MEYER AND HALPERIN

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
3
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 27, 2012
Sequence Number: 
26
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
December 7, 1985
Content Type: 
REPORT
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4.pdf139.16 KB
Body: 
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4 \ RADIO TV REPORTS, INC. 4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 (301) 656-4068 FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF DATE December 7, 1985 7:00 P.M. I SUBJECT Meyer and Halperin STATION WJLA-TV Washington, D.C. DAVID SCHOUMACHER: There's nothing new about betraying our country. Benedict Arnold, after all, was only the first. He sold out his soldiers for 20,000 pounds, the equivalent of about a million dollars in today's economy. So, what struck us most about all the recent spy cases is not that there've been so many, but that the price of treason has not kept up with inflation. Jonathan Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst, allegedly sold out to Israel for $50,000. Ronald Pelton is said to have become a spy for the Soviet Union for just $25,000. Still, although the pay isn't all that good, money, not politics, or even love, has become the motive for this generation's traitors. To consider what can be done about it, we're joined in our Washington studios by Cord Meyer, who was an official of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1967 to 1977, once a station chief in London, and Assistant Deputy Director. Mr. Meyer is now a syndicated columnist and teaches at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Also with us is Morton Halperin, Director of the Washington Office of the American Civil Liberties Union and a former member of the National Security Council. Mr. Meyer, on this program Arkady Shevcheko, the U.N. diplomat, said that although he had sold out his own country, the Soviet Union, that he thought that traitors should be hanged. Is that what your view? OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON DC. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES Material supplied by Radio N Reports. Inc may be used for file and reference purposes only It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4 CORD MEYER: I think I'm inclined to agree with Senator Roth of Delaware, who has just introduced a bill in the Senate which would call for an optional death penalty. It would give the judge in the case the right, in the event of major crimes, to optionally choose to apply the death penalty. The advantage obviously being that it would be a deterrent, and it also would be a bargaining chip in the negotiations that led to a final decision. In the absence of that possible penalty, the deterrent effects of the other sentences that are available are not, to my mind, sufficient. SCHOUMACHER: Mr. Halperin, would that work as a deterrent, do you think, the death penalty? MORTON HALPERIN: I think it might contribute to deterrent. But in my view, the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, is unconstitutional, and should not be applied. Moreover, attempting to use the death penalty here will introduce an enormous amount of needless controversy into what I think otherwise could be an agreement about what to do to reduce the amount of spying that there is. I think life sentences are sufficiently deterring. I do not believe that people become spies because they think they will only get life imprison, as they have gotten, rather than the death penalty. I think they become spies because they think they're not going to get caught, and with good reason, because the system has simpy been very poorly designed to catch spies. And it's only recently, and mostly because of luck, that we've begun to catch some of these spies. SCHOUMACHER: You know, there are several different kinds of people you talk about here when you talk about spies. First of all, there are enemy agents. Then there are Americans who have turned traitor. And then, finally, there is the third category, which we saw in the Morison case, and earlier in the Pentagon Papers -- that is, essentially whistle-blowers who don't approve of a certain government policy, and go to the press. Should somebody like Morison face the death penalty? HALPERIN: I don't think he should have faced any penalty at all. I don't believe that it should be a crime to give information to the press. Moreoever, if we confuse the two things, again we get involved in controversy about the public's right to know, and Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4 distract our attention from what is the critical problem, --namely, the fact that people are selling or giving secret information to our enemies and causing great harm to the security of the country. That's the real problem, not the publication in a magazine of a photograph which did not cause any harm, which is what Morison was accused of doing. SCHOUMACHER: What about the view from inside the agency? Would they want to see reporters, as well as their sources, prosecuted, do you think, Mr. Meyer? MEYER: Well, I think that Morton is completely correct. Nobody's dreaming of a death penalty for the kind of infraction that Morison was guilty of. Senator Roth makes clear in his proposal it would only apply in the case of very major espionage infractions. argument. MEYER: That is really beside the point, that whole But I do think that the Morison case is a serious problem because he really leaked information to Jane's, that publication, that almanac in Britain, on the basis of information that had been given to him and that was in his safekeeping. He made it public in order to get a job with Jane's magazine. HALPERIN: The government ought to have the right to fire somebody in that situation. But I think when you start using criminal penalties to deal with that rather than real spying, you chill public debate because the penalty could apply to the reporters as well, and you interfere with the public right to know. So I think that's a totally separate issue that ought to be kept separate. MEYER: It's not entirely separate. Because if you go back and look at what President Harry Truman said in 1951, he said that the difference between --a damaging leak that let's very vital information out and available to our opponents is no different from what was... HALPERIN: But I think that was... MEYER: ...an effective espionage... HALPERIN: Even Harry Truman sometimes made a mistake. MEYER: Well, I don't know. Harry had a lot of common sense about him. Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504400026-4