Steve Aftergood from the Federation of American Scientists has posted the latest explanation from Daniel Mulhollan of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on why CRS leadership is concerned about efforts to have Congress publish their products (as recommended by The OpenHouseProject).

Aftergood’s blog has a great summary and rebuttal:

“First, there is a danger that placing CRS in an intermediate position [between Congress and the public] would threaten the dialog on policy issues between Members and their constituents.”

“Second, the current judicial … perception of CRS as ‘adjunct staff’ of the Congress might be altered if CRS were seen as speaking directly to the public, putting at risk Speech or Debate Clause constitutional protections afforded the confidential work performed by this agency.”

“And third, if CRS products were routinely disseminated broadly to the public, over time these products might come to be written with a large public audience in mind and would no longer be focused solely on congressional needs.”

A copy of Director Mulhollan’s seven page memorandum on “Access to CRS Reports,” dated April 18, 2007, was obtained by Secrecy News and is available here.

The arguments detailed by Mr. Mulhollan seem singularly unpersuasive to an outsider. CRS is not being called upon to mediate between Congress and the public or to engage in a public dialog on policy issues. Rather, proponents of broader dissemination are simply asking for the same public access that commercial vendors of CRS reports already enjoy.

One point that is worth emphasizing is that, in the memo, Mulhollan does not distinguish between confidential CRS prodcuts for specific Congressional offices and the non-confidential CRS products that are made generally available to all of Congress and have found their way to commercial entities and some to the OpenCRS Web site . CRS already draws this distinction themselves and the current public availability does not seem to have harmed the quality of the Service’s products as Mulhollan’s arguments suggest it would.