Hunting License

Amid all the squabbling last week over the relative potencies of "condemn" and "censure," one fact was as welcome as it was clear: the Senate has hung a can on Senator McCarthy that years of tongue wagging will not shake off. While the law-makers of the 83rd Congress have cured the most apparent symptom of the disease that McCarthy brought to the upper house, next year's 84th Congress should strike at the cause of the sickness by placing effective curbs on committees. It should assure the nation that no other unscrupulous individual will ever use the broad powers of a Congressman for personal political advantage.

Probably McCarthy's most flagrant abuse was his practice of holding one-man hearings, sitting himself almost as a judge and jury. As Dean Griswold said in his address to the Massachusetts Bar Association last winter, "There is nothing about the nature of membership in the Senate or the House of Representatives which should give each member a general commission to go through the length and breadth of the land, far from his own state or district, far from the seat of the general government, even on formal delegation to him from his House or one of its committees."

The best way to check the dangers that come so easily from closed one-man executive hearings is always to require the presence of at least one other committee member, and he from the opposite party. A Democrat in all of McCarthy's hearings would have kept the Wisconsin Senator from leaking bits and pieces to the press at times of his own choosing. It would also have checked the strong-arm tactics McCarthy used to evict attorneys and witnesses from hearing rooms.

Abolishing one-man hearings should be central to any code of committee conduct, but equally important are a whole series of provisions for guarantees to the witness. He should have the power to cross-examine his accusers and to subpoena witnesses in his own behalf. Because accusations receive so much more space in the press than the replies that come afterward, the investigating Congressmen should be prevented from releasing their charges to the press until the witness has a chance to answer them.

Another abuse that should be eliminated is the free-wheeling committee, or Congressman, who plunges into an investigation of anything which looks like a headline. One of the sorriest spectacles of recent years was the flight by waterboys of three different committees to see which one could first grab a particular witness and the front page space that went with him. Each committee should be limited to specific areas, and then forces to stay within the bounds of the original grant of power.

Reforms such as these are far-reaching. They will be difficult to institute because Congressmen have seldom willingly limited their own power. Some will say they are not necessary, that the McCarthy debacle has served as warning for all. For the time being--almost certainly for the duration of the 84th Congress--this may be true. But in politics it is too easy to lapse back into old habits; Congress should finish the good work it has started by drawing up a binding code of fair committee practice.