The
Truman Committee (itself successor to the
Nye Committee 1934–1936) stood up from March 1941 to 1948. The Investigations Subcommittee of the
Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments took over two key aspects of the Truman Committee. First, Investigations Subcommittee took the Truman Committee's investigation of war contracts and procurement of the
Hughes XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and the
Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat (
Spruce Goose). Second, the subcommittee also assumed responsibility for the records of the Truman Committee. Under the chairmanship of
Homer S. Ferguson of Michigan (1948) and
Clyde R. Hoey of
North Carolina (1949-1952), the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments held hearings on such matters as
export control violations, for which Soviet spy
William Remington was called in to testify; the trial of
Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch; and the
Mississippi Democratic Party's sale of postal jobs, which Mississippians from rural areas attested to purchasing. A much larger scandal erupted with the "5 percenters", so-called because these men, including Presidential aide
Harry H. Vaughan, were accused of charging a 5% commission for their influence in securing government contracts. A legislative reform as a result of the hearings was a restriction of one year after leaving government employment before an attorney could practice law again before the government.
Korean War atrocities As news of war crimes during the
Korean War unfolded, the Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities was headed by
Charles E. Potter, and began an investigation of the abuse and murder of
prisoners of war such as forced marches, maltreatments, and the shooting and murdering of prisoners shortly after capture.
Joseph McCarthy In the
83rd United States Congress, the subcommittee (now known as the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations or PSI), under its new chairman,
Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin, greatly increased the number of investigations and number of witnesses called. His subcommittee held 169 hearings throughout 1953 and 1954. Of the 653 people called by the Committee during a 15-month period, 83 refused to answer questions about
espionage and
subversion on constitutional grounds and their names were made public. Nine additional witnesses invoked the
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution in executive session and their names were not made public. Some of the 83 were working or had worked for the
Army, the
Navy, the
Government Printing Office, the
Department of the Treasury, the
Office of War Information, and the
Office of Strategic Services. Others were or had been employed at the Federal Telecommunications Laboratories in New Jersey, the secret radar laboratories of the
Army Signal Corps in New Jersey, and
General Electric defense plants in Massachusetts and New York. Nineteen of the 83, including well known communist party members
James S. Allen,
Herbert Aptheker, and
Earl Browder, were summoned because their writings were being carried in
United States Information Agency libraries around the world. The hearings also investigated such matters as communist
infiltration of the
United Nations;
Korean War atrocities; and the transfer to the
Soviet Union of occupation
currency plates. From December 1952 to July 1953,
Robert F. Kennedy was an assistant counsel of PSI. In April 1954, McCarthy's exchange of charges with
Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens led to the appointment of a special subcommittee of the PSI to investigate the charges. Chaired by
Karl E. Mundt of
South Dakota, the proceedings became known as the
Army–McCarthy hearings.
Labor racketeering and organized crime From 1955 until 1972,
John Little McClellan of
Arkansas chaired the PSI. McClellan continued extensive hearings of the Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and added new inquiries relating to communist activities in the United States and to business activities and alleged improper activities by
Eisenhower Administration appointees and political associates. In the
86th Congress (1957), members of the Subcommittee were joined by Members of the
Committee on Labor and Public Welfare on a special committee (the
Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management) to investigate labor racketeering. Chaired by Senator McClellan and staffed by
Robert F. Kennedy, the Subcommittee's chief counsel, and other staff members, this special committee directed much of its attention to criminal influence over the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, most famously calling Teamsters' leaders
Dave Beck and
Jimmy Hoffa to testify. The televised hearings of the special committee also introduced Senators
Barry Goldwater and
John F. Kennedy to the nation, as well as leading to passage of the
Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. testifying before the subcommittee about organized crime, September 1963 After the select committee expired in 1960, the PSI continued to investigate labor racketeering and other labor-related matters. From 1961 through 1968, it also investigated
gambling and
organized crime in which
Joseph Valachi testified about the activities of the
Sicilian Mafia, the
Billie Sol Estes case, irregularities in missile procurement, procurement of the
General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark fighter plane, excessive risks in underwriting
Federal Housing Administration mortgages,
riots, and
civil disorders, the
Agency for International Development commodity import program, and procurement of railway bridges for
South Vietnam under the
counter-insurgency program. The Subcommittee's investigations also led to passage of major legislation against organized crime, most notably the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO act"), which is a section of the
Organized Crime Control Act passed in 1970. In 1973, Senator
Henry M. Jackson, a Democrat from Washington, replaced McClellan as the Subcommittee's chairman and Senator
Charles H. Percy, an Illinois Republican, became the Ranking Minority Member. During Senator Jackson's chairmanship, the Subcommittee conducted landmark hearings into
energy shortages and the operation of the
petroleum industry.
Nunn-Roth era The regular reversals of political fortunes in the Senate of the 1980s and 1990s saw Senator
Sam Nunn trade chairmanship three times with Delaware Republican
William V. Roth Jr. Nunn served from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1987 to 1995, while Roth served from 1981 to 1986, and again from 1995 to 1996. Senator Roth led a wide range of investigations into commodity investment fraud, off-shore banking schemes,
money laundering, and
child pornography. Senator Nunn inquired into federal drug policy, the global spread of
chemical and biological weapons, abuses in
Federal Student Aid programs,
computer security,
aviation safety, and
health care fraud.
Federal financial aid and proprietary colleges In the early 1970s, student loan programs created by the
Higher Education Act of 1965 and subsequent legislation had begun to produce evidence of fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. In November 1975, the Permanent Subcommittee held four days of hearings that followed on staff investigations that focused largely on West Coast Schools, a for-profit school that had grown quickly with federal loan money and closed after questions were raised about its operations. Secretary of Education
Ted Bell told the Subcommittee "It must be kept in mind that when the floodgates were opened in 1968 to allow virtually every kind of institution operating on an interstate basis to lend under the program—public, private, profit, nonprofit, noncollegiate, and correspondence schools—we had only 50 persons on the staff." In the late 1980s, skyrocketing student loan defaults led the Permanent Subcommittee to again examine the federal student aid programs. After an 18-month investigation and a series of hearings, the Subcommittee concluded that the student loan program, "particularly as it relates to proprietary schools, is riddled with fraud, waste and abuse." Following on the Subcommittee's work, Congress adopted
amendments to the Higher Education Act that contributed to the closure of hundreds of schools. The reforms included cutting off federal aid at schools with high default rates; prohibiting the use of commission-based sales agents in recruiting; and limiting federal funding to no more than 85 percent of any for-profit college's revenue. Senator Nunn, as chair of the Permanent Subcommittee, also worked to include reforms of state oversight of colleges participating in the federal aid programs. Those reforms were adopted but were subsequently repealed before being implemented.
Tenures of Collins, Levin, and Coleman In January 1997 Republican Senator
Susan Collins of Maine became the first woman to chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Her Chairmanship was also notable in that she held the Senate seat of former
Maine Senator
Margaret Chase Smith, an opponent of Senator McCarthy. Senator
John Glenn of Ohio became Ranking Member. Upon Senator Glenn's retirement from the Senate, Senator
Carl Levin became Ranking Member in 1999. In June 2001, when the Democrats resumed control of the Senate, Senator Levin assumed the chairmanship of the Subcommittee until January 2003 when Senator
Norm Coleman assumed the Chairmanship. When the Democrats took control of the Senate in January 2007, the chairmanship reverted to Senator Levin.
Oil-for-Food Program Hearings In December 2004, Coleman called for
Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan to resign because of the "UN's utter failure to detect or stop Saddam's abuses" in the
Oil-for-Food Programme and because of fraud allegations against
Kojo Annan, his son, relating to the same program. In May 2005 the subcommittee held
Oil-for-Food Program Hearings to investigate abuses of the Oil-for-Food program, including oil smuggling, illegal kickbacks and use of surcharges, and
Saddam Hussein's use of oil vouchers for the purpose of buying influence abroad. These hearings covered certain corporations, including Bayoil Inc., and Russian politician
Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The hearings received significant media attention for the combative appearance of British politician
George Galloway of the
Respect Party, in which he forcefully rejected the allegations.
Homeland Security In 2003, after the Homeland Security Act of 2002 established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Committee took over the primary oversight of designing policies, operations, and function of the DHS. It represents an in-depth investigation as well as a permanent record of the
2008 financial crisis and took over two years of research and investigations to compile. It found "that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street." ==Members, 119th Congress==