DANIEL SCHORR COMMENTS ON EFFORTS TO PLUG LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910012-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: October 2, 1986
• Content Type: REPORT

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-009658000705910012-0
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RADIO TV R E P
O RTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENU~CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM All Things Considered STATK~N WETA Radio
NPR Network
DATE October 2, 1986 5:00 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
~~ Daniel Schorr Comments on Efforts to Plug Leaks
MARGO ADLER: The FBI has formed a new unit to:
investigate leaks of sensitive government information to the news
media. News analyst Daniel Schorr says that he finds disturbing
symmetry in that news and the alleged spreading of disinformation
by the National Security Agency.
DANIEL SCHORR: The FBI's four-man seekers-of-leakers
team would have been knownin Nixon times as the plumbers, but
might today be more aptly labeled as the keister cops, referring
to what President Reagan has said he is up to in leaks.
One of the unit's first reported assignments, not
surprisingly, is the leak last June of a secret report of the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, PFIAB to us
insiders. The report excoriated the FBI and the CIA for
mishandling the case of Edward Lee Howard, the discharged CIA
agent who blew the agency's operations in Moscow, was fingered by
defector Vitaly Yurchenko, escaped while under 24-hour F8I
surveillance and defected to the Soviet Union.
What the keister cops are supposed to investigate is not
how Howard got away, let alone why Yurchenko went away, but how
word of the criticism got away.
One trouble the leak-seekers may run into is distin-
guishing between authorized and unauthorized leaks. In 1983
President Reagan ordered a full-scale FBI investigation, with
polygraph tests, because of a leak that Robert McFarlane, then in
Lebanon, had sent a cable recommending an air strike against
Syrian positions endangering the American Marines. Three months
later, the FBI concluded that the source of the information had
been a White House briefing. And what's more, McFarlane told me
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-009658000705910012-0