LETTER TO STANSFIELD TURNER FROM MAX FRANKEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000601740005-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 24, 2009
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: July 28, 1978
• Content Type: LETTER

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229 WEST 43 STREET.
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10038
MAX FRANKEL
Edoca:r.?yye
J=uly aa, 1978
I have your letter to Abe Rosenthal and welcome the chance to
comment on your comment on our editorial.
As I am sure you and your colleagues recognize,. we are allies
in seeking a way out of the muddle that cases' like Snepp have
created, even if we disagree on one or another proposal for
getting, there.
It is our judgment and, indeed, our experience that no safeguards--
existing or imaginable--ever make government censorship tolerable.
Judges, even on the Supreme Court, flee in horror :rhenever &o'iera-
ment invokes the magic slogan "national security" because
customarily they know less about codes and bombs and, spy satellites
than the average Pentagon or State Department reporter.. If you
would have someone review the secret briefs and. testimony is the
Pentagon Papers case you would see how absurd some of the Defense
Department's claims of secrecy were and how easy it was for any
well-read person to point to the publication of the same or Similar
information in many other places. Some of the demana.s for deletion
from the Marchetti book showed the same tendency.
I can well understand this tendency. An official, runs across a
fact or statement that he knows to exist in a "secret" file and,
he wants to keep it unpu:?lishad. To him, as3 to any r_viewin.g
authority in a court or special board, it is rarely immediately
evident that the same or similar information appears regularly
in the newspapers, in the memoirs of the highest for !_icial.s,
in trade publications, and so on. The fact is, as we demonstrated
in the Pentagon Papers case, the normal e4change of information
between the Executive and Congress, and the normal efforts to
lobby or persuade the public of anything, regularly involve
officials in the disclosure of nominally secret information.. It
is hardly possible to criticize a weapons program, to question a
military or intelligence budget or to question the analyses or
predictions of our intelligence services without dealing in
"secret" but fairly widely known information. When granted the
power to censor, or in claiming that power, neither government
nor the judicial branches of government have shown themselves
particularly reliable in distinguishing between the need to
protect "ultimate" and tr L_--u-i-ta: & -=? and their desire to
also protect run-of-the-mill secrets, confidences an-el sir ply
embarrassments.
Moreover, government is in this, as in so many other res-pacts, a
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f,::tm~_ral Turner( ige 2 JuI-> 28, ] 978
government of men, not principles. Robert Kennedy, Arthur
Schlesinger, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, William Colby,
Lyndon Johnson and dozens of others are allowed one level of
comment and discretion after they leave government, and mere
underlings quite another. We both know that it will always he
thus. There are more secrets and diplomatic embarrassments
floating around in these privileged writings than Snepp ever
heard of.
We on The Times editorial board do recognize the problem of
government's need to retain some discipline over its employees
and former employees. It is the Agee problem. On the one hand,
it is unreasonable that anyone who ever works for government for
a few years should for the rest of his life be subject to censor-
ship. On the other hand, it is unreasonable and dangerous,
particularly in a time of dissension and stress, for any government
employee to be liberated from the obligation to keep the gravest
secrets to himself.
That is why we showed, in the very editorial you commented on,
some interest in Mr. Colby's recent suggestion. It seems to us
not impossible, as he suggests, for the most sensitive agencies
to try to write a law covering the narrow range of critical
secrets--as the espionage act does now--which should not ever be
published by former or present government employees without
official sanction, on pain of criminal punishment. It goes
without saying that this law should reach only government employees
and graduates and not persons over whom government should have no
authority. Just as it is a crime to disclose the design of a
government code machine, it could be a crime for a former government
official to disclose the name of a secret agent.
And within the framework of such a law, the Government could then
provide a mechanism for voluntary review and appeal of materials
that former employees propose to publish. Those who prefer safety
could submit to that review. Those who are confident that they
know the law and the bounds of prudence could publish without review
and take their chances on prosecution. It?is possible in some
gray-area cases that the prosecution itself would do more harm
than good; but that risk already exists in most espionage cases,
or wiretap and informer cases.
I cannot emphasize too strongly my conviction that the ultimate
discipline in these matters depends on agency and social morale.
And central to that morale and to the discipline that ordinary
officials will demonstrate is the example set by the conduct of
the highest officials. When Lyndon Johnson and Henry Kissinger
are free to vindicate their roles in history and to blame anyone
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for what went wrong by blowing any "secret"--and in fact by selling
their wares to the public as the revelation of confidences--it
becomes petty and demeaning for the Government to be pursuing a
few smallfry. I cite these two gentlemen not because I want to
see them censored (I would much prefer access to the same documents
from which they spin their versions of history) but because they
themselves, in office, were among the most ferocious protectors of
secret information and were quick to impute the worst motives to
the disclosures of others.
The fact remains, we have not done badly as a nation in this area.
Some secrets have been lost, through officials high and low, and
we have had to adjust to the damage. And many secrets have been
pried out that either should not have been secret or, in any case,
deserved publication for a higher public interest. From time to
time, we may do worse or better by this record, but we can only
move it4a few degrees to one side or the other. It seems to me
that the problem does not justify any solution that puts government
into the censorship business.
Admiral Stansfield Turner
The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D. C. 20505
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