THE GOVERNMENT STRUGGLES TO KEEP EVEN THOSE SECRETS THAT LEAK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504750001-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 2, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-009658000504750001-3
ASSOCIATED PRESS ~I`~ ~~~~
2 June 1986
The Government Struggles to Keep Even Those Secrets That Leak
/, By W. DALE NELSON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
"AI1 that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret
as passible," the general wrote. "For upon secrecy, success depends in most
enterprises of the kind."The general was George Washington, and the enterprise
he was talking about was "procuring good intelligence" _ or, in short, spying,
What he had to say about it in 1777 is being repeated in his own words and
others in 1986 as official Washington and the journalists who report on it
grapple with what President Reagan calls "this business of secrecy."Keeping
secrets "does not come easily to us Americans," the president said in a speech
Thursday night to tight-lipped veterans of the Office of Strategic Services, the
granddaddy of the CIA.
It certainly doesn't, judging from the administration's experience so far in
dealing with what it says is an alarming leakage of intelligence information in
the news media.
The trial this week in Baltimore federal court of Ronald Pelton, the former
National Security Agency communications worker accused of selling secrets to
Soviet agents he talked with over a pizza parlor telephone, has focused the
issue most sharply.
Rut, as White House spokesman Edward Djerejian told reporters Friday, "there
is a larger question" going beyond Pelton's case.
"Every method we have of obtaining intelligence _ our agents, our
relationships with other intelligence services, our photographic, our
electronic, our communications capabilities have been damaged by
disclosures of sensitive information, CIA Director William J. Casey told The
Associated Press in an interview last week.
The administration is attacking the problem on two fronts and is not finding
the going easy on either. As it seeks to stop its own people from making
unauthorized disclosures, it encounters disagreement in its ranks over how far
to go. And when it cautions news organizations about publishing sensitive
intelligence information, it is accused of trying to muzzle the press.
"Meetings have taken place at the working level to look at how the government
can have better discipline over unauthorized disclosures," Djerejian said.
"When the senior group that would have to make recommendations on this issue
meets, then you get into the area where recommendations to the president will be
discussed in an authoritative way."He said he didn't know when this would
happen.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-009658000504750001-3
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-009658000504750001-3
Among the issues being discussed are how extensively to administer polygraph,
or lie detector, tests to government employees. Casey supports polygraph use,
but Secretary of State George P. Shultz has said he would resign if he were
asked to take one.
Also at issue is a 1950 law against "publishing any classified information
concerning the communications intelligence activities of the United
States."Casey cited this law in referring to the Justice Department for possible
prosecution an NBC-TV report on the Pelton trial. The law has never been invoked
against a news organization and some administration officials are said to
believe it should not be.
Djerejian conceded there are disageements within the administration, but said
he wouldn't get into "who is advocating what."As the government unfolded its
case against Pelton in court, Casey and NSA Director Lt. Gen, William E. Odom
issued a warning:
"Those reporting on the trial should be cautioned against speculation and
reporting details beyond the information actually released at trial. Such
speculation and additional facts are not authorized disclosures and may cause
substantial harm to the national security."Lawrence K. Grossman, president of
NBC News, responded, "There are some countries where 'speculation' or analysis
must be authorized by the government before it can be published or broad cast.
That does not happen in a democracy, and our constitution will not allow it to
happen in the United States."Sen. Charles Mathias, R-Md., a senior member of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, said he believed Casey "is genuinely concerned by
these leaks, genuinely feels that there will same damage be done, but I think
that society at large has to balance whatever that damage may be as against the
much greater damage of muzzling the press."The administration retreated a bit on
the issue of the verb "speculate," which Webster's New World Dictionary defines
as "To think about the various aspects of a given subject; meditate; ponder;
especially to conjecture.""If I had it to do aver again I might not use that
word," said Casey. "I might use 'extrapolation.""'Extrapolate" is defined as "to
arrive at conclusions or results by hypothesizing from known facts or
observations" or "to speculate as to consequences on the basis of known facts or
observations."Djerejian, too, said that "a better word than speculation could
have been found."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-009658000504750001-3