US LEAK-PLUGGING EFFORT TURNS INWARD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605440001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 8, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605440001-3
.:. IT! R APPEA II
BOSTON GLOBE
8 June 1986
US leak-plugging effort turns inward
Wealth of secrets, ideologues pose a daunting task
By Walter V. Robinson
Globe Staff
WASHINGTON - When William J. Ca-
se v, the director cen ra n e ence
called last month for the prosecution of five
news organizations for repo Ing details
about intercepted Libyan communications,
he urged no such action against some of the
officials who leaked the information to the
first place.
Those officials, as it turned out, included
high-ranking government officials to whom
Casey himself reports.
Indeed, In the view of some officials, the
most public disclosure of highly classified
commun ca ons intelligence a ence of
L yan complicity in the terrorist bombing
of a West Berlin discotheque was made by
President Reagan himself, in an April 14
television address seen by tens of mi ions
of Americans.
"The evidence is now conclusive that
the terrorist bombing ... was planned and
executed under the direct orders of the Lib-
yan regime," the president declared, Then
he, like some of his aides had already done
privately, launched into a description of
messages that could have come only from
intercepted communications. He added,
"Our evidence is direct. It is precise. It is
irrefutable."
As president, however, Reagan. has the
right to divulge even the most sensitive
classified information. But that privilege
does not extend to his aides.
"By definition, a president can't leak. He
eclassifies." said Stephen Hess, a Brook-
gs institution scholar who has studied
t e issue. As for other high officials, Hess
remarked. "At the topr, they don't leak in-
formation. They plant it."
Since he made those threats last month,
Casey has threatened prosecution of sever-
al news organizations for disclosing details
of the fied intelligence that Ronald W.
Pe on. a ormer intelligence analyst, was
convicted last Thursdayof selling to the So
viet Unio .
But White House officials have been
critical of Casey's tactics, while the Justice
partment has resisted taking such ac-
ion. And the White House, chief of staff,
Wald T. Regan, indicated in an interview
on Friday that the Reagan administration
is much more interested in going after gov-
ernment officials Involved in the unauthor-
ized leaking of classified information than
In prosecuting news organizations that re-
ceive It.
Referring to the unauthorized leakers,
Regan declared, "1 think in that particular
case, all of those should be investigated.
And if it's found out who did it, that that be
a case that be prosecuted."
As for the press, he added, "I don't thifik
we can have a hard and fast policy that ev-
ery damn time that happens, we prosecute.
But on the other hand, I don't think we
should say we'll never prosecute." '
However, Regan said punitive action
should not be limited to disclosure of ciasdf-
fied information. He expressed anger -ah
well at what he called "embarrasef n'' ~" Or
disconcerting" leaks about unclassified'but
politically sensitive internal matters; 'in-
cluding "domestic policies or procedures or
decisions that the president may. have
made but we're not prepared to annotince:"
He added: "And the person responltlbk,
if it's deliberate and if it's repetitive; -that
person should be fired, because these of ie
unauthorized disclosures."
Whatever tack is taken in stemmi%the
torrent of classified secrets, the problem is
daunting. And Hess attributes much of it to
the .amoun of-classified information at
exists- and to the number o peop e who
have access to it.
By, government estimates, more than 4
million Americans - or about one in every
60 persons in the United States - have -
cess to U government secrets of one kind
or anoter. About 1.5 million of those work
for companies holding government con-
tracts. '
And an astonishing number of people -
somewhere between 125,000 and 185,000,
no one is quite sure of the number - have
c earances t at a ow them access to the
highly sensitive, top secret intelligence, in-
c ing communications intelligence, of the
type that Pelton was convicted of having
sold-f6--the Soviets.
What's more, Hess noted, about 20 mil-
lion 'new federal documents are classified
every year, with 350,000 of those classified
as too secret or higher. In 1982. Hess re-
called. he discovered that the State Depart-
ment even classifies some clippings from
foreign newspapers.
Because of these numbers, the potential
for unauthorized disclosures of classified
information is enormous. And in the Rea-
gan administration, by the estimate of Hess
and others, the problem is compounded by
the large number of ideologues who hold ap-
pointed positions.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605440001-3
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605440001-3
Many middle-level political appointees
in the Reagan administration, he said,
"have a very high ideological quotient.
They are true believers who fight their bat-
tles by trying to influence public opinion.
And one way they do that is to leak infor-
mation to the press."
Such motivations were cited in two re-
cent cases, in which Pentagon and State
Department political appointees were fired
for disclosing classified information. In one
case, a State Department speechwriter,
Spencer C. Warren, a conservative appoin-
tee, admitted that he had leaked a top se-
cret diplomatic cable suggesting that House
Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. was under-
mining Reagan's policy toward Nicaragua.
More troublesome to intelligence offi-
cials, in some respects, is the disclosure of
sensitive information by more senior offi-
cials intent on buttressing support for ad-
ministration policy.
That was evidently the case with the
disclosure of the intercepted Libyan com-
munications, which was displayed publicly
to create support for the bombing raid an-
nounced by Reagan in his April 14 address
to the nation.
Other such instances, each potentially
damaging in its own way to national secu-
rity, have occurred with some frequency
during Reagan's presidency. Just last
month, for instance, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz told White House reporters
during an on-the-record briefing in Tokyo
that the United States had detailed knowl-
edge of the scene around the site of the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster site, in the pro-
cess making an obvious reference to intelli-
gence gathered under the highly secret US
satellite reconnaissance program.
In 1983, after Soviet fighters shot down
a South Korean airliner that had overflown
Soviet airspace,. killing 269 persons, Shultz
disclosed that the United States had Inter-
cepted the messages between the Soviet pi-
lots and their base. The year before, the
United States made public top-secret recon-
naissance photos taken over Central Amer-
ica, with the goal of providing public evi-
dence of the growth in the size of the Nica-
raguan armed forces.
WILLIAM J. CASEY
Threatening the media
Even Casey is not averse to disclosing
highly classified intelligence. Last year.
after a Soviet defector from the KGB. Vitaly
S. Yurchenko. returned to the Soviet Union
the White House sought to portray Yur-
c en ko s information as virtualll worth-
less to the United States.
Casey, in a public rebuttal, authorized
his subordinates at the CIA to brief report-
ers on the wealth of top secret information
that Yurchenko_hadprovided during CIA
debriefings.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605440001-3