LEAK SOUP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302910009-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: May 14, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302910009-9
THE PROGRESSIVE
14 May 1930
i'~ 401N
P
Stein
he U.S. Capitol is a'marvelous
place to go exploring, and the
halls are again filled with the
throngs of tourists and high school stu-
dents making the annual spring pil-
grimage here. In groups of thirty or
more, they are led around the halls of
the House of Representatives and the
Senate-the two wings of the build-
in-by red-jacketed tour guides who
point out the original chamber of the
Supreme Court, interpret the rich tab-
leaux around the Rotunda, and offer
tidbits of historic trivia. The climax of
the tour is a visit to the gallery of the
House or Senate to watch the nation's
business in progress. This is sometimes
a disappointment: There are rarely
more than half a dozen Senators on the
floor. People naturally wonder.
To be fair, not much business is
transacted in the debating chambers.
Usually, it is all worked out before-
hand in the various committees of each
house. Often, however, the consensus,
if it can be called that, is worked out
even before a bill gets to the commit-
tee. SALT II, for example: That evap-
orated in the newspapers.
Speaking of newspapers, people
read them differently here. For official
Washington-the bureaucrats, high-
level Cabinet officers, members of
Congress and theirstaffs, White House
employes-the newspapers function as
the day's early warning system. These.
people read the papers to find out
who's shooting at them. In other
words, all that stuff you might have
read about "leaks -damaging to na-
Jeffrey Stein is The Progressive's con-
tributing editor in Wash ~gton.
tional security" and the need to plug
them up "by unleashing the CIA and
the FBI" is so much nonsense. Things
aren't often "leaked" here; they are '
planted. Inside information is fun-
neled to a reporter from one bureau-
crat or legislator who wants to torpedo
another.
There's nothing really mysterious
about all this. It's easy to distinguish a
"plant" from a "leak." A plant is never
followed by a prosecution. The
-Washington Post's Bob Woodward, for
example, reported a few years back
that King Hussein of Jordan had long
been receiving a regular retainer from
the CIA. Seems "sensitive," right? Not
a peep from the White House. Some-
one wanted that out. The plant was
engineered for foreign policy reasons.,
Now take for a moment a couple of
other revelations that made their way
into the press. These were "leaks," not
"plants," and it's easy to identify them.
One was accomplished by Frank
Snepp, a former CIA officer in Saigon.
He wrote a book called Decent interval
which revealed, among other things,
that the CIA dropped people out of
helicopters, and that this agency so ob-
sessed with secrecy had abandoned its
agents and filles to the North Vietnam-
ese during the final offensive of April
1975. This was obviously a "leak," be-
cause the CIA took Snepp to court for
violating his secrecy oath. Last month,
the Supreme Court upheld the lower
court decision and seized Snepp's earn-
ings from the book. The most sweeping
opinion by the Court was written by
William Rehnquist, who was awarded
his job on the Court after successfully
defending, as a Justice Department at-
torney, the Nixon Administration's
need for keeping the bombing of Cam-
bodia secret.
Flushed with victory, the CIA and
the Justice Department have decided
to hound another former CIA officer
with the "Snepp Statute." He is John
Stockwell, another "leaker." It was
Stockwell who left the agency and
wrote an unauthorized book, It.. Search
of Enemies, which took the wraps oft
secret CIA-South African collabora-
tion in Angola in 1975. Stockwell also
-disclosed that former CIA Director
William Colby lead lied abont U.S. par-
ticipation in the Angola secret war and
had used Angola insurgents as well as
someleadingblack Americans to prop-
agandize for the war here in the United
States-activity which is strictly forbid-
den by the CIA's charter. This, of
course, was an "unauthorized leak," as
opposed to the officially sanctioned
kind which are the daily fare of news-
papers here.
Finally, there arewhat we might call
"syndicated plants." These do not re-
sult in penalties to their originators-
quite the opposite. Henry Kissinger, in
cooperation with Time, Inc., seems to
have brought the "syndicated plant" to
its state-of-the-art. Ile has reaped mil-
lions of dollars from his published
memoirs, based on papers, docu-
ments, and memos compiled on Gov-
ernment time. This qualified as a
"leak" only in the sense that
Kissinger's papers, which he spirited
out of Washington to the estate of his
friend, Nelson Rockefeller, before
leaving office, have been determined
to be "classified" and beyond the reach
of freedom-of-information statutes.
The Supreme Court decided last
month that only the Executive branch,
and not a mere citizen whose taxes paid
for Kissinger's papers, has the right to
ask the former Secretary of State to
turn them over. The White House has
expressed no interest in seeing them.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302910009-9