HIS OWN PETARD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100030015-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 24, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030015-2
ARTICLE AF RID NEW YORK TIMES
ON PACE -Z 24 November 1983
ESSAY
His Own Petard By Will. Safire
In the Briefingate investigation, the moralized state of the F.B.I. when
F.B.I. has expended over 4,000 man- ? you took it over, you would refuse to.
days to- find out who obtained Jimmy be stampeded into abusing investiga.
Carter's debate briefing book for Mr. tive techniques that could ruin repu-
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 - The
Frankenstein's monster of the Rea-
gan Administration - an obsession
with secrecy that has unleashed the
so-called lie detector on 112,000 for-
merly trusted officials - is now ris-
ing to maul its creators.
In his infamous National Security
Decision Directive 84, Mr. Reagan di-
rected the F.B.I. to drop its require-
ment that leak-hunts be related to
criminal prosecution; thereby plac-
ing F.B.I. agents at the beck and call
of bureaucrats wanting to terrorize
subordinates , without court re-
straints. He has forced Government
workers to give up their rights to
refuse to be booked up to a fearsome
and often inaccurate machine; "ad-
verse consequences will follow an
employee's refusal to cooperate with
a polygraph examination ......
To the President's men, such cater-
ing to the boss's predilection for poly-
graphs must have seemed like a great
idea. Now some of them rue the un-
foreseen consequences:
man was willing to take a lie-detector
test but charged that C.I.A. Director
William Casey, whom Mr. Baker ac-
cused of obtaining the book, was duck-
ing. Under pressure of this challenge
(lie detectors at 100 paces) Director
Casey allowed as how a polygraph
about a three-year-old event would be
"demeaning" but he would take it.
Ir, a second episode, the tables were
turned. On Aug. 30, President Reagan
issued another jeremiad against
leaks; not two weeks later, after he
decided in the National Security
Council to shell Moslem militiamen
in Lebanon, that "secret" decision
was not leaked but disseminated by a
wide variety of Administration
sources to all three television net-
works as well as major newspapers..
Oddly furious, the President ordered
an all-faucets plumbing operation.
This time it was 44r. Casey who
came forward with his arm out,
volunteering for the flutter-box test.
And this time, according to the Casey
camp, it was Mr. Baker who showed
great reluctance to be subjected to
the procedure he did not find repug-
nant when it was directed at 111,999
untrustworthy colleagues.
In severity, a three-network leak is
equivalent to an Australian three-dog
night. The dissemination was top-
level, and not from an N.S.C. secre-
tary cleared for Sensitive Compart-
mented Information who would blub-
of staff James Baker said that their
ber a confession at the heart-stopping
sight of a lie detector. "The Ship of
State," Walt Rostow is supposed to
have said, "is the only vessel that
leaks from the top."
Here is an Administration that has
enshrined the lie detector, which is a
device to measure nervousness, not
truth, and is regarded with such sus-
picion by scientists that its results are
not admissible as evidence in the Fed-
eral courts. Here are two of the na-
tion's highest officials, each con-
vinced that the other is a liar. Here is
the President, who has removed the
F.B.I.'s previous requirement that
criminal prosecution be the goal of,
any leak investigation, saying "Find
theleakerl"
What would you do if you were Wil.
liam Webster, Director of.the F.B.I.?
If you were a weak lawman, eager to
please the President, you would "flut-
ter" every suspect in both investiga.
lions and publicly pillory the first per-,
son to break into a sweat. On the other I
hand, if you remembered the de-
The so-called lie detector is a civil-
liberties abomination; NSDD 84 is a
disgrace to conservative principle;
its author, Deputy Assistant Attorney
General Richard Willard, is one of
those earnest, clean-cut young fel
lows in the grand tradition of Tom
Charles Huston, who in revering se-
curity subverts the Constitution.
Poetic justice abounds in the notion
of the President's men being the first to
suffer from the President's obsession.
That same petard is hoisting former
C.I.A. chief Stansfield Turner, perpe-
trator of its Publication Review Board,
who is now having fits clearing his own
book, "Revolution in Spying," with
C.I.A. censors emboldened by NSDD
84: they will not even let him confirm-
revelations already made by Presi-
dents Carter and Reagan.
Mr. Reagan should stop this liede-
tector mama before he requires him-
self to attach a box with its jumping
needle to his own arm during press
conferences. If he does not3nut his
closest associates, he should confront
them or fire them, and not let his sus-
picion send a chill through tens of
thousands of public servants with se-
curity clearances.
He cannot set a double standard for
security: exempting high-level sus.
pects and fluttering civil-service secre-
taries; rather than forcing Mr. Baker
to take a test that too often brands
truth-tellers as liars, he should scrap
the damnable procedure.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030015-2