CONTROLLING LEAKS TO THE PRESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300008-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: June 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO 1V REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM The Carol Randolph Show
June 24, 1986 10:00 A.M.
STATION WDVM-TV
Washington, D.C.
Controlling Leaks to the Press
rA-ROL RAND LO sH Are leaks to the press getting out of
hand, a-n --s- ou I some members of the press be prosecuted? Join
us and call in your opinion as we discuss national security and
the media with my guests: John Greaney, Executive Director,
Association of Former Intelligence icers; Herb Hetu, former
Navy public information officer and farmer C 'A public affairs
officer;-Rita-Braver, CBS correspondent; Tom Diaz, Assistant
Managing i or he Washington Times; an im Anderson,
diplomatic correspondent with United Press Internati
It's a pleasure to have all of you here this morning.
Is this much ado about nothing? I mean does Mr. Casey
really have a legitimate gripe here?
JOHN GREANEY: Mr. Casey, as Director of Central
Intelligence, has a statutory mandate to protect intelligence
sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure. The Congress
gave him that responsibility. He's merely exercising his
statutory responsibility.
RANDOLPH: That's a law that's been on the books since
1950, though, John.
GREANEY: No, this is '47, the National Security Act.
The statute that you're referring to is the Communications
Intelligence Act.
RANDOLPH: The one that he wants to enforce.
GREANEY: Which is a very narrow statute that has
specific items involved. And I think he merely referred it to
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the Attorney General for his consideration. Mr..Casey was not
going to prosecute anybody.
JIM ANDERSON: I just wanted to say what Mr. Casey has
not said and what you're not saying is that the biggest leaker in
town, by far, is the U.S. Government, the official part of the
U.S. Government. And in this case., particularly with this
Administration, the Administration comes to court with unclean
hands.
RANDOLPH: Like the pot calling the kettle black. Is
that what we're talking about here?
ANDERSON: I'm saying that there are good leaks and
there are bad leaks, and they're talking about prosecuting bad
leaks. The good leaks, which have come almost in uninterrupted
torrent from the White House, are perfectly okay.
For example, the case of the Soviet freighter bound for
Nicaragua obviously came from the CIA because it supported the
President's point of view that he is being tough against the
Sandinistas. There's no threat of prosecution there.
GREANEY: Because that doesn't disclose sources and
methods. You've made a judgment, you've got the intelligence,
you're going to use it. The President has the authority to use
intelligence. It's given to him for his use.
But the unauthorized disclosure of classified material
is a different problem.
RANDOLPH: Well, what about the...
T0M,DIAZ: There is another point here that hasn't been
brought out, and that is this: Sure, Mr. Casey is responsible
for protecting sources and methods and national security. But
it's a question of methods of how he goes about doing it. And
the debate is whether the best way to do that is to threaten the
press or whether it is to control leaks within the
Administration.
And there's another problem here, too. The power, to
classify information has been so degraded because it's so widely
used in the Administration, in the government, that people simply
don't respect that stamp as much as they should.
GREANEY: But you see, that's another problem, though.
DIAZ: But it's related to this problem.
RANDOLPH: Congressman Edwards says that this Adminis-
tration is .guilty of overclassifying everything, that we ought to
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go through and streamline it.
GREANEY: I don't think he's a valid authority. He
left the FBI under some very strange circumstances, and he
doesn't like to talk about that.
RANDOLPH: But does he have a good argument here?
GREANEY: No, he doesn't have a good argument.
RANDOLPH: You think he does have a good argument.
HERB HETU: Yeah, I do. Because -- and I [unintelli-
gible] disagree with my friend John. But I know that one of the
most dangerous things that happens in government is people who
leak things, and they don't know what they're leaking because
they don't respect the classification system. And particularly
in the national security area, where you have instant Assistant
Secretaries of State and Defense who are given instant clearances
and don't really understand the material that they're handling.
That scares me to death.
RITA BRAVER: One of the things that Mr. Casey has been
upset about has been the discussion of intercepted Libyan cables.
That's something that the President spoke about in his own news
conference. It's also something that I happen to have reported
on, and I know that this information came from within the White
.House. It was clear to me when I was reporting on this story,
because it's not an area that I usually cover, that it was a
message that the White House wanted to get out.
Unfortunately, what you sometimes have is a situation
where signals are crossed, where someone in the CIA isn't aware
that somebody in the White House wants to leak something. So you
have people with different agendas. And lots of times reporters
are simply trying to get the information. They don't really care
how they get it, as long as they can try to explain to people why
the United States is going after Libya.
BRAVER: I think that's exactly right.
And I think you also have another agenda for Mr. Casey
here, as well. We reported on CBS that Mr. Casey is in fact very
concerned about a forthcoming book about him that Bob Woodward
from the Washington Post is writing. A lot of people in town are
aware of this. Mr. Casey appears to be afraid that he is going
to be accused of being the source of some of the information in
it. And this seems to be something that he is very worried
about.
RANDOLPH: So why punish the messenger, in that
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RANDOLPH: What about these issues, too, that the people
who are responsible for leaking -- or covering these issues don't
have the same kind of sense of responsibility, if you will, that
have been perhaps there in the press a long time ago?
BRAVER: I think that's totally unfair. And I'm sure
that all of us have...
GREANEY: Well, I think the person you mentioned,
though, doesn't have any responsibility. Bob Woodward.
BRAVER: I think that there are instances where Bob
Woodward, where all of us have withheld information because we
know that people's lives are at stake.
GREANEY: Well, I know of an incident where Bob Woodward
was told that a story was false -- this was a year ago, related
to the TWA hijacking -- where he put out the story about the
CIA-trained counterterrorists in Beirut. That was a false story.
He put it out. Then when they had the killing of the Navy man on
the TWA hijacker, the tower said, "Why did you kill an innocent
person?" And they said, "Remember the ones that were killed in
Aba el-Bad (?)."
And that was a false story. It was investigated by the
committee, and. they found out it to be false.
BRAVER: ...I think is whether or not I think the
question that Carol asked here is whether or not reporters are
patriots. And I think that it's totally unfair to suggest, as
some people do, that reporters are not interested in...
DIAZ: Well, there's a middle ground here, though. You
don't have to go so far as to say that reporters are not patriots
or are disloyal to say that they may or may not understand the
significance of what they've gotten.
Now, the Libyan cables and the President's disclosure,
that is one case. But you also have cases where people in middle
levels of government have access to very sensitive information.
And if they don't know what they're doing, how could we expect a
reporter to?
RANDOLPH: So what would you do?
DIAZ: Which argues that -- and this is a point where I
do agree with Mr. Casey. And that is that when a news institu-
tion has access or stumbles across something that appears to be
extremely sensitive, there's no reason why that organization
should not talk to the government about what they've found.
I'm not saying...
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RANDOLPH: You mean checking out whether or not this
DIAZ: Yes. Check out and find out the level of the
sensitivity and discuss that.
Now, I know that's done by many institutions, and it
should be done.
RANDOLPH: So why are you on a hit list? I mean I'm
just curious...
DIAZ: We'd like to know that, too.
ANDERSON: I think there's a basic misunderstanding on
this side of the room as to what exactly a leak is. I think
there's a general perception on the part of the intelligence
agencies and the White House and the public that a leak -- your
telephone rings and you say, "Hello. This is Ken Anderson, Leak
Central, here." And you get it, and all set.
give him my phone number.
[Laughter]
ANDERSON: What happens is that I read the newspapers, I
read the foreign newspapers, I read the FIBUS (?) , I read other
wires, talk to embassies, pick up a tip, a hint. Three out of
four are wrong. I keep pursuing it. If I get one confirmation.,
I don't stop there. I go get three or four.. And it's a sense of
building a mosaic.
It is not something that falls into my lap. It is
something that I go out and pursue. And, obviously, I have no
coercion over the people I talk to.
RANDOLPH: So we're not talking a Deep Throat kind of a
situation here.
ANDERSON: I can't force them to leak to me. I can ask
them questions, and they know what I haven't known so far. And
they think, and I think quite correctly, that they have a
responsibility to steer me in the direction of accuracy. And if
that involves some information which happens to be on a classi-
fied document, that does not mean that that bit of information is
in fact the only thing that makes that document classified.
RANDOLPH: So how would you handle that, Jim? As Tom
was saying, let's say you-come across something that you're not
quite sure whether or not it is infringing on, perhaps, national
security. Would you go, would you check?
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ANDERSON: Of course. Of course.
RANDOLPH:. So you draw lines here.
ANDERSON: And if I -- well, an example, the. best
example I can think of. During the Iranian hostage crisis, by
the simple method of counting and knowing who was then in there,
knowing from the families in the United States, we knew, I knew
that there were six hostages short. We knew and we deduced, and
correctly as it turned out, that they were hidden someplace in
Teheran. There was no question of our going with that story,
'cause we did not -- obviously, didn't want to tip off the
Iranians.
And when it finally was tipped off by a Canadian
newspaper, as it happened, then we went with the country. But to
my knowledge, not only did we at UPI know the story, the New York
Times did, NBC, and.I can't tell you how many others. There was
no question of going with the story.
RANDOLPH: We're going to have to go to a break here.
When we come back.I'll let you finish up your point.
I'd like to also get into how the NBC -- that NBC story
about the alleged terrorists.. And we'll find out where we are
with that.
RANDOLPH: We're talking about national security and the
press. We've closed our poll. We asked the question: Should
members of the press who disclose national security issues be
liable for prosecution?-. And 69 percent of you said yes and 31
percent of you said no.
GREANEY: If you leave it to the American people,
they'll vote right
[Laughter]
DIAZ: What was the...
RANDOLPH: National security was the issue. All right.
DIAZ: Right away we're at the problem of definition.
Now, I could certainly agree with John, for example, that there
are certain kinds of classified information, the disclosure of
which ought to be -- subject the person who disclosed it to
criminal prosecution. But national security is such a broad
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word. And I have seen classified documents, and I've been in the
government and seen classified documents that are classified
solely to protect someone from embarrassment...
RANDOLPH: From embarrassment.
DIAZ: Or because it's easier. Just like it's easier
for a lawyer to give yo the advice not to do something, it's'
easier for. someone in government to take out a stamp and hit it.
BRAVER: The embarrassment issue, I think, is really key
here. And I think Jim started to get to it at the beginning.
That what you have frequently, when people go after reporters for
disclosing information that's classified or. secret in some way,
is a desire by someone to save themselves from embarrassment or
to control the nature of the debate. If you only release certain
information, then you can only talk about certain information.
If you only release information that the Contras are freedom
fighters, you can only discuss the Contras as freedom fighters.
If you also release information that Contra funds have been
siphoned off into personal bank accounts, then you have a whole
.other agenda to discuss.
This is a way'of controlling the debate.
GREANEY: That's a different problem, though.
RANDOLPH: It's time for a phone call, John. Just a
moment. Let me try for a phone call.
Go right ahead....
WOMAN: I have always wanted to be a journalist. And I
never looked at the press as a spokesperson or the spokespeople
for the incumbent President. And I don't think it's unfair to
ask the press to be that way [sic].
RANDOLPH: All right. I don't think anybody has said
that's their role, either. To be, a spokersperson for the
President?
ANDERSON: No, certainly not. But on that same point,
we were talking about patriotism, duties and responsibilities of
citizens. I, as a journalist, have a duty and a responsibility,
which comes close to being patriotic, is to find out as much as I
can, as a working journalist, and to try to determine the truth,
and then to distribute that truth.
If, in the course of it, I come across something that
somebody convinces me is so secret that it would harm the
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national security, of course I would listen to it. But my duty
as a journalist is to support the First Amendment.
RANDOLPH: And you assume that the American public can.
understand and decipher this information on their own.
ANDERSON: Yeah. It's not my First Amendment. It is
the public's right to know. I'm just a channel.
GREANEY: But there is nothing in the First Amendment
that says a right to know, though, Jim. That's a misconception
on the absolutist of the First Amendment' The First Amendment
says there'll be no law passed which abridges a free press. And
the idea is that that doesn't say a right to know. That's an
interpretation that the press has picked up and gone with.
ANDERSON: It's implicit in that amendment and the rest
of the Constitution.
RANDOLPH: But let me just move us away just a minute
from that and to this issue about coverage here, this Abul Abbas
interview that was done. Was NBC compromised in. that? There
seems,to be a real debate-about it, some saying that actually the
government knew -- they're going after NBC because of the fact
they don't have any idea how to track down the terrorists.
What's going on here?
ANDERSON: I think the NBC decision was a disgrace. I
think that a professional journalist does not make deals with his
sources like that. You wouldn't make a deal that us that -- with
me saying, "I'll come on, but as long as you don't ask me about
what kind of car I drive." You don't make deals.
RANDOLPH: Anybody else with a different point of view?
GREANEY: I support that. I think that was an
abominable thing. They're an accessory after the fact in the
crime situation. He's an indicted fugitive and they need to get
hold of him. And I think it was despicable they did it.
RANDOLPH: Well, there were quite of people that were
going after him. A few people -- I believe the New York Times,
in fact, turned it down under the conditions that were given.
But what about the fact, the public's right to know?
Does that...
GREANEY: I don't support that theory.
HETU: You know, I think there's so much time and energy
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wasted arguing, that if there was a little trust and respect on
both sides, you could work this problem out.
When I was at the Central Intelligence Agency, I worked
with newsmen very carefully. I worked with some of the people
you've mentioned. They called me and told me when they had a
story. And I would say, "Well, this fact gives me gas. This
fact makes me bleed, because you've used the name of an agent or
a source. And it doesn't do any good for your story. Please
take it out." And they did. They believed me.
DIAZ: I can't name the names of people, but I have
talked to several people who I can comfortably say are in very,
high levels in the intelligence community, and some of them agree
and feel very strongly that we've gotten to the point now where
on the government's side, the government is so withholding of
information that it's hurting itself in the long run because it
forces those of us on our side to ferret out wherever we can get
it. And they would like to see mor.e open...
RANDOLPH: But how did it get to the stage that it is
right now?
HETU: Isn't there some way that these sorts of things
could be mediated by a central party of some sort?
[Negative responses and confusion of voices]
GREANEY: ...protect intelligence. You've got to
consider that.
BRAVER: It has to be between the people who are
reporting and the people they cover. And you're lucky when you
have a good relationship with someone who can say to you...
RANDOLPH: Who you respect, also.
BRAVER: ..."If you disclose this" -- I've had it happen
to me.,both ways. I had one situation where I wanted to do a
story on Robert Vesco and his_ activities in Cuba. And the
Justice Department called me in and told me that to run it would
be a problem, it could spoil an ongoing operation. And I
discussed it with my bureau chief and with the CBS Evening News.
We agreed we wouldn't run it.
It was a Friday. On that Sunday, Family Weekly came out
with a story that had everything in it. We went to the Justice
Department on Monday and said, "What about it?" They said,
"Okay, run it."
And that's the kind of thing that makes you lose faith.
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On other occasions I have been asked to hold off on
running stories until someone was picked up who was going to be
arrested. And of course we do. We don't want to be responsible
for having people escape.
RANDOLPH: ...You're on the air.
MAN: I have great respect for both the security and
intelligence information community, as well as the press.
However, my problem seems to be that the security community has
such a broad line on what national security is, and it seems so
personal sometime. And I think that the press should bring a lot.
of these stories out that have not come out.
And I'd like to know what the panel feels on where does
the line start and where does it end.
RANDOLPH: All right. I'll tell you what. We'll take a
break, come back and try to answer your question.
RANDOLPH: Let's get back to that caller's point about
the security issue, about whether or not -- how do we define it?
And I guess that's where we are here. How do you define what
needs to be covered and whether or not these guys ar really
infringing, perhaps, on individual rights.
DIAZ: There are certain things, as a journalist, that I
think absolutely should not be reported. And it gets back to
this question of the communications statute, whatever it is, of
1950 that Mr. Casey is trying to enforce.
One, inexcusable to publish anything that would
compromise an ongoing intelligence-collection operation. And
journalists don't always know if that will have the effect.
Absolutely not anything that will hazard the lives of
people who are in the intelligence community. Or -- and this is
where it gets a little difficult to tell -- the rebound effect of
that. And that's what some of the big debate was about Bob
Woodward's articles last year., whether or not that had an effect
on it and, in effect, caused the TWA hijacking.
But those two factors, compromising ongoing security and
threatening somebody's life.
RANDOLPH: But Tom, how does that cover, for example,
those spy trials? And what about the issue about the launching
of satellites that in fact would carry the means to observe the
Soviet Union? I mean is that, again, national security, the fact
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that we were told that the shuttle was going up and it was
carrying this satellite?
GREANEY: Well, Carol, let's go back to the spy trials
first. Once the government makes the decision to prosecute in an
espionage case, the material has already been considered, what
will be made public. That's very true.
What Mr. Casey was saying about the Pelton case was that
he didn't want a lot of speculation that was going to go into
hypotheses and things.
BRAVER: Isn't that incredible, that he would suggest
that people not be allowed to speculate?
GREANEY: Well, it's a very. dangerous area.
BRAVER: Doesn't that even make you a little nervous,
that someone is suggesting that...
GREANEY: No, it doesn't bother me at all, because
speculationcan be very...
BRAVER: ...people in this country can't speculate on
something?
ANDERSON: He thinks the Soviets can't speculate?
GREANEY: They can speculate, but confirmation is
another problem. The narrowness of that statute...
ANDERSON: But my speculation doesn't confirm anything.
BRAVER: And that statute does not even - as I
understand it, does not even mention speculation. That's
something, just a little tidbit that Mr. Casey put into this.
GREANEY: As a warning. It was a warning. That's all.
RANDOLPH: Warning? Are you sure that's all? As
someone said, it's a chilling effect.
GREANEY: Why?
RANDOLPH: Has there been a chilling effect.
[Confusion of voices]
GREANEY: ...the difference between chilling and
warning. .I don't understand the difference.
RANDOLPH: A chilling effect is that someone will not
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do perhaps as aggressively as they would do on any other
occasion.
GREANEY:_ They were very aggressive in covering that
trial. I don't think it inhibited any coverage of that trial.
BRAVER: And part of that reason was that some. of the
things that Mr. Casey went after -- for example, the disclosure
of one of the code names -- was something that had been revealed
during a pretrial hearing. There was a later decision
not to talk about it during the trial itself, but it was
something that a lawyer said during pretrial.
Part of the problem was that I think that you had a
sense from Mr. Casey and from the head of the NSA that they were
losing control, and they were very nervous about the trial. One
of the...
RANDOLPH: Was that the basic issue,. control?
BRAVER: One of the Justice Department attorneys who was
involved in negotiating with the NSA and the CIA over how the
case would be tried said to me, "This is open-wound time for
them. Every day this stuff gets talked about in open court
hurts them. And they are very, very nervous about it because it
has never happened before."
But believe me, everything that was talked about in that
trial had been sanitized pretty much. And the Russians had it.
GREANEY: But Rita, this is what happens.in every trial.
In every prosecution for espionage, you have the same
hand-wringing as to how much you're going to have to give up.
BRAVER: That's exactly right.
GREANEY: It's a very serious problem.
BRAVER: And the NSA has traditionally been the most
secret of the intelligence -- part of the intelligence community.
And yet I heard things in the courtroom that I had only read
about without having actual confirmation before. So here the
government was standing up and saying, "Yes, you're hearing from
top officials of the NSA admitting on the scope of U.S. ability
to intercept Soviet signals." It never had been discussed
before. And I can understand that people were nervous about
this. It certainly is...
ANDERSON: Could I go back to something that Herb said
before which may supply some kind of an answer to this: that
there should be and has been a working relationship between the
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intelligence agencies and the press which has worked to the
benefit of national security.
The best example that I can think of was the Glomar
Explorer case, which was well known to several journalists.
Colby went around town. Anybody who had ,a piece of the story was
told, "We'll tell you about it, but you have to hold it. You
hold it until" -- and everybody said,""Well, we'll hold it if the
other guys will hold it." And eventually it did hold until as
much as the submarine as they could...
GREANEY: Unfortunately, your namesake was the one that
ANDERSON: Yeah. But by then, of course, the sub had
been brought.up and...
G:REANEY: But it prevented the rest of the-thing being
acquired.
RANDOLPH: But that's your point about having:that kind
of r_elationship,.which I gather, as Rita was saying, it either is
a one-on-one basis or it just doesn't exist, at all.
BRAVER: And Mr. Casey can be extremely selective about
l
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