SPIES AND NON-SPIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000503820015-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 28, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503820015-1
n. 'T '_i ... .
NEW YORK MiES
28 November 1985
ABROAD AT HOME I Anthony Lewis
Spies and Non-Spies
BOSTON
I t would be unbelievable in fiction:
Four Americans arrested on espio-
nage charges in five days. Two of
them former employees of the super-
secret National Security Agency and
the Central Intelligence Agency. Se-
crets allegedly flowing for years to
three different powers - the Soviet
Union, China and Israel.
If the damage to national security
is half as bad as officials are saying,
these are among the most serious
prosecutions brought under the Es-
pionage Act since Congress passed it
in 1917. But that raises a profound
irony.
While the Government tries to cope
with the grave consequences of real
spying, it is bringing the weight of the
Espionage Act down upon someone
who did not spy for any foreign
power. He acted not to weaken but to
alert the United States. And what he
did caused no identifiable damage to
the national security.
Those are facts in the case of Sam-
uel Loring Morison, a former Navy
intelligence analyst who was con-
victed last month of violating the Es-
pionage Act. He is due to be sentenced
next Wednesday. And even though
what he did was not spying, and has
never before been the basis of an Es-
pionage Act conviction, he is subject
to a sentence of up to 40 years in
prison.
What Mr. Morison did was to leak
three photographs, taken from a U.S.
satellite, of a Soviet aircraft carrier
under construction, He sent them to
Jane's Defense Weekly, a British
military magazine. He was not paid.
He did it, he said, because the carrier
was a significant new element in the
Soviet fleet - and publication would
alert Americans to the threats.
Morison did
not commit
espionage
Mr. Morison is deeply, even obses-
sively committed to the idea of a
strong U.S. Navy. If Americans knew
what the Russians were doing, he
said, there would not be all this silly
anti-defense talk.
The Reagan Administration used
the Morison case to try to turn the Es-
pionage Act into something the
United States has never had: a crimi-
nal statute against leaks. And by per-
suading the trial judge and then the
jury, it did create something very
much like the British Official Secrets
Act.
An official secrets act punishes dis-
closure of official information even
when it is published, not slipped to an
enemy, and even when it does no
provable harm. In the Morison case a
witness who had run our satellite
photograph operation for i0 years
said the Russians knew all about it
and would not benefit from the pic-
ture in Jane's. But the judge said the
jury could weigh "potential" damage
- without limiting that hazy term.
In the current atmosphere of alarm
about real spying, I suppose there is a
danger that Mr. Morison will be sen-
tenced to a prison term, inappropri-
ate as that would be for a "crime"
never before punished. But the point
of the case is not only the personal
tragedy involved.
"The hallmark of a truly effective
internal security system," Justice
Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court
said in 1971, in the Pentagon Papers
case, "would be the maximum possi-
ble disclosure, recognizing that se-
crecy can best be preserved only
when credibiilty is truly main-
tained." In other words, the Govern-
ment should focus on a limited area of
true secrecy instead of using the blun-
derbuss approach and trying to
stamp everything secret.
The Morison case is the blunder-
buss approach. No real spy is going to
be discouraged by the Government's
fitful moves against leaks. That
course wastes resources and weakens
the credibility of the effort to protect
important secrets.
The prosecution of Mr. Morison
also says a good deal about the consti-
tutional faith of the Reagan Adminis-
tration. The foundation of our Consti-
tution is the Separation of Powers.
Congress makes laws, not the Presi-
dent.
If we need a law against leaks, the
American way would be to go to Con-
gress and ask for one. But Attorney
General Meese, with all his talk of re-
spect for the Legislature and the dan-
ger of activist judges, has not done
that. He has asked the courts to read
the crime of leaking into a 68-year-old
act against spying. Why? Because he
knows that Congress would not pass a
general law against leaks. The end
;ustifies the means.
Espionage and leaks are wholly dif-
ferent things in the American tradi-
tion. 'pying strengthens foreign
powers. 1.eaxing, an everyday occur-
rence in Washington, is part of the
process that en_tbies citizens to judge
the policy of heir Government. We
think that process strengthens, not
weakens America. 7
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503820015-1