REAGAN ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION POLICIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170004-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: April 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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PRLSSTIME
April 1985
ARTICLN_=.
ON PAGE
REAGAN
ADMINISTRATION
INFORMATION
POLICIES
All Presidents have shown a desire to restrict access to information.
But many press groups insist that Ronald Reagan and his administration
have been unusually active in this area. And concern is growing
about the implications of another term of restrictive policies.
BY MARGARETGENOVESE
presstime staff writer
T he Justice Department seeks to weaken the Freedom of
Information Act.
The Defense Department clamps a lid on release of
unclassified information.
The CIA prepares legislation to criminalize the disclosure of
classified information to reporters.
The President directs more than 100,000 federal workers to
sign lifetime censorship contracts.
The press is excluded from on-the-scene coverage of U.S.
troops landing on Grenada.
What .clo they add up to?
"All in all, I think we are faced with an administration that is
quite uncomfortable with a free flow of information," says
Charles S. Rowe, editor and co-publisher of The Free Lance-Star
in Fredericksburg, Va., and chairman of the First
Amendment/Freedom of Information working group of the
ANPA Government Affairs Committee.
Dom Bonafede, senior contributing editor of National Journal,
a weekly magazine that covers the federal government, goes even
farther. The administration of Ronald Reagan, the "Great
Communicator," is, he says, "more repressive against the free
flow of information than any other administration of recent
times." .
Even some of the staunchest Reagan supporters among the
press are critical of the administration's information policies.
The Enterprise, a 13,000-circulation daily in Simi Valley and
Morepark, Calif., twice endorsed Ronald Reagan for President.
Says Editor and Publisher Wayne Lee: "He is a hell of a lot better
than Jimmy Carter was or Walter Mondale would have been."
But when it comes to access to government information, Lee
rates the Reagan record as "deplorable."
"And, frankly," he adds, "I don't understand it for a fellow
who keeps talking about freedom and the fact that much of (this
country'slfreedom rests on the free access to information."
Although the press may seem to be acting in concert in
criticizing the administration's information policies, not every
initiative draws unanimous condemnation.
For instance, at least one press group opposed the Reagan
administration's policy of notifying a business when it becomes
the subject of an FOIA request; others have not. When the press
was barred from coverage of the first two and a half days of the
October 1983 invasion of Grenada, most news organizations
protested vehemently; but some like The Richmond (Va.) Times-
Dispatch sprang to the administration's defense.
In fact, there have always been some divisions in the media
ranks. To cite one example: In 1974, ANPA did not join other
press organizations in urging Congress to override a presidential
veto of amendments to strengthen the FOIA, but instead it urged
the adoption of compromise language suggested by President
Gerald R. Ford.
However, among press groups today, there is widespread and
growing concern about the prospect of four more years of
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restrictive information policies. Tony Mauro, immediate-past
chairman of the Freedom of Information Committee of the
Society of Professional journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, is one who
doubts the access-to-information situation will improve during
the second Reagan term, especially because the re-elected
President does not have to face the voters again.
Observes Mauro, who covers the news media and the law for
Gannett News Service: "Every president, to some extent, tries to
batten down thehatches. ... It seems to go with the office. But
Reagan has elevated it to an art form."
Some wonder whether the nature of information flow in the
United States might be altered for decades to come by two
consecutive presidential terms in which the general attitude was
one of withholding, not disclosing.
Responding to a litany of press complaints, President Reagan's
chief spokesman told presstime the administration did not come
into office with a plan to restrict information. "Never did we set
out a grand design that we were going to dry up information or
funnel information," says Deputy Press Secretary Larry M.
Speakes. (See story, p. 22.)
But concern among media groups is so great that some are
considering going on the offensive. SPI,SDX, for example, is
working with a congressional subcommittee on a draft FOIA
improvements bill. "If the agenda is always defined by the
administration, then you are always reacting defensively," says
Bruce W. Sanford, SII,SDX First Amendment counsel.
Not the first. As critics-of the Reagan administration information
policies concede?and administration supporters point out?
there is nothing new in the desire of Presidents to restrict access
to government information.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, two years before
he became President, George Washington took the assemblage to
task for not being more careful about safeguarding state secrets.
"Gentlemen," Washington said, "I am sorry to find that some
one member of this body has been so neglectful of the secrets of
this convention as to drop in the State House a copy of their
proceedings, which by accident was picked up and delivered to
me this morning. I must entreat, gentlemen, to be more careful,
lest our transactions get into the newspapers and disturb public
response by premature speculations."
In more recent times:
? Harry S Truman extended almost government-wide the
authority to classify information?something that had been
limited to the Defense and State departments.
? Dwight D. Eisenhower withheld information from
Congress on the basis of executive privilege.
? John F. Kennedy was accused of "muzzling the military"
by requiring a Pentagon press representative to be present when a
reporter interviewed a Defense Department official.
? Lyndon B. Johnson tried unsuccessfully to get the Freedom
of Information Act killed in Congress.
? Richard M. Nixon claimed executive privilege as one of
the bases for withholding information from Watergate
investigators.
? Gerald Ford vetoed the amendments to strengthen the
FOIA.
? jimmy Carter's justice Department prepared a package of
amendments that would have weakened the FOIA.
"All Presidents have a tendency to restrict the disclosure of
damaging information," says historian and presidential
biographer James MacGregor Bums. "Quite obviously, the
question is how much they do."
For example, says Bums, during the administration of
President Franklin]). Roosevelt, there was "a tremendous effort
to educate and inform the American people. And since Mr.
Reagan likes to compare himself with Roosevelt, I think FDR still
has a lot to teach Ronald Reagan."
A Washington, D.C.-based longtime battler for a free flow of
information, attorney
Richard M. Schmidt Jr.,
observes that "no
government 'loves' a free
press, and that includes our
government. They, at
best, tolerate a free press."
But the Reagan
administration, compared
with the four previous
ones he has observed at
close range, has "been
busier in more areas
in its attempts to
control the flow of information to the public, and seems to have
done that with more public acceptance, than previous
administrations," says Schmidt, who is general counsel of the
American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Media attorney, Floyd Abrams of New York City, says flatly
that when the Reagan administration's information policies are
viewed in their entirety, the picture is not a pretty one.
On the whole, says Abrams, the policies are "restrictive," are
"based on the assumption that information doesn't much matter
except for the potential harm it can do," and follow an approach "
"which is extremely hostile to the notion of taking any sort of
risks for the greater gain of a more informed public."
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
recently issued a report chronicling 51 "actions by the Reagan
administration and its legislative supporters aimed at restricting
public and media access to government information and
intruding on editorial freedom." Says jack C. Landau, executive
director. "If you are trying to find a synthesis, it all starts
from the same intellectual basis: 'We own it (information) and we
will decide if it is in the public interest (for the public) to
have it."
"The most grotesque example of it was Grenada," says
Landau. "They claimed they owned the war...."
The exclusion of the news media from the initial stages of the
invasion is perhaps the most dramatic example of information
control exerted by the Reagan administration.
The outcry from the press led General John W. Vessey Jr.,
chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff, to create a panel of military
officers, former journalists and journalism educators to make
recommendations on military-press policy. As a result of its
deliberations, the Pentagon says it is forming a standing
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contingency "pool" of reporters which could
accompany the military into future surprise op-
erations ipresstime, Nov. 1984, p. 381.
Assaults on the FOIA. While that skirmish has
ended in at least a partial victory for press-gov-
ernment cooperation, a battle that could be
more important in the long term still is being
fought over the Freedom of Information Act.
Enacted in 1966, and bolstered by strength-
ening amendments enacted by Congress in 1974
over President Ford's veto, the FO1A essentially
requires the federal bureaucracy to make in-
formation available to the public, with certain
exceptions. It is the tool that allows the public
and the press to tap into the federal govern-
ment's vast reservoir of information.
Critics say that from the outset the Reagan
administration has been attempting to slow the
flow down the FOIA spillway.
Under FOIA, all information is presumed to
be open except information fitting nine exemp-
"Every President,
to some extent, tries
to batten down the
hatches," says
Tony Mauro of
SPJ,SDX.
"Reagan has
elevated it to
an art form."
tions. In these cases, FOIA allows agencies to
withhold information, but it does not mandate it.
In the Carter administration, the Justice Department said it
would defend an agency's decision not to withhold records only
when release would be "demonstrably harmful" to the
government. This policy would apply even to documents fitting
one of the act's exemptions.
In April 1981, three months after taking office, then-Attorney
General William French Smith rescinded that policy.
The Reagan administration's substitute policy does not
encourage agencies to violate the law by
withholding non-exempt information; but
neither does it encourage agencies to disclose
information that they have the cliscretion to
release, observes Deborah Drosnin, editor of
Access Reports/Freedom of Information, a
newsletter that follows FOIA issues. "h seemed
to be sending a signal to them: Don't go beyond
the law," she says.
Six months after implementing this new
policy, the Reagan administration unveiled its
legislative proposal to amend the FOIA. Among
other things, the proposal called for broadening
four of the act's nine exemptions and adding two
others. The administration said the proposal,
which it termed "very modified and limited,"
was aimed at helping law enforcement,
protecting businesses' proprietary information
and safeguarding personal privacy.
Press organizations, though, labeled it a full-
scale assault on the law. And they still do.
"The administration aims its so-called
reforms at what it thinks are abuses of the FOIA,
but in so doing has cut a broad swath through
the public's and press's right to know," says Tonda F. Rush,
ANPA counsel/government affairs.
"For example, the Justice Department says it receives requests
for federal records from organized crime figures, but rather than
looking to the law's exemptions for sensitive law enforcement
material, it proposes to simply put all organized crime records
under seal for eight years," Rush says. "The result would be less
information about such headline stories as Abscam, Jimmy
They're fighting FOI battles in Canada, too
Efforts to control the flow of
government information have been
made in Canada, too.
The government of Prime Minister
Brian Mulroney began last year with a
preoccupation with secrecy, according
to some Canadian journalists, although
they say the situation has eased.
Last November, employees of the
Ministry of External Affairs were
directed to funnel all press inquiries
through the ministry's press secretary.
They even were warned about
discussing government business if they
should encounter a member of the news
media in a social setting.
This action followed a spate of press
reports quoting sources within the
ministry?the equivalent of the U.S.
State Department?speculating that
certain embassies would be closed for
budget reasons.
Several weeks later, that directive was
replaced by government-wide
guidelines.
Those guidelines advise public
servants to speak to members of the
media only on the record, for attribution
by name, and to confine their answers to
matters' of fact, not speculation. Off-the-
record briefings are permitted only in
"exceptional" circumstances and only
with the prior approval of a cabinet
minister.
Although the for-the-record edict is
still in effect, external affairs employees
gradually have returned to their
"longstanding" practices in dealing with
the media, says Sean Brady, the official
spokesman for the Ministry of External
Affairs.
Edison Stewart, a reporter for the
Canadian Press in Ottawa, agrees that
there has been some relaxation in
government-press relations. "There
doesn't seem to be the preoccupation of
secrecy that there was, but they are not .
going around leaking documents,
either," he says.
The guidelines have not been all bad
for the press. Stewart says he has used
them to remind government sources -
that they are supposed to answer
questions of fact.
Patrick Nagle, parliamentary reporter
for Southam News, attributes the
restrictions to the new government's
being "an absolute rookie," starting
with Mulroney, who served only one
year in Parliament before his election
last September.
Meanwhile, Canada's new Access to
Information Act, comparable to the U.S.
Freedom of Information Act, has been
plagued by delays in processing
complaints about denied requests
In February, two assistant information
commissioners were appointed to try to
speed up the decision-making process. ?
- Information Commissioner Inger
Hansen says she requested the
assistance to help the press get quicker
responses and to have a large number of
examples to cite when Parliament
begins its mandated review of the act
sometime within the next year and a
half.
Although her office has processed 150
complaints in the last 10 months, a
backlog of 90 cases remains, Hansen
reports.
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Hoffa's disappearance and drug trafficking from South America?
all stories in which the public has an intense and legitimate
interest."
Although the Republican-controlled Senate in the last
Congress passed a bill incorporating some of the administration's
proposals, the Democrat-controlled House Government
Information Subcommittee reported no bill to the House.
Fixing fees. In addition to adding exemptions, the administration
proposal would have added to the cost of using the FOIA. It would
have allowed agencies to charge for all costs attributable to
processing FOIA requests, not just for search time and copying.
When the legislative proposal stalled on Capitol Hill, the
Justice Department in 1983 took another route to cost recovery:
It issued guidance to federal agencies that was viewed as more
restrictive than the previous policy on waiving fees.
The FOIA provides for waiving fees when furnishing the
requested information can be considered primarily benefiting the
general public. And in the Carter administration, the Justice
Department urged that discretion to waive fees be exercised
"generously."
But Re.agan's team at the department issued a new set of
criteria for determining whether a waiver should be granted. It
noted that "federal agencies are obligated to safeguard the public
treasury" by refusing waivers when they do not meet the
requirements of the law. It said agencies should consider whether
there is a "genuine public interest in the subject matter" of the
requested records.
A subsequent study by the lobbying organization Common
Cause contradicted the notion that the federal government could
re21j7e any significant cost savings by denying waivers. For those
agencies whose costs could be determined, the study found that
the total value of fee waivers granted in 1982 amounted to only
about three-tenths of one percent of the total cost of
administering the FOIA. Common Cause concluded that the
restrictive fee waiver policy "may result in the worst of all
possible scenarios: limited public access to information offset by
a marginal, at best, impact on total FOIA costs."
Has the policy resulted in limited access? Ask Lee E.
Norrgard, senior editor of Common Cause magazine.
In 1983, Norrgard was chief investigator of the Better
Government Association, a non-profit, civic watch-dog
organization that conducts investigations and works with the
news media to publicize the results.
Norrgard and United Press International reporter Gregory
Gordon were working together on an investigation of foreign
travel by members of Congress and other government officials.
The probe was triggered by a leaked cable from U.S. Ambassador
to France Evan Gailbraith, complaining about the amount of
embassy staff time spent seeing to the needs of official U.S. ?
visitors to the Paris Air Show.
On July 14, 1983, Norrgard made an FOIA request to the State
Department's inspector general, seeking "any audits, inspections
or reports" issued since January 1979 on five of the largest U.S.
embassies in Western Europe.
On July 26, his request for a fee waiver was denied. He
appealed, citing the public interest in finding out
how embassies spend funds and detailing BGA's
past work uncovering government scandals in
parmership with the news media.
A month later, his appeal also was denied.
"There is no current evidence to demonstrate
any especially heightened interest in the expen-
diture of funds by large embassies abroad,"
wrote Frank M. Machak, the State Depart-
ment's information and privacy coordinator. An
incredulous Norrgard points out that only days
before Machak's letter was written, UPI had
carried a series of articles, based on the Gail-
braith memo, about the Paris Air Show hospital-
ity.
Norrgard says that prior to the embassy-
spending case, he had never lost an appeal. He
sued, whereupon the Justice Department de-
cided not to defend the State Department but to
waive the fee.
Nonetheless, the Better Government Associ-
ation is proceeding with the case in order to
challenge the fee-waiver policy.
In the past four years, the Reagan adminis-
tration has made two other changes in the administration of the
FOIA. -
First; the Justice Department told agencies to implement a
procedure whereby any business that becomes the subject of an
FOIA request must be given a chance to object before the
information is released. Richard L. Huff, co-director of the Justice
Department's Office of Information and Privacy, acknowledges
that these "submitters' rights" policies have made it "extremely
difficult and even in some cases impossible" for agencies to meet
the FOIA's statutory response time of 10 days.
Second, the Office of Management and Budget told agencies
they should consider information not available through the
federal Privacy Act also to be unavailable through FOIA, although
the FOIA's personal-privacy exemption is narrower. After press
organizations objected, Congress overturned that policy.
Classification order. Issuing instructions on classifying
information in the interests of national security long has been the
prerogative of presidents.
When President Reagan issued his executive order on
classification in 1982, critics said it reversed a 30-year trend
toward limiting classification that began when President
Eisenhower narrowed some of the classification authority
extended in President Truman's much-criticized 1951 order.
In a report on the Reagan order, the House Committee on
Government Operations concluded: "whether or not it was
intended, the new order will lead to the classification of
additional information."
The head of the office responsible for monitoring government
classification insists the new order was not intended to increase
government classification, nor has this been its result In fact,
says Steven Garfinkel, director of the General Services
Administration's Information Security Oversight Office, the
number of "original" classification actions during fiscal year
1983?the first full year the Reagan order was in effect?was 18-
percent lower than the year before.
Criticism of the order may have actually helped keep
classification down, suggests Garfinkel. "There was a great deal of
effort to hold the line on classification," he says, because of all the
adverse publicity at the time.
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But he acknowledges that the magnitude of
classification in any given year is more a
function of current events than policy. For
instance, an event such as the bombing of the
U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983
"will result in literally tens of thousands of
classified documents," he says.
Allan Adler, legislative counsel for the
American Civil Liberties Union and a critic of
-the order, maintains statistics do not tell the
whole story. Says Adler: "What we are talking
about here is the administration's attitude
toward classification policy.... Their attitude
favors classification."
In a related area, the Reagan administration
also has been criticized for drastically reducing
funds for the government agency responsible for
declassifying documents.
In Fiscal Year 1982 (the first budget year
reflecting Reagan administration cuts), the
budget for the National Archives' Records
Declassification Division was cut to $1.4
million from its previous $2.3 million, and its
staff was reduced to 53 from 93. In the current
fiscal year, the division's budget is up to $2 million, but its staff
has further shrunk to 44.
The National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of
History has been critical of the cuts. "Historians are very
distressed that the declassification program has ground almost to
a halt," says Page Pumam Miller, director.
The role of Congress. In the indictment of the Reagan
administration's information policies, Congress has to be
considered at least a co-conspirator. During the last four years,
Congress has passed a number of bills that provide exemptions to
the FOIA. Three have generated particulary strong objections
from the press.
In 1984, Congress passed legislation that exempts certain CIA
"operational" files from the act. The CIA argued that records in
these files are already exempt from disclosure and that the
exemption would merely relieve CIA personnel from having to
search for requested material, only to declare it exempt. ANPA
and other press groups succeeded in convincing Congress to
strengthen the ability of the courts to review files that the CIA
designated as exempt.
In contrast, the other two incontrovertibly put previously
available information out of the reach of the press and public.
In 1983, Congress granted the Defense Department's request
for authority to withhold from release under the FOIA
unclassified information that has military or space application
and that cannot be exported without a license under the Export
Administration Act or the Arms Control Act. Defense officials
contencithat making this information freely available under the
FOIA is tantamount to giving it to the Soviet Union.
The other measure, passed by Congress in 1981, gave the
Department of Energy the authority it requested to withhold
unclassified information pertaining to the design of nuclear
weapons, the design of nuclear production facilities, and the
security arrangements for the facilities or nuclear material in
transit Concern about the growing threat of terrorism was the
justification given.
The regulations issued pursuant to the 1983 and 1981 laws
have been criticized as going far beyond congressional intent.
At the Defense Department, directives implementing the law
safeguarding military and space technology have been written so
broadly that they could be used by the Pentagon to keep under
wraps unclassified information that demonstrates weaknesses in
weapons systems,?says Clark Mollenhoff, a Pulitzer Prize-
winning reporter turned journalism educator.
Mollenhoff says the regulations have the potential for
becoming a kind of Official Secrets Act, ala Great Britain's, in
which everything is secret except that which the government
authorizes for release. Moreover, he says, the Pentagon already
has the means to safeguard national security information?the
classification system. "If it's unclassified, why the hell do you
want to control it?" he asks. "If it should be classified, classify it."
Meanwhile, at the Department of Energy, proposed
regulations governing so-called "Unclassified Controlled Nuclear
Information" hit like a bomb when they were issued.
Among the groups contending that the regulations were far
too broad was the American Society of Newspaper Editors. At a
public hearing conducted by the department, ASNE General
Counsel Schmidt testified that one provision "gives a blank
check to the secretary of energy to withhold almost any
information the secretary deems fit to withhold."
Final regulations have yet to be issued.
Plugging the leaks. Despite all the caulk put in place to prevent
the disclosure of information the government wants kept secret,
some of it inevitably will leak out.
Some of the harshest criticisms of Reagan administration
information policies have dealt with its attempts to discourage
goverrunent employees from leaking information to the press and
to detect and punish those who do. The focal point has been
National Security Decision Directive 84.
Although the issuance of the directive in March 1983 came
two months after Reagan declared he had "had it up to my
keister" with leaks, the deliberations leading up to the issuance of
NSDD-84 began long before that.
NSDD-84 grew out of a series of meetings in early 1982 of
representatives of the departments of Defense, Energy, Justice,
State, Treasury and the CIA.
Among other things, NSDD-84 required all govemment
employees with access to "sensitive compartmented information,"
or SCI, to sign a statement agreeing to submit to government
censors any writing they might do?even after leaving
government service?that related to SCI or other classified
information. It also instructed agencies to implement procedures
for using polygraphs to investigate news leaks.
Comments White House spokesman Speakes: "Our approach
to those types of things is mainly from the standpoint of national
security. The President felt very strongly that top secret and other
highly classified material was ending up in the newspapers and on
television, and it was harmful to the national security."
But ANPA's Rowe, testifying before a congressional
subcommittee, called NSDD-84 "another building block in the
Caatilmed
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wall that this administration appears to be
building to shut off the flow of information to
the public."
Congress passed legislation delaying the ef-
fectiveness of the lifelong censorship and poly-
graph provisions. Subsequently, the President
indefinitely suspended these provisions.
Although the action defused the contro-
versy, congressional. sources say the administra-
tion's use of prepublication review and lie-
detector tests has not stopped.
According to Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Texas),
chairman of the House Government Operations
Committee, the suspension of the prepublica-
tion review provision of NSDD-84 has not af-
fected a similar program begun in 1981.
The General Accounting Office told his
committee last spring that all agencies with
personnel with access to SCI are requiring them
to sign lifelong prepublication review contracts,
Brooks says. The contracts are "virtually identi-
cal" to those proposed under NSDD-84, he says.
In addition, while the polygraph provision of
the President's NSDD-84 is in abeyance, the
Defense Department has been given the congressional go-ahead
to conduct polygraph screening tests this year of up to 3,500
employees. The department has said the examinations have
"nothing to do with leaks." But three of the questions that
affected employees will be asked are whether they have ever been
approached to give or sell classified information to unauthorized
persons, whether they ever did so, and whether they know ,
anyone who did. A department official acknowledged that
"unauthorized persons" could be reporters.
Four more years. Looking ahead, media attorney Abrams told
members of the ANPA Government Affairs Committee in March
that he believes the administration is likely to increase the use of
the espionage law against publiching material that it considers
harmful to national security.
It already is doing so in one case, he pointed out.
Samuel L. Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, was indicted
last October on charges he sold classified satellite photographs
to a British magazine. He is being prosecuted under the Espio-
nage Act of 1917. In March, a 'U.S. District Court judge ruled
that the law can be used to prosecute someone who has re-
leased information to the press and not a foreign government.
It was the first time a ruling had been made on the question.
Abrams also noted that in two recent instances in
which administration officials castigated the
press for publishing information they consid-
ered harmful to national security, they
couched their criticism in terms of criminal
wrong-doing.
, In those cases, Secretary of Defense
Caspar . W. Weinberger accused The
Washington Post of lending "aid
and comfort" to the enemy for its
article reporting on the secret
military payload of the space
shuttle Discovery; and Lt.
Gen. John T. Chain Jr., director
of the State Department's Bu-
reau of Politico-Military Affairs, accused Leslie
H. Gelb, a writer for The New York Times and
a predecessor in Chain's post, of "willingly,
willfully and knowingly" publishing a story
"damaging to the country." The Gelb piece
dealt with U.S. contingency plans for emergency
deployment of nuclear weapons in several
foreign countries.
There is precedent during the Reagan
administration's first term for criminalizing the
publication of sensitive information. In 1983,
Congress passed legislation making it a crime to
publish the names of intelligence agents.
And now in Congress, the stage is set for
continuing confrontations over information
policy.
Rep. Brooks has reintroduced a bill to outlaw
prepublication review agreements except for
those used by the CIA and the NSA and to void
those that have already been signed. His bill also
would put limits on the uses of polygraphs.
In late March, the administration said it was
considering legislation proposed by the CIA that
would impose criminal penalties on
government employees who disclose classified
information to reporters or others.
Meantime, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution Subcommittee, has
resuscitated the administration-backed FOIA bill passed by the
Senate during the last Congress.
In anticipation of renewed efforts to weaken the FOIA, ANPA
will work to "solidify our position in support of the law basically
as it is now written," according to W. Terry Maguire, vice
president/general counsel.
The press also should work "harder than ever" to reestablish
mist with its readers, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher of The
New York Times, said in a speech late last year on the outlook for
the press in the second Reagan administration "We want them
to understand that when newspeople go ashore with the troops, it
is not to-leak information to the enemy but to
faithfully report to the reader, and no one else,
what is happening."
Sulzberger said he feared "a continuing
move afoot to cast the American press as
untrustworthy and, indeed, somewhat un-
American."
Evidence of that came recently when an
administration official, White House Science
Advisor C. A. Keyworth II, accused the press of
"trying to tear down America."
Responding, ANPA Chairman and
President Richard J. V. Johnson said
politicians such as Keyworth
"apparently would prefer a `press' that
agrees with them and articulates
only their beliefs and that only
reports their view of events."
Said Johnson, president of the
Houston Chronicle: "In fact, what
our free press and our citizens' free
speech do is preserve a robust exchange
of myriad, diverse views within a free
marketplace of competitive ideas." El
C.onimued
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An avid FOIA user says the process has bogged down
(Th ne person who says he has seen a
marked change during the Reagan
administration in the government's
willingness to.divulge information is
Scott Armstrong one of the all-time
champs in the FOIA-user division.
A former reporter for The Washington
Post, Armstrong, 39, is writing a book
on foreign policy and national security
decision-making. He began his research
for the book when he was on the Post
staff, which he joined in 1976 after a
career that included stints as a private
investigator in the District of Columbia
and as senior investigator for the Senate
Watergate Committee.
Traditionally, he says, federal agencies
have gone to great lengths?and great
expense?to provide quick and "vol-
uminous" responses to reporters'
requests for information.
"Sometime early in this
administration?I would put it
sometime in mid-1981?the pattern and
practice of providing such information
to reporters narrowed substantially.
Some agencies, including the CIA,
stopped providing reporters with
background briefings, he says. Others
began responding to some inquiries with
"File an FOIA request" ?
Armstrong has done just that.
In fact, he estimates he now has 2,000
FOIA requests outstanding,
primarily to the departments
of Defense, State, Treasury,
Energy, Agriculture and
Commerce and to the CIA. If
not the biggest current user
of the FOIA, Armstrong be-
lieves he is certainly "in the
top 10."
At the Defense Depart-
ment, which Armstrong says
used to have one of the fed-
eral government's best FOIA
response records, his requests Scott
began to take longer to pro-
cess. The responses, when
they finally came, were incomplete. His
appeals of initial denials of information
also have bogged down, he says. The
Post filed four lawsuits against the
department over Armstrong's FOIA
requests.
Armstrong is not the only one with
complaints about his FOIA requests.
The Defense Department March 5
informed Leonard Downie Jr., managing
editor of the Post, that it would not
process any of Armstrong's pending
requests, or one from a current Post
reporter, until Armstrong paid the
$430.56 it says he owes in FOIA fees.
In its letter to Downie, the
department said it had already spent
Armstrong
S34,187.76 processing
Armstrong's 408 requests.
Because the FOIA allows
requestors to be charged only
for search time and copying,
the department said
"collectible charges"
amounted to $15,693.61, of
which it had waived
$15,095.08 in the public
interest.
Armstrong, who has paid
$167.97 in FOIA fees to DOD
under protest, says the sum-
of money involved is not the
point. It's the principle that
the Defense Department is making the
determination that some of the material
he is requesting does not rptalify for a fee
waiver.
On March 13, the Post paid the
$430.56. Staff attorney Patrick J. Carome
said the newspaper was not acceding to
the department's claim that it was due
the fee, "but we do not want the ?
question of these charges to stand in
the way of the timely and proper
processing of any Post FOIA
requests."
A Pentagon public affairs officer said
the FOIA office would not comment on
the Armstrong case because of the
pending lawsuits.
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