CIA AND NSA CHIEFS APPEAL FOR MEDIA COOPERATION IN KEEPING SPY SECRETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100100023-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 7, 2012
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: May 29, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100100023-5
ASSOCIATED PRESS
29 May 1986
CIA AND NSA CHIEFS APPEAL FOR MEDIA COOPERATION IN KEEPING SPY SECRETS
5 BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
WASHINGTON (AP) The directors of the CIA and the National
Security
Agency shifted gears Thursday and appealed for news organizations to
cooperate in efforts to stem intelligence leaks they claim have cost
both human lives and billions of taxpayer dollars.
V CIA Director William Casey and NSA chief Lt. Gen. William domes in
a
unique joint interview at CIA headquarters, played down their recent
threats of criminal prosecution against news organizations and even
backed slightly off a warning they had issued only the night before to
reporters covering the espionage trial of former NSA communications
expert Ronald Pelton.
rX Casey, Odom and Casey's deputy Robert M. Gates agreed to the
interview with The Associated Press, in Gates' words, to lower the
noise level, turn down the volume and have a serious dialogue.''
'1 We haven't made ourselves always as clear as we might be,'' Casey
said. 'And I think that certainly the press has been very hysterical
about the thing, saying we're trying to tear up the First Amendment and
scuttle the freedom of the press. We're not trying to do that.''
The intelligence officials appealed to reporters working on stories
which involve intelligence-gathering techniques to call the CIA for
guidance on which details might risk lives or compromise expensive
information-gathering equipment.
11 we're saying that you can write about the whole range of national
security issues without revealing unique, fragile national intelligence
sources,'' Gates said.
make Casey added, ''We will work with you on that line. I wish you'd
clear the narrow line we're treading here and the sensitivity we have
to the broader rights and needs and contributions of the press."
Casey and Odom said they were led to take their extraordinary
actions of the last several weeks because, Odom said, ''A series of
recent signals intelligence leaks over the last six months is the most
serious we can remember in a long, long time.'Casey added, ''Every method we have of obtaining intelligence: our
agents, our relationships with other intelligence services, our
photographic, our electronic, our communications capabilities have been
damaged. Everyone of them has been severely damaged by disclosures of
sensitive information that lets our adversaries defeat those
capabilities and to literally take them away from us.
11 This is costing the taxpayers billions and billions of dollars
and, more importantly, Americans' and our national security are at
risk. We can't permit this to continue. To do so would undercut our
national security severely, our personal safety, hopes for arms control
our efforts to establish and maintain peace around the world.''
Casey and Gates both said there were agents who had not been heard
from after disclosures in this country. They declined to provide
details.
The interview came as administration sources, insisting on
anonymity, described the Justice Department as extremely reluctant to
comply with Casey's recent request that NBC News be prosecuted for
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re ortin that P 2
P g elton told the Soviet Union about an expensive
technical method of eavesdropping involving the use of American
submarines.
Although Odom presented a legal memorandum arguing that news
organizations could be prosecuted under a 1950 statute for publishing
material about U.S. communications intelligence, the Justice Department
has used the law only against government employees who spied and never
against a news organization.
The Justice Department sources said that although the law might
apply in some circumstances to news organizations, the Justice
Department believed that it would be very difficult to win a conviction
of such a defendant.
Odom said he would recommend prosecution of journalists with the
greatest reluctance'' and that the combination of the law and his oath
to protect intelligence sources presented him with a very
uncomfortable dilemma.''
A day earlier, Casey and Odom had cautioned reporters at the Pelton
trial in Baltimore ''against speculation and reporting details beyond
the information actually released at trial.''
Legal experts, inside and outside the government, quickly pointed
out that the government had no power to regulate ''speculation'' by
news organizations.
Although they complained about the criticism of their statement,
both Casey and Odom tempered the remarks a bit on Thursday.
~If I had it to do over again, I might not use that word, '' Casey
said. ''I might use extrapolation.''
Odom added, ''There's nothing in there that says we're going to try
to prosecute anybody based on speculation.''
They were asked why in the Pelton trial the government is
attempting
to protect information that is widely known to U.S. reporters and
widely believed to be known to the Soviet Union such as the
wiretapping by U.S. agents of telephones at the Soviet Embassy here.
Gates responded: ''How does any member of the press know what the
Russians know? Does anyone in the media have any penetrations of the
(Soviet) KGB (spy agency)? And they don't know the degree to which the
information they provide amplifies on what a spy may have given,
confirms what a spy may have given or updates what a spy has given up.''
Odom added that the government was faced with the danger of giving
up seemingly innocuous pieces of information 'fact by fact until you
cross through the line without every knowing it, and the accumulation
of facts adds up to a new body of information.''
He said, however, that he had a responsibility not to clarify in
public, as opposed to within the administration or in secret testimony
to Congress, how that process may have occurred with past leaks.
And the officials were reluctant to provide publicly what Casey
said dozens even hundreds of examples of damage from leaks.'' He did
say that after news organizations reported about U.S. eavesdropping on
a communication line in Beirut that traffic stopped, undermining our
ability to deter future attacks, which did occur.''
Casey said providing examples was very difficult because it tended
to confirm information for adversaries. He acknowledged, however, that
any trial of a news organization would likely provide similar
confirmation.
Thus, he said, a decision to go to trial would involve a difficult
balancing of competing interests.
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-3
The officials said they also were attempting to curb leakers inside
the government. Among the actions they said were being debated were a
greater use of polygraphs in leak investigations and a more active
effort in such probes by the FBI.
Casey laid the blame for increased leaks on ''a breakdown in
discipline in the government primarily.'' He said this coincides with a
rise in the tempo of threats in this terrorist rampage.''
Nevertheless, Casey acknowledged that every U.S. intelligence
agency
he is familiar with as Director of Central Intelligence is behind
schedule on reinvestigating its employees for security risks. ''It
takes a long time to catch up,'' he said.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100100023-5