DEALING WITH PRESS LEAKS OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706180001-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 27, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
CBS Nightwatch STATION WDVM-TV
CBS Network
May 27, 1986 3:00 A.M.
Washington, D.C.
Dealing with Press Leaks of Classified Information
FRED GRAHAM: Journalists are always looking for a good
story, and no story is as good as a secret. But when that secret
belongs to the government, national security may be involved.
And deciding who can say what about a national security issue can
be a very tricky business. It is so tricky, in fact, that one
day someone may land in jail over it.
CBS reporter Hampton Pearson takes a look at the latest
controversy.
HAMPTON PEARSON: The rivalry between the press and the
intelligence community heated up last week. NBC News was the
target of a stinging attack by the Director of the CIA, William
Casey. He charged that one of the network's correspondents had
broken the law. The report on the Today Show told of a secret
sold to the Soviets by Ronald Pelton, who is on trial for
espionage. The NBC report allegedly revealed classified
information about U.S. eavesdropping operations. Casey asked the
Justice Department to investigate whether the story had violated
a 1950 law.
The Washington Post had been holding back on a similar
story. They were faced with a Casey threat to prosecute, as well
as a telephone call from President Reagan urging them not to
print. But after NBC's report, the Post went ahead with a
front-page story of its own, minus a few key details.
No news organization has ever been prosecuted under the
36-year-old law. Casey is threatening to crack down, though, on
any future offender.
Critics charge the Administration ought to clean up its
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PPINC'IPAI CITIES
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own act before going after the news media. They say the real
problem is spying, not the stories in the press.
Also, the President himself has been accused of
revealing secrets about U.S. eavesdropping capabilities.
PRESIDENT REAGAN: On March 25th, more than a week
before the attack, orders were sent from Tripoli to the Libyan
People's Bureau in East Berlin to conduct a terrorist attack
against Americans, to cause maximum and indiscriminate
casualties.
GRAHAM: In that speech, the President himself appeared
to give away American eavesdropping capabilities.
The news media have also published information about
U.S. interception of Libyan communications. The CIA charged
these stories broke the law.
Who's right, the press or the government? Here's our
night match resolution: Quote. In its pursuit of stories, the
press has compromised national security interests and covert
actions. It is high time the government cracked down hard. End
of quote.
Arguing in favor of the resolution, John Greaney. He's
a former associate general counsel of the CIA and now head of the
Association of Retired Intelligence Officers. Arguing against
that resolution, Howard Simons. He's a former managing editor of
the Washington Post and now heads the Neiman Fellowship program
at Harvard University.
Mr. Greaney, your opening statement, please.
JOHN GREANEY: Good evening.
Howard, nice to meet you.
Fred, it's nice to be back.
I would like to say that national security is not an
ethereal term. It's defined in statutes. The Supreme Court has
reviewed it and discussed it and explained its ramifications on
many cases. We can get into the cases later.
Specifically, in support of the resolution tonight, I
would like to refer back to a story that appeared in Mr. Simons'
former employer's paper on May 12th of 1985. This was a front-
page story in which Bob Woodward was the principal author, and
identified a March 8th car-bombing in Beirut and had been carried
out by counterterrorist unit trained and supported by the CIA.
That was on May 12th.
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As a sideline, I'd like to comment that Tass carried
that same story on 13 May, Pravda 15 May, and Izvestia on 16 May.
So there was a complete follow-up from the Soviet press.
We then step to the 15th of June, 1985, during the
hijacking of the TWA aircraft, when the hostages murdered a U.S.
Navy Petty Officer Robert Stetham and just ceremoniously threw
his body off the tail of the plane. And at the time, the tower
was reported as saying, "Why did you do that?" And they said,
"Do not forget the massacre at Belabed (?)."
That is the way the press treated an American sailor.
HOWARD SIMONS: I'm not -- I'm more interested in the
general climate today, of what Mr. Casey is trying to do, which
in my recollection is bashing the press in a way that hasn't
happened since the Nixon Administration.
My view of the press is very simple. It's more
interested in keeping government honest than in honest
government, and that the Founding Fathers were very smart. They
believed in checks and balances, and then added another check.
And that other check, in my view, was the First Amendment. And
if you crack down hard on the press, you're going to crack down
hard on democracy. And what you end up with is secret
government. And I don't like secret government.
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney, in your response, there's been a
general answer there to your very specific charges. What's your
general answer?
GREANEY: Well, I would say that I think it's wrong to
criticize Mr. Casey. Mr. Casey is carrying out a statutory
mandate that was given to him by the Congress, which was elected
by the people. This mandate was established in 1947 in the
National Security Act. The act that he identified as having been
violated was the amendment to the Espionage Act of 1950, 789 of
Title 18. Those are specific statutes that have been on the
books, notwithstanding the First Amendment.
And I would offer this argument, that I don't think
the First Amendment is a Holy Grail that is the all-ensuing
answer to everything that people want to make it. I think there
are limits on the First Amendment.
SIMONS: Oh, I definitely think there are limits on the
First Amendment. But having said that, why has not this obscure
law, which has been on the books since 1950, which Mr. Casey got
out of some antiquated trunk and dusted off, never been used?
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GREANEY: That is not so. It's not an antiquated law.
SIMONS: Why has it not been used against the press by
any of the Administrations from 1950 to 1986?
GREANEY: It has been used in criminal cases. It has
been used in the Boyce-Lee trial. Christopher Boyce and Dalton
Lee were convicted of violations of 798.
SIMONS: But they weren't newspaper people.
GREANEY: That's not written specifically for newspaper
people.
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney, let's let Mr. Simons finish his
rebuttal, and then we'll take a break, and then you can have at
him.
SIMONS: The other thing I don't understand is your
implication that -- was it the press's fault and national
security was broken when the young man was killed in the TWA
hijacking? Was it Bob Woodward's fault that a rogue group,
trained presumably with some help with the CIA, caused a lot of
damage in Lebanon?
GREANEY: I would say yes.
SIMONS: Well, that's very interesting. But I don't
think that's what the President of the United States said.
GRAHAM: And with that, we're going to take a break.
SIMONS: It's much more comfortable for them if they can
tell the press what to print and what not to print, and if the
press is so afraid of them that they silence themselves, censor
themselves.
GRAHAM: Howard Simons, that's the classic First
Amendment response to the kind of arguments that John Greaney has
been making. And my question to you is this: We all understand
that in recent years more and more of the information we have
obtained about world affairs come through highly sensitive
surveillance methods, the value of which is incalculable to our
country. Now, when the newsman makes a decision to make the
substance of that public, because the substance he knows is not
damaging to national security, perhaps the method by which it was
collected will be compromised in a way that will damage the
security in ways he cannot know.
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Why should you? Who elected you, a member of the media,
to make that decision, when Congress has passed a law saying that
it should not be made by you?
SIMONS: Well, to begin with, I was unaware of the law
until this recent case.
But having said -- I wish I listened to my mother and
become a lawyer. I could then deal with Mr. Greaney better. But
having said that, it seems to me that it's the government's job
to keep the secret. It's the press's job to find out the secret.
That's been my -- that's the blood the surges through my veins,
and has for 30 years. Once we discover the secret, then it's up
to us to determine whether you publish it or not.
And everyone asks the same question that you asked. And
that is, who died and left you boss? as my mother used to say
when I got uppity. And it seems to me that in a democracy, as
viewed by the courts for these 200 years, the press has had that
role. And it's been a very successful role.
I must say, having been at the Post for 23 years,
covering space and covering nuclear energy and covering
disarmament, and then as an editor, many times we were asked by
government officials not to publish something and many times we
didn't publish them. But sometimes we did. Because in this town
you cannot do business as a newsperson without bumping into a
secret. Twenty million federal documents, twenty million, are
classified in this country every year.
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney?
GREANEY: Well, I would take exception to that
application to this case, Howard, because I think the statute
that we're talking about, that Mr. Casey referred to, of 798,
specifically limits comment on communications intelligence and is
a very narrow statute. And certainly does -- I don't disagree
that there's that many documents classified. But we're talking
about a very specific narrow issue that the legislature...
SIMONS: I'm not talking about that specific narrow
I'll tell you two things I find very -- core irony in
what Mr. Casey is doing, and it is as follows: If I understand
what I read in the press, because that's my information these
days, he suggests that by publishing information people have on
what the alleged spy, Pelton, gave to the Soviet Union, you may
confirm to the Soviets information that they are not certain they
have as accurate.
GREANEY: But he didn't limit it that way.
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SIMONS: Now he goes and confirms it himself by
targeting an NBC reporter and by targeting five newspapers.
If I were the Soviet intelligence appartus, I'd be...
GREANEY: There's different stories, Howard.
SIMONS: I'd be combing the Washington Times, the
Washington Post, Newsweek, Time to see what it is that was
published that's so vital that he doesn't want the Russians to
know about it.
GREANEY: Well, you've confused apples and oranges
because you're in different stories. The Pelton case was a
single story that did relate to the story the Post was going to
publish. Those two and the Polk story on NBC are the same
information that's being dealt with.
But I think you have to go back and find the other
statute that Casey is faced with, and one that you're very
familiar with, and that is obstruction of justice. If Casey
doesn't conform to his statutory mandate to protect sources and
methods from unauthorized disclosure, somebody on Capitol Hill,
or the Washington Post, is going to accuse him of obstructing
justice.
SIMONS: Well, he would be the first CIA Director in my
living memory to be so accused by anybody.
GREANEY: But remember Mr. Helms's case. Don't forget
that case.
SIMONS: But there hasn't been a CIA Director that
hasn't come to the newspapers quietly, pulled them aside, or
"Come out and visit us at Langley, and let's talk about it." And
that's the way every one that I have known has dealt with the
press.
You know, there's a little bit in this that strikes me
as Mr. Casey calling attention away from the fact that every true
secret that has gone to the Soviets in the last X years has
walked out the front door by ex-CIA employees, ex-NSA employees,
ex-government employees, ex-Pentagon employees; not published in
newspapers.
GREANEY: Well, I don't see how you come up with that
answer. The ones that have been caught, the spies that have been
caught, that have been prosecuted have been government employees.
But we don't know how many stories the Soviets gather, just as
this was reprinted, the story that I alleged and affirmed to in
the opening statement, where you end up with Tass, Pravda and
Izvestia redoing and restructuring the whole story.
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SIMONS: You know, there's a very amusing story about
the breaking of the Japanese codes during World War II, in that
the Chicago Tribune actually said the victory at Midway was
possible because we broke the Japanese codes. Now, if you go and
read the history of that, the Japanese didn't know about that
story in the Chicago Tribune. It's kind of logical. They'd have
to really have somebody clip it in Chicago and send it to Tokyo,
or send it to Berlin to send to Tokyo.
It was the lawsuit that the Justice Department brought
that tipped off the Japanese, which then led to them changing the
codes.
And what I'm suggesting is that Bill Casey is doing the
same thing here when he goes after Polk.
GREANEY: Well, I disagree with that because I still
say that Bill Casey is not being selective. He's not going after
Polk alone. Casey is willing to prosecute...
SIMONS: He's intimidating the press, and that's what
his game is.
GREANEY: I don't think the press can be intimidated.
SIMONS: Oh? Well, we'll find out.
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney, why suddenly, then, has he started
to do this? After all these years of all these secrets spilling
out, why now?
GREANEY: He has just become -- I really think that
this incident, when you start talking about individuals' lives
being lost, and these things lay down and they get back to the
question -- and General Odom, the Director of NSA, said one
night, "The real problem is that, having lost the intercept
capabilities because of the publicity attached to it, many
people's lives will be endangered." And this is what the crisis
has come to, that the leaking of information has resulted in the
possibility of loss of American lives.
SIMONS: How about all those people who walk out the
front door with secrets?
GREANEY: Well, I ask you to report those people if you
know about them.
GREANEY: I don't know who they are. Casey doesn't know
who they are.
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GRAHAM: Can you cite a case in which an agent has been
lost because of a press story?
GREANEY: An agent.
GRAHAM: Yeah. One of our agents.
GREANEY: One of our agents. I can cite a similar case.
He was not an agent but he was identified the widow of a
former...
GRAHAM: I don't want to -- I'm sorry, I don't want to.
But you can't cite a case [unintelligible).
But the point -- we saw the President do it, and it was
a decision on his part. Mr. Simons has pointed out that they've
gone out the front door through all these CIA and NSA employees.
It seems to me that the confirmation that you allege by the media
is so minor compared to that that you have to wonder what...
GREANEY: Well, I think you have to consider that, first
of all, espionage cases are very difficult to prove in court.
The burden, a heavy burden, is on the government to prove that
case.
I welcome the fact that if he can identify people who
are giving away secrets, I think Mr. Meese would be welcoming him
with open arms, to go ahead and prosecute those people.
SIMONS: Mr. Greaney, you've been in this town as long
as I have.
GREANEY: Yes, sir.
SIMONS: It seems to me that no secrecy labels, in my
experience, in my experience, which is not as extensive as yours
in intelligence operations, has been that the secrecy labels more
often than not are put on there not to keep a true secret, but
for lots of other reasons.
GRAHAM: Gentlemen, we're going to have to take a break.
You're going to have a shot at each other in just a moment.
GRAHAM: Mr. Simons, complete your question that we
interrupted.
SIMONS: Secrecy labels are put on as often, in my
experience, to stifle criticism, to cover up cost overruns, to
cover up abuse, to cover up power, to do lots of things. And
very few of them are really true secrets.
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GREANEY: Well, that's a different problem, though
Howard. That's a classification problem. And I'm not going to
argue that every document that's classified is properly
classified. That would be foolish to do that. I would still
like to...
SIMONS: Who makes that determination? Can the press
make that determination? If you're not willing to say that every
one is properly classified, who makes the determination?
GREANEY: I think the value has to be made when the
substance is looked at in the story itself.
enough.
SIMONS: That's what the press does.
GREANEY: But I don't think they do it frequently
SIMONS: What they often do is go back into the
literature and say, "Well, this has been published. The Russians
know it and it's all been published."
GREANEY: But they don't know what the Russians know.
That's the thing. The only way the Post would know what the
Russians...
SIMONS: Well, I'm not sure the CIA knows what the
Russians know, either.
GREANEY: Well, the only way the Russians...
SIMONS: I don't even know what CIA knows, because they
never say anything.
GREANEY: The only way the Post would know what the
Russians know is if the Post gave it to them. And you want to
admit that?
SIMONS: Oh, God. That's a disjunctive something or
[Laughter]
GRAHAM: Howard Simons, let me ask you this. We didn't
get an -- I didn't hear an answer to my initial question.
SIMONS: I agree with Nat Hentoff.
GRAHAM: You say that the press's job is to get the news
and print it, and it's their fault for leaking it. But if you
learn or if you suspect that, beyond the substance of that, a
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secret method of surveillance that cost billions will be
compromised...
SIMONS: I do not know of an editor who will willingly
or knowingly compromise that. I still have secrets...
GRAHAM: If he knows it. How can he know it, though?
SIMONS: Well, in checking out the story, you're told.
I mean I've been called over to Langley and I've met with CIA
Directors and I've been asked not to publish some things. And
there are some things we never published.
GREANEY: And to his credit, I would say that the story
that the Post printed this week was a responsible answer to
deleting the...
SIMONS: Well, that's after they had their head bashed
GREANEY: Well, if it takes that, do it. But they
responded.
SIMONS: I disagree.
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney, the report in NBC by James Polk,
he didn't check it out. Russia knew all about those secrets that
he disclosed Pelton told the Russians. How could that possibly
hurt national security?
GREANEY: Well, I think you go back to the interview you
had with Mr. Colby the other night. And the problem is that what
that has done is embarrass the Soviets to the point that they
have to take action, having brought it back up to the public's
interest...
GRAHAM: And we're going to lock up an American reporter
because we've embarrassed the Russians.
GREANEY: Now wait a minute. You're talking about way
do own the road. You've got to go through a process. First of
all...
GRAHAM: You mean you've got to try him first?
GREANEY: You have to go to the Attorney General and get
his decision to prosecute, to indict. And then you go to trial
and then you have the jury system. There are many, many checks
and balances. Just the fact that Mr. Casey would like to see a
prosecution doesn't support that prosecution.
SIMONS: And don't you think he wants that prosecution
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to intimidate the press, to scare 'em?
GREANEY: No. I think Mr. Casey's judgment was that
that story violated the specific language in 798. And therefore
his responsibility was report it to the Attorney General.
SIMONS: And is he going to be terribly disappointed
when the Attorney General says, "I really don't want to touch
this with a 10,000-foot pole, because it's not the democratic
way"?
GREANEY: Well, that's the Attorney General's
responsibility, because he too has an oath to support the
Constitution and the laws of the United States. Now, I can't
speak for the Attorney General. But he has an obligation to
support the Constitution.
SIMONS: So what you're saying, there's an inexorable
business that's going on here, that Step B has to follow Step A,
and Step C has to follow Step B.
legal...
GREANEY: No. I'm saying that there is a process of
SIMONS: Why has no one ever availed themselves of this
in the past? I can't understand why for 36 years...
GREANEY: I don't think the evidence has been so
prominent to show a violation of the common statute. Now, this
is because of the narrowness of the items involved and what it's
related to.
SIMONS: Do you think the statute is constitutional?
GREANEY: Yes, because I don't consider the First
Amendment an absolute prohibition.
SIMONS: It says that Congress shall pass no law
abridging freedom of the press.
GREANEY: A free press.
SIMONS: Yeah.
GREANEY: A free press.
SIMONS: Okay.
GREANEY: A free press doesn't mean...
GRAHAM: It says freedom of the press. It doesn't say a
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free press. Freedom of the press or of speech.
You're going to have to go fast to find your
Constitution. I'm sorry.
We'll be back with more in a moment.
GRAHAM: We're talking about the CIA's threat to
prosecute journalists for revealing classified information about
U.S. intelligence gathering. Here's our night match resolution
once again. Quote. Resolved: In its pursuit of stories, the
press has compromised national security interests and covert
actions. It is high time the government crack down hard. End of
quote.
Our debaters: former associate general counsel of the
CIA, John Greaney; and former managing editor of the Washington
Post, Howard Simons.
And our first questioner is Reed Irvine, who is the
Chairman of Accuracy in Media.
REED IRVINE: I direct this to Mr. Greaney.
Mr. Simons has given us a view of the press as being
people who are motivated only by the national interest in going
after these secrets. Lyle Denniston of the Baltimore Sun, an
unusually candid journalist, has said that he would steal
documents, secret documents off the desk of the Secretary of
Defense, he would break and enter to get such documents, because
his only job is to get information and sell it for a profit.
Mr. Greaney, do you think that journalists are always
motivated by the national interest in going after national
secrets?
GREANEY: I don't know as many journalists as you do,
Mr. Irvine, but I would say that a journalist that practiced
those actions that you described is clearly one that Mr. Casey
had in mind when they should be referred to prosecution under
798. Because if they're going after that kind of material, that
kind of action warrants prosecution in the swifest order and it
should be done.
Now, I don't think you can generalize that all journa-
lists are of that ilk. I think there are responsible
journalists.
IRVINE: But is there a difference between a journalist
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of that ilk and Mr. Pelton and others who sell for a profit
national secrets?
GREANEY: I think it depends on what that journalist
does with the material he steals. He's sort of like a broker at
that point. If he steals it and then comes back and tells you he
got it and wants to blackmail you, then you go after him.
GRAHAM: Howard Simons, I bet you have something to say
about that.
SIMONS: Well, no. Reed Irvine's an old friend. He
runs an organization called Accuracy in Media, whose acronym is
AIM, but they don't always shoot straight.
JANE KIRTLEY: I'm Jane Kirtley and I'm the Executive
Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
I do have a question for you, Mr. Greaney,, and it's
this: We've been talking a lot this evening about the government
owning your secrets. And I'd like to ask you what your
justification is for saying that the government really owns
anything. I thought that the government represented the people.
And I'm curious to know where that designation comes from.
GREANEY: Well, I think it comes -- if I could answer
that portion before you go on. I might forget the question.
The idea is that the government is a system of checks
and balances. You have three parts to the government. You have
the legislative branch, which appropriates the money and sets up
the authority for the government to do business. It is through
that business and through the statutes that the Congress had
passed, which has been elected by the people, that set up these
restrictions.
KIRTLEY: If I may, speaking of checks and balances. It
would seem to me that I would be a lot more comfortable if a
court of law were to tell me that the government was correct in
classifying information than saying it was stealing to take it
away and disseminate it to the people and to have a handful of
appointed officials making that determination.
GREANEY: Well, I think the courts have done that in the
Symms (?) case. If you go back to the Freedom of Information
Act, which has a questionable constitutionality to it that has
not yet been-challenged; but if you go back to the Supreme Court,
where they determined that the protection of sources and methods
was a valid exemption under the Freedom of Information Act, then
I think they have -- the Supreme Court has passed on that
question.
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KIRTLEY: The Supreme Court has also said, however, that
a prior restraint is justified only under the most extraordinary
circumstances.
GREANEY: We're not talking prior restraint.
KIRTLEY: Oh, but we are.
GREANEY: You're mixing apples and oranges.
KIRTLEY: No. We've been talking about a prior
restraint all evening, because the Washington Post has not
published information that they have, sir.
GREANEY: Not by a court order, though. It's not a
court order. It's not something that was brought about...
KIRTLEY: Then it's been even more effective, hasn't it,
because you haven't even had to submit your proof to public
scrutiny that there is a damage to national security.
GREANEY: I think you're dealing with responsible people
when you're talking to the editor of the Post.
SIMONS: No. You're helping create an Official Secreets
Act by fiat, is what you're doing. And that's what she was
suggesting.
MAN: A question for Mr. Simons. My name is Dolph
[unintelligible]. I'm a consultant. on international security
affairs.
Isn't the change in the entire tenor of world events
which operates out of the change of the technology and the rise
of organizations like the KGB, and now terrorism, isn't that the
thing that causes all organisms within government and in the body
politics to change? And yet the media still remains kind of
frozen.
Now, take a case of national security endangered by not
publishing something. NBC, Henry Champ reporting from the
interview with Abu Abbas, refused to tell people where Abu Abbas
was at that time. Yet Abu Abbas, like Son of Sam, is going to go
out and kill again.
Now, doesn't journalism have to look at some standards
and say, "Yes, for other days, perhaps we had a kind of working
modus operandi. But now maybe we have to change some things for
national security?
SIMONS: I think it's unfair to suggest that Henry Champ
would have gotten the interview had he not promised Mr. Abbas
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that he wouldn't reveal where he was. Now, if you're asking him
to become a participant in the law enforcement business, that's
not his job.
MAN: But what I'm saying, sir, is if Henry Champ
thought the interview was more important than the security
element involved, then Henry Champ is saying exactly what Reed
Irvine mentioned, that they go out for the money, they want the
story, and they're detached, like they live in UFOs and won't be
affected by the results of denying...
SIMONS: Isn't it also possible that Abbas is a
newsworthy figure who has a message and that that message has an
audience, whether you agree with it or you don't?
MAN: He killed Leon Klinghoffer and he masterminded the
Achille Lauro hijacking. He's not a personality you'd put on the
Phil Donahue Show or the Tonight Show. He is a killer and a
criminal. And the press has not recognized this. And I think
there is one of those glowing deficiencies of the press's ability
to mature.
GRAHAM: Thank you very much.
Maryland.
ALAN LUDCKE: My name is Alan Ludcke (?), University of
Mr. Greaney, talking about revealing secrets,
compromising covert operations, 24-25 years ago the press didn't
reveal a covert operation -- that is, the Bay of Pigs. And
President Kennedy said afterwards he wished that the secret had
come out and he'd been saved from one of the worst mistakes of
his Administration.
GREANEY: But I would say...
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney, you have one minute.
GEANEY: ...the mistake was the President withdrew
two-thirds of the air support for that operation. I don't think
it was a bad operation.
SIMONS: Let me take Mr. Greaney's side in this, 'cause
he didn't give you the right answer.
[Laughter]
SIMONS: President Kennedy would have never said that
had it been successful.
GREANEY: Thank you.
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SIMONS: But I do think you're turning the corner on
something else, which is deception. Deception practiced by
government always costs the people of this country, whether it is
the U-2, when the CIA lied when it was first shot down and killed
a promising summit between Khrushchev and Eisenhower, whether it
was the Bay of Pigs, the secret bombing of Cambodia, Watergate,
or the invasion of Grenada. Whenever there is deception, then we
pay a price for it. And I don't think it's worth that price.
GRAHAM: We'll be back with more of this discussion.
GRAHAM: We're back, firing questions at John Greaney
and Howard Simons.
MAN: Mr. Simons, my question is addressed to you.
I'm interested in learning what criteria or standard
that you would use or encourage your colleagues in the media to
use in evaluating what type of information to release to the
public.
SIMONS: Well, I think the impulse and the imperative
ought to always be to print. But having said that, there are all
kinds of yellow lights and red lights that you don't go through.
One is when you think you're going to jeopardize a human life.
Another is when you think you're going to cause something to blow
up. You just don't do that.
And sometimes, to be honest with you, there are national
security in which a Director of the CIA or the DIA or the
President of the United States convinces you that if you publish
it, you really are going to damage the United States. And I tell
you, in my own experience, most -- I can't speak for everyone --
most responsible editors never knowingly and willingly carry that
kind of information.
GRAHAM: Howard, do you think the Post caved in on this
SIMONS: I don't know of the de -- it's unfair. I don't
know enough of the details. I haven't been involved. So for me
to say that...
GRAHAM: Next questioner.
JULIAN SHEPARD: My names Julian Shepard. I'm assistant
general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters.
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Mr. Simons, the 1950 statute does not require the
prosecution to prove that the government was actually harmed by
the publication of classified information. Now that Mr. Casey
has threatened to use the statute, does it have a chilling effect
on journalism?
SIMONS: Oh boy, does it. There are two chilling --
there are three parts to that chilling effect. The first is, as
I suggested, people are going to think twice.
Number two, if you're a smaller newspaper, less powerful
than the Washington Post, you're going to think three times.
Because every time you pick up the phone to call your lawyer,
it's $300 when you say hello.
The second thing is that I think terrorism has given Mr.
Casey an ally. Terrorism in the world has given him an ally in
this bashing of the press. And that is, people are spooked by
it. I'm spooked by it. Everybody's afraid of terrorists. If he
says sources and methods will tell us about terrorists, and if
you kill that we're not going to know about them, that's pretty
heavy stuff.
GREANEY: Well, I think...
SIMONS: Although it's all right for the President to
instantly declassify it for whatever strategic or foreign policy
reasons he wants.
GREANEY: I think you have to give Mr. Casey his due,
and that is the fact that he does have that as a requirement on
his plate right now, that terrorism has been placed as an
additional requirement, collection requirement for the
intelligence community. And it is a major threat.
SIMONS: Did you think the President was wise in
suggesting to the Libyans and giving away sources and methods?
GREANEY: I think the President made a decision, as our
commander-in-chief, to use...
SIMO.NS: I didn't ask whether he made the decision. I
know he made the decision. Do you think it was a wise decision?
GREANEY: I do. I support the President in using the
material that was given to him to explain to the American people
why it was done.
SIMONS: But the press can't do that.
GREANEY: That's right, because I think the President is
much better informed to make that judgment.
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SIMONS: So it's only the government that can inform
the public.
GREANEY: Only the President, in that case.
question.
GRAHAM: I think, with that, we'll turn to the next
MAN: Mr. Simons, my question is for you.
But Mr. Greaney, you can comment on it as well.
Mr. Simons, on PBS a few years back, in 1983, you said
that you would publish secret documents, saying, quote, "My job
is to find them, and finding to publish, because we're not in the
business of drawing moral values."
My question is, is it your view that journalism is an
amoral profession? In other words, are you concerned that
publishing some of these facts may harm journalists or the
reputations of various -- not journalists, but various -- the
national security or people's reputations?
SIMONS: Sure. And I was concerned about it when I was
managing editor. And I can only repeat myself several times
tonight, that there are still secrets I carry with me that I
never published because I thought they would harm either the
national security or human beings.
MAN: Do you think it's an amoral profession?
SIMONS: An amoral?
MAN: Right.
SIMONS: Well, : can't speak for the whole profession or
for everybody. I try to be apolitical. But morality is in the
eye of the inculcation.
GRAHAM: All right, gentlemen. The next question.
SIMONS: One person's morality is somebody else's
immorality, as [unintelligible] pornography.
MAN: My question is for Mr. Simons.
Mr. Simons, Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief of the
L.A. Times, was asked on a TV program last year how he would
handle information about a supersecret satellite, disclosure of
which would have disastrous consequences for our country. Nelson
replied that he would copy them and discuss them with his editor.
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And the moderator said that -- commented that he was being
somewhat -- he was not being careful about them.
And he replied, quote, "Well, that's not my business to
be careful about it. After all, I get it. Hopefully, it's going
to wind up in the paper, and there are going to be a lot of
people who know about it."
Do you agree with this Mr. Nelson on this point?.
[Unintelligible], Meg Greenfield, and Charles Madigan all more or
less agreed with him on the program.
SIMONS: I don't mean to be dense, but I don't quite
understand the point.
MAN: It is the point that you made earlier, that
editors have to be careful and have to check their facts and find
SIMONS: But, you know, Jack Nelson had the Glomar
Explorer story. Bill Colby asked his boss not to publish it.
And it was the editor who made the decision, not Jack, and it
wasn't published -- I mean the first story was placed way in the
back of the L.A. Times, and then they killed the follow-up
stories.
MAN: But do you agree with that quote? I mean is it --
it's not his -- Jack said he didn't have to be careful with it.
"Hopefully, it's going to wind up in the paper, and there's going
to be a lot of people who know about it."
SIMONS: Sorry, I'm not focusing on it. I still don't
-- I don't know whether I agree or not because I don't know the
context. I didn't see the program. I can't comment.
GRAHAM: ...that we don't have the quote in the right
context. Can we pass on that one?
SIMONS: Maybe John would.
GREANEY: Well, I think that you'd have to consider -- I
think what Howard is saying -- I'll support him in this position
-- that Jack Nelson is the bureau chief and he goes to an editor.
He doesn't make the decision as to what goes in the paper.
And I think the point is well taken. There are
responsible editors. And I think his example of the Glomar is
very true. That story wasn't leaked in the Los Angeles Times.
There were other places where it leaked.
So, I would say that the editor plays a very key role
in this kind of situation.
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GRAHAM: We're going to take a break here.
GRAHAM: We're back with John Greaney and Howard Simons,
discussing the media and national security.
MAN: My question is for Mr. Greaney.
Mr. Greaney, Mr. Simons mentioned that he would not
knowingly jeopardize the life of an intelligence agent or
[unintelligible] our national security through leaking
information through the Post, or whatever. When you brief a
journalist like Mr. Simons, can you possibly always reveal all
the reasons why he or she shouldn't reveal a secret? Can you
always be that candid with them?
GREANEY: No. You're very candid with them, but you
also develop a degree of trust, and it's over a long period of
time that there is a relationship that you begin -- we in the
intelligence community would like the editors to come and ask the
intelligence community questions as to what is sensitive and what
sshuldn't be published. That is the ideal solution, to discuss
it; not to get it up on the front burner, not make a big issue
out of it. We would welcome -- and Mr. Casey has said this
himself, that he would welcome the opportunity to discuss
material with the editors before the public...
SIMONS: The kinds of things we want to discuss with Mr.
Casey, though, he won't discuss. Like, what are they doing? And
is it legal? And are they running operations that may not be
subject to public scrutiny or...
GREANEY: The legality of the operations isn't the
business of the press.
SIMONS: Oh yes it is.
GREANEY: That's the business of the oversight
committees.
S I M 0 N S : It's the business of the public of the United
States, because it involves their lives and livelihoods.
GREANEY: But it's the oversight committees that are set
up by Congress...
SIMONS: Not only. Not only. Not only. And besides,
CIA doesn't tell Congress any -- everything.
GREANEY: Oh, they tell them everything.
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SIMONS: Congress is still mad because they didn't know
about the mining of the harbor in Nicaragua.
GREANEY: But they did know about it. I'd take issue
with that.
GRAHAM: If we may interrupt...
MAN: I think this question happens to be relevant to
what your subject -- the subject has turned to.
Someone before mentioned about the press breaking into
the Defense Department. And you mentioned the name of Bob
Woodward. Well, I was young in the early '70s, but it seems to
me that the substantial benefit of having an extra watchdog on
the government greatly outweighs the potential detriment of an
occasional leak.
GRAHAM: Mr. Greaney.
GREANEY: Well, the watchdog -- I wouldn't consider Bob
Woodward a watchdog. I would consider him a little different
description, particularly as I started...
[Boos]
GREANEY: ...that business of the example I gave you to
begin with. That's not the only stories that Bob Woodward has
written that have been damaging to intelligence.
The Watergate situation? I don't think that Bob
Woodward was the sole purpose, in deference to your paper. I
think the legal system of the United States demonstrated the
strength of this country, where you went to the court, you went
to the district court, the appellate court, then you went back to
the Congress and they laid out the ground rules of whether they
would or would not impeach Nixon. I think the strength is on the
system.
GRAHAM: Before we go to your final statement, Mr.
Greaney, do you want to comment on that?
SIMONS: I thought you were going to ask me about my
GRAHAM: I just did.
SIMONS: Haynes Johnson and Howard Simons have written a
spy novel, due out in two weeks, called "The Landing." And it's
full of spies.
UNIDENTIFIABLE: Notice he says spies, not secrets.
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GRAHAM: He thought I'd never ask that question.
Now, gentlemen, we're getting to the time to wrap this
up, [unintelligible] your summations.
John Greaney.
GREANEY: All right. I would like to say that the
circumstances around the use of the First Amendment, in my
opinion, are a Holy Grail that the press is taking advantage of.
And there are limitations on it. The Supreme Court has a whole
series of cases. Our association has published a pamphlet on the
national security and the First Amendment, and it goes through
all the legal ramifications of it.
The specific point that the Supreme Court said, that
while the Constitution protects against invasion of individual
rights, it is not a suicide pact. And I think that demonstrates
that the Supreme Court will evaluate what it is that the public
has to understand to be kept secret. This goes back to the days
of the Revolution, with George Washington, when he said we had
to conduct items in secrecy.
And the Congress has approved money for this. This
Congress is elected by the people. The people support the use of
intelligence. And until the Congress says there will not be an
intelligence community, I think we have to protect the secrets.
SIMONS: Yes. I want to quote two of my favorite
people. The first one is myself. And the quote is that I would
hope that forever the press in this country will go cloakless and
daggerless into the battle for information and news and truth
against those who would deny it information, hide news from it,
and distort the truth.
But the man who said it best was Federal District Judge
Murray Gurfein (?), who during the Pentagon Papers case had this
to say about national security. Quote, "Security also lies in
the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an
obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in
authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom
of expression and the right of the people to know." Unquote.
And to that I say amen, amen, amen.
GRAHAM: Gentlemen, this debate is over. The debate,
obviously, about freedom of the press and national security will
continue in other forums.
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