ESPIONAGE LAW AS A MUZZLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740037-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 37
• Publication Date: October 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740037-3
ARTICLE ED
ONPAGEA
BOSTON GLOBE
23 October 1985
WIL-L-IA-M V SHANN N l
Espionage law
as a muzzle
I normally do not write about the First
Amendment and about government efforts to
censor or intimidate reporters and editors be-
cause I suspect many readers regard such arti-
cles as self-serving.
I am moved to make an exception in the case
of Samuel Loring Morison. He is a naval intelli-
gence analyst convicted last week in federal
court in Baltimore on four counts of espionage
and theft for giving secret photographs to
i Jane's Weekly, a British military publication.
Morison is the victim of a grave injustice. His
is only the second case in which the espionage
laws have ever been used to prosecute someone
for turning government documents over to the
press.
The first was the case of Daniel Ellsberg and
Anthony Russo who gave the Defense Depart-
ment's confidential history of the Vietnam War,
the so-called Pentagon Papers, to the New York
Times. That case was part of a deliberate at-
tempt by the Nixon White House to frame two
opponents of the Vietnam War. The case was
thrown out of court because of government mis-
conduct.
The espionage laws are meant to guard
against people who give secret information to a
foreign power with the intent of harming the in-
terests of the United States. Handing documents
to a newspaper or magazine that publishes
them is considerably different from slipping
them to a foreign government.
In addition to his regular job for the Navy,
Morison had a "moonlighting" job as American
editor for Jane's Fighting Ships, an annual ref-
erence volume published in Britain about the
world's navies. This book Is the bible in its field,
and its annual publication Is always the occa-
sion for stories in the world's press.
People who write about military affairs regu-
larly refer to it. Its information is so authorita-
tive that I have always assumed that its editors
must have the cooperation of Western Intelli-
gence agencies in compiling it. I was therefore
not surprised that Its American editor was him-
self a naval intelligence official.
The Navy knew about Morison's part-time
job with Jane's and permitted it, although testi-
:mony in the trial indicated that his Immediate
superior disapproved of the relationship. The
charge against Morison was that he gave Jane's
Weekly three photographs taken by a US satel-
lite showing a Soviet ship being constructed at a
Black Sea shipyard. They were published in the
magazine and widely reprinted.
A retired official of the Central Intelligence
Agency testified that there was nothing of value
to the Soviet Union in the photographs because
the Russians obviously knew everything about
their own ship and they had already obtained
elsewhere a copy of the technical r,anual for the
satellite.
Morison's conviction will be appealed. In the-
ory, he could be sentenced to up to 40 years in
prison and fined $40,000. After he was convict-
ed, the prosecutor said: "I would hope that peo-
ple who are tempted to give out. In an unauthor-
ized fashion, information relating to the nation-
al defense, stop doing it."
This is pompous nonsense. There is no espio-
nage here. Morison is at worst guilty of an im-
propriety and deserving perhaps of a repri-
mand. If he is guilty of espionage, I would esti-
mate that most of the reporters covering the
Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA
are likewise guilty for they have published se-
cret information that has been leaked to them
"in an unauthorized fashion." What Is unusual
in the Morison case is that he was both in the
government and In the press: he leaked a story
to himself.
The Morison prosecution is in line with the
Reagan administration's relentless effort to con-
trol all sources of information and to manage
the news to make Itself look good. It is not con-
cerned about leaks as such: it just wants to be
certain that only its top officials and their desig-
nated spokesmen do the leaking.
No dissenters are to be allowed to blow the
whistle and disturb official policy. No lesser offi-
cial such as Morison is to be permitted to cut
through rules and regulations that are often ri-
diculous and stultifying. That privilege Is re-
served for Henry Kissinger and other Very Im-
portant Persons who write their instant mem-
oirs.
The Reagan administration professes to seek
a fantasy known as total security. Let us hope
that the higher courts do not permit them to in-
voke the espionage laws in their pursuit of this
unholy grail.
William V. Shannon Is a contributing col-..
umnist.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740037-3