Opinion ID: 106393
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exposure.

Text: There is also no merit to petitioner's contention that the Committee undertook simply to expose petitioner for the sake of exposure, Watkins v. United States, 354 U. S. 178, 200. The origins of the McClellan Committee, and the products of its endeavors, both belie that challenge, and nothing in the record of the present hearings points to a contrary conclusion. It cannot be gainsaid that legislation, whether civil or criminal, in the labor-management field is within the competence of Congress under its power to regulate interstate commerce. The Committee's general legislative recommendations, made at the conclusion of its First Interim Report, S. Rep. No. 1417, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 450-453 (1958), were embodied in two remedial statutes enacted by Congress: the Welfare and Pension Plans Disclosure Act of 1958, 72 Stat. 997, and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 519. The enactment of the first of these statutes is attributable primarily to the findings and recommendations of several Subcommittees of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, S. Rep. No. 1440, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 2-3 (1958). But passage of the bill was stimulated by the information then being gathered at hearings of the McClellan Committee. See 104 Cong. Rec. 7054, 7197-7198, 7233, 7337-7338, 7483, 7509-7510, 7521 (1958). The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 was a direct response to the need for remedial federal legislation disclosed by the testimony before the McClellan Committee. This is made clear not by imprecise inferences drawn from legislative history; the proof is in the statute itself. Section 2(b) of the Act declares it to be a finding of Congress from recent investigations in the labor and management fields, that there have been a number of instances of breach of trust, corruption, disregard of the rights of individual employees, and other failures to observe high standards of responsibility and ethical conduct which require further and supplementary legislation. 73 Stat. 519. The Senate and House Reports lean heavily on findings made by the McClellan Committee to justify particular provisions in the proposed bills. See S. Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 2, 6, 9, 10, 13-17 (1959); H. R. Rep. No. 741, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 1, 2, 6, 9, 11-13, 76, 83 (1959). The resolution which gave birth to this Committee, when considered in light of the fruits of its labors, proves beyond any doubt that the committee members . . . [were] serving as the representatives of the parent assembly in collecting information for a legislative purpose. Watkins v. United States, supra, at 200. This is not a case involving an indefinite and fluctuating delegation which permits a legislative committee in essence, to define its own authority, to choose the direction and focus of its activities. Id., at 205. This Committee was directed to investigate criminal or other improper practices . . . in the field of labor-management relations. Deciding whether acts that are made criminal by state law ought also to be brought within a federal prohibition, if, as here, the subject is a permissible one for federal regulation, turns entirely on legislative inquiry. And it is this inquiry in which the Senate was engaged when it assigned the fact-finding duty to the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field. Moreover, this record is barren of evidence indicating that the Committee, for reasons of its own, undertook to expose this petitioner. First: The transcript discloses a most scrupulous adherence to the announced Committee policy of not asking a witness under state indictment any questions on the subject matter involved in the indictment. Note 9, supra. This particular indictment related solely to activity in which petitioner and others had been engaged in their individual capacities, not on behalf of any labor organization. The Committee's concern was not whether petitioner had in fact defrauded the State of Indiana of $78,000 in concluding a dishonest sale or whether he had personally corrupted a state employee. Its interest, which was entirely within the province entrusted to it by the Senate, was to discover whether and how funds of the Brotherhood of Carpenters or of the Teamsters Union [17] had been used in a conspiracy to bribe a state prosecutor to drop charges made against individuals who were also officers of the Brotherhood of Carpenters, and whether the influence of union officials had been exerted to that end. If these suspicions were founded, they would have supported remedial federal legislation for the future, even though they might at the same time have warranted a separate state prosecution for obstruction of justice, or been usable at the trial of the Marion County indictment as evidence of consciousness of guilt. Supra, pp. 607-608. But surely a congressional committee which is engaged in a legitimate legislative investigation need not grind to a halt whenever responses to its inquiries might potentially be harmful to a witness in some distinct proceeding, Sinclair v. United States, supra, at 295, or when crime or wrongdoing is disclosed, McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U. S. 135, 179-180. Second: The information sought to be elicited by the Committee was pertinent to the legislative inquiry. The Committee was investigating whether and how union funds had been misused, in the interest of devising a legislative scheme to deal with irregular practices. Because of petitioner's refusal to answer questions, and because of the similar refusal by other witnesses to testify with regard to the Lake County grand jury proceedings, the Committee was not able to learn whether union funds or influence had been used to persuade Holovachka to drop those proceedings. Petitioner contends that the Committee's finding in its Second Interim Report that Raddock had been used by Hutcheson as a fixer in an attempt to head-off the indictment of Hutcheson [and others] . . . shows that his testimony was not needed for any purpose other than to prejudice or embarrass him. But this overlooks the fact that the Committee had been able to obtain no information whatever on the Lake County grand jury proceedings from any of the other witnesses by reason of their refusals to testify on the subject. [18] Moreover, it does not lie with this Court to say when a congressional committee should be deemed to have acquired sufficient information for its legislative purposes. Third: The Committee's interrogation was within the express terms of its authorizing resolution. If the Committee was to be at all effective in bringing to Congress' attention certain practices in the labor-management field which should be subject to federal prohibitions, it necessarily had to ask some witnesses questions which, if truthfully answered, might place them in jeopardy of state prosecution. Unless interrogation is met with a valid constitutional objection the scope of the power of [congressional] inquiry . . . is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution. Barenblatt v. United States, supra, at 111. And it is not until the question is asked that the interrogator can know whether it will be answered or will be met with some constitutional objection. To deny the Committee the right to ask the question would be to turn an option of refusal into a prohibition of inquiry, 8 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.) § 2268, and to limit congressional inquiry to those areas in which there is not the slightest possibility of state prosecution for information that may be divulged. Such a restriction upon congressional investigatory powers should not be countenanced. The three episodes upon which the petitioner relies as evidencing a Committee departure from these legitimate congressional concerns fall far short of sustaining what is sought to be made of them. The first of these is the Committee counsel's statement at the outset of the hearings explaining the subject matter being inquired into, in the course of which he referred to the real estate transaction involved in the Marion County indictment, and explained the Committee's interest in finding out whether union funds or influence had been used in bringing to an end the Lake County grand jury investigation of the matter. [19] The propriety of such an inquiry has already been discussed. Pp. 617-618, supra. The second episode is the Chairman's statement to the effect that all the facts as to the Lake County proceedings had not been developed by the committee; that further exposure of them should be made; and that the Committee stood ready to assist and help Indiana if it chose to interest itself in the matter. [20] We can see nothing in this statement, which was made after the Committee's inquiry had ended, beyond a perfectly normal offer on the part of the Chairman to put the Committee transcript at the disposal of the Indiana law enforcement authorities if they wished to avail themselves of it. [21] The final occurrence is the so-called Committee finding as to petitioner's alleged use of Raddock as a fixer to head-off an indictment by the Lake County grand jury. Whatever the basis for that finding (cf. note 18, supra ), we must say that its mere inclusion in an official report to the Senate of the Committee's activities [22] furnishes a slender reed indeed for a charge that that Committee was engaged in unconstitutional exposure. In conclusion, it is appropriate to observe that just as the Constitution forbids the Congress to enter fields reserved to the Executive and Judiciary, it imposes on the Judiciary the reciprocal duty of not lightly interfering with Congress' exercise of its legitimate powers. Having scrutinized this case with care, we conclude that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be Affirmed. MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER took no part in the decision of this case. MR. JUSTICE WHITE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.