SPEECH WRITER AT STATE DEPT. FIRED IN CLASSIFIED NEWS LEAK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100130009-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 7, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: May 17, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100130009-8
_._J r4 _
WASHINGTON POST
17 May 1986
Speech Writer at State Dept.
Fired in Classified News Leak
By John M. Goshko
W.nh t gton Post Staff Wrier
Spencer C. Warren, a speech
writer on the State Department's
policy planning staff, was fired yes-
terday after department officials
said he admitted leaking to the
news media a classified cable from
the U.S. ambassador in Argentina
critical of House Speaker Thomas
P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) and
other members of Congress.
In an unprecedented move,
spokesman Charles E. Redman be-
gan his daily news briefing by an-
nouncing: "The department is dis-
missing a midlevel employe because
he made an unauthorized disclosure
of classified information to the news
media."
Redman refused to name the em-
ploye. However, other department
officials identified him as Warren, a
political appointee with a civil ser-
vice rank of GS-15 who came to
State after working as a policy an-
alyst in President Reagan's reelec-
tion campaign. Warren could not be
reached for comment despite re-
peated calls to his office and home.
The action came two days after
Secretary of State George P. Shultz
angrily told the Overseas Writers
Club that "we've lost all sense of
discipline" about leaks and added:
"It's disgusting the way the stuff
leaks out. We've .got to find the peo-
ple who are doing it and fire them."
In another demonstration of the
administration's campaign again,t
news leaks, Michael E. Pillsbury, an
assistant undersecretary of de-
fense, was fired last month after he
reportedly failed to pass a poly-
graph test. Pentagon sources said
he had been suspected of leaking
information to reporters about the
shipment of Stinger antiaircraft
missiles to rebels in Angola and Af-
ghanistan.
Tensions between the adminis-
tration and the news media over
leaks increased last week when
Central Intelligence Agency Direc-
tor William J. Casey said The Wash-
ington Post, The New York Times,
The Washington Times and Time
and Newsweek magazines should be
prosecuted under a 1950 federal
law that prohibits the publication of
information about communications
intelligence. The statute carries a
maximum penalty of 10 years in
prison and a $10,000 fine.
However, in a speech yesterday
to the American Jewish Congress,
Casey modified his position. He said
he thinks that the five news organ-
izations violated the statute by re-
porting that U.S. intelligence had
intercepted messages between the
Libyan government and its People's
Bureau in East Berlin before the
April 5 bombing of a West Berlin
nightclub frequented by U.S. ser-
vicemen. But Casey added that he
does not favor prosecution after the
fact.
State Department sources said
that Warren, after being confronted
with the findings of an internal in-
vestigation, had admitted that he
leaked to The Washington Times
and syndicated columnists Rowland
Evans and Robert Novak the con-
tents of a cable from Frank V. Ortiz
Jr., the U.S. ambassador in Buenos
Aires.
Ortiz charged in the cable that
O'Neill and other Democratic mem-
bers of a congressional delegation
visiting Buenos Aires had pressured
Argentine political leaders to con-
demn Reagan administration pol-
icies in Central America. Reports
about Ortiz's cable and angry coun-
tercharges from the members of
Congress were published by The
Washington Post and Washington
Times on April 10 and also were
discussed in an Evans and Novak
column a few days later.
The officials said Warren was
fired yesterday morning from the
speech-writing post, which carries a
salary of between $52,000 and
$67,000. Before leaving the depart-
ment he wrote a letter of apology to
Shultz, the officials added. The Jus-
tice Department has decided not to
prosecute him for unlawful disclo-
sure of classified material, they
added.
The moderator of a colloquium
on national security affairs in which
Warren participated at Rutgers
University last year said he had
provided biographical 'material de-
scribing himself as an attorney with
a degree in international affairs.
The material also said he had been
a "senior policy analyst" for the
Reagan-Bush campaign, but cam-
paign staff members said last night
that they had only a vague recollec-
tion of Warren as a researcher.
Other officials who worked with
Warren said he was one of two po-
litical appointees on the planning
staff who were assigned full-time to
writing speeches for senior depart-
ment officials. They said that his
views on major foreign policy issues
were generally conservative, but
they also were unable to specify a
reason he might have leaked the
Ortiz cable.
One source said that based on
brief contacts, he regarded Warren
as a conservative but "not a true
movement conservative."
Staff writers Joanne Omang, Don
Oberdorfer and Sidney Blumenthal
contributed to this report.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100130009-8