PRESIDENT'S SECRECY ORDER IS UNNECESSARY AND UNWISE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100030148-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 148
• Publication Date: March 16, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/17: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030148-5
LOUISVILLE COLRIER-JOURNAL (KY
16 March 1983
`secrecy order
is necessar
RONALD REAGAN is`'hardly the.
first ? president to bemoan the fact that
"confidential" information tends to.
leak. through his administration's fin-
gers like vanilla ice cream at the.
beach in July. But. like his predeces-
sors, he's the one who bit the end off
the-cone. What does he expect?.'.- . _
.When an administration leaks: infor-
niation to the media for its. own pur-
poses, its example understandably en=
courages others to do the same. That's
not necessarily, bad: - our government
would run a lot less smoothly if offi-
cials couldn't float - trial balloons; or.
criticize an agency's policies without
being publicly identified'by name. But:
where do you draw. the' Line?
President Nixon, when he activated
the "plumbers" to search for leakers in
his administration, said 'he was' draw=::
ing the line at national security. But
"national security," in the Nixon dic
tionary, meant anything threatening
his re-election.
-Now it's President Reagan's turn.
Just two months after' angrily- an-
pouncing that' he'd "had it up to my
keister with these leaks" " and ordering
tighter controls on press contacts with
White House staffers, he's going after
the potentially more serious leakage of
classified information. But his prescrip- i
tion is a case of blatant overkill, a
capitulation to the sort of police-state
mentality. that was such a characteris-
tic of the Nixon administration.
Mr. Reagan: has' ordered that an' y4
federal employee with access to classi-4
fied'information must agree in advance
to submit any writings for government
review, and to submit to a lie-detector
examination if asked - to do so by
agents investigating a leak of such in-
formation. This extends CIA practices.
to the rate Department, House,
Justice a ther agencies.
It 'will intimidate a lot of people. But,.
it won't work, as Kentucky's Senator
Huddleston implied this. week, because
it's a double standard. j
....... ....
and., unwise
Senator Huddleston, a member of
the Senate's Select Committee on In-'
telligence, notes that information pre-
isented only days earlier to the commit-
as 'classified was turned over to the
world- by the Reagan administration
when it published 300,000 copies of a
Defense Intelligence Agency report on.
.Soviet military power. The report was
released, 'of course, to bolster President
Reagan's attempts to head off ' congres
sional cuts im defense spending.
"Selective declassification," as Mr.
Huddleston called: it, tends to make
cynics . of - those. who deal with classi-
fied data. When today's secret can be-
come tomorrow's headline as -a. result
of political expedience, it cheapens the
value of secrecy and challenges the
credibility of' the whole system.
The same point is emphasized by the
'President's order that the writings of I
everyone with access to ultra-secret
documents be washed through a pre-
publication screening. Theoretically, at 'l
A east, that would apply not only to
memoirs by former officials but maga-
zine articles, novels and letters to the
editor.' Yet in practice, as everyone
knows, all outgoing presidents, secre-
taries of state and other high officials
now pepper their memoirs: with select-
ed revelations cleared by no one but
themselves. It's -a double standard
that's unlikely to be changed, and thus
it's guaranteed to fail.
As for threatening all employees
with lie detector tests, that's simply
government by intimidation. The tests
are of such questionable accuracy that 1,
they're not even accepted in court. But
security-fetishists love these machines
for the fear they invoke. When even
the innocent tremble at the thought of
interrogation, as totalitarian regimes
since the Spanish Inquisition have
proved, then life becomes simpler for
those 'in charge-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/17: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100030148-5