THE REAGAN PARADOX IS LESS RIGOROUS BUT MORE TROUBLING, AT LEAST TO MANY REPORTERS WHO COVER FOREIGN POLICY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030038-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 5, 2007
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: July 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/04/06: CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030038-9
?PEAR.ED
ON P1%G.
8
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
July/August 1982
overnment It
The Reagan administration is stonew
on the intelligence beat
except, of course, when leaks servE
by JAY PETERZELL
The most rigorous paradox is Epimenides' confession
"I am lying": if true, it is false; and if false, it is
true.
The Reagan paradox is less rigorous but more troubling,
at least to many reporters who cover foreign policy and
other beats that frequently involve access to national secu-
rity information. The paradox is that the Reagan adminis-
tration has placed unprecedented restrictions on press access
to intelligence information but is at least as willing as past
administrations to use leaks and selective declassification to
support its foreign policy. The result is that security-minded
officials have released information - on Libyan threats to
assassinate President Reagan, for example - that reveals
intelligence sources and methods but which, like
Epimenides, leaves us dizzy about the truth.
Attempts to use t press to influence policy are, of
course, not limited t the intelligence community. But the
CIA or the Nationa ecurity Council differs from the U.S.
Forest Service in at information obtained from the former
often cannot independently confirmed by reporters. It
may come from an unreliable or unevaluated source; it may
be a conclusion based on secret evidence that does not fully
support it; it may have been released as part of an intelli-
gence operation of which the press is unaware. As one
Washington Post reporter who has "dealt fairly extensively
with the CIA" put it, intelligence information is difficult for
journalists because "it is less exposed to the cut and thrust
of public dialogue about its accuracy and its origin, and it's
not so readily accessible to checks on its authenticity."
The Libyan hit-squad story is a good case in point. On
October 8, 1981, the New York Post carried a "Jack Ander-
son Exclusive" reporting that the National Security Agency
had intercepted a phone call between Libya and Ethiopia
shortly after the U.S. shot down two Libyan jets over the
Gulf of Sidra last August. During the phone call, Libyan
leader Miuammar Qaddafi threatened to have Reagan assas-
Ja\ Pcier,eil is a research associate at the Center for National Se-
curin- Studies. a Washington-based organization funded by the
,' crica,: Civil Liberties Union and The Fund for Peace.
STAT
sinated. "It was not an adverse leak [i.e. it was not hostile
to the administration]," Anderson associate Dale Van Atta.
recalled.; "The source was an NSA source." The story was
also covered by Newsweek and NBC Magazine; then it dis-
appeared.
On November 23, Newsweek breathed new life into the
story after State Department correspondent John Walcott
learned that officials now thought Qaddafi had .dispatched
death squads, armed with bazookas, grenade launchers, and
SAM-7 missiles, that were gunning for Reagan and other
top U.S. officials. For the next three weeks the press was
filled with lurid accounts of countersniper teams on the
White House roof, nationwide searches for assassination
squads, and even the involvement of the dread Venezuelan
terrorist "Carlos." The source of the government reports
was later learned to be a former Lebanese terrorist who
walked into an American embassy in mid-November and
.claimed to have heard Qaddafi give the "kill" order the
..preceding month.
It was on December 6, only a few hours after Qaddafi had
dismissed the reports as "big lies," that the State. Depart-
ment for the first time went on record as saying that "we
have strong evidence that Qaddafi has been plotting the
murder of American officials...." The next day Reagan
added: "We have the evidence and [Qaddafi] knows it." On
December 10, the president called on some 2,000 U.S. oil
company employees and other Americans to leave Libya -
a request the administration had made repeatedly and un-
successfully over the past year to clear the way for eco-
nomic and military actions reportedly designed to culminate
in Qaddafi's downfall.
As soon as most. Americans had reluctantly agreed to
leave Libya, the hit-squad threat evaporated. "The risk is
diminished some," Senate majority leader Howard Baker
told The Washington Post on December 16. FBI Director
William Webster, who had been skeptical all along, said in
January that as far as he could tell no Libyan assassins had
ever entered the United States. Evidence presented at
classified briefings during the height of the crisis "got flim-
sier and flimsier," a member of the. Senate Intelligence