Voir Dire

It seems that there’s been growing concern recently about export controls and strategic national resources (for example, regarding technical information, fissile materials, and even rice).

In an early example of the debate over export controls, the Hindenburg crashed and burned 71 years ago today:

There are no records of the president speaking publicly about this following the disaster. But in 1938, FDR was questioned about National Munitions Control Board’s decisions re export controls for helium:

Q. Mr. President, regarding the helium question, which you took up with members of various departments the other day and afterwards indicated that the matter was for decision of the National Munitions Control Board, that Board had already approved the export. Did you intend that they should reopen the question?

THE PRESIDENT: I think probably there will be another meeting of the Board very soon.

Q. When?

THE PRESIDENT: Very soon; I don’t know when.

Q. Who has the power to call that meeting?

THE PRESIDENT: The Chairman.

Q. The Chairman yesterday said it would depend on you.

THE PRESIDENT: Perfectly true; I have not asked him yet because I have not seen him.

Q. Do you understand that the Board acted illegally when it approved the export of helium?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know; it is a question of law, I suppose. The statute is very definite in setting up the National Munitions Board. It says, “The Secretaries” of these different Departments—”The heads” of these Departments. Well, by Government custom, as you know, these interdepartmental boards meet with the membership composed of Assistant Secretaries and, in order that the record may be perfectly clear, we want to have a meeting with the Secretaries present. Legally, whether the action of the Board when it is constituted by Assistant Secretaries may be all right, nobody knows.

Following the disaster, Germany requested that the US loosen export controls on helium as a replacement for hydrogen in the next airship, Graf Zeppelin II (which was eventually used for military purposes). Congress responded by tightening controls, which became part of the dialogue between FDR, the Board, and the press regarding the Board’s decisions:

Q. In weighing the laws governing the export of helium, does the Board take into consideration the intent of the Congress, the intent of the time when it was passed, which was immediately after the Hindenburg disaster?

THE PRESIDENT: They take into consideration the language of the statute primarily. When any question comes up as to the construction of the language, they are at full liberty to look into the debates on the floor or the hearings of the committee prior to the passage of the statute. . . .

So the hydrogen/helium question became part of the debate between Congress and the president about administrative accountability.

Malcolm Smith and Cornelius Cotter used this as evidence in their 1957 article “Administrative Accountability: Reporting to Congress” in the old Western Political Quarterly. Look at the study: they try to catalogue all the required reporting devices that Congress imposed on the executive for a selection of statutes over about 25 years. Do we even do this type of work anymore?

[Google Scholar tells me this article has been cited a grand total of 2 times in the last 51 years, which probably tells us more about how our post-behavioral revolution "science" discards old narrative-based studies than anything about the actual study.]