REAGAN'S LAW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100020151-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 151
• Publication Date: January 23, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/21 : CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100020151-2
AR7I CLE A110 LARED IMP YORK Ti)oMS
OK 23 Jaavery 198 --
ABROAD AT HOME
'BOSTON, Jan- 22 -= In no other exemptions, the Supreme Court ap-'
Pamtry is law remotely as important pointed a private lawyer to do so
a strand in the social fabric
We live and barred th
.
e exemptions in an into-
in' a Madisonian system, our free- 1 decision.
eagan s Lave doors enforced by law. A disparate One of Mr. Smith's first actions as
and fractious people, we have been Attorney General was to tell all Gov-
'held -together by law. For us law has ernment agencies to be less generous
been both a liberating and a stabiliz- in responding to Freedom of Informs-
By Anthony Lewis ing. force: both of those because on tion requests. Since then secrecy has
tense issues it has offered a'hope of been one of his main themes.
ordered change. On the day his resignation became
It is in terms of his contribution to known, it was reported that his Jus-
that broad concept of law that an At. tice Department had persuaded a
toiney General of the United States Federal Court of Appeals to prohibit
must be judged. And it is in those publication of a trial judge's opinion
ferns that William French Smith will because it criticized department law-
W_ 4mted by history as one of the yens. It was a unique prior restraint:
Weakest gtges to hold the position: a a perfect symbol of William French'
maip who saw law not as an enlarging -Smith's disregard for the tradition of
'vision of justice but as a narrow polit-. - American freedom; c:
'163 instrument. - Of the many Reagan secrecy mess-,
? ' 413x. Smith's record is marked by uses' a Paalbd eyt r?+o ,novel
`'three major endeavors. He undid was?tix +reeideQt ~order*of-Viarci
what he could of his predecessors' 11;-983.~re ~fetime'oeosor_
?aehievements in civil rights enforce ship em.,~arR
mtht. Be helped in the most relent- -clearadforsen t?a enational
'less and lawless campaign for gov-, i ormation., evoMer-'evas-drafted
erament-secrecy in American histo- by one 11fr..Smit ' ca ap.
'ry.And be worked to create an im- pointees,
~. - Assistant Attorney
perial Presidency, .-unrestrained by General l2ichanddtoWinerd,
. the' constitutional power of Congress. Legally speaking, the most astonish..
.: -a single episode in the civil rights ing thing about the March 11 order was
field forever defined Mr. Smith as an its assumption that a President could
fe-bo)d his ttorney General al unwilling eor unable stablished so drastically change the American
- A
system on his own, without asking Con.
.Principles of law. That was the affair - gress for legislation `Censorship has
??o!,tax -exemptions for segregationist been anathema in the United States.
r?jsssvateschools. from James Madison on, yet here was
-- In the Nixon Administration, in a President purporting to impose that
f970, the Internal Revenue Service hated concept without a shred of legis-;
filled that schools discriminating on lative authority. Congress, resisting,:
racial grounds were not eligible for has postponed enforcement of the
favored tax treatment. For more orderuntil April 15.
--than a decade, under Administrations The same disregard for the consti-
?of-both parties, the Justice Depart. tutional system of limited power,
meat defended that ruling in the dividing authority among the three
couits. branches of government, was evident
-But in January 1982, President Rea- in Mr. Smith's attitude toward ques-
sas Justice and Treasury Depart. lions of war. He supported President
..mmnts announced that they had Reagan's bold attempts to arrogate
changed the position. It was a switch the war-making power to himself, in
so devoid of support in the law that it Lebanon and Central America.
was attacked by both Republicans A wise President wants a Minister of
? and.-Democrats in Congress, and by Justice in his Attorney General: a man
many Justice Department lawyers. of character, independent enough to
President Reagan squirmed des- tell him no when the law so counsels.
',perately to escape the political heat. William French Smith had no visible
' He.said be wanted Congress to pro- independence from his President. He
Jiibit the tax exemptions. He said he came across in Washington as a soci-
-had'not realized that there was a Su- ety figure, without the intellectual
preme Court case pending - he strength that earns respect.
-thought "that the problem of segre- And-now it seems we are to have
gated schools had been settled." Then Edwin Meese 3d, a man who is just as :
-theruth leaked out: He had ordered much a creature of Ronald Reagan's
, thechange at the suggestion of a Ms. and has just as narrow, rightist a view
.sissippi Republican. of the law. Itwas Ed Meese who in 1981
- Fbrough all this undignified mock- called the American Civil Liberties
ery of the law William French Smith Union a "criminals' lobby." Will the
sat silent. When his Justice Depart- Senate care about the continued deal-
meat would not argue against the tax ?gration of a once great office?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/21 : CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100020151-2