TODAY'S LUNCH? SHH. TOP SECRET.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100030141-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 141
• Publication Date: March 22, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030141-2
MICi AF~":~:= NEW YORK Ts
22 MARCH 1983
Today's Lunch? Shh. Top Secret:
"Top secret is mneaniiigless," Presi-
dent Richard M. Nixon confided to-
White House associates in 1971. He
noted that 100 million World War II
documents were still needlessly clas-
sified, and that even the White House
menu was top secret.
Mr. Nixon's comments were made
the day after the United States Su-
preme Court's decision in the Penta-
gon Papers case, five days after So.
licitor General Erwin N. Griswold
conceded to the Court that the United
States was not entitled to an iniunc-
Lion against publication simply be-
cause the material at issue was classi-
fied.
Has anything changed since then?
Not much. A series of reforms. de-
signed to avoid the routine and often
absurd abuses of the classification
system were adopted in the 1970's. But
now they lie in ruins.
On March 11, the Reagan Adminis-
tration announced a new I executive '
order requiring that all Government
-employees with access to classified in-
formation, however low the level of
classification, be forced to sign non-
disclosure agreements that will be en-
forceable by the Justice Department.
(Formerly such agreements were re-
quired only of employees of the Cen-,
tral Intelligence Agency and other
especially sensitive agencies.) Lie-de-
tector tests (though inadmissible in
most Federal courts) are to be admin-
istered throughout the Government to
employees suspected of leaking infor-
mation to the Dress.
By Floyd Abrams
the 1978 Carter executive order. No
longer were Government officials re-
quired even to consider the public's
right to know in classifying information.
When in doubt, officials were required
to classify material at the highest, not
lowest, possible level of secrecy. No re-
quirement of identifiable potential
harm to national security was required
for information to be classified. As a re-
sult, the power of the judiciary to decide
whether information had been improp-
erly classified, though rarely used, was
eviscerated. And now a new executive
order imposes a vow of silence through-
out the Government
.
pp
reversing each of the critical features of -
The precise nature of the classified
information that is revealed is irrele-
vant to the new executive order. It
makes no difference whether the ma-
terial is trivial, or widely known or
beneficial to the public.
We have come a long way from the
changes that followed the Pentagon
Papers case. In 1974, Congress empow-
ered judges presiding over lawsuits
brought under the Freedom of Infor-
mation Act to determine whether ma-
terial at issue was properly classified.
Government officials were required by
an executive order signed by President
Jimmy Carter in 1978 at least to -con-
.sider the public's right to know before,
classifying information, to use the low
est level of secrecy clearance when in
doubt and to classify information only
on the basis of "identifiable" potential
damage to national security. Guide-
lines were established, as well, by
order of Attorney General Benjamin R.
Civiletti in 1980 to insure that the Gov-
ernment carefully and sensitively
studied a variety of factors before
rushing to court to obtain injunctions
against unintentional and possibly
meaningless disclosures of informa-
' tion that may never have been prop-.
erly classifiable in the first place by
present or former employees.
Nothing now remains of these efforts.
The Civiletti guidelines were revoked
outright by Attorney General William
French Smith in 1981. In 1982, President
Reagan signed an executive order
All this has been done in the name of
national security. But there are no ex-
amples of how the classification re-
forms of the 1970's compromised na-
tional security. In-1982, when the Ad-
ministration repealed the require-
ment that damage be identifiable be-
fore material was classified, no exam-
ple was offered of how the rule limit-
ing overciassification had caused any
harm. Nor were any examples offered
when the Civiletti guidelines were re-
pealed. Again, on March 11, when
asked for any specific example of how
national security had been harmed
under the old system, the unidentified
Administration spokesman who an-
nounced the executive order could not
cite a single one.
What concept of national security
leads to such results? It is less one of
politics than of ideology, an ideology
that seems distrustful of information
itself. It is the same ideology that has
led to the denial of visas to visit the
United States to both the Rev. Ian
Paisley and Owen Carron, spokesmen
of radical Protestant and Roman
Catholic groups in Northern Ireland,
and to the widow of Salvatore Allende.
It is the same ideology that led United
States customs officials to impound
books that had been widely sold in
Iran purporting to contain copies of
United States Embassy material. It is'
a fearful ideology that focuses intently
on the risks of information, but not on
its benefits. Nor on the perils of its
ression
su
Floyd Abrams, who has represented
The New York Times and other publi-
cations, is a partner in the law firm of
Cahill Gordon & Reindel.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030141-2