1954: Eisenhower Asserts ‘Executive Privilege’ to Thwart McCarthy

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, attempting to protect government files from Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI)‘s anti-Communist “witch hunts” and to prevent government officials from being forced to testify at the Army’s hearings on McCarthy, cites a never-before-used phrase, “executive privilege,” to resist giving over information or allowing aides to testify. While presidents have withheld information from Congress before in narrow and defined circumstances—in 1792, George Washington refused to allow Congress and the courts to obtain information about a disastrous military expedition against Native Americans along the Ohio River, for example—Eisenhower is the first to assert that the executive branch has the right to withhold any internal documents or block officials from giving testimony to other branches or agencies of the government. In 2007, reporter and author Charlie Savage will write that Eisenhower’s actions “creat[ed] a potentially boundless new category of government information a president could deny to Congress.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 20; National Public Radio, 6/28/2007]