CORDIAL TRUCE OVER LEAKS FORESHADOWS BATTLES YET TO COME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000200880048-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 48
• Publication Date: June 9, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
STAT
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0" PA6 AM' LOS ANGELES TIMES
9 June 1986
Cordial Truce Over Leaks Foreshadows
Battles Yet to Come
By DOYLE McMANUS, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON-After three
weeks of skirmishes, the Reagan
Administration and the press have
declared a cordial truce in their war
over leaks of national security
secrets. Although both sides are
claiming victory, neither seems
qui,e sure who won.
And both sides also agree on one
other thing-new battles are yet to
co e.
The CIA, which touched off the
disp!!!n Director William J.
Casey threatened to prosecute
newspapers and television net-
works if they published details of
the+ secrets sold to Moscow by
convicted spy Ronald W. Pelton,
no i says it has achieved most of its
purpose-to prevent the news me-
dia,from immediately publishing or
broadcasting any secrets that come
their way.
'jVe're Pleased About That'
"A lot of people have paid atten-
tion to what we said, and we're
STATpleased about that," CIA spokes-
woman Kathy Pherson said. "A
L-1 few haven't, and we don't appreci-
ate'that."
Editors who published articles
about the stolen secrets-in some
cases after deleting material at the
Administration's request-main-
tain that they gave up nothing in
the confrontation.
We haven't done anything dif-
ferent from our normal practice,"
said Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive
editor of the Washington Post.
"We've thought an awful lot about
the issue" because of Casey's ac-
tion, he said, "but then, we always
have. . . . They (the Administra-
tion) have not done themselves a
lot of good."
Senate Intelligence Committee
Chairman Dave Durenberger (R-
Minn.) welcomed the airing of the
touchy issue. "I think we're enter-
ing an era where the relationship
between the government and the
media on national security issues is
going to be redefined," he said,
"and there are going to be more
cases of this kind in the future
rather than less. But we don't have
any of the answers yet."
White House Communications
Director Patrick J. Buchanan not-
ed: "Leaks are like prostitution and
gambling. You can control them
and contain them a bit, but you're
not going to eliminate them."
For the time being, President
Reagan's Cabinet has shelved the
idea of charging newspapers and
television networks with criminal
espionage. Also dormant are pro-
posals for a new FBI strike force
and increased use of lie detectors to
ferret out leakers inside the bu-
reaucracy.
Those decisions were at least
implicit rebuffs to Casey and Na-
tional Security Adviser John M.
Poindexter, who had argued for a
bare-knuckled offensive against
both those who leak classified
information and those who print it.
But the Cabinet-level group that
met to consider the issue last week
agreed to continue a measured
crackdown against government
employees who divulge secrets to
the press. Even before the furor
over the Pelton case, the Pentagon
fired a senior official who had
confirmed to reporters the secret
shipments of Stinger missiles to
rebels in Angola and Afghanistan,
and the State Department dis-
missed a political appointee for
leaking a cable critical of House
Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill
Jr. (D-Mass.).
The FBI also has launched a
program to improve the perform-
ance of its existing "leak squad"
with new training and other mea-
sures, officials said.
'AGood Bit of Anger'
"There's a good bit of anger
welling up inside the Administra-
tion, legitimate anger, over leaks
which can fairly be described as
gross breaches of confidence and
national security leaks," a senior
White House official said. "My
view is that they ought to be
prosecuted and the people that do'
them punished-the people who
are doing the leaking."
State and Justice Department
officials acknowledge that such
talk has had an impact on their
behavior-the very impact it was
intended to have.
"It's had a chilling effect on us,"
said a Justice Department official,
who asked not to be quoted by
name. "Even though we're not
bringing any prosecution, it's hav-
ing an impact in that people aren't
willing to talk to you guys."
And Administration officials
pointedly kept in reserve their
threat to use the espionage laws
against reporters-even while in-
sisting that they would prefer gen-
tle persuasion instead.
"If they violate a law, a legiti-
mate, constitutional, proper law,
they ought to be prosecuted," Sec.
retary of State George P. Shultz
said. "But I think they can properly
he talked to, and journalists are
talked to regularly. And I think
there is a tradition of responsibility
in the journalistic community."
Still, even some intelligence offi-
cials acknowledged that the case
Casey chose to make his point was
probably not strong enough to
sustain a successful criminal prose-
cution. The 1950 espionage law,
which makes it a crime to "publish
any classified information concern -
ing the communications intelli-
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gence activities of the United
States." was initially intended to
prevent American cryptologists
from going public with their
knowledge and has never been
applied against the press.
Last month, in the aftermath of
the U.S. interception of Libyan
diplomatic messages, Casey
warned five newspapers and maga-
zines that they could be prosecuted
if they published any details of
communications intelligence oper-
ations.
President Reagan personally
telephoned Washington Post
Chairman Katharine Graham to
ask that her newspaper not print an
article on "Ivy Bells." the U.S.
eavesdropping operation in Soviet
harbors that Pelton already had
described to the Soviets. (The Post
had discussed the article with Ad-
ministration officials for five
months, had shown them several
drafts and had already delayed
publication several times.)
When NBC went ahead and
broadcast an item describing the
basic nature of Ivy Bells, Casey
asked the Justice Department to
prosecute the network on criminal
charges.
Casey and NSA Director William
E Odom then took a further ex-
traordinary step, warning report-
ers covering the Felton case
"against speculatiogjuid reporting
details beyond the *nation ac-
tually released at trig.
"Such speculatioee and addition-
al facts are not authorized disclo-
sures and may cause substantial
harm to national security," the two
intelligence chiefs said.
That touched off a storm of
protest from the media-"Those
are the kind of. instructions the
editor of Pravda gets," said Brad-
lee-and some quiet criticism
within the Administration as well.
Casey then backtracked a bit, say-
ing "speculation" was probably not
the right word and offering "ex-
trapolation" instead.
Later, the Post and The Boston
Globe printed new details about the
Pelton secrets, but only after delet-
ing material at the CIA's request.
Casey did not specifically recom-
mend that they be prosecuted,
officials said.
Legitimate Ceders
Among U.S. officials privy to the
secrets of Ivy Bells, even Casey's
critics agree that the Administra-
tion had legitimate concern about
divulging more details of the oper-
ation. Some hinted that Pelton may
not have supplied the Soviet Union
with all the technical information
about the project.
The prosecutor of the Pelton
case, Assistant U.S. Atty. John C.
Douglass, pointed out there may
also be other countries against
which the United States can use
the system. Said CIA spokeswoman
Pherson: "One of the first things
you learn in this business is that
people don't always know what you
assume they know."
But it might have been difficult
to convince a jury that NBC, or
anyone else who described Ivy
Bells in detail, had done much
wrong. Some of the information in
.the stones was drawn from pretrial
testimony in the Pelton case; some,
such as the fact that the United
States was using submarines to
eavesdrop on the Soviets, had been
published as long ago as 1974.
And the Reagan Administration,
which frequently uses intelligence
information to bolster its own polit-
ical points, may not be in the
strongest possible position to press
charges.
"They don't think about leaks in
terms of Ronald Reagan declassi-
fying information about terrorist
camps in Nicaragua for television
purposes ... or Ronald Reagan
believing he needs to sell the
American public on bombing Trip-
oli and Benghazi," Durenberger
said. "That all has serious implica.
tions for the collection of commu-
nications intelligence. I would start
my definition of leaks there."
Durenberger conceded that it
was appropriate for the Adminis-
tration to draw the press's atten-
tion to its concerns about leaks. He
said publishers have a "higher
national responsibility" than to
publish unquestioningly the stories
of. their enterprising reporters.
But Casey, he added, went too
far: "The government's case isn't
served by overstepping-by say-
ing, as Casey did, that the govern-
ment has the right to decide what
you can and can't publish. They
went beyond where everybody
agreed they should have gone."
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