Source: https://casetext.com/case/laird-v-tatum-2
Timestamp: 2019-12-10 11:57:39
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 331', '§ 331', '§ 4', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 141']

Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1 | Casetext
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Lairdv.Tatum
U.S.Jun 26, 1972
As will be discussed in Section IV.A. 1, however, she could not — under this scenario — establish standing to…
" Id. Moreover, the court held that "because the plaintiffs have failed to show that they are subject to the…
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holding that plaintiff “who alleges that the exercise of his First Amendment rights is being chilled by the mere existence, without more, of a governmental investigative and data-gathering activity” lacks standing to invoke federal jurisdiction
Summary of this case from Amnesty International USA v. Clapper
holding that "[a]llegations of a subjective `chill' are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm" for purposes of establishing Article III standing
Summary of this case from Zherka v. Difiore
Argued March 27, 1972 Decided June 26, 1972
Prior to its being called upon in 1967 to assist local authorities in quelling civil disorders in Detroit, Michigan, the Department of the Army had developed only a general contingency plan in connection with its limited domestic mission under 10 U.S.C. § 331. In response to the Army's experience in the various civil disorders it was called upon to help control during 1967 and 1968, Army Intelligence established a data-gathering system, which respondents describe as involving the "surveillance of lawful civilian political activity." Held: Respondents' claim that their First Amendment rights are chilled, due to the mere existence of this data-gathering system, does not constitute a justiciable controversy on the basis of the record in this case, disclosing as it does no showing of objective harm or threat of specific future harm. Pp. 3-16.
BURGER, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. DOUGLAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 16. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which STEWART and MARSHALL, JJ., joined, post, p. 38.
Respondents brought this class action in the District Court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on their claim that their rights were being invaded by the Department of the Army's alleged "surveillance of lawful and peaceful civilian political activity." The petitioners in response described the activity as "gathering by lawful means . . . [and] maintaining and using in their intelligence activities . . . information relating to potential or actual civil disturbances [or] street demonstrations." In connection with respondents' motion for a preliminary injunction and petitioners' motion to dismiss the complaint, both parties filed a number of affidavits with the District Court and presented their oral arguments at a hearing on the two motions. On the basis of the pleadings, the affidavits before the court, and the oral arguments advanced at the hearing, the District Court granted petitioners' motion to dismiss, holding that there was no justiciable claim for relief.
The complaint filed in the District Court candidly asserted that its factual allegations were based on a magazine article: "The information contained in the foregoing paragraphs numbered five through thirteen [of the complaint] was published in the January 1970 issue of the magazine The Washington Monthly . . . ."
On appeal, a divided Court of Appeals reversed and ordered the case remanded for further proceedings. We granted certiorari to consider whether, as the Court of Appeals held, respondents presented a justiciable controversy in complaining of a "chilling" effect on the exercise of their First Amendment rights where such effect is allegedly caused, not by any "specific action of the Army against them, [but] only [by] the existence and operation of the intelligence gathering and distributing system, which is confined to the Army and related civilian investigative agencies." 144 U.S.App.D.C. 72, 78, 444 F.2d 947, 953. We reverse.
There is in the record a considerable amount of background information regarding the activities of which respondents complained; this information is set out primarily in the affidavits that were filed by the parties in connection with the District Court's consideration of respondents' motion for a preliminary injunction and petitioners' motion to dismiss. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b). A brief review of that information is helpful to an understanding of the issues.
The President is authorized by 10 U.S.C. § 331 to make use of the armed forces to quell insurrection and other domestic violence if and when the conditions described in that section obtain within one of the States. Pursuant to those provisions, President Johnson ordered federal troops to assist local authorities at the time of the civil disorders in Detroit, Michigan, in the summer of 1967 and during the disturbances that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Prior to the Detroit disorders, the Army had a general contingency plan for providing such assistance to local authorities, but the 1967 experience led Army authorities to believe that more attention should be given to such preparatory planning. The data-gathering system here involved is said to have been established in connection with the development of more detailed and specific contingency planning designed to permit the Army, when called upon to assist local authorities, to be able to respond effectively with a minimum of force. As the Court of Appeals observed,
The constitutionality of this statute is not at issue here; the specific authorization of such use of federal armed forces, in addition to state militia, appears to have been enacted pursuant to Art. IV, § 4, of the Constitution, which provides that "[t]he United Page 4 States . . . shall protect each of [the individual States] . . . on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
"Preliminary steps, such as alerting the troops, can be taken by Page 5 the Federal government upon oral communications and prior to the governor's determination that the violence cannot be brought under control without the aid of Federal forces. Even such preliminary steps, however, represent a most serious departure from our traditions of local responsibility for law enforcement. They should not be requested until there is a substantial likelihood that the Federal forces will be needed."
"No logical argument can be made for compelling the military to use blind force. When force is employed it should be intelligently directed, and this depends upon having reliable information — in time. As Chief Justice John Marshall said of Washington, `A general must be governed by his intelligence and must regulate his measures by his information. It is his duty to obtain correct information . . . .' So we take it as undeniable that the military, i. e., the Army, need a certain amount of information in order to perform their constitutional and statutory missions." 144 U.S. App. D.C., at 77-78, 444 F.2d, at 952-953 (footnotes omitted).
That principal mission was described in one of the documents filed with the District Court as the conducting of "investigations to determine whether uniformed members of the Army, civilian employees [of the Army] and contractors' employees should be granted access to classified information." App. 76-77.
"[R]eports concerning civil disturbances will be limited to matters of immediate concern to the Army — that is, reports concerning outbreaks of violence or incidents with a high potential for violence beyond the capability of state and local police and the National Guard to control. These reports will be collected by liaison with other Government agencies and reported by teletype to the Intelligence Command. They will not be placed in a computer . . . . These reports are destroyed 60 days after publication or 60 days after the end of the disturbance. This limited reporting system will ensure that the Army is prepared to respond to whatever directions the President may issue in civil disturbance situations and without `watching' the lawful activities of civilians." (App. 80.)
In the course of the oral argument, the District Judge sought clarification from respondents' counsel as to the nature of the threats perceived by respondents; he asked what exactly it was in the Army's activities that tended to chill respondents and others in Page 9 the exercise of their constitutional rights. Counsel responded that it was
"precisely the threat in this case that in some future civil disorder of some kind, the Army is going to come in with its list of troublemakers . . . and go rounding up people and putting them in military prisons somewhere." (Emphasis added.)
" we're not quite sure exactly what they have in mind and that is precisely what causes the chill, the chilling effect." (Emphasis added.)
"This position of the [petitioners] does not accord full measure to the rather unique argument advanced by appellants [respondents]. While [respondents] do indeed argue that in the future it is possible that information relating to matters far beyond the responsibilities of the military may be misused by the military to the detriment of these civilian [respondents], yet [respondents] do not attempt to establish this as a definitely foreseeable event, or to base their complaint on this ground. Rather, [respondents] contend that the present existence of this system of gathering and distributing information, allegedly far beyond the mission requirements of the Army, constitutes an impermissible burden on [respondents] and other persons similarly situated which exercises a present inhibiting effect on their full expression and utilization of their First Amendment rights . . . ." Id., at 79, 444 F.2d, at 954. (Emphasis in original.)
Indeed, the Court of Appeals noted that it had reached a different conclusion when presented with a virtually identical issue in another of its recently decided cases, Davis v. Ichord, 143 U.S.App.D.C. 183, 442 F.2d 1207 (1970). The plaintiffs in Davis were attacking the constitutionality of the House of Representatives Rule under which the House Committee on Internal Security conducts investigations and maintains files described by the plaintiffs as a "political blacklist." The court noted that any chilling effect to which the plaintiffs were subject arose from the mere existence Page 11 of the Committee and its files and the mere possibility of the misuse of those files. In affirming the dismissal of the complaint, the court concluded that allegations of such a chilling effect could not be elevated to a justiciable claim merely by alleging as well that the challenged House Rule was overly broad and vague.
In deciding the case presently under review, the Court of Appeals distinguished Davis on the ground that the difference in the source of the chill in the two cases — a House Committee in Davis and the Army in the instant case — was controlling. We cannot agree that the jurisdictional question with which we are here concerned is to be resolved on the basis of the identity of the parties named as defendants in the complaint.
For example, the petitioner in Baird v. State Bar of Arizona had been denied admission to the bar solely because of her refusal to answer a question regarding the organizations with which she had been associated in the past. In announcing the judgment of the Court, Mr. Justice Black said that "a State may not inquire about a man's views or associations solely for the purpose of withholding a right or benefit because of what he believes." 401 U.S., at 7. Some of the teachers who were the complainants in Keyishian v. Board of Regents had been discharged from employment by the State, and the others were threatened with such discharge, because of their political acts or associations. The Court concluded that the State's "complicated and intricate scheme" of laws and regulations relating to teacher loyalty could not withstand constitutional scrutiny; it was not permissible to inhibit First Amendment expression by forcing a teacher to "guess what conduct or utterance" might be in violation of that complex regulatory scheme and might thereby "lose him his position." 385 U.S., at 604. Lamont v. Postmaster General dealt with a governmental regulation requiring private individuals to make a special written request to the Post Office for delivery of each individual mailing of certain kinds of political literature addressed to them. In declaring the regulation invalid, the Court said: "The addressee carries an affirmative obligation which we do not think the Government may impose on him." 381 U.S., at 307. Baggett v. Bullitt dealt with a requirement that an oath of vague and uncertain meaning be taken as a condition of employment by a governmental agency. The Court said: "Those with a conscientious regard for what they solemnly swear or affirm, sensitive to the perils posed by the oath's indefinite language, avoid the risk of loss of employment, and perhaps profession, only by restricting their conduct to that which is unquestionably safe. Free speech may not be so inhibited." 377 U.S., at 372.
The respondents do not meet this test; their claim, simply stated, is that they disagree with the judgments made by the Executive Branch with respect to the type and amount of information the Army needs and that the very existence of the Army's data-gathering system produces a constitutionally impermissible chilling effect upon the exercise of their First Amendment rights. That alleged "chilling" effect may perhaps be seen as arising from respondents' very perception of the system as inappropriate to the Army's role under our form of government, or as arising from respondents' beliefs that it is inherently dangerous for the military to be concerned with activities in the civilian sector, or as arising from respondents' less generalized yet speculative apprehensiveness that the Army may at some future date misuse the information in some way that would cause direct harm to respondents. Allegations of a subjective "chill" are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm; "the federal courts established pursuant to Article III of the Constitution do not render advisory opinions." United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 89 (1947).
Not only have respondents left somewhat unclear the precise connection between the mere existence of the challenged system and their own alleged chill, but they have also cast considerable doubt on whether they themselves are in fact suffering from any such chill. Judge MacKinnon took cogent note of this difficulty in dissenting from the Court of Appeals' judgment, rendered as it was "on the facts of the case which emerge from the pleadings, affidavits and the admissions made to the trial court." 144 U.S. App. D.C., at 84, 444 F.2d, at 959. At the oral argument before the District Court, counsel for respondents admitted that his clients Page 14 were "not people, obviously, who are cowed and chilled"; indeed, they were quite willing "to open themselves up to public investigation and public scrutiny." But, counsel argued, these respondents must "represent millions of Americans not nearly as forward [and] courageous" as themselves. It was Judge MacKinnon's view that this concession "constitutes a basic denial of practically their whole case." Ibid. Even assuming a justiciable controversy, if respondents themselves are not chilled, but seek only to represent those "millions" whom they believe are so chilled, respondents clearly lack that "personal stake in the outcome of the controversy" essential to standing. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962). As the Court recently observed in Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U.S. 163, 166, a litigant "has standing to seek redress for injuries done to him, but may not seek redress for injuries done to others."
"Apparently in the judgment of the civilian head of the Army not everything being done in the operation of this intelligence system was necessary to the performance of the military mission. If the Secretary of the Army can formulate and implement such judgment based on facts within his Departmental knowledge, the United States District Court can hear evidence, ascertain the facts, and decide what, if any, further restrictions on the complained-of activities are called for to confine the military to their legitimate sphere of activity and to protect [respondents'] allegedly infringed constitutional rights." 144 U.S. App. D.C., at 83, 444 F.2d, at 958. (Emphasis added.)
The concerns of the Executive and Legislative Branches in response to disclosure of the Army surveillance activities — and indeed the claims alleged in the complaint — reflect a traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs. That tradition has deep roots in our history and found early expression, for example, in the Third Amendment's explicit prohibition against quartering soldiers in private homes without consent and in the constitutional provisions for civilian control of the military. Those prohibitions are not directly presented by this case, but their philosophical underpinnings explain our traditional insistence on limitations on military operations in peacetime. Indeed, when presented with claims of judicially cognizable injury resulting from military intrusion into the civilian sector, federal courts are fully empowered to consider claims of those asserting such injury; there is nothing in our Nation's history or in this Court's decided cases, including our holding today, that can properly be seen as giving any indication that actual or threatened injury by reason of unlawful activities of the military would go unnoticed or unremedied.
This obviously means that the "militia" cannot be sent overseas to fight wars. It is purely a domestic arm of the governors of the several States, save as it may be called under Art. I, § 8, of the Constitution into the federal service. Whether the "militia" could be given powers comparable to those granted the FBI is a question not now raised, for we deal here not with the "militia" but with "armies." The Army, Navy, and Air Force are comprehended in the constitutional term "armies." Article I, § 8, provides that Congress may "raise and support Armies," and "provide and maintain a Navy," and make "Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." And the Fifth Amendment excepts from the requirement of a presentment or indictment of a grand jury "cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger."
The most pointed and relevant decisions of the Court on the limitation of military authority concern the attempt of the military to try civilians. The first leading case was Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 124, where the Court noted that the conflict between "civil liberty" and "martial law" is "irreconcilable." The Court which made that announcement would have been horrified at the prospect of the military — absent a regime of martial law — establishing a regime of surveillance over civilians. The power of the military to establish such a system is obviously less than the power of Congress to authorize such surveillance. For the authority of Congress is restricted by its power to "raise" armies, Art. I, § 8; and, to repeat, its authority over the Armed Forces is stated in these terms, "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces."
The Constitution contains many provisions guaranteeing rights to persons. Those include the right to indictment by a grand jury and the right to trial by a jury of one's peers. They include the procedural safeguards of the Sixth Amendment in criminal prosecutions; the protection against double jeopardy, cruel and unusual punishments — and, of course, the First Amendment. The alarm was sounded in the Constitutional Convention about the dangers of the armed services. Luther Martin of Maryland said, "when a government wishes to deprive its citizens of freedom, and reduce them to slavery, it generally makes use of a standing army." That danger, we have held, exists not only in bold acts of usurpation of power, but also in gradual encroachments. We held that court-martial jurisdiction cannot be extended to reach any person not a member of the Armed Forces at the times both of the offense and of the trial, which eliminates discharged soldiers. Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11. Neither civilian employees of the Armed Forces overseas, McElroy v. Guagliardo, 361 U.S. 281; Grisham v. Hagan, 361 U.S. 278, nor civilian dependents of military personnel accompanying them overseas, Kinsella v. Singleton, 361 U.S. 234; Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, may be tried by court-martial. And even as respects those in the Armed Forces we have held that an offense must be "service connected" to be tried by court-martial rather than by a civilian tribunal. O'Callahan v. Parker, 395 U.S. 258, 272.
Page 18 3 M. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention 209 (1911).
The upshot is that the Armed Services — as distinguished from the "militia" — are not regulatory agencies or bureaus that may be created as Congress desires and granted such powers as seem necessary and proper. The authority to provide rules "governing" the Armed Services means the grant of authority to the Armed Services to govern themselves, not the authority to govern civilians. Even when "martial law" is declared, as it often has been, its appropriateness is subject to judicial review, Sterling v. Constantin, 287 U.S. 378, 401, 403-404.
Even some actions of the Armed Services in regulating their own conduct may be properly subjected to judicial scrutiny. Those who are not yet in the Armed Services have the protection of the full panoply of the laws governing admission procedures, see, e. g., McKart v. United States, 395 U.S. 185; Oestereich v. Selective Service Board, 393 U.S. 233. Those in the service may use habeas corpus to test the jurisdiction of the Armed Services to try or detain them, see, e. g., Parisi v. Davidson, 405 U.S. 34; Noyd v. Bond, 395 U.S. 683, 696 n. 8; Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1; Billings v. Truesdell, 321 U.S. 542. And, those in the Armed Services may seek the protection of civilian, rather than military, courts when charged with crimes not service connected, O'Callahan v. Parker, 395 U.S. 258.
Our tradition reflects a desire for civilian supremacy and subordination of military power. The tradition goes back to the Declaration of Independence, in which it was recited that the King "has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power." Thus, we have the "militia" restricted to domestic use, the restriction of appropriations to the "armies" to two years, Art. I, § 8, and the grant of command over the armies and the militia when called into actual service of the United States to the President, our chief civilian officer. The tradition of civilian control over the Armed Forces was stated by Chief Justice Warren:
The Bill of Rights and the Military, 37 N.Y. U. L. Rev. 181, 182, 193 (1962).
"The military establishment is, of course, a necessary organ of government; but the reach of its power must be carefully limited lest the delicate balance between freedom and order be upset. The maintenance of the balance is made more difficult by the fact that while the military serves the vital function of preserving the existence of the nation, it is, at the same time, the one element of government that exercises a type of authority not easily assimilated in a free society. . . .
"In times of peace, the factors leading to an extraordinary deference to claims of military necessity have naturally not been as weighty. This has been true even in the all too imperfect peace that has been our lot for the past fifteen years — and quite rightly so, in my judgment. It is instructive to recall that our Nation at the time of the Constitutional Convention was also faced with formidable problems. The English, the French, the Spanish, and various tribes of hostile Indians were all ready and eager to subvert or occupy the fledgling Republic. Nevertheless, in that environment, our Founding Fathers conceived a Constitution and Bill of Rights replete with provisions indicating their determination to protect human rights. There was no call for a garrison state in those times of precarious peace. We should heed no such call now. If we were to fail in these days to enforce the freedom that until now has been the American citizen's birthright, we would be abandoning for the foreseeable future the constitutional balance of powers and rights in whose name we arm."
It was in that tradition that Youngstown Sheet Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, was decided, in which President Truman's seizure of the steel mills in the so-called Korean War was held unconstitutional. As stated by Justice Black:
"Not the less true is it, that the liberties of Rome proved the final victim to her military triumphs; and that the liberties of Europe, as far as they ever existed, have, with few exceptions, been the price of her military establishments. A standing force, therefore, is a dangerous, at the same time that it may be a necessary, provision. On the smallest scale it has its inconveniences. On an extensive scale its consequences may be fatal. On any scale it is an object of laudable circumspection and precaution. A wise nation will combine all these considerations; and, whilst it does not rashly preclude itself from any resource which may become essential to its safety, will exert all its prudence in diminishing both the necessity and the danger of resorting to one which may be inauspicious to its liberties.
The action in turning the "armies" loose on surveillance of civilians was a gross repudiation of our traditions. The military, though important to us, is subservient and restricted purely to military missions. It even took an Act of Congress to allow a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to address the Congress; and that small step did not go unnoticed but was in fact viewed with alarm by those respectful of the civilian tradition. Walter Lippmann has written that during World War II, he was asked to convey a message to Winston Churchill, while the latter was in Washington together with his chiefs of staff. It was desired that Churchill should permit his chiefs of staff to testify before Congress as to the proper strategy for waging the war. Lippmann explains, however, that he "never finished the message. For the old lion let out a roar demanding to know why I was so ignorant of the British way of doing things that I could dare to suggest that a British general should address a parliamentary body.
"No provision of this Act shall be so construed as to prevent a Secretary of a military department or a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from presenting to the Congress, on his own initiative, after first so informing the Secretary of Defense, any recommendation relating to the Department of Defense that he may deem proper." See H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 1142, 81st Cong., 1st Sess., 18. This provision is now codified as 10 U.S.C. § 141 (e).
"As I remember it, what he said was `I am the Minister of Defense and I, not the generals, will state the policy of His Majesty's government.'" The Intervention of the General, Washington Post, Apr. 27, 1967, Sec. A, p. 21, col. 1.
The claim that respondents have no standing to challenge the Army's surveillance of them and the other members of the class they seek to represent is too transparent for serious argument. The surveillance of the Army over the civilian sector — a part of society hitherto immune from its control — is a serious charge. It is alleged that the Army maintains files on the membership, ideology, programs, and practices of virtually every activist political group in the country, including groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Clergy and Laymen United Against the War in Vietnam, the American Civil Liberties Union, Women's Strike for Peace, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Army uses undercover agents to infiltrate these civilian groups and to reach into confidential files of students and other groups. The Army moves as a secret group among civilian audiences, using cameras and electronic ears for surveillance. The data it collects are distributed to civilian officials in state, federal, and local governments and to each military intelligence unit and troop command under the Army's jurisdiction (both here and abroad); and these data are stored in one or more data banks.
Judge Wilkey, speaking for the Court of Appeals, properly inferred that this Army surveillance "exercises a present inhibiting effect on their full expression and utilization of their First Amendment rights." 144 U.S.App.D.C. 72, 79, 444 F.2d 947, 954. That is the test. The "deterrent effect" on First Amendment rights by government oversight marks an unconstitutional intrusion, Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 307. Or, as stated by MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, "inhibition as well as prohibition against the exercise of precious First Amendment rights is a power denied to government." Id., at 309. When refusal of the Court to pass on the constitutionality of an Act under the normal consideration of forbearance "would itself have an inhibitory effect on freedom of speech" then the Court will act. United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 22.
Finally, we know from the hearings conducted by Senator Ervin that the Army has misused or abused its reporting functions. Thus, Senator Ervin concluded that reports of the Army have been "taken from the Intelligence Command's highly inaccurate civil disturbance teletype and filed in Army dossiers on persons who have held, or were being considered for, security clearances, thus contaminating what are supposed to be investigative reports with unverified gossip and rumor. This practice directly jeopardized the employment and employment opportunities of persons seeking sensitive positions with the federal government or defense industry."
Hearing on Federal Data Banks, Computers and the Bill of Rights, before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971).
"Army intelligence has been maintaining an unauthorized watch over civilian political activity for nearly 30 years. Nor is this the first time that Army intelligence has, without notice to its civilian superiors, overstepped its mission. From 1917 to 1924, the Corps of Intelligence Police maintained a massive surveillance of civilian political activity which involved the use of hundreds of civilian informants, the infiltration of civilian organizations and the seizure of dissenters and unionists, sometimes without charges. That activity was opposed — then as now — by civilian officials on those occasions when they found out about it, but it continued unabated until post-war disarmament and economies finally eliminated the bureaucracy that conducted it." Pp. 29-30.
"Whoever, being such officer or member, interferes in any manner with an election officer's discharge of his duties —
"The President's bringing Gen. Westmoreland home in order to explain the war reminds me of an instructive afternoon spent during the Second World War. The country and the Congress were divided on the question of whether to strike first against Hitler or first against Japan. Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed on the policy of Hitler first. But there were large and powerful groups in the country, many of them former isolationists in the sense that they were anti-European, who wanted to concentrate American forces on winning the war against Japan. Even the American chiefs of staff were divided on this question of high strategy.
"No one who ever aroused the wrath of Churchill is likely to forget it. I certainly have not forgotten it. I learned an indelible lesson about one of the elementary principles of democratic government. And therefore, I take a very sour view of a field commander being brought home by the President to educate the Congress and the American people."
Our military added political departments to their staffs. A Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Military Policy Division, was first established in the Department of the Navy by President Truman in 1945. In the Office of Secretary of Defense that was done by President Truman in 1947, the appointee eventually becoming Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs. A like office was established in 1961 in the Department of the Army by President Kennedy and another for the Air Force in 1957 by President Eisenhower. Thus, when the Pentagon entered a Washington, D.C., conference, its four "Secretaries of State" faced the real Secretary of State and more frequently than not talked or stared him down. The Pentagon's "Secretaries of State" usually spoke in unison; they were clear and decisive with no ifs, ands, or buts, and in policy conferences usually carried the day.
"Of course they cannot do this with everyone. The state security people have their schedule, and their own profound reasoning. On some days, there is no surveillance at all, or only superficial surveillance. On other days, they hang around, for example when Heinrich Boll came to see me [he is a German writer who recently visited Moscow]. They will put a car in front of each of the two approaches [to the courtyard of the apartment house where he stays in Moscow] with three men in each car — and they don't work only one shift. Then off they go after my visitors, or they trail people who leave on foot.
"And if you consider that they listen around the clock to telephone conversations and conversations in my home, they analyze recording tapes and all correspondence, and then collect and compare all these data in some vast premises — and these people are not underlings — you cannot but be amazed that so many idlers in the prime of life and strength, who could be better occupied with productive work for the benefit of the fatherland, are busy with my friends and me, and keep inventing enemies."
"[Respondents] contend that the present existence of this system of gathering and distributing information, allegedly far beyond the mission requirements of the Army, constitutes an impermissible burden on [respondents] and other persons similarly situated which exercises a present inhibiting effect on their full expression and utilization of their First Amendment rights of free speech, etc. The baleful effect, if there is one, is thus a present inhibition of lawful behavior and of First Amendment rights.
"Under this view of [respondents'] allegations, under justiciability standards it is the operation of the system itself which is the breach of the Army's duty toward [respondents] and other civilians. The case is therefore ripe for adjudication. Because the evil alleged in the Army intelligence system is that of overbreadth, i. e., the collection of information not reasonably relevant to the Army's mission to suppress civil disorder, and because there is no indication that a better opportunity will later arise to test the constitutionality of the Army's action, the issue can be considered justiciable at this time." Id., at 79-81, 444 F.2d, at 954-956 (emphasis in original) (footnotes omitted).
"To the extent that the Army's argument against justiciability here includes the claim that [respondents] lack standing to bring this action, we cannot agree. If the Army's system does indeed derogate First Amendment values, the [respondents] are persons who are sufficiently affected to permit their complaint to be heard. The record shows that most if not all of the [respondents] and/or the organizations of which they are members have been the subject of Army surveillance reports and their names have appeared in the Army's records. Since this is precisely the injury of which [respondents] complain, they have standing to seek redress for that alleged injury in court and will provide the necessary adversary interest that is required by the standing doctrine, on the issue of whether the actions complained of do in fact inhibit the exercise of First Amendment rights. Nor should the fact that these particular persons are sufficiently uninhibited to bring this suit be any ground for objecting to their standing." Id., at 79 n. 17, 444 F.2d, at 954 n. 17.