THE POST AND PELTON HOW THE PRESS LOOKS AT NATIONAL SECURITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500140021-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 1, 2000
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: June 8, 1986
• Content Type: NSPR

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Am'-N WASHINGTON POST
rim F . ' 8 June 1986
The Post and Pelton:
How The Press Looks
At National Security
By Benjamin C. Bradlee
N ATIONAL SECURITY means pro-
tection or defense of the country
against attack, sedition, espionage,
or other forms of hostile interference.
It isn't a complicated concept.
It isn't just hard to be against national se-
curity; it's inconceivable.
And yet, why is the director of Central In-
telligence trying to get various news organ-
izations indicted for the treasonous disclo-
sure of information classified in the interest
-of national security? Why does the director
of the National Security Agency threaten to
prosecute news organizations if they publish
information he feels threatens the national
security? What does the assistant to the
president for national security affairs have
in mind when he joins the battle with such
relish?
Why is the president of the United States
himself so concerned that he calls the chair-
man of the board of this newspaper and asks
that information be withheld in the interests
of national security?
What's all the fuss about? Do these men
really think the people who run this news-
paper would betray their country? What re-
porter and what editor could betray this
trust, and look their owner in the eye?
It sounds so simple, but it isn't.
The Washington Post has been at the
center of some stormy national security de-
bates in the last 20 years. One of those de-
bates-the Pentagon Papers-went all the
way to the Supreme Court in 1971 before it
was resolved, in favor of the press.
The most recent, and the most anguish-
ing, of these debates surrounds the story we
published late last month about the Ronald
Pelton spy case, after eight months of inter-
nal discussion and six months of conversa-
tions with the highest government officials.
As usual, outsiders seem both fascinated
and mystified by how this newspaper han-
dles this kind of story.
The Pelton case illustrates two importan~
points about how The Post deals with na-
tional security issues:
^ First, we do consult with the government
regularly, about sensitive stories and we do
Benjamin C. Bradlee is the executive editor
of The Washington Past.
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withhold stories for national security rea-
sons, far more often than the public might
think. The Post has withheld information
from more than a dozen stories so far this
year for these reasons.
^ Second, we don't allow the govern-,
ment-or anyone else-to decide what we
should print. That is our job, and doing it re-
sponsibly is what a free press is all about.
T rouble starts when people try to
sweep a lot of garbage under the rug
of national security. Even some very
highly placed people.
Like President Richard Nixon in 1969,
when he described a New York Times ex-
clusive report on the secret bombing of
Cambodia as an egregious example of na-
tional security violation.
That's right out of Kafka, when you think
about it. The Cambodians certainly knew
they were being bombed, and since only the
United States was then flying bombing mis-?
sions in Indochina, they certainly knew who
was bombing them. If the Cambodians
knew, the Vietcong knew. And if the Viet-
cong knew, their Soviet allies knew imme-,
diately. So what was all that about? Well, the
American people didn't know and, in fact
they had been told we would not bomb Cam-
bodia.
Here, national security was used to cover
up a national embarrassment: The president
had lied to the American people and to the
world. But the New York Times story, by
reporter William Beecher, was used by the
White House to justify creation of the infa-
mous Plumbers unit, ostensibly to plug the
leak that produced this dreadful violation of
national security.
This led us to Watergate, of 'course. Is
there anyone now alive and kicking in to-
day's national security debate who remem-
bers Nixon looking the world in its televi-
sion eye and telling us. he couldn't tell the
world the truth about Watergate because
national security was involved?
The worst He of all.
All of this is not to say that there is no
such thing as a legitimate claim of national
security. Of course there is. Ever since
World War II, a standard example of what
not to publish for reasons of national secu-
rity has been the sailing times of troopships
leaving American harbors for foreign battle.
But the world doesn't work that way any-
more. Another good rule for when not to
publish involves the risk of American lives
(though that one has been used in cases
where the risk was all but impossible to
conceive). In any case, this newspaper does
keep information out of print for reasons of
national security. I can't give you a list
without violating the national-security in-
terest that led me to withhold publication.
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 'Fc P I etiees*dW/jhjM CIA Mfl - +1d @O1E OMW12"inn
NO some close calls--?etorles! -'that are laaon" by news organizations on irWitary'as-
eveoNdY run, after long discussions where pects of the mission would result in a De-
?M!n6 views are vigorously defended. tense Department investigation, Abel said.
e W
hi
.
as
ngton + ~aau-
Potf Feb. 18, 1977, under the ally by one of his editors, "What t the the hell is
Millions to Jordan's King Hus- in that satellite, anyway?" He said he would
5001hid under reporter u? i. make a few calls" to find ntt T......i.,....
(as distinct from economic or
!1
m
iid) had been Daid to the king b
the
y
MOW Carter had been president less
thank month. He agreed to see Woodward
and me; after we sought White House re-
ad to the story before publication. The
P t totally disarmed us by admittipg
the story was true. He said that the pa k-
ments had been stopped, and then stunned
us by saying that he had known nothing
about it until The Post had sought White
Hou& reaction, despite multiple briefings
during the preceding months by Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger and CIA Director
Gegrge Bush. The president never asked
t* the story not be printed, although he
made. clear he hoped it would not. He told
us that the story, if printed, would make the
progress he hoped for in the Middle East
hardw to achieve.
The argument over whether to print or
not, to print was spirited, to understate it.
Some of us felt that the national interest
would beat be served if the world knew that
the CIA had a king on its payroll, and that
neither the outgoing CIA director nor the
outgoing secretary of state felt that fact
was Important enough to share with the
new' President- that might Others
resolution of the problems
of the Middle East more difficult was not
worth the candle of publishing.
There are no absolutes in such discus-
sions. Rightness or wrongness lies in the
eye of the beholder. Our decision was to
publish. Hussein is still king. Bush is the
president. Carter is the former pres-
vice klent
U nder President Reagan, there was
only one major point of tension about
national security between the White
House and this newspaper during the first
term. It is hard to say whether this period
of comparative detente was the result of the
presence in the White House of James Bak-
er as chief of staff and David Gergen as di-
rector of communications, both now labor.
u~ in different vineyards, or the absence of
Washington Post interest in national secu-
rity matters. The latter seems unlikW...
The one incident occurred in the waning-
days-December 1984-of the first term
and Involved Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger, The story stedtmed from an
eftwrftM Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard F. Abel about
under his and Mary Thornton's bylines, de-
scribing in general terms its signals-intel-
ligence mission.
On that same morning, Weinberger was
en route to a CNN early morning talk show
interview, where he intended to push the
Defense Department budget, which was al-
ready under a certain amount of attack from
the Congress. He was interrupted by CBS
reporter Reid Collins and asked if The
Post's story "gave aid and comfort to the
enemy" (an odd question, it seemed then
and now). Weinberger replied that the story
did just that, and the fat was in the fire.
The Post issued a statement saying that
there was nothing in the Pincus-Thornton
story that had not appeared in bits and
pieces somewhere else. But the damage
was done. More than 4,000 letters to the
editor were received. Some of the letters
contained threats of bodily harm, even
death.
The story would die .there, a minor, if
scarring skirmish in the battle over national
security, were it not for a lecture given at
Emory University a few days later by Gen-
eral Abel. The general was asked if The
Post had violated national security by pub-
lishing. He replied that The Post's story
contained little or no information not on the
public record. No Post reporter was present
at the lecture, but a student called the pa-
per to report both the question and the an-
swer. We smelled a hoax, and asked to lis-
ten to a tape. We listened. He said it. We
still wanted confirmation from General
Abel, and finally got it at 9 p.m., when he
returned to his home from Atlanta.
S ome time in September 1985, reporter
Woodward came into my office, shut
the door, and in almost a whisper laid
out an amazing top-secret American intel-
ligence capability that emerged in bits and
pieces eight months later in the trial of Ron-
ald Pelton. Woodward described in great
detail how the communication intercept had
worked, where the communications were
intercepted, every detail except Pelton's
name.
Woodward didn't have Pelton's name be-
cause no American knew for sure at that
point that a man named Pelton had sold this
intelligence gold mine to the Russians five
years earlier. That didn't start to surface
until well after Vitaly Yurchenko defected
last Year and fingered Pelton. Yurchenko
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 in had an faft Tbc eTt02 sp- ill 12
the beans. Pelton was arrested last Nov. 24.
But without knowledge of Pelton, back
last September, The Washington Post had
no knowledge that every detail of our story
was already known to the Russians. We
thought we had the highest national secu-
rity secret any of as had ever heard. There
was never a thought given to publishing any
of this information.
At one of our weekly breakfasts, I told
publisher Donald E. Graham about the sto-
ry, and about my concern that while the ad-
ministration was beating the press upside
the head for run-of-the-mill leaks, truly im-
portant national-security information was
floating around town. I wondered out loud
to him about trying to get an appointment
with President Reagan to inform him of our
information and our concern. We scrapped
the idea on the grounds that it would inev-
itably appear to be self-serving and grand-
standing.
About that time I did run into the national
security adviser, Vice Adm. John Poindex-
ter, at a dinner party, and asked him for an
appointment to discuss the same subject.
lWe did meet, and he suggested I talk to Lt.
William Odom, the head of the Nation-
al Security Agency. General Odom and I
first met at his downtown Washington office
in the shadow of the Executive Office Build-
ing on Dec. 5, 1985. Post waging editor
Leonard Downie and two members of
Odom's staff also were present. We told the
NSA chief the detailed information we had,
information we said that the Russians now
had as a result of Pelton's treasgWe said
we felt extremely uncomfortable with this
information, but we had it, the Russians had
it, and we asked why it should be kept from
the American people.
General Odom shook his head in dismay.
He said the information was still extremely
sensitive. We didn't know exactly what the
Russians knew, he said. It was hoped, he
said, that Pelton would plead guilty, avoid-
ing any public discussion of the evidence
against him. He looked us in the eye and
told us that any story about this case would
gravely threaten the national security of the
United States.
We were to hear that claim many, many
times in the next five months, as we tried to
frame a story that would tell the American
people what the Russians already knew, and
only what the Russians already knew.
We were determined not to violate
the legitimate security of the na-
tion, but we were equally deter-
mined not to be browbeaten by tt* admin.
istration, which has from time to time ap-
peared to relish press-bashing, into not pub-
lishing something that our,enemies already
knew.
kind of a battle are formidable: presidents,
admirals, generals, CIA directors telling
you that publication would endanger the na-
tion and the lives of some of its fighters, and
ultimately threatening to prosecute you for
violating the law.
These are red fights that a newspaper
goes only with a deliberate lack of
speed.
The weapons of the press in this kind of
battle are generally the reporters them-
selves and their facts, the First Amendment
and common sense.
These are the green lights that make de-
mocracy the greatest form of government
yet devised.
From the first session with General
Odom on December 5 to a final session with
CIA Director Casey in the bar of the Uni-
versity lu on Friday afternoon May 2, the
issue was joined. There were at least three
meetings between-Odom and one or more
editors of The Post. At least four meetings
with Casey. One with Poindexter. One with
FBI Director William Webster. (One after-
noon Webster and Casey asked to see me
urgently, and walked through the city room
into my office surrounded by bodyguards,
while more than 150 reporters and editors
watched in astonishment. The subject was
national security, but the area was Central
America, not the Soviet Union.)
At each of these meetings, different ver-
sions of the Pelton story were discussed
with the government officials. In some
cases different versions of a written story
were shown to them, something this news-
paper rarely does in advance of publication.
Each time, the officials invoked national se-
curity. Each time, the editors felt that ra-
tional security was not involved, but were
not 1,000 percent convinced that the So-
viets knew every single detail of The Post's
story, and publication was delayed.
(On one occasion on Feb. 20, 1986,
aboard Air Force One, a copy of the latest
version of The Post's story was passed
around between Poindexter, Weinberger,
Secretary of State Shultz and White House
Chief of Staff Donald Regan, according to
reliable sources. These high officials talked
about how important it was to keep this ver-
sion of the story out of the paper, and they
felt it would not be published.)
I n February, at an editors' conference in
Florida, Washington Post editors held a
seminar on national security and the
press. Former CIA director Richard Helms
was present to give us perspective of an
old intelligence hand. Later in a discussion
with only four editors, Helms was told the
story and asked what were the chances that
the Russians did not know the whole story.
He felt the chances were slim. He felt spe-
cifically that Gorbachev himself might not
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know, but he would certainly know if the
Post published the story and his reaction as
the new leader was hard to predict, and po-
tentially volatile. Helms gave no advice.
In April, former NSA director Admiral
Bobby Inman met with an editor of The
Post to discuss the story in great detail. He,
too, felt it was unlikely the Russians were
unaware of anything in the Post's story, but
on balance argued against publishing.
On May 1, 1986, over breakfast, General
Odom was shown the penultimate version of
the story. For the first time, he mentioned
that he and others were looking to the pos-
sibility of using 18 United states Code 798
to prosecute anyone who published
ton story. This law provides for a maximum
punishment of 10 years in jail and a $10,060
fine for anyone who "publishes . . . any clas-
sified information ... concerning .
use ... of any device ... for communica-
tion intelligence purposes ... ."
This newspaper's lawyers reported that
while the government would surely argue
that the story was a technical violation of
that statute, the fact that the Russians
knew the specific classified information
made the government's argument more
tenuous.
On Friday, May 2, CIA director Casey
called me from his car telephone. He said he
had heard we were going to run the story
on the next Sunday and he wanted to talk.
He suggested the bar of the University
Club. Downie and I met him there at 4 p.m.
He was shown the story, - d it slowly,
tossed it aside and said, "'There's no way
you can run that story without endangering
the national security." He then said he
didn't mean to threaten anyone, but he
would have to consider recommending pros-
ecution of the newspaper if we published
the story. "We've already got five absolute-
ly cold violations" of 18 USC 798 against
The Washington Post and four other news
organizations, Casey said.
Nine days later President Reagan, just
back from the Japan summit, called Kath-
arine Graham, chairman of the board of The
Washington Post Company, to impress upon
her his views that publication of The Post's
story would endanger national security.
That was the last red light. The post
withheld the story one more time, and
started working immediately on a version of
the story that removed all the "wiring di-
agram" details of the intelligence system, all
the details that might be prohibited by the
statute. .. -
As a courtesy to the president, in light of .
his call to Mrs. Graham, White House press
secretary Larry Speaker was informed on
Tuesday night, May 27, that The Poet was
going to run its story without the wiring di-
agram details the next day, unread by any
government official.
And it appeared next morning under the
bylines of Bob Woodward and Patrick
Casey respoi `that day by saying that
the CIA was studying the story to see
whether it should be referred to the Justice
Department for prosecution. And there the
matter lay, until a few days later in the mid-
dle of the Pelton trial, Casey and Odom is-
sued a joint statement warning the press
against speculating about the Pelton evi-
dence, and implicitly threatening prosece-
tion if they did.
Warnings against speculation are the fab-
ric of a Pravda editor's life. They are anath-
emas in a free society, and they were
greeted as such by the American press on
this occasion.
Pelton was convicted last Thursday, after
seven days of testimony in a Baltimore
courtroom, where the government laid out
more information in a public forum about its
most secret intelligence gathering capabil-
ities than at any time since World War II.
(Some of the testimony produced informa-
tion that was not in the original Poet arti-
cle.)
The role of a newspaper in a free so-
ciety is what is at issue here. Govern-
ments prefer a press that makes their
job easier, a press that allows them to pro-
ceed with minimum public accountability, a
press that accepts their version of events
with minimum questioning, a press that can
be led to the greenest pastures of history by
persuasion and manipulation.
In moments of stress between govern-
ment and the press-and these moments
have come and gone since Thomas Jeffer-
son-the government looks for ways to
control the press, to eliminate or to mini-
mize the press as an obstacle in the imple-
mentation of policy, or the solution of prob-
lems.
In these moments, especially, the press
must continue its mission of publishing in-
formation that it-and it alone-deter-
mines to be in the public interest, in a use-
ful, timely and responsible manner-serv-
ing society, not government.
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5 June 1986
U.S. an Intelligence Target
Of the Israelis, Officials Say
By Charles R. Babcock
Washington Post Staff Writer
J There is evidence that Israel has
run intelligence operations in the
United States for years, despite
Israeli assertions that the Jonathan
Jay Pollard spy case was an isolated
episode, according to current and
former U.S. intelligence officials.
Israeli intelligence services were
"more, active than anyone but the
KGB .... They were targeted on
the United States about half the
time and on Arab countries about
half the time," John Davitt, long-
time head of the justice Depart-
ment's internal security section un-
p
our
man
til his retirement in 1980, said in a OIsraeli team that asked to travel to
recent telephone interview. the NUMEC uranium
Davitt, who was responsible for processing
reviewing all espionage cases pend- plant in Apollo, Pa., in September
ing at the justice Department, said 1968. The Washington Post has
he recalled a handful of cases during learned reliably that the Eitan
his 30 years of government service
in which Israeli diplomats suspected
of espionage were quietly asked to
leave the United States.
A secret 1979 Central Intelli-
gence Agency document on Israel's
"Foreign Intelligence and Security
Services" noted that two of Israel's
first three , intelligence priorities
involve the United States. The
Arab states were the first targets
listed. Second was "collection of
information on secret U.S. policy or
decisions, if any, concerning Israel."
Third was "collection of scientific
intelligence in the United States
and other developed countries."
Other U.S. intelligence officials,
who declined to be identified, said
they were aware of a number of
cases of Israeli intelligence oper-
ations in the United States. Some
involved leaks of classified informa-
tion to Israeli agents by Americans
who were pro-Israel but were not
paid agents like Pollard.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Yossi
Gal IA night reiterated an earlier
statement that the "Pollard affair
was an~unauthorized deviation from
the -cletarcut Israeli policy of not
conducting any espionage activity
whatsoever in the United States
One previously unpublicized ex-
ample of Israeli activities apparent-
ly inva ved Rafael Eitan, the long-
time Israeli intelligence official
named yesterday in court papers as
Pollard's chief handler. Eitan's
name appears in a U.S. government
document contained in a file about a
case in the 1960s involving urani-
um, which disappeared from a
Pennsylvania plant and has long
been suspected of being diverted to
Israel for use in an atomic bomb.
A declassified Federal Bureau of
Investigation document shows that
a "Raphael Eitan, chemist, Ministry
of Defense, Israel, born 11/23/26,
in Israel" was
art of ' a f
-
named in the Pollard case has the
same birthdate.
Eitan was a participant in the Is-
rae4i kidnaping of Nazi war criminal
Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos
Aires street in 1960, according to
Israeli sources. In 1968, he report-
edly-was an officer of the Mossad,
the Israeli intelligence service.
More recently, he has served two
Israeli prime ministers as adviser
on terrorism.
During the 1960s, the FBI inves-
tigated NUMEC's founder, a U.S.
nuclear scientist named Zalman M.
Shapiro, because inspections by the
Atomic Energy Commission found
that 200 pounds of enriched urani-
unl=enough to make six atom
bon;bs-were missing from his
plant near Pittsburgh, according to
previously declassified government
files. U.S. officials believe the ura-
nium had disappeared by the mid-
1960s; Shapiro denied that he gave
the uranium to the Israelis and the
case was closed with no charges
being filed.
Shapiro could not be reached for
comment yesterday. His sister,
Mrs. Zipporah Schefrin, said he was
hospitalized following recent sur-
zery. Eitan, who now heads a state-
r,wned rhPmiral nlant diii not rv-
Iritan was sc u e to be accom-
panied to the NUMEC plant in the
fall of 1968 by Avraham Hermoni,
the scientific counselor at the Is-
raeli Embassy, and by two men
identified as being'from Israel's De-
partment of Electronics, according
to the FBI document made public
under the Freedom of Information
Act. It is unclear whether the trip
ever took place.
Diplomatic lists show that Her-
moni was scientific counselor at the
Israeli Embassy from 1968 to 1972.
Officials at the Israeli Foreign Min-
istry and the Ministry of Science
and Development, which has a De-
partment of Electronics, said yes-
terday that they did not know any of
the names listed in the 1968 FBI
document.
Sources familiar with the
NUMEC case said the FBI learned
of a meeting which Hermoni at-
tended at Shapiro's house with 11
American scientists in November
1968, two months after the planned
trip to NUMEC. In June 1969, the
sources added, FBI agents watched
Shapiro meet in the Pittsburgh air-
port with another scientific attache
from the Israeli Embassy.
Scientific attaches have been
identified as contacts in a number of
suspected cases of Israeli espionage
over the years, according to one
knowledgeable federal law enforce-
ment source. One of Pollard's han-
dlers was a science consul at the
Israeli consulate in New York. An
earlier case involved another U.S.
Navy employe, who was investi-
gated in the early 1970s but not
prosecuted, the law enforcement
source added.
Other intelligence and diplomatic
sources, however, also noted that
Israel and the United States have
had a long tradition of sharing in-
telligence, such as recent cooper-
ative efforts to combat terrorism.
In another case, declassified doc-
uments show that Davitt's staff rec-
ommended in 1979 that a grand
jury investigate allegations that
Stephen D. Bryen, who had been a
member of the Senate Foreign Re-
lations Committee staff, had given
secrets to Israeli Embassy officials.
The recommendation was rejected
by superiors. Bryen, who strongly
denied the charges, is now a Pen-
tagon official responsible for re-
STAT.
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A series of investigations of the
NUMEC case has fueled specula-
tion about Israel's nuclear weapons
capability. The latest episode was in
May 1985, when Richard K. Smyth,
a California businessman, was in-
dicted by a federal grand jury for
illegally shipping to Israel 810 "kry-
trons," electronic devices that can
he used in the triggers of nuclear
weapons. Smyth fled the country
after he was indicted. At the time
Israeli government officials said
some of the krytrons had been used
for nonnuclear purposes and prom-
ised to return those that were un-
used.
Recent public disclosures show
that the CIA believed Israel had an
atomic bomb as early as 1968.
The CIA drafted a National In-
telligence Estimate on the Israelis'
nuclear capability in 1969, but Carl
Duckett, who was head of the agen-
cy's directorate of science and tech-
nology, said that then-CIA Director
Richard M. Helms told him not to
publish it, according to government
documents.
According to Duckett's account,
President Lyndon B. Johnson told
Helms, "Don't tell anyone else,
even Dean Rusk and Robert McNa-
mara," then secretaries of state and
defense respectively. Helms has
said he has no recollection of such a
conversation with Duckett.
By 1974, according to another
CIA document on nuclear prolifer-
ation inadvertently made public, the
agency had concluded: "We believe
Israel already has produced nuclear
weapons. Our judgment is based on
Israeli acquisition of large quanti-
ties of uranium, partly by clandes-
tine means .... "
Washington Post Jerusalem
correspondent William Claiborne
contributed to this report.
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