DURENBERGER BLAMES REAGAN ADMINISTRATION FOR SOME NEWS LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605140007-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: September 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605140007-2
24 September 1986
DURENBERGER BLAMES REAGAN ADMINISTRATION FOR SOME NEWS LEAKS
BY CHRISTOPHER CONNELL
WASHINGTON
Sen. Dave Durenberger, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, said Wednesday night the Reagan administration is itself to blame
for news leaks that have harmed U.S. spying efforts.
Durenberger, speaking on a panel with Central Intelligence Agency
Director William J. Casey, said the administration let sensitive information
slip on several occasions this year when it was sought to rally support for the
bombing of Libya and aid to the Nicaraguan rebels.
The Minnesota Republican said Casey himself emerged from a White House,
briefing a few months ago and revealed that Russian pilots were flying
reconnaissance aircraft in Nicaragua.
"Though the damage in some of these cases is considerable ... I really don't
know of any effort to restrain or to punish the officials that were responsible
in each of these cases,"Durenberger told 140 persons at the meeting of the
Washington chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, the society of professional journalists.
Last fall, after Durenberger publicly criticized Casey's management of the
CIA, Casey upbraided the senator and accused his committee of leaks.
Durenberger said it was ironic that the congressional intelligence committees
often were "cut out of the information loop" because of leaks they had nothing
to do with.
He said the media itself shares some of the blame for the current
"prostitution" of U.S. intelligence-gathering activities.
"Generally, journalists are all too willing to be used in return for
information. ... It is deplorable when stories which harm our interest, :ind
potentially our citizens, are published for the sake of a scoop," he said.
Casey said he will press for tougher laws to punish both government employees
who leak secrets and the news media for willfully publishing sensitive
in formation.
"The y GB and other hostile intelligence services every year spend billions of
dollars trying to acquire this information. But the unauthorized publication of
restricted information hands to them on a silver platter information that their
spies, their researches, their satellites are working 24 hours a day to uncover
and use against us," Casey said.
The senator and the CIA chief were joined on the panel by two Pulitzer
Prize-winning investigative reporters: Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, who
is completing a book on the CIA, and James Polk, the NBC-TV reporter whom
Casey asked the Justice Department in May to consider prosecuting for a brief
report on the Ronald Pelton spy case.
Polk reported thatPelton, a former National Security Agency employee, had
given the Soviets information about an eavesdropping operation by American
submarines inside Russian harbors that was code named "Ivy Bells."Polk said he
. Am".
?- Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605140007-2