William G. Miller: Watching the Watchdogs

As the American negotiating team arrived in Iran to work for the release of the embassy hostages, the student captors broke into the U.S. embassy files, finding enough evidence to confirm "in their minds that the embassy was a nest of spies."

William G. Miller, the leader of the 1979 negotiating mission and an Institute of Politics fellow this spring, recalls the difficulty of conducting diplomacy in a situation where "there was so much chaos." A provisional government had collapsed while the negotiating team was flying to Iran, and upon arrival, the diplomats were told that no Americans would be welcome in the country.

The negotiators were forced to carry out their mission from Istanbul, Turkey. And after countless meetings with United Nations officials, representatives of Iranian factions, and Middle Eastern diplomats with Iranian contacts, Miller secured the release of twelve embassy hostages.

Miller's stint at shuttle diplomacy had its roots in 1959 when he joined the foreign service. But he had not always been set on a career in the State Department's pin-striped ranks.

Thirty years ago Miller was a Winthrop House tutor and a teaching fellow in History and Literature. He had studied at Oxford University under C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and was prepared for a life in academia. But, Miller says, he found that "things of the mind have an attachment to the real world," and he discovered a desire to help shape policy.

Miller says that his first foreign service assignment in Iran in the early 1960s taught him the impact U.S. decisions can have. American policy in Iran was a product of "confused purposes," he says. While the U.S. helped to improve health and education, it "destroyed the democratic vision," Miller says, adding that Washington did not take advantage of a "number of opportunities" to encouage the Shah to open the political process.

On his return to Washington, Miller was appointed a junior assistant to then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk with responsibility for Vietnam. As in Iran, Miller says he found a "confusion of purposes in U.S. policy." "The simplifications that were being used [to explain the policy] were less than the complicated truth," Miller says.

Due to his increasing difficulties with U.S. policy in Vietnam, Miller left the State Department after three years in Washington. "I didn't want to be part of the policy," he says.

Miller left the executive branch for Congress where he served as special assistant to former Sen. John Cooper, working on efforts to halt the production of anti-ballistic missiles, the SALT I negotiations, and other foreign policy questions.

Miller describes himself as a strong advocate of Congressional participation in foreign policy decision-making. "Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that foreign affairs and defense are the sole perogative of the President," Miller says.

In the post-war period, policy making was left to the President, and Congress was involved only as an "afterthought," Miller says. This system went "unquestioned when it appeared things were successful" but was reexamined in light of the Vietnam experience, he says.

Miller was a part of this examination as a staff member of the bipartisan Emergency Powers Committee from 1972 to 1974. The committee found that over 2000 statutes unconstitutionally delegated powers to the President.

"The top leaders in Congress have far more experience than any president" in foreign policy, and Congressional participation is necessary for democratically decided policy, Miller says.

But the Executive branch's monopoly on secret information gives it a great edge, says Miller. As staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by former Sen. Frank Church, Miller was involved in Congress' post-Vietnam, post-Watergate investigation of the role of secrecy in a democracy.

The committee's investigations revealed that the FBI and CIA were hiring "racketeers and gangsters to carry out covert activities" and found that the FBI had assigned agents to civil rights leader Martin L. King Jr., Miller says.

The investigations resulted in guidelines for covert activities, the establishment of Congressional oversight of the CIA and Congressional access to secret information.

Miller says that Congressional access to secret information was an important step toward full participation in policy making. "Though there is a risk of disclosure this is a risk worth taking," he adds.