STATE DEPT. EYES ITS OWN FOR LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100090016-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: March 9, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT i
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090016-5
i The question is who gave
Dept Sheehan what. As one de-
partment insider said caus-
tically, "There are only
four officials in the depart-
iL.,yes t- 0 ~aa ment with enough muscle to
have given Sheehan the
5 kind of 'memcons' he print-
'-- ed Sisco Atherton San-
By Jeremiah O'Leary
Washirr~tem Star Staff Writer
The State Department
today is in the position of
appearing to be investigat-
ing some of its own highest
officials, including Secre-
tary of State Henry A. Kis-
singer, about just what
information they provided
for a controversial article
en Mideast diplomacy.
If any department official
gave the author,- Edward
R.F. Sheehan, any of the
documents known as
"Memcons" - memoran-
dums of conversations -
the department spokesman,
Robert L. Funseth said,
"this was unauthorized, a
serious error of judgment,
and disciplinary action will
be taken."
ders and Kissinger. Do you
think anybody is going to
discipline them?"
THE OFFICIALS he
referred to, other than Kis-
singer, are Joseph Sisco,
undersecretary for political
affairs; Alfred Atherton,
assistant secretary of state
for Near Eastern affairs,
and Harold Saunders, now
director of intelligence and
research but a top Middle
East expert for the other
three during the 1973 war
and its aftermath.
There is no question that
Sheehan was briefed at the
State Department's highest
level before writing his
explosive article in Foreign
Policy magazine. He talked
with 60 sources on three
continents, including Kis-
singer and the secretary 's
top Mideast experts, Kiss-
inger's press spokesman ac-
knowledged.
What is not clear is
whether any- of these
sources gave Sheehan mem-
cons that President Ford
and other U.S. officials had
with Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and other
Arab leaders.
It is also unclear whether
Sheehan got such :nemcons
with the promise not to use
them in the precise form in
which they are written.
Sheehan contended that the
conversations reported
were "verbatim"
THE DENIAL by the
State Department that
Sheehan's version of the
conversations were ver-
batim. is hair-splitting.
"Memcons" are not tran-
scripts; they are memos de-
scribine, important conver-
sations and they are the
work of second-level offi-
cials who take notes and
write down the substance of
the conversations from
these notes. But a "mem-
con" is close enough to the
actual conversation that it
has the impact of a steno-
graphic transcript.
What is important is that
the conversations took
place, and no official has
denied the authenticity or
substance of them as re-
ported by Sheehan.
It is really a question of
whether Sheehan violated
ground rules about the dis-
cussions he had with State
Department officials and
whether they gave him
documents to take with him
under certain conditions of
attribution. i
The department arranged
Sheehan's interviews; but
says it did it on a back-
ground basis, meaning that
the information was not
supposed to be quoted or at-
tributed. Funseth also said
that Kissinger himself met
with Sheehan for one or two
brief sessions.
THE ARTICLE purports
to quote Ford as telling
Sadat that the U.S. objec-
tive in the Mideast was an
Israeli withdrawal to its
1967 borders. The disclosure
caused a furor in Israel and
a certain amount of glee in
Egypt.
But the real pinch now is
for Kissinger and his aides.
They often berate others for
leaking important informa-
tion to the papers, and the
Foreign Policy article has
every earmark of being an
in-house State Department
leak.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090016-5