LIBEL AND REAGAN CENSORSHIP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100030010-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: December 3, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030010-7
ot; :;;,;E 3 December 1983
SHOP TALK AT THIRTY
Libel and Reagan censorship
By Anthony Lewis
Journalists, like other groups, tend
to exaggerate their problems.
When they say the First Amend-
ment is crumbling, as they sometimes
do, I am skeptical.
But I think there is reason for con-
cern about the trend of libel cases
these days: the outlandish damages
claimed and often awarded by juries,
the burdensome cost of defending
against the most worthless claim. .
And now there is doubt about the
continuing availability of what has
been the last essential protection
against outrageous libel judgments:
strict review of those judgments by
judges of higher courts.
The Supreme Court has just heard
arguments in a case in which a libel
plaintiff maintains -that appellate
judges should have no power to over-
turn what he won in the trial court
unless it is "clearly erroneous." He
won, at trial on what I regard as a
far-fetched claim, with no showing of
any actual injury. If he wins in the
Supreme Court, the victory that free-
dom appeared to have won in New
York Times v. Sullivan will have been
undone: It is serious.
But the more serious threat to free-
dom, the one that should concern us
urgently as journalists and citizens; is
the secrecy campaign being carried
on by President Reagan and his
Administration.
I use the word campaign
deliberately. We are all aware that in
the last three years the Federal Gov-
ernment has taken steps to increase
secrecy.
But I am convinced that they are
more than isolated steps. They reflect
a methodical, consistent and relent-
less effort to close off the sources of
public knowledge on basic questions
of national policy: to upset the
Madisonian premise that American
citizens must be able to examine pub-
lic characters and measures. .
We have a dramatic example at
hand: the exclusion of the press from
the invasion of Grenada. I make no
point here of some special privilege
for reporters; I do not believe in that.
The point, rather, is the one made
by Justice Powell: that in-the modern
world the public necessarily relies on
the press to find out what is going on.
To keep reporters away from Gre-
nada was to keep the public ignorant,
and that was exactly the idea.
Moreover, it worked.
This is not the place to argue the
merits of the invasion, the need for it.
But the Reagan Administration was
able for a week to control most of the
facts bearing on those questions, to
assure that during that crucial period
the public heard only its version of
events - and formed a lasting
judgment on that basis.
And so we heard that U.S. forces
were bombing and shelling with sur
gical precision and thus had avoided
causing civilian casualties - only to
learn at the end of the week that a
mental hospital had been bombed.
We were told by the admiral in
charge, Wesley McDonald, that there
were at least 1,100 Cubans on Grena-
da, all "well-trained professional
soldiers;" at the end of the week the
State Department agreed with the
Cuban Government's estimate that
fewer than 800 of its nationals were on
Grenada - and said only about 100
were "combatants."
President Reagan said that the
Soviet Union had "assisted and en-
couraged the violence" in Grenada,
the bloody coup, but there is simply
no evidence of such a Soviet role.
I take those few examples from
many in an important story by Stuart
Taylor Jr. in the New York Times of
Sunday, Nov. 6. It filled a full page
inside the paper - I wondered myself
why it was not on page 1- with care-
ful, meticulous reporting of the
inaccurate and unproven statements
made by Administration officials dur-
ing the Grenada operation, and of the
facts concealed.
But will the public awareness ever
catch up with the truth?
I doubt it. The reporter who has
covered Ronald Reagan longer than
anyone, and with a good deal of sym-
pathy, Lou Cannon of the Washing-
ton Post, wrote:
"Reagan & Co. believe that they
won a pair of glorious victories on the,
beaches of Grenada two weeks ago.
The first was the defeat of the ragtag
Grenadian army and band of armed
Cuban laborers. The second was the
rout of the U.S. media. Reagan's
advisers are convinced that the media
are virtually devoid of public support
in their protests of both the news
blackout of the invasion and the mis-
leading statements made about it."
Yes indeed. The President and his
men have good reason to feel that
way. Anyone in the press who
thought the public loved all of us and
our business - and you would have to
have been pretty silly to think that -
must have been disabused in the Gre-
nada affair.
John Chancellor said his mail was
running 10 to .1 against the protests
that he voiced against the exclusion of
reporters, and I think that was not
untypical.
Standing up for the proposition that
the press has a right - no, a duty - to
examine the officially-stated pre-
mises of a war is not going to be easy.
I do not mean to put overwhelming
emphasis on Grenada. It is part of a
pattern whose significance is much
greater as a whole.
For example, President Reagan's
preference for secret wars is not lim-
ited to Grenada. He is encouraging
and financing one against Nicaragua,
and doggedly resisting Congressional
efforts to end the covert character of
that war.
We have learned lately that he has
also undertaken a secret military plan
of significance in the Middle East: to
finance a special forces unit in Jordan
that would deal with trouble through-
out the region.
Secrecy in government more gener-
ally has been an objective of the
Administration from the day it took
office.
But the most important single
action by President Reagan to
insulate the government from
informed criticism was his order last
March imposing on more than 100,000
top officials in government a lifetime
censorship system that would make
them, even after leaving government
service, submit for a clearance sub-
stantially everything they want to
write or say on national security
issues: books, articles for newspaper
Op Ed pages, even fiction.
Before -Cyrus Vance or Henry
Kissinger could write about a disaster
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030010-7