TALE OF TWO LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100090008-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: March 27, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090008-4
SI I 27
-'Co2 :'/ Q Leaks
It is en!ightening to compare two recent cases of viola-,
tion of security-confidentiality-secrecy and what is being
done about them. One is the case of Daniel Schorr, the
CBS News correspondent who found a copy of the widely
discussed Pike Committee report on intelligence burning a
hole in his pocket and decided that the public should have
a look at its actual words even though the House had
voted, under administration pressure, to bury it. The other
is the case of Secretary of State Kissinger whose apparatus
made available, to a writer for Foreign Policy, documents
on his 1975 negotiations leading to 'the disengagement
between Israel, Egypt and Syria-which, in the words of
columnist Mary McGrory, "served . to reveal him as the
greatest negotiator since Moses bargained with God."
In the case of Schorr, the House Committee on Stand-
ards of Official Conduct has sprung from a mere bud
into a budget of $350,000, with a staff of forty-three and
a projected 1,100 hours of investigative time. (Since some
2,000 copies of the Pike report were printed, and assum-
ing only one reader per copy, a rough calculation would
give a half-hour per "suspect" for the ethics committee
probes.) But Kissinger, who quite clearly authorized
the whole leak, has managed to plumb the depths of his
colleagues' indiscretion, which he called "gross," in a
mere three days and already the two sub-leaders have
had their "`reprimands." It is reasonable to think that
these showy slaps on the wrist will not leave deep scars.
.Since Kissinger has been the loudest and most persis-
tent complainer against the alleged indiscretions of Con-
gress, which he claims make the conduct of international
affairs impossible, the Foreign Policy article, with its'
quotations from Kissinger's conversations with Arab and
Israeli leaders, should be deeply embarrassing to the
Secretary of State. They would also seem to do much
more harm to the proper conduct of this country's foreign
policy than any amount of revelations on the ineptitude
and eventual criminality of the American intelligence
apparatus.
If shuttle diplomacy produces as its main by-product a
flattering portrait of,the American shuttler's brilliance, at
the expense of all confidentiality for his interlocutors,.
what foreign leader will be eager to expose himself (or
herself, since Golda Meir is extensively quoted) to this
experience the next time around? Kissinger, in his closing
days as this country's first diplomat, is obviously prepared
to take that risk. His motive can only be, apart from
simple vanity, the burnishing of his own image as the
indispensable man of American foreign policy. It is a
dangerous game that he plays. He will not salvage the
policy of "detente," which the President has at least
verbally cast adrift during this political season, by such
discreditable tactics.
As for Daniel Schorr, the object of all the House of
Representatives' wrath, he awaits the fall of a two-cd;ed
ax. The ethics committee is sharpening one side, trying"
to figure a way around the protections of the First Amend-
ment. And the craven businessmen who own the CBS
radio affiliates are honing the other blade in .the interest
of preserving their "license to print money" (as a broad-
cast license has accurately been described). The CBS
affiliates have counseled CBS News to consider bring
Schorr.
All sorts of double standards are at work here. It is all
right for a Secretary of State to have revealed his bril-
liant manipulation of foreign statesmen in a ticklish dip-'
lomatic situation (ard then to put on a show of blaming
subordinates, entirely dependent on him, when his in-
discretions are criticized). It is all wrong for a reporter
who happens to possess a document which Congess,?,
an-&!r executive branch pressure, has weakly decided to;
suppress after its substance has been widely reported, to
make the text itself known to the American public.
It's a tale of one city-but of two dubious standards
of morality.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090008-4