REPORTER AND SCIENTIST TANGLE IN STUBBORN PURSUIT OF TRUTH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201140111-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 30, 2010
• Sequence Number: 111
• Publication Date: February 26, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR
26 February 1982
Reporter and scientist tangle in'
stubborn pursuit of truth'.
STAT Austin C.
Wehrwain
iwm. am
The wide worlds of journalism, global
intelligence and diplomacy collided with a
narrow, highly specialized scientific world
last week.
The locale was a 'Minnesota News Coun-
cil hearing. On the docket was a complaint
against the St. Paul Dispatch brought by
Chester J. Mirocha, a plant pathology pro-
fessor at the University of Minnesota's St.
Paul campus.
The intricacies of Mirocha's subject ex-
ceed the grasp of most people. But every-
one can comprehend the chronicle of
American spies and Communist perfidy
that underlies his complaint.
The episode also involves a reticent Phil-
adelphia scientist who acted as an' under-
cover intermediary for the State Depart-
ment In connection with a hush-hush in-
vestigation of clues to "yellow rain" war-
fare conducted by the Soviets and the
Vietnamese.
Professor Mirocha, an internationally re-
nowned mycotoxin expert, is it rather pri-
vate person. who had never dealt with a
reporter before this story broke.
His antagonist is 26-year-old Jeann Lins
ley, a personally shy but professionally ag-
gressive reporter. She joined the Dispatch
last July from her first job at the Bay City
(Mich.) Times. She also had a three-month
internship In 1978. on the staff of Jack An-
derson, the muckraking syndicated colum-
nist.
The issue boiled down to whether she
and her editors owed Mirocha an apology,;
both for flaws in a Sept. 28 front-page sto-
ry, "U professor made secret tests for bio-
logical warfare agents," and the relentless
techniques she used to get her story.
The key?word in the headline is "se-
cret." , .,?, .E..?, _~
For if,'1ni fact, Mirocha' had knowingly;
done secret testing of leaf and stem sam-
ples found last March by U.S. intelligence
operatives in Cambodia near the-Thai bor-
der, he would have violated university pol,
icy against unauthorized secret work. His
indignant denial of any'. Impropriety
frames the.. issue now before the, News
Council..
The fact Is that a young reporter had a
piece of what one council member called
"one hell of a story" about a controversy
still boiling in Washington, Moscow and
points east:'
It's a story in which the professor un-
willingly played a starring role. that was
thrust upon him by no less a public figure
than Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
In a speech In Berlin on Sept. 13, Haig
made a stunning charge: that confirmation
had been found for reports that the Soviet
Union and the Vietnamese were using le-
thal toxic agents known as mycotoxins,
which are organically produced poisons.
Any allegation of what's loosely called
chemical warfare sets off an international
sensation. In this instance, the Soviet Un-
ion denounced Haig's charges as "a big,
lie" geared to' win support for President
Reagan's plan to resume production of
U.S. chemical weapons. Just this week,
the CIA leaked a story that it had more
hard and "grotesque" evidence that the
Soviet Union used chemical warfare-in-
cluding "yellow rain"-to kill up to
30,000 people in Southeast Asia and Af-
ghanistan.
Haig's chief evidence was an analysis of
the Cambodian leaf and stem sample,
which showed certain mycotoxins linked
to, the effects of yellow rain. That's a ref-
erence to the yellow powder in which the
poisons were reportedly released from air
planes. Poisons of this kind cause vomit-
ing, itching, blisters, internal hemorrhag-
ing and, ultimately, death. Instances of
this have been. reported from' Cambodia,
Laos and Afghanistan.
Who made the analysis?
At first the State Department said that
much of th? info.-mation about the proiect._
was classified. Yet,. two days later, on
Sept. 15, news service stories from Wash-
ington said government officials indicated
the test was made by a Minnesota. re
searcher whom they refused to identify.,",,
Now the scene shifts to St. Paul. "'
She' and another reporter, armed. with.
the cryptic- account from Washington, fol
lowed the trail to Mirocha, tracking him;
down in Egypt, where he was conducting,
a scientific seminar. After eight calls . to
;Cairo,.Llnsley finally reached Mirocha. '
Depending on your viewpoint, it could
be said that while the professor was snot-
ty, the reporterwas sassvx ..
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By her account, the professor refused too
identify the client for whom he ran the
tests, and though he told her to stop asking
questions about the sample, he also prom-
ised to call her back, which he didn't do
until Sept. 25 in St. Paul.
By his account, he and his lab staff sim-
ply didn't know the plant samples came
from Southeast Asia when they arrived in
mid-July for immediate analysis. He there-
fore resented Linsley's suggestion that his
tests were secret and improper by univer-
sity standards. He also said that he wasn't
able to verify the State Department con;
nection until he returned to St. Paul Sept
23, when he was still recovering from jet
lag.
Meanwhile, Linsley had put the suction
pump-as we old-time reporters put it-,
.on Mirocha's lab staff and discovered the
"Hayes connection."
Now the plot thickens.
A. Wallace Hayes was the middleman
who got the leaf and stem samples from
the State Department and relayed them to
Mirocha without disclosing their source or
the purpose of the test.,
Who is this mystery man? He is a Phila-
delphia toxicologist and pharmacologist
employed by Rohm and Haas, a chemical
company that, among other things, spe-
cializes in agricultural chemicals. He's also
editor of the Journal of Applied Toxicol-
ogy. When Linsley finally managed to get
Hayes on the phone he said he knew noth-
ing about any samples..
But Mirocha would later explain to they
council that Hayes did, In fact, request they
test, adding that he ran it as part of the[
lab's routine work, for which the universi-i
ty charges a per-job fee. The lab tests hun-i
dreds of samples, most related to Minneso-
to agriculture, all of which are public in-
formation. Mirocha conceded at the coun-1
cil hearing that it. was "a little extraordi-;
nary" to run a test of the kind Hayes re-
quested, but he said he assumed Hayes
was on the brink of a. discovery that could l.
be patented.
That raises a question about the Hayes-
Mirocha relationship: Do they have mutual
links to the intelligence community? Miro-
cha, who has been at. the university 'since
1963, said he had never held a government
job, doesn't have a security clearance and
had met Hayes only. at scientific gather-
ings.
After some delay, during which Linsley
was pursuing other sources,. Mirocha
called her back Sept. 25. He regarded her
questions as perfunctory, and indeed by
then she was on top of the story as she
saw it. Her first story ran Sept. 28, and it
began:
"Highly guarded government-sponsored
analyses of suspected biological warfare
agents have been under way at the Univer- .
sity of Minnesota for about two months,
the Dispatch has learned.
"The work, conducted at the St. Paul
campus plant pathology laboratory under
the direction of Prof. Chester J. Mirocha,
was done without the knowledge of uni-
versity officials, and was undertaken 'de
spite university policies prohibiting, classi-
fied or secret research.",.
This story quoted Mirocha as saying he
would have done the test even if he had
known the purpose because he felt he
owed it to his government.
Her follow-up story on Sept. 29 began,
"Some University of Minnesota regents
say university policy of classified or secret
research has to be tightened up."
In contrast, on the same day the St. Paul
Pioneer Press ran a story by Mike,
Sweeney that quoted at length the profes-
sor's vows that he was innocent of viola-
tions of university secrecy guidelines.
The next day Linsley did a long rehash i
that buried in the eighth paragraph a joint'
denial that the, tests were secret by Miro-
cha and David French, his depart-
ment chairman. And that same
day, a Dispatch editorial, with the
headline "Nothing sinister about U
testing," declared that there was
no evidence that. Mirocha had vio-
lated university secret-research
rules. It was a complete vindica-
tion for the professor. .
He got another on Oct. 15 when ;
the university's Board of Regents
exonerated him-in a resolution that
deplored any aspersions about his
integrity. Linsley wrote a story
that covered this action, though
she quoted another professor who
suggested the need for a firm uni-
versity policy on service for out-
side clients.
By then, Mirocha had worked up
a full head of steam. He filed a
complaint with the News Council,
which mandates an attempt at con.
ciliation before.it will grant a hear-,
ing. Instead of cooling it at a meet-
ing with Dispatch editors on Oct.
28, Mirocha rejected as an insult an
offer either to write a letter to the ,
editor or an article that would be
twinned with a Linsley rebuttal.
He also rejected, in favor of a
full-dress News Council review, a
proposed "clarification." The lan-
guage of it was tantamount to a
retraction that cleared the profes-
sor and put the onus on the State
Department. .
In short, the Dispatch. .was will-
ing to concede that Mirocha was a
victim rather than a party to any
secrecy:
What more; then, did he. want?
An apology for a- "defamatory"
story "created out of fantasy," he)
said. Even though Dispatch Manag-
ing Editor W.F. Cento was willing
to concede "an unintended implica-
.tion" in the first story, a demandf
that the newspaper apologize
stuck in the editors' craws.
At this point, the ground shifts
away from Mirocha's role to Lins-
ley's techniques.
He accused her of downright
"non-professional conduct, citing
as evidence the "Interrogating"
and "harassing' of 'his laboratory !
staff-in one instance her arriving'
at the dwelling.of a male techni-~
cian at.I2:30 a.m.:.,..
Mirocha also produced a letter
from A. Wallace Hayes' wife that
accused Linsley of falsely claiming
to be a Mirocha assistant during an
October telephone call. Such mis-
representation is a universally con-
demned. sin in journalism,' and
Linsley denied she had committed
it. She suggested she was being
"set up." She had, in any event,
called the Hayes residence in Sep-
tember, not October, as Mrs. Hayes
said.
Mirocha's state of mind was evi-
dent from an Oct. 8 letter to, John
R. Finnegan, executive editor of
the St. Paul papers. It concluded:
"When I -returned from Cairo and
learned of'Ms. Linsley's harass-
ment of my employees, I decided I
wanted nothing' to do with her.
Her conduct and resulting story
convinced- me that I never want
anything do to with a Dispatch re-
porter.'.
*
Here's my own reaction, based
on close to 50 years in the newspa-
per business, which I am about to'
leave. If that makes me prejudiced,
so be it. As a preface, I cite the iron
law for a professional journalist- '
which Jeann. Linsley obviously is,
despite her age-that the bigger
the story, the harder you must
work on it. Absent that, there
would be little good journalism. So'
much for the charge of harassment
and interrogation.
I agree with my friend Finnegan
that she's a "stubborn" reporter,
and he's lucky she is.
Yet didn't she needle-as we
old-timers used to say-her first
story? I think, she did. Indeed, she!
milked the secrecy angle: She trad-
ed hard on comments that Miro-
cha's critics made about the alleged
secrecy.
Still, I see. extenuating circum-
stances in at least her first story
when she was under time - pres-
sures and could find nobody at-the
university who -really knew what,
was going on. In journalism, as in
other fields including law, medi-
cine and even science, there comes
a time when you have to go with
what you've got. From a reporter's
viewpoint, as' well as the public's,
she was confronted with a
"guarded" and-"secret'. situation,
albeit the real watchdogs were
woofing in Washington.
She was also misled by normally ~
sound university sources who were
plainly `confused, for example,
about whether there is a distinc-
tion between "research," which is
subject to the- guidelines, ;and
"tests," which aren't.
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Even University of Minnesota
President C. Peter Magrath said at
the Oct. 15 regents meeting that
the "tests performed were not re-
search," although he told me this
week that the research policy
guidelines do 'cover tests. In any i
case, Mirocha told me that he had
no objection to doing secret work,
but that of course he'd. get official
permission before doing it.
Actually, the university's glori-
ous secrecy ban isn't iron-clad. It
'has a loophole for classified and se-
cret government work. There are
steps prescribed for getting a
waiver, to do it thou_gh,Magrath.
told me he knew of no waivers,
that loophole ought to be a red flag
for reporters and editors.
Linsley's claim that the - tests
were done without anyone outside,
the lab becoming aware of them
was accurate. The explanation
now is that Mirocha's lab routinely
does so many tests that there's no
reason to pass-a running list up the
chain of command.
But this one was different..
Clearly, there ought to be more ac-
countability in a state university,
even though all research-and, as
we now know, testing-is sup-
posed to be an open book.
The test in question, after all,
wasn't just another corn test for a
farmer or for Cargill. It was an un-
usual request from Philadelphia.
And the State Department still,
treats the subject as ostensibly;
classified, regardless of the univer-
sity's publish-all policy. That's all..
the more reason Linsley was enti-
tled to demand access to the facts,
and fast.
I can nevertheless see why Miro-1
cha, who comes across as a person
of stiff dignity and pride-some
might say with a touch of arro-
gance-was hurt. Not, I think, so
much by the facts but more by the
innuendo. Linsley compounded this.
by not trying harder to question
the professor in depth before she
wrote her first story. For this her
editors must take the primary
blame.
Comments made by two mem-
bers of the News Council bear re-
peating.
One was from Jim Miles, who
told the professor he was oversen-
sitive. The other was from David
Graven, who remarked that the in-
nuendo of wrongdoing wasn't ac
curate, adding to Mirocha: "The-
Dispatch gave you a clean bill of
health. It put the blame on the
State Department. That remedies-
the-innuendo. You came out a
bloody hero!"
The News Council decision is god
ing to be that, yes, Mirocha was
put in a false light, but to the ex-
tent that he was reluctant to coop-
erate with the Dispatch reporter-
indeed, was hostile-it was a, self- j
inflicted wound.
I must add that when I talked
with Mirocha-after the fact, to be
sure-he was gracious and forth-
coming. For all her natural skills,
Linsley may still have something
garb of a stubborn, hard-nosed in-
vestigative reporter. She's fortu-
guidance as well as drawing. her in,
journalism is an art you must work'
,on mastering 'all your life: -I guess;
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