a congressional subpoena:

A legislative inquiry may be as broad, as searching, and as exhaustive as is necessary to make effective the constitutional powers of Congress. … A judicial inquiry relates to a case, and the evidence to be admissible must be measured by the narrow limits of the pleadings. A legislative inquiry anticipates all possible cases which may arise thereunder and the evidence admissible must be responsive to the scope of the inquiry which generally is very broad.18

The courts further broadened the standard by holding that a congressional inquiry could evolve over time to encompass new subjects, and that a congressional “subpoena was to be enforced ‘unless the district court determines that there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will produce information relevant to the general subject of the … investigation.’”19 The Supreme Court instructed that a congressional subpoena should be upheld even if investigators end up searching “some ‘blind alleys’ or “non-productive enterprises.” It stated: “To be a valid legislative inquiry there need be no predicable end result.”20

With that type of direction from the high court, lower courts were generally unreceptive to claims that a congressional subpoena should be invalidated because it was overbroad. The courts followed Supreme Court precedent holding that, when it came to policy-oriented inquiries, Congress had discretion to explore the facts, related issues, and even remote connections.

There was one big exception to that broad approach—when Congress subpoenaed information from the president or executive branch. Several Supreme Court cases had held that, unlike a private individual or entity, the president had certain executive privileges that could limit the information obtainable by Congress. Figuring out the bounds of those executive privileges was an ongoing source of conflict between the executive and legislative branches.

Lying and Obstructing

One more critical set of legal issues in congressional oversight involved the federal statutes that prohibited lying to Congress or obstructing its investigations. I learned that the prohibition against lying to Congress was very broad. It wasn’t limited to hearings where a witness swore an oath to tell the truth and risked a perjury charge for material misstatements.21 It also applied to statements made during the course of any authorized “investigation or review” by Congress, which meant it applied to statements made to a member or congressional staffer during a deposition, interview, telephone call, letter, or email exchange. The key criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1001, stated that anyone who “knowingly and willfully … falsifies, conceals, or covers up … a material fact” or “makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement,” or makes or uses “any false writing” in a matter within the jurisdiction of Congress could be fined or imprisoned for up to five years.

The obstruction statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1505, was equally tough. The law made it a crime for anyone to “corruptly” or through the use of “any threatening letter or communication” to “influence, obstruct, or impede” a congressional inquiry. Persons who violated the statute could be fined or imprisoned for up to five years.

Pretty stern stuff. While it was relatively rare for someone to be prosecuted for lying to or obstructing Congress, it wasn’t an empty threat. In fact, several years later, in connection with a Levin investigation into the 2001 collapse of Enron Corporation, a corporate executive would be convicted of lying to the Senate and jailed for three years. I learned that a credible threat of criminal prosecution for false statements played a frequent and critical role in getting to the truth.

A final source of oversight restrictions and practices involved specific rules issued by Congress itself. In each Congress, the Senate and House issued rules governing the circumstances under which their respective committees could conduct an inquiry, issue a subpoena, or hold a hearing.22 In addition, most committees issued their own supplementary set of rules governing their operations. Some subcommittees did the same, including PSI. I was to learn that those rules also had a real impact on how investigations played out.

Learning What Not to Do

During my OGM tenure, while I participated in many compelling investigations, one stood out. It was the highest profile investigation undertaken by the Governmental Affairs Committee while I was there, and it swept up the whole committee for an entire year.

The investigation arose out of the 1996 campaign won by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore over Republican challengers Senator Bob Dole and his running mate Congressman Jack Kemp. It was a hard-fought election that led to angry recriminations and allegations of wrongdoing by both sides. Questions included whether foreign money had influenced the outcome, whether the White House had broken any laws by selling political access to big campaign contributors, and whether loopholes in federal campaign finance laws were allowing campaign contributions to corrupt American politics.

The Republicans were then the majority party in the Senate, and in December 1996, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott announced the Governmental Affairs Committee would conduct a special investigation into the 1996 campaign. The committee chair was Senator Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican who’d been a staff lawyer during the Watergate inquiry.

In January 1997, under Senator Thompson’s leadership, the committee approved a bipartisan description of the scope of the inquiry, authorizing an investigation “into illegal or improper fundraising and spending practices in the 1996 Federal election campaigns.”23 After three months of bickering, the full Senate passed a supporting resolution in March 1997 and imposed a oneyear deadline to complete the inquiry.24

The investigation concluded on time in March 1998. Along the way, the committee hired more than 50 new staffers, set up a special room to secure about 1.5 million pages of documents, issued 427 subpoenas, conducted 200 depositions and another 200 interviews, held 32 days of hearings over three months, took testimony from 72 witnesses, and wrote a six-volume, 9575page report with findings and recommendations.25 The investigation was fastpaced, wide-ranging, and riven with partisan disagreements. It dominated my life for the entire year. And it taught me lesson after lesson about how not to conduct congressional oversight.

In Washington, the common wisdom is never to allow a crisis to go to waste, but to use it to analyze and fix real problems. Public outcry about the 1996 election campaign provided a rare opportunity to clean up the sewer system that the U.S. campaign finance system had become. But to do that, the parties needed to work together, admit the stink permeated both sides of the aisle, and develop bipartisan solutions. The problem with the Governmental Affairs investigation was that, while the committee Republicans were happy to point out all the problems on the Democratic side, they refused to admit that similar problems afflicted their party.

The refusal to acknowledge a bipartisan problem played out in every aspect of the investigation. Multiple witnesses with information about Democratic fundraising practices were brought in for questioning, but requests to interrogate their Republican counterparts were largely ignored. Not one witness from the Republican National Committee (RNC) or Dole campaign was called to testify at a committee hearing. The 32 days of hearings examined Democratic fundraising misconduct in detail, while the three days of hearings promised to examine similar problems on the Republican side never materialized.

The GOP’s “see-no-evil” approach, as Senator Levin labeled it at one point, didn’t actually protect the Republicans from criticism. Despite a lack of interviews and hearing opportunities, the committee Democrats repeatedly released evidence of Republican fundraising misconduct that paralleled Democratic misdeeds. When the Republicans denounced President Clinton for letting big contributors stay overnight in the White House’s Lincoln bedroom, the Democrats produced invitations from President George H.W. Bush enabling big contributors to meet Cabinet members in the White House’s Indian Treaty Room. When the Republicans ridiculed Al Gore for attending a fundraiser in a Buddhist temple, the Democrats castigated President Bush for taking $500,000 from a Japanese businessman, Michael Kojima, who’d been labeled a “deadbeat dad” for failing to pay child support. When the Republicans showed Chinese

money being bundled by Democratic contributor John Huang, Democrats traced Hong Kong money flowing to the RNC through a conduit called the National Policy Forum.

The investigation’s tit-for-tat dynamic poisoned committee relationships. Instead of everyone agreeing on the facts underlying the campaign finance problems and pushing for a bipartisan solution, the two sides got increasingly angry at each other for criticizing their counterparts and not themselves. Republicans charged Democrats with trying to deflect attention from President Clinton’s misdeeds, while Democrats slammed Republicans for trying to hide their party’s own wrongdoing. The inquiry produced a dysfunctional stalemate instead of a joint effort to solve a mutual problem. The infighting also disgusted the media and the public.

Perhaps the lowest point in the investigation from an institutional perspective came when the committee abandoned efforts to enforce document subpoenas it’d sent to politically powerful organizations on both sides of the aisle. Neither side would support the other’s enforcement effort. When a committee throws up its hands on enforcing its own subpoenas, it weakens Congress as a whole by enabling investigative subjects to thumb their noses at congressional requests.

Another low point was the committee’s final report. The two sides didn’t even attempt to draft a joint product. Instead, each wrote its own report. The final result was over 9000 pages of divergent depictions of what happened during the 1996 presidential campaign. I wonder how many people—other than those of us involved in the drafting—ever read the whole thing.

Despite the disastrous Senate investigation, it had one positive outcome. The awful facts it compiled contributed to a growing public demand to reform the U.S. campaign finance system. It took another five years, but in 2002, Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, won enactment of the landmark Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act. It tackled a wide range of campaign finance problems, many of which had been documented in the Senate investigation.

For a while, the McCain-Feingold Act halted a host of ugly practices in U.S. campaign finance. But few reforms endure where money in politics is concerned. As Supreme Court decisions weakened many of the McCainFeingold restrictions, Congress failed to respond with new legislation, leading to another surge in campaign finance abuses. When allegations of foreign influence over the U.S. presidential election erupted in 2016, it demonstrated the ongoing need for congressional oversight in the electoral arena.

Mastering the Basics

In the Levin camp, the campaign finance investigation produced bitter regret that the 1996 campaign crisis had not led to a truly bipartisan inquiry. The crucible of that failed investigation was painful, but it also helped crystalize my views about congressional oversight.

By the investigation’s end in 1998, I felt I finally had a good grasp of the oversight process. It was no longer a mysterious, amorphous subject, but one composed of distinct phases:

• Designing the investigation; • Getting the facts through research, document requests, and interviews; • Writing up the investigative results; • Holding a hearing; and • Pushing to fix the identified problems.

I was also convinced that bipartisan investigations led to more thorough, accurate, and credible fact-finding as well as to higher-quality, longer-lasting policy reforms.

But perhaps more important than the investigative techniques were the lessons I had soaked up about Congress itself. I had learned that, in many ways, Congress was a closed world, insular, with its own traditions, unwritten rules, and sensitivities. At the same time, Congress was exposed to and buffeted by multiple outside forces including constituents, lobbyists, and the public, expressing a cacophony of differing points of view. I had begun to understand that the 100 senators and 435 House members were, first and foremost, singular individuals with strengths, weaknesses, and interests, operating in an ever-shifting network of political pressures and alliances. Each member of Congress decided on how to devote their time and energy; the puzzle was figuring out how to enlist them into a common endeavor.

I found myself fascinated with the whole complicated process. While the rest of the country was becoming increasingly disillusioned with Congress, I found I’d become a full-fledged congressional junkie whose knees got weak when I gazed at the statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol dome. I found I’d become fiercely devoted to Congress as an institution. While most congressional staff left the Hill after a few years, I found I didn’t want to leave; working for Congress had become my chosen career.

I also realized that I’d been able to maintain my positive feelings about Congress, because I had landed a job in oversight working for an outstanding senator. The thing about oversight, when done well, is that it’s worthwhile and

fun, even in an otherwise dysfunctional Congress. When everyone else is banging their heads against the wall trying to pass legislation that can’t get passed, oversight investigators can continue to do valuable work. They dig out the facts, interview victims and wrongdoers, analyze problems, and try to discover what might make things better. And isn’t that why many people go to Washington in the first place—to analyze and fix problems hurting the country?

Even in troubled times, when solutions require a political consensus that isn’t possible at the moment, an oversight investigation can prime the pump by educating policymakers and the public about a problem and what can be done about it. Then when a crisis hits, all that analysis and work on possible solutions will be ready—to make sure the crisis doesn’t go to waste.

What I didn’t realize in 1998 was that, while OGM had been a remarkable adventure in its own right and produced terrific oversight, it was only a warmup for what was coming.

Notes

1. For more information on the Pujo Committee investigation, see Congress

Investigates: A Critical and Documentary History, editors Roger A. Bruns,

David L. Hostetter, and Raymond W. Smock (Facts on File 2011) (hereinafter “Congress Investigates”), Volumes 1–2, at 417–459; “Money Trust

Investigation: Financial and Monetary Conditions in the United States,”

House Committee on Banking and Currency subcommittee (5/16/1912),

HRG-1912-BCU-0017, Y4.B22/1:M74/2-1, http://bit.ly/2ASceSc (first of multiple hearing days). 2. For more information on the Pecora investigation, see Congress Investigates, at 500–539; “Stock Exchange Practices,” Senate Committee on Banking and

Currency, S. Hrg. 73-1455 (6/6/1934), http://bit.ly/2hKZVDt (report and associated hearings from January 1933 to May 1934). 3. For more information on the Watergate investigation, see Congress Investigates, at 886–926. 4. For more information on the Church Committee investigation, see Congress

Investigates, at 927–967; “Final Report of the Select Committee to Study

Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States

Senate together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views,” S. Rpt. 94-755 (4/26/1976), https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel01unit. 5. See, for example, the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, P.L. 98-369 (S. 2127); Social Security Disability Reform Act of 1984, P.L. 98-460 (S. 476); Anti-Kickback Enforcement Act of 1986, P.L. 99-634 (S. 2250);

Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988, P.L. 100-503 (S. 496); Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990, P.L. 101-648 (S. 303); Lobbying

Disclosure Act of 1995, P.L. 104-65 (S. 349). 6. See, for example, the following hearings and reports from investigations conducted by the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management:

“Department of Defense Subcontractor Kickbacks,” S. Hrg. 99-810 (2/27/1986), http://bit.ly/2jEncHL; “Wedtech: A Review of Federal

Procurement Decisions,” S. Prt. 100-108 (5/1988), http://bit.ly/2Cwa9Q8;

“Department of Defense Safety Programs for Chemical and Biological

Warfare Research,” S. Hrg. 100-902 (7/27–28/1988), http://bit.ly/2itP2mx;

“Oversight of Oil Spill Protections for the Great Lakes,” S. Hrg. 101-354 (9/6/1989), http://bit.ly/2yWWFbk; “Lax Federal Enforcement of the

Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Program,” S. Prt. 102-52 (10/1991), http://bit.ly/2zPXVAu; “Navy’s Mismanagement of the Sealift Tanker

Program,” S. Hrg. 103-1044 (10/12/1994), http://bit.ly/2zPYNVJ. 7. 273 U.S. 135 (1927). For more information on the Teapot Dome scandal, see

Congress Investigates, at 460–499. 8. See also Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178 (1957). 9. See U.S. Code, Title 2, “The Congress.” 10. Anderson v. Dunn, 19 U.S. 204 (1821). 11. The Supreme Court has upheld Congress’ right to use imprisonment to induce a subpoena recipient to produce requested information or impose punishment for noncompliance. The Court has limited the term of imprisonment by stating it may not exceed the term of the Congress that authorized it.

See, for example, “Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of

Congressional Subpoenas: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure,” Report

No. RL34097, Congressional Research Service (5/12/2017), at 8, 10–11 (hereinafter “CRS Report on Congress’s Contempt Power”). 12. See 2 U.S.C. § 192 (authorizing Congress to find a person who was summoned as a “witness” before a house of Congress, but refused to appear, answer questions, or produce requested papers, guilty of a criminal misdemeanor, and subject to a monetary fine or imprisonment for up to one year); 2 U.S.C. §§ 288b(b) and 288d, 28 U.S.C. § 1365 (authorizing the Senate to file civil contempt lawsuits in federal district court); CRS Report on Congress’s

Contempt Power, at 20–25. In place of the Senate’s civil contempt statutes, the House requires adoption of a House resolution each time a House committee seeks to enforce a subpoena through civil contempt proceedings. Id. at 25–30. The last time Congress conducted its own trial on contempt charges, outside of a federal court, was in 1935. Id., at 12. 13. If voting is successful and a contempt citation is “certified” by the Senate

President or House Speaker, the law states it becomes the “duty” of a federal prosecutor “to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.” 14. Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 503–507 (1975).

15. Wilkinson v. United States, 365 U.S. 399, 408–409 (1961). 16. The number, names, and jurisdictions of its subcommittees also underwent repeated alteration. 17. The Governmental Affairs Committee’s jurisdiction was set forth in the

Senate’s standing committee rules and the committee’s funding resolution.

See, for example, Senate Rule XXV-1(k) and S. Res. 85, both in force during the 99th Congress. 18. Townsend v. United States, 95 F.2d 352, 361 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 303

U.S. 665 (1938). 19. Senate Select Committee on Ethics v. Packwood, 845 F. Supp. 17, 20–21 (D.D.C. 1994), stay pending appeal denied, 510 U.S. 1319 (1994). 20. Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 503–507 (1975). See also

Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 187 (1957) (The investigative power of Congress “encompasses inquiries concerning the administration of existing laws as well as proposed or possibly needed statutes. It includes surveys of defects in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling

Congress to remedy them. It comprehends probes into departments of the

Federal Government to expose corruption, inefficiency or waste.”). 21. 18 U.S.C. § 1621. 22. In the 99th Congress, Senate Rule XXVI provided the standing procedural rules for how Senate committees operated, while the same function was performed for House committees by House Rule XI.2(m)(1). 23. “Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996

Federal Election Campaigns,” Report, Volumes 1–6, U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Rept. 105-167 (3/10/1998) (hereinafter “1996

Campaign Report”), Volume 1, at 11–12, http://bit.ly/2hKgO0W et seq. (6 parts). See also related hearings at http://bit.ly/2zQ0bHF et seq. (10 parts). 24. Senate Resolution 39 (3/11/1997). 25. 1996 Campaign Report, Volume 1, at 14–15.

2

Landing at PSI

“While the conventional assumption is that the strength of legislative bodies lies in the power to legislate, a respectable tradition has long argued that it lies as much or more in the power to investigate.” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Congress Investigates: A Critical and Documentary History, Volume 1, at xxi (Facts on File 2011)

What followed next was 15 years of big-league investigations by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, known to insiders as PSI. PSI has long been seen as the Senate’s premier investigative panel with decades of bipartisan, hard-hitting, high-quality oversight inquiries.

PSI originated as a temporary investigative committee, led by then Senator Harry Truman, to examine war profiteering during World War II. It later became a “permanent” subcommittee and built a formidable reputation taking on Nazi war criminals, political corruption, and organized crime. In 1954, it faltered when, for two years, Senator Joe McCarthy conducted a series of investigations so offensive they corroded the PSI brand. After his departure, PSI slowly rebuilt its credibility with high-profile investigations into labor racketeering, the mafia, drug trafficking, and white-collar crime. PSI also examined such matters as the U.S. race riots in the 1960s, gasoline shortages in the 1970s, and money laundering in the 1980s.

Senator Levin claimed his PSI leadership spot in 1999. For the rest of his Senate career, he used his position on PSI to conduct one high-stakes inquiry after another. He exposed tax cheats hiding money offshore, credit card companies abusing American families, money launderers misusing U.S. financial

institutions, Wall Street banks generating the financial crisis that devastated middle America, multinational corporations gaming the tax system, and more. His investigations targeted some of the most powerful corporations in America, including Apple, Citibank, Enron, and Goldman Sachs, as well as tax-cheating billionaires, corrupt foreign dictators, and bankers behaving badly.

Through it all, Senator Levin burnished PSI’s reputation for fact-based, bipartisan inquiries that not only exposed wrongdoing, but also pushed for policy reforms. As one opponent quipped during the Levin era: “PSI stands for pretty scary investigations.”1

Distilling the Levin Principles

I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat during the whole of the Levin years on PSI, first as a Levin investigator and later as his staff director and chief counsel. Over time, as one investigation rolled into the next, the Levin PSI team built up a set of principles that guided our oversight efforts. They functioned as informal supplements to our official committee and subcommittee rules. What follows is a distillation of a dozen of what I think of as the key Levin Principles for delivering high-quality congressional oversight.

The Levin Principles

1. Apply the Two-Year Rule. Given limited resources, the Levin PSI team could conduct only a few investigations each year, so selecting our investigative topics was a crucial first step. While many factors were weighed, one important one was whether the subject was worth two years of intensive effort out of our lives, because that would be the minimum amount of time involved. We found that evaluating an investigative topic in terms of the time taken from our own lives helped focus the mind. 2. Conduct Original Research. Our second principle was to use PSI resources to conduct research that hadn’t been done before. Too many congressional inquiries consist of little more than asking experts to describe prior research. Senator Levin didn’t want a regurgitation of what was already known. He wanted new information. 3. Focus on the Facts. Third, Levin inquiries focused on compiling factual information. The world is a complicated place, and problems worth

investigating typically have layers of complexity. A good investigation has to dig through those layers to figure out what happened and why. Reaching bipartisan agreement on the key facts underlying important issues is usually a difficult process. Once accomplished, however, bipartisan factual findings provide a solid foundation for informed public policy. 4. Use Case Studies. Every Levin investigation used case studies to investigate and analyze targeted problems. Too many congressional investigations allow witnesses to spout generalities and platitudes when asked about an issue. We learned those generalities rarely reflected how things really worked. Detailed case studies, on the other hand, typically exposed the true nature of the problems in question. 5. Be Relentlessly Bipartisan. One of the most important Levin principles was to conduct investigations that were relentlessly bipartisan. All documents were shared. Key interviews had both sides present. Interview questions were shared beforehand. Everyone was encouraged to ask as many questions as it took to reach consensus on the facts. Our bottom line was that investigators with political differences had to investigate together, reviewing the same evidence at the same time, if they were ever to agree on the facts. More, we learned that investigators with different viewpoints produced more thorough, accurate, and credible fact-finding. 6. Take the Time. Another key lesson was that bipartisan investigations required time to succeed. Two weeks wasn’t enough. Neither was two months. Enabling investigators to build sufficient bipartisan trust to come to agreement on a complex set of facts typically took a year. That was the cold, hard truth, even in inquiries that proceeded at the grueling pace of most PSI investigations. To succeed, we had to take the time. 7. Listen to All Sides. Still another key principle was that investigators had to listen to all parties. Our rule was not to go public with negative information about anyone unless we first gave them an opportunity to present their side of the story. The resulting investigation took longer, but it afforded everyone a fair shot and produced a more accurate and complete picture of the facts. 8. Maintain Confidentiality. Another critical principle was confidentiality.

Confidential investigations enabled our investigators to follow the facts wherever they led and to change their minds about what was important and why. Confidentiality allowed the investigative team to drop witnesses, reverse directions, and develop new leads without having to justify each step in public, expose innocent parties to public scrutiny, or publicly spar with opponents seeking to disrupt the inquiry. The PSI team wasn’t always successful at preventing leaks, sometimes because our targets used

leaks to try to spin information to their advantage. But we did our best to keep our investigations quiet until we were ready to go public. 9. Write It Up. The next key Levin principle was to write up the investigative results. Hearings can produce a truncated, even distorted picture of an inquiry. To prevent that outcome, almost all Levin investigations included a detailed report, complete with footnotes identifying the source of every fact in the text. Writing the report was often the toughest part of the investigation, necessitating months of agonizing work. But the pain was counterbalanced by the benefits—capturing months or years of work with accuracy, getting clear bipartisan agreement on the facts, and providing context to understand the issues and events. We had many rules about how PSI reports were organized, footnoted, and reviewed. We usually made explicit factual findings and recommendations. We also typically shared key parts of the report with the targets 24 hours before its release, to alert them to our findings and provide an opportunity to identify any errors. The final result was a bipartisan product that informed the public about a complex problem and possible solutions, an educational undertaking which we saw as PSI’s single most important function. 10. Use Hearings to Effect Change. In addition to a report, Senator Levin almost always held a hearing on the results of an investigation. The hearing wasn’t intended simply to trumpet the findings. It was also designed to effect change. One key step was to give the witnesses ample notice of the hearing so they could prepare for it. Human nature being what it is, we knew many witnesses would use the time to come up with solutions that could be announced at the hearing. That meant the resulting hearing could expose not only an important problem, but also what could be done about it, including commitments for future action. 11. Take on the Tough Guys. Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the Levin approach was his commitment to taking on the tough guys—the big institutions, the CEOs, the bullies no one else had faced down. Names were named in our reports, and wrongdoers typically hauled in for a public hearing. The goal was not to berate the witnesses, but to hold them accountable for their actions. Forced to confront their own actions, a number of the tough guys chose to acknowledge wrongdoing and announce changes in policy or practice. 12. Tackle the Problems. The final Levin principle was that every investigation had to tackle the problems identified. Too often, congressional inquiries stop after exposing problems or make only a faint-hearted effort to right the wrongs uncovered. In contrast, Senator Levin saw tackling the identified problems as an essential part of the investigative

process. Our rule of thumb was to spend at least two years trying to fix the problems, using the report recommendations as a road map. We referred wrongdoers to law enforcement and pushed for reforms through legislation, regulations, and better policies and practices in both the public and private sectors.

These dozen principles evolved over time, arising from our mistakes as well as our successes. While we never reduced them to writing, we often discussed how we should handle various issues to ensure we were conducting our investigations in a consistent, effective, and fair way. We consciously worked to develop standard practices to guide our actions. The Levin Principles served us well.

The remainder of this book recounts how the Levin Principles played out in actual PSI investigations over time. But before diving into those specific inquiries is the series of events that led to Senator Levin’s landing his leadership slot at PSI in the first place.

Jumping to PSI

Senator Levin’s move from the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee to the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations came in two stages.

The first was in 1997, when Senator Fred Thompson, then Republican chair of the full Governmental Affairs Committee, decided to commandeer key portions of OGM’s jurisdiction, including contract and ethics issues, for handling at the full committee level. After reducing OGM’s jurisdiction, he also clipped its budget. Since Senator Levin was by then an OGM fixture, having held OGM leadership posts for 18 years, no one thought he’d jump ship from the subcommittee designed for him. But with less money and jurisdiction, that’s just what he did.

When the 105th Congress convened in January 1997, Senator Levin invoked his seniority to become ranking minority member on a new Subcommittee on Proliferation, Federal Services, and the District of Columbia. Linda and I promptly moved to the new subcommittee’s offices.

The subcommittee chair was Senator Thad Cochran from Mississippi, an active, intelligent Republican senator with a courteous staff. While our first year on the subcommittee was consumed by the campaign finance investigation described earlier, the next year we began investigating the export of socalled “dual use” technologies suitable for both military and non-military use. The issue had arisen because dual use computers were being exported to China, raising national security concerns on both sides of the aisle.

The Cochran-Levin partnership was cut short, however, because, in 1997, Senator John Glenn, a Democrat from Ohio, announced he was retiring from the Senate at the end of 1998. At the time, he was the ranking Democrat on both the full Governmental Affairs Committee and on PSI. His retirement meant both slots would open.

As the next most senior Democrat on the committee, Senator Levin could step into Senator Glenn’s shoes and claim both leadership posts. But there was a complicating factor. A few months after the Glenn announcement, Senator Sam Nunn, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced that he, too, was retiring, which meant Senator Levin would be the most senior Democrat on that committee as well.

The Armed Services Committee was one of the most powerful in the Senate, overseeing U.S. military operations around the world and defense spending involving hundreds of billions of dollars. Leading it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But under Democratic Party rules, Senator Levin couldn’t lead two full committees at the same time. If he took the ranking minority member post on Armed Services, he couldn’t hold the same position on Governmental Affairs; he would have to choose between the two committees.

After weeks of deliberation, Senator Levin took the leadership post on the Armed Services Committee, bypassing that position on the Governmental Affairs Committee. He took the ranking slot on the PSI subcommittee instead. Linda and I prepared to jump a second time.

Tracing PSI’s Origins and History

Relinquishing the leadership post on the full Governmental Affairs Committee was a hard decision, but PSI was an exceptional consolation prize. Excited to join such a celebrated Senate institution, I took some time to delve into its origins and history. I learned to my surprise that PSI’s past was more checkered than I thought.

Its history began in 1941, when the Senate established a temporary investigative body called the Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program.2 Chaired by Senator Harry Truman, it soon became known as the Truman Committee. Senator Truman used it to traverse the United States rooting out instances of war profiteering, waste, fraud, and abuse during World War II. His investigations became famous for exposing waste and wrongdoing in U.S. defense operations, recommending reforms, and taking a responsible, bipartisan approach to oversight.3 His work helped propel his selection as vice president by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944. After President Roosevelt’s death the following year, Vice President Truman assumed the presidency.

The Truman Committee continued to battle defense-related misconduct for several years after Senator Truman left. When it completed its work in 1948, among other accomplishments, it was credited with producing an overhaul of the military contracting system estimated to have saved the Defense Department $250 million; increasing production of aluminum, steel, and other metals needed in the war effort; and reorganizing the Navy’s Bureau of Ships. Altogether, it had held 450 public hearings and 300 executive sessions, while issuing 50 reports.4

Upon completing its work, the Truman Committee became subject to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which required Congress’ standing committees to conduct oversight investigations and withdrew authorization for its many temporary investigative committees.5 Out of respect for the Truman Committee, however, Senator George Aiken, chair of the thennamed Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, did not disband the committee, but merged it with a subcommittee.6 The renamed “Subcommittee on Investigations” was assigned a broad jurisdiction allowing it to investigate “the operation of the executive branch of the Government at all levels to determine its economy and efficiency,”7 including, as the full committee later put it, instances of “fraud, malfeasance, collusion, corrupt or unethical practices and waste and extravagance in transactions, contracts, and activities.”8

During its first year, the new subcommittee was chaired by Senator Homer Ferguson, a Michigan Republican who’d served on the Truman Committee and also served as head of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. During his one-year tenure, he held two high-profile hearings. The first examined issues related to two suspected Soviet spies, Elizabeth Bentley and William Remington, who were called to testify.9 The second examined actions taken by the American military related to a Nazi war criminal, Ilse Koch known as the Beast of Buchenwald, whose sentence of life imprisonment had been mysteriously shortened to four years.10 The two hearings provided an auspicious start for the new investigative subcommittee.

The subcommittee’s next chair was Senator Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina, who held the post from 1949 to 1952. His best-known investigation exposed the so-called Five Percenters, Washington lobbyists who helped clients obtain federal contracts in exchange for 5% of the contract profits. Emblematic of the crass corruption going on was the disclosure that some Five Percenter lobbyists were supplying some government officials with expensive “deep freezers” for storing food.11 Another Hoey hearing that attracted attention examined the illegal “sale” of rural postal jobs by the Mississippi Democratic Party, featuring testimony from persons who had “purchased” their posts.12

Around the same time, a new ad hoc Senate investigative committee began an inquiry that would eventually lead to an expansion of PSI’s jurisdiction. Formed in 1950, the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce was chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.13 Known as the Kefauver Committee, it held hearings across the country, exposing wrongdoing by organized crime and taking testimony from notorious mobsters as well as “bookies, pimps, and gangland enforcers.” Many of its hearings were televised, attracting the first huge television audiences to Senate hearings. The committee probed local organized crime syndicates across the United States and documented “shocking corruption in local government” allowing the syndicates to operate, leading to “numerous local indictments.”14 After issuing several reports, the committee disbanded. Later, its mandate to investigate organized crime affecting interstate commerce was transferred to the Subcommittee on Investigations.15

Sometime around 1952, the subcommittee underwent a second name change, becoming the “Permanent” Subcommittee on Investigations, to distinguish it from the Senate’s many temporary committees that were formed to conduct a single investigation and then disappear. The new name signaled that PSI was intended to remain in existence from Congress to Congress, building its expertise in conducting oversight investigations.

Surviving McCarthy

Despite the impressive first five years of the Subcommittee on Investigations, once it became “Permanent,” PSI’s reputation took a nosedive. Its first chair became its most infamous: Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who held sway over PSI for only 2 years from 1953 to 1954, but engaged in a litany of investigative abuses so offensive they still reverberate more than 60 years later.16 Paradoxically, Senator McCarthy’s misdeeds also served as a catalyst for rule changes that caused PSI to evolve into one of the most bipartisan operations in Congress today.

Senator McCarthy began his political career as a Democrat, but later switched to the Republican Party. He won his first election as a circuit judge in 1937, at age 29. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps to fight in World War II. In 1945, he returned home and re-entered politics. In 1946, in a Republican primary, he unexpectedly defeated respected Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette Jr. and went on to win the general election for Senate.

His first four years as a U.S. senator were relatively quiet, but in 1950, in a Lincoln Day speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator McCarthy claimed to have a list of 205 Communists working in the State Department under President Truman. The Red Scare was on.

Over the next two years, Senator McCarthy became a leading voice in the anti-Communist movement then sweeping the country, easily winning reelection in 1952. His re-election was part of a wave of Republican victories that helped Republicans regain the Senate majority for only the second time in 20 years, on a razor-thin margin of 48–47 plus one Republican-leaning independent. As a member of the majority party, Senator McCarthy won a spot as chair of the newly named Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He immediately launched a PSI investigation into alleged Communist influence on the U.S. government, even though the newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower was a member of his own party.

During the course of his controversial investigation, Senator McCarthy held 161 hearings behind closed doors and interrogated nearly 500 individuals, including well-known figures such as Aaron Copland, Dashiell Hammett, and Langston Hughes, along with government employees, labor organizers, and Army officers. The closed-door hearing transcripts, released by PSI in 2003, disclosed that Senator McCarthy browbeat witnesses, grilled them about their political beliefs, families, and past associations, and threatened them with imprisonment—sometimes for holding unpopular views and sometimes for resisting the government’s authority to probe their personal lives.17

Senator McCarthy also held public hearings, many televised, pursuing allegations of Communist subversion of U.S. agencies, including the State Department, Army Signal Corps, and Government Printing Office. In April 1954, he held a 35-day series of hearings on alleged Communist infiltration of the U.S. Army before a television audience estimated at 20 million.18 Due to the blatant unfairness of the proceedings, which included Senator McCarthy badgering and berating witnesses, the hearings undercut much of his public support. It was in one of those televised hearings that a witness, Joseph Nye Welch, famously asked the senator: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”19

Senator McCarthy’s two-year tenure as PSI chair was marked by rocky relations with the subcommittee’s other members, due among other reasons to his failure to share information, outrageous conduct, appearing inebriated at some hearings, and abrasive staff. At the time, he controlled the hiring of all subcommittee personnel. His majority staff director, Roy Cohn, was just 26 years old and widely disliked. Perhaps his most famous hire was Robert Kennedy, an ardent anti-Communist who joined the PSI staff in 1953, at about the same age as Cohn. Cohen and Kennedy apparently acquired a quick distaste for each other and ultimately engaged in a fist fight that led to Kennedy’s quitting the subcommittee.20

In July 1953, the three Democrats on PSI, Senators John McClellan of Arkansas, Henry (“Scoop”) Jackson of Washington, and Stuart Symington of Missouri, resigned en masse and refused to attend future hearings.

Their resignations failed, however, to deter Senator McCarthy who barreled ahead with more closed-door and public hearings.

One constraint on his conduct was a string of unexpected deaths that kept Republican control over the U.S. Senate on a knife’s edge. During the course of the 83rd Congress from 1953 through 1954, nine senators died in office and were replaced by individuals who either extended the Republicans’ oneseat margin or left the Senate equally divided with an independent deciding the status of the majority party.21 For example, in July 1953, the same month the three Democrats resigned from PSI, Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert A. Taft died in office, leaving Republicans with two open seats, a 46–47 split between the parties, and a wavering independent. Senator Taft was later replaced by a Democrat.

Given the uncertain circumstances, to ensure approval of PSI’s budget in 1954, Senator McCarthy needed his Democratic counterparts to support his budget request. The Democrats conditioned their support upon his giving them authority to hire their own staff. Having little choice, Senator McCarthy agreed. In response, the Democrats supported the PSI budget request and hired Robert Kennedy as PSI’s first minority counsel.22

On July 30, 1954, Republican Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont filed a Senate resolution seeking censure of Senator McCarthy’s increasingly offensive conduct, and the Senate formed a special committee to examine the charges.23 Senator McCarthy attacked the committee, calling it an “unwitting handmaiden” of Communism. In November, elections returned the Democrats to majority status in the Senate by a one-vote margin of 48–47.24 The results meant that, in the next Congress, Senator McCarthy would lose the PSI chair, though he’d remain senior Republican on the subcommittee. In December 1954, by a vote of 67–22, the Senate approved a resolution censuring Senator McCarthy for conduct “contrary to senatorial traditions.” After the censure, his influence collapsed. Senator McCarthy died three years later, on May 2, 1957, at age 48, of ailments triggered by alcoholism.25

In the 84th Congress, in response to Senator McCarthy’s malfeasance, the members of PSI amended the subcommittee’s rules to reinstate a more bipartisan approach and prevent investigative abuses. Among other changes, the new rules required a quorum of members to be present to hold a hearing, barred confidential testimony unless authorized by a subcommittee majority, and enabled a unanimous subcommittee minority to block a public hearing unless supported by a full committee vote. The new rules also gave both parties full access to all information in the subcommittee’s possession and confirmed the minority’s right to hire staff.26

The McCarthy years represented the nadir of PSI’s influence and respect. “McCarthyism” has since become synonymous with abusive investigations— excessive secrecy, unsubstantiated accusations, the bullying of witnesses, inadequate due process, and disrespect for individuals holding unpopular views. While the McCarthy years ravaged PSI’s reputation, they also revived and gave new urgency to the earlier Truman approach, with its emphasis on responsible, bipartisan oversight. In the end, the McCarthy years appear to have burned into the consciousness of every PSI leader the need to conduct responsible investigations.

Rebuilding PSI

Rebuilding PSI after the McCarthy debacle took time. Luckily, his immediate successor was Senator John McClellan of Arkansas who would turn out to be PSI’s longest sitting chair, holding the subcommittee’s helm for the next 18 years, from 1955 to 1972. During his tenure, Senator McClellan restored PSI’s reputation for responsible investigations and strengthened its staff expertise, while also increasing the subcommittee’s jurisdictional reach.

A key part of his work, from 1957 to 1961, came from chairing a separate temporary investigative committee, the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, which was formed after PSI uncovered troubling information warranting an in-depth investigation.27 Including senators from PSI and the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, the select committee launched an inquiry into the extent to which organized crime and criminal practices were influencing labor unions, including issues related to labor racketeering. For the next three years, the select committee operated out of PSI offices and shared PSI personnel, including Robert Kennedy who acted as chief counsel for both bodies. Senator McClellan led both PSI and the new select committee.

Over three years, the select committee held 270 days of hearings, took testimony from over 1500 witnesses, and served over 8000 subpoenas, including taking testimony from Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters labor union.28 At its height, it had over 100 staffers located in PSI’s Washington office as well as in field offices across the country. Upon its dissolution, the select committee’s files and jurisdiction were transferred to PSI, which gained new authority to investigate criminal activity affecting labor-management relations. In addition, the investigation contributed to enactment of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, to curb labor union misconduct.

Senator McClellan also delved more deeply into issues associated with organized crime. Following up on the Kefauver hearings, he held a famous series of PSI hearings in 1963 known as the “Valachi Hearings.”29 They featured a low-level mobster, Joseph Valachi, who provided firsthand testimony about organized crime activities in the United States. He testified about the Mafia’s leadership structure, recruitment and induction practices, alleged code of conduct, and crimes. The hearings encouraged the Department of Justice, then led by Attorney General Robert Kennedy—whose interest in organized crime deepened during his stint at PSI—to set up the first Organized Crime Strike Force. The Justice Department also increased federal organized crime investigations and installed new information-sharing procedures with other law enforcement agencies. In addition, based in part on PSI’s work, Congress enacted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) provisions of the Crime Control Act of 1970.

Senator McClellan conducted investigations into a wide range of other issues as well. They included key causes of the 1967 riots in U.S. cities, commodities and mortgage fraud involving Texas financier Billie Sol Estes, contract problems at the Department of Defense, narcotics trafficking, and securities and banking fraud.30 Hearings on a labor leader’s alleged misuse of $4 million in union benefit funds contributed to eventual enactment of the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).31 By the time Senator McClellan left office, PSI had regained its stature as Congress’ premier investigative body.

Senator McClellan was followed by a succession of strong PSI leaders who continued the subcommittee’s effective oversight and bipartisan traditions. Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington State held the post for five years, from 1973 to 1978, working closely with his Republican counterpart, Senator Charles “Chuck” Percy of Illinois. Together, they held hearings on both majority and minority-led inquiries. They also oversaw a further expansion of PSI’s jurisdiction when, in 1973, the National Security Subcommittee was folded into PSI along with its jurisdiction over national security issues, technology transfer, and international organizations; and in 1974, when energy resources and shortages were added to PSI’s palette.32 The Jackson-Percy investigations included inquiries into U.S. energy shortages after the ArabIsraeli war; federal drug busts of questionable effectiveness; and misconduct associated with the hearing aid industry, arson-for-hire crimes, and illegal insurance schemes.33

After the Jackson-Percy era came the Roth-Nunn era. Beginning in 1978 and continuing for 17 years until 1996, PSI was led by Senator William Roth, a Republican from Delaware, and Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat from