We did issue a suspension which, as in many matters of this kind with the kind of personnel which the OMB has, which is only Washington personnel, we did not police every process involved in the implementation of that suspension.

As a point of fact, during the period of the suspension, we were much more engaged in the work of reviewing the policy descision than in policing the suspension. We were concerned that the suspension was respected, and we certainly are appreciative of and will review the materials that your committee put in the record on this point.

Mr. CONSTANDY. One other thing. The Acting Administrator submitted a three-page letter which I think takes exception to the contract between the Postal Service and the Corps of Engineers, and in it they express why.

The response to them, which was also dated May 5, is reduced to a two-paragraph letter which does not relate to the issues that they had raised relative to the review-and, if you will forgive me, neither have you-but simply says:

I appreciate your prompt reply to my letter of March 27, 1971, transmitting your views concerning the agreement between the Post Office Department and the Corps of Engineers, which provides for the Corps of Engineers to serve as construction agency for the Post Office Department.

Enclosed is a copy of our letter to the Postmaster General informing him of the results of our review of the agreement. An identical letter has also been sent to the Secretary of Defense.

It does not particularly seem responsive to the issues they raised in the letter to you, OMB, dated April 15.

Mr. NATHAN. I would say on that matter that, again, the staff level contacts with the agency are going on all day long. Our people who are in contact with the GSA, or on the telephone with them, work with them very closely. Our reasoning on this matter was it may not be satisfactory to explain by your standards in the correspondence that you have obtained, and I don't think is necessarily a controlling fact.

I tried, to the best of my ability, in the testimony to give our rationale and to the extent that it falls short of satisfying the standards of the committee, that is a matter I can only regret.

Mr. CONSTANDY. We both can regret, Mr. Nathan.

Mr. WRIGHT. Let me ask a question with respect to a comment in your prepared statement.

You have said and I quote:

In view of present uncertainties concerning future postal requirements in Federal Office Buildings, GSA has at our request suspended the award of site and design contracts for projects with postal space, pending a confirmation of plans from the Post Office and a determination of whether the projects should proceed as planned, be redesigned or abandoned, or other alternatives in meeting Federal space requirements.

Does this mean that all those multipurpose buildings that have been approved by the Congress are now being suspended, all those that contain any postal space are being suspended, and that the GSA has been stopped from proceedings with construction of any of those multipurpose buildings?

Mr. NATHAN. Mr. Chairman, this is an action taken by GSA. I am sure you raised this matter with Deputy Administrator Kreger.

I would say that this is one of the areas in this whole array of issues in which the OMB has a very great interest. We have written to the

parties and have worked with them through our staff in the hope that I should say more than a hope-in the expectation, as my statement indicates on page 7, that we will work out a set of criteria and a set of understanding by which the GSA and the Postal Service will be able, even under this new structure of the Postal Service, to work together and to build joint facilities.

We intend to exert our influence in an important and constructive way to get such an agreement.

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes.

Back to my question. Does this mean that all those multipurpose buildings which have been approved by Congress for construction by GSA in which the Postal Service will use any of the space are stopped and cannot proceed, pending a lifting of this suspension?

Mr. NATHAN. There are two, Mr. Chairman, that have already been removed from that suspension list. That is one point I would make.

Another is that I would say that this is an action taken while we reviewed the matter. One might characterize it as a pro forma action in the expectation that we will work out arrangements for these projects to proceed.

Now, as the Postal Service testified, their concern is timing. Their concern is moving ahead on these facilities.

Mr. WRIGHT. Do you not think the GSA has a concern with regard to time and the need for space for other Federal operations?

Mr. NATHAN. There are some parts of the process of approval and implementation of decisions to construct buildings over which GSA, unfortunately for them, I imagine, in their view, does not have control. They would like to be able to move faster just as the Post Office would like them to be able to move faster.

Mr. WRIGHT. When you made your review of the March 11 agreement, what was your view of the restraint placed by those agreements upon the corps in discussing any proceedings under the program with Members of Congress?

Mr. NATHAN. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure I understand your question. You say were we restrained from discussing this with the Congress during that period?

Mr. WRIGHT. What was your view in looking over the March 11 agreement of the restriction which that agreement imposes upon the Corps of Engineers against any direct responses to Members of Congress respecting this program?

Mr. NATHAN. I am not knowledgeable in detail on that part of the process. I do recollect that the agreement contains in it a provision which applies to relations with the Congress. That probably is part of what you are thinking about when you raise that question. That is a matter for agreement and discussion between the affected agencies, in this case the Postal Service and the corps.

At that time, I did not even have knowledge of this question as an important question. I was not aware during the review of this matter of what was transpiring between the two agencies on this point.

It is possible at some point a congressional clerk in the White House does have some supervisory responsibilities on matters of this kind. This was, as far as I know, not ever called to his attention either. Mr. WRIGHT. For your information, and to refresh your memory from page 3 of the March 11 agreement, I shall quote these words:

Congressional liaison relating to any matter covered by this agreement will be the exclusive responsibility of the United States Post Office Department. And it goes on to say:

Congressional inquiries received by the Corps regarding all work performed under this agreement will be sent to the Post Office Department Congressional Liaison Office for disposition.

Subsequent to this, the corps had developed elaborate procedures at the urging of the Post Office Department-Postal Service-spelling out in great detail how it is to avoid answering any questions that might be posed to it by Members of Congress. It seems to me that this is a very significant policy question involved in the agreements, and yet you were not aware of it and did not consider it to be an important part of the agreement, according to what you just said.

Mr. NATHAN. Mr. Chairman, I think that one has to regard the Postal Service as having policy responsibility for these buildings, and that would include responsibility for explaining to the public-and very importantly to the Congress, since their law was passed by the Congress how they are carrying out that responsibility, and corps is an agent in this case of the Postal Service, and they determined that they should operate on that basis.

While it may be questioned by some Members of the Congress, it seems to me that from our point of view, we have no reason to intercede in that division of responsibilities.

Perhaps the Congress will, but that is not something that we regarded as an area we should enter.

Mr. WRIGHT. The construction of multipurpose buildings, the occupancy of multipurpose buildings, the use of multipurpose buildings, involve a great many Federal agencies, and their capacity to operate efficiently. Those matters are the concern of Congress and, particularly, in view of the gag order earlier imposed by the Postmaster General upon all of his own employees, it seems to me of singular significance that it now is transferring that gag order so as to make it applicable to these activities of the corps which do have a bearing upon other Government activities, the activities of other agencies that have to come to Congress for authorization and for appropriations, and which operate under directives passed by the Congress.

For that reason, it seems to me that it is a matter of extreme impor

tance.

Mr. NATHAN. Mr. Benton reminds me there has been some history of this and that the Appropriations Act for the Post Office, in fact, has a provision in it that speaks to this concern of many in the Congress and prohibits the Postmaster General from withholding information to the Congress.

My response to the question about this being a policy responsibility of the Postal Service, I would stand on. I would make one addition, and that is to say that insofar as multipurpose buildings are concerned, the spokesman for that project would be the agency that, based on the discussions that were held in planning, was selected to be the major agency responsible for the construction of that project.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Constandy?

Mr. CONSTANDY. Mr. Nathan, do either you or Mr. Benton have a copy of the June 28 document with you?

Mr. BENTON. No.

Mr. NATHAN. We do not.

Mr. CONSTANDY. Do you have copies of the March 11 agreement? Mr. NATHAN. Yes. And the March 20.

Mr. BENTON. May 20.

Mr. WRIGHT. Do you have copies of both March 11 agreements with you?

Mr. NATHAN. Yes.

Mr. CONSTANDY. And the May 20 agreement.

Mr. NATHAN. Yes.

Mr. CONSTANDY. Have either of you ever read the June 28 agreement? Mr. NATHAN. I would answer this way

Mr. CONSTANDY. Could you answer yes or no once? Either you have it or you do not.

Mr. NATHAN. May I answer no, and then can I make a comment? My comment is

Mr. WRIGHT. The question was, Has either of you? Mr. Benton, you have not?

Mr. BENTON. No.

Mr. WRIGHT. Neither of you have seen the agreement. That is the testimony.

Mr. NATHAN. This is the comment I would make, that does not mean that our responsibility is such that when we see the agreement-and surely we will-if it raises questions we need get into, we will do that.

Mr. CONSTANDY. Our point here is that all your testimony today has been with the personal ignorance of the contents of it, so we have to construe everything you said today in the light of that fact, that neither of you have the agreement, ever read the agreement, or have access to its contents.

Mr. NATHAN. That is correct, and to the extent that that agreement would change our decision, which we cannot at this time know, that might make some difference for he purpose of these discussions. That might change the character of these discussions.

Mr. CONSTANDY. It might?

Mr. NATHAN. Our understanding of the

Mr. CONSTANDY. Did you say it might change

Mr. NATHAN. I am saying we will, in the course of our work, review that agreement, and if it contains any provisions that we would feel would justify our taking any action again in this matter, we would do

it.

Mr. CONSTANDY. We are concerned for the record here. That is irrevocable.

Mr. NATHAN. The record, we have not seen it, but that does not mean when we do see it

Mr. CONSTANDY. But the things you have commented about today were commented on with ignorance of the provisions of the June 28 agreement.

Mr. NATHAN. I do not know how important it is.

Mr. CONSTANDY. Exactly. Exactly, Mr. Nathan; which is why we are here today.

There were four agreements. You have the two dated March 11 and the May 20 one, and they do differ, if you will bear with me a minute. The first agreement, four pages, of March 11, was quite

specific in section 2 under heading G-1, "The Chief of Engineers is designated as the Department of the Army representative for all matters pertaining to the acquisition of postal facilities for the U.S. Post Office Department."

That is quite broad.

Page 2 gets down to what they were considering when they drafted this agreement under section 3, contractual services. It speaks of entering into and administering contracts for real estate, design and construction of facilities.

Under section 4, operating procedures, it says that the U.S. Post Office Department requests for real estate, design, and construction services will be in writing. It is not yet broadened.

On the long agreement of that date, the 23-page one, in the first section of transfer of functions, in the middle of the paragraph it reads to refer back to this first umbrella agreement on page 2 under the assignment of program and project responsibilities, and in fixing the program responsibilities-this is the May 20 agreement-it includes for the first time that the corps will perform the lease construction and fixed mechanization, fabrication, and installation contracts, and, on page 3, for the first time, it makes reference under section B, new construction projects under 50,000 square feet, fixed mechanization, including modifications and the major improvements and modification projects to be commenced in fiscal 1972 and after.

Your not knowing what was provided had to have an influence on your decision.

Further, in the June 28 agreement, entitled "Assignment of Responsibility for the Execution of the U.S. Post Office Department Leasing Program to the Corps of Engineers," under section 2, assignment of responsibilities, it lists the two pages and a portion of two others. The specific actions of the corps were performed for the Postal Service, and each of these has broadened the workload that the corps will undertake for the Post Office.

Your review was limited entirely to the two agreements of March 11.

Mr. NATHAN. Mr. Constandy, No. 1, we consider the March 11 agreement to embody the basic concept of the relationship here envisioned. We consider the subsequent agreements and working memorandums to implement that concept, and we have based our decision, not only on reading those agreements, but, also, as I indicated earlier, on discussions by our program experts with program experts in the pertinent agencies.

Mr. CONSTANDY. During those discussions, did they ever make reference to the fact that the corps would then undertake the lease construction program?

Mr. NATHAN. Yes.

Mr. CONSTANDY. Did they have discussions which related that the corps would undertake the small and medium postal construction program?

Mr. NATHAN. We understood that.

Mr. CONSTANDY. This is back on March 27

Mr. NATHAN. We understood the Post Office was to-was going to turn over all of these responsibilities to the corps and get out of these areas themselves and that is not a very good phrase-but they were