MUZZLING THE MEDIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403690004-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: July 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE NATIONAL JOURNAL
ON PAGE 12 July 1986
IMAM"InU11311
Muzzling the Media
The Administration's attempts to reduce the flow of information in the name of
national security raises fundamental
u
ti
b
q
es
ons a
out the role of a free
BY DOM BONAFEDE press.
game and indicated a shift by the Admin. We're just now trying to do it in a
istration" in the zealousness with which 't
0 ne of the singular anomalies of the
contemporary political scene is that
Ronald Reagan, universally hailed as the
"Great Communicator." presides over an
Administration that from all appearances
is intent on stemming the free flow of
information and muzzling the national
news media.
Interested observers, including con-
stitutional lawyers, scholars, prominent
journalists and public-interest advocates.
widely agree that the Reagan Adminis.
tration, generally under the cloak of na-
tional security, has taken an unprecedent-
edly narrow view of I st Amendment
rights involving free speech and an unfet-
tered press.
Floyd Abrams. a noted I st Amendment
expert and a partner in the New York law
firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, main-
tained that during the past three years, the
Administration has
taken "a more di-
rect. vocal and far
more visible public
position in the ex-
treme overbreadth
of its definition of
national security
and its under-
evaluation of con-
stitutional values."
Allan Adler,
counsel for the
American Civil
Liberties Union
(ACLU), con-
tended that "this
Administration
has far surpassed
any previous Ad-
ministration in
demonstrating its
disdain for the
public's right to
know what it is doing." Adler added:
"Three decades ago, the Communist
threat was the avenue to restrict the 1st
Amendment and freedom of speech.
Now, we're seeing that terrorism and
national security are being used the same
way.'.
Adler said that the "public threat" by
CIA director William J. Casey to bring
criminal charges against news organiza-
tions that purportedly violate certain na-
tional security laws "clearly changed the
pursues government employees and 'our- more systematic and aggressive way."
1 Casey's critics, however, argue that he
nalists who disclose unauthorized con- seems more interested in systematically
fidential material. andaggressively ins
"This Administration is possibly the poring control over the
Y press than in striking a mutually ally accept-
most restrictive in recent memory in able balance between press and govern.
terms of the free dissemination of in. ment. They have a sense that he misunder.
formation," said Jane E. Kirtley, execu. stands their conflicting roles, with the
tive director of the Reporters Committee press conditioned to challenge authority
for Freedom of the Press. and act as a buffer to extraconstitutional
She said the committee has compiled a or questionable activities on the pan of the
list of 75 actions the Administration has government, whose ambition is to get its
taken that have had a "serious impact" message out and put its best face forward
on freedom of the press, "ranging from publicly. Inevitably, the two institutions
efforts to eviscerate the Freedom of In- often clash in pursuit of their goals.
formation Act to Casey's threatg to prose- While Casey has thrust himself into
cute news organizations-and that's only the forefront of the controversy, he is, in
the stuff we know about. contrasted to effect, a creature of the President and is
what we don't know." presumably acting if not with the Admin-
Others, however. take a more tem- istration's endorsement, then at least with
pered view. Former CIA director Wj , its acquiescence. In large measure, he has
liam E.-Colby said: "All Administrations become a personal symbol of an Adminis-
go t moss t e agony of this problem; tration that either out of distrust or insti-
President Kennedy did, and I imagine tutional caution, has cultivated an arm's-
George Washington did.... Casey is sim- length relationship with the news media ng to plykt in pointing people to are pull
laws their and has artfully sought to impose tighter
g out there managerial control over government in-
this area and that these laws are very formation, or, when conditions are favor.
clear. He has a legal obligation to call able, to circumvent the press entirely.
attention to possible violations." Thus, a confluence of issues is brought
Casey, who enjoys a comfortable per- into play, including free speech guaran.
sonal relationship with Reagan and is tees under the 1st Amendment, the
generally recognized to be the most politi- press's role and responsibility, the need to
cally oriented of assure the nation's security, the occa-
recent CIA direc- sional conflict between civil liberties and
tors, has publicly ideology, the adversary relationship be.
asserted that the tween press and government and, perhaps
American press most important, the people's right to
fails to fully com- know as a basic element in the shaping of
prehend and ap- official policy in a democratic society.
preciate the need
to protect U.S. GOVERNMENT CRACKDOWN
i n t e l l i g e n c e From the beginning, the Administra-
sources, capabili- tion has consistently taken measures to
ties and methods. regulate the flow of government informa.
(See box, p. 17/8.) tion. These included steps to:
"I am trying to ? prohibit an unspecified number of writ.
correct that situa- ers, artists and political figures, including
tion," he declared prominent Canadian nature writer Farley
in an interview in Mowat and the widow of former Chilean
the July Washing- president Salvador Allende, from enter.
ton Journalism ing the United States under the 1952
Review. "All of us McCarran-Walter Act because of their
in the intelligence views and associations.
community have ? require all government employees and
an obligation to contractors who have or seek high-level
sensitize the peo-
ple in the media to this problem,
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security clearance, including political ap-
pointees but not elected officials, to sub-
mit to lie detector tests. The apparent
purpose of the polygraphs is to trace leaks
of information to the press and guard
against infiltration by spies.
? expand, as the result of an executive
order that Reagan signed, the discretion
of federal agencies to classify information
for an indefinite period. The order further
allows the withholding of information
that merely relates to national security or
foreign affairs and provides au-
thority to reclassify information
already in the public domain.
? mandate that all government
officials with access to high-
level classified information sign
statements that require them for
the rest of their lives to submit
for official, pre-publication re-
view all articles and books they
write for public consumption. A
book by former CIA director
Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and
Democracy, the CIA in Transi-
tion, was delayed 18 months
before being cleared by censors
who insisted on almost 100 dele-
tions on security grounds.
? impose a news blackout dur-
ing the October 1983 invasion
of Grenada and threaten to
shoot any U.S. reporters who
tried to reach the island on their own.
Coverage of the initial stages of the as-
sault was selectively provided by the De-
fense Department's own news service.
Later. Defense Secretary Caspar W.
Weinberger and then-White House chief
of staff James A. Baker III announced
that the Administration had the right to
exclude the news media from future mili-
tary operations if it wished to do so.
? seek to broaden existing exemptions in
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
to include the CIA's "operational files."
U.S. Secret Service records and the in-
vestigatory files of the Securities and
Exchange Commission. The CIA ac-
knowledges that it takes an average of
14.5 months for the agency to respond to
an FOIA request.
In other actions, the CIA took the
unprecedented step of filing a complaint
with the Federal Communications Com-
mission charging that ABC News had
"engaged in deliberate news distortion"
in broadcasts about the alleged connec-
tion between the agency and an Hawaii
investment banker then under indictment
for fraud. And in recent months, two
high-level government employees, one
from State and the other from Defense,
were fired on suspicion of leaking in-
formation to the press.
While previous Administrations en-
gaged in some similar actions, none was
as blatant and intimidating in its efforts
to manage, if not control, the news-with
the notable exception of the Nixon Ad-
ministration in the Watergate cover-up,
the secret bombing of Cambodia and the
attempts to block release of the Pentagon
Papers that detailed the genesis of the
Vietnam war.
SETTING THE PATTERN
The most highly publicized and con-
tentious incident involving the press and
government centered on Casey's disclo-
sure in May that he and other Adminis-
tration officials had discussed the pos-
sibility of prosecuting five news
organizations for publishing information
about U.S. intelligence-gathering opera-
tions, particularly the ability of the Na-
tional Security Agency (NSA) to inter-
cept and decode messages of other
nations. The CIA director indicated that
the news organizations had violated a
section of the Espionage Act that was
enacted in 1950 but has never been ap?
plied. Casey, in his warning, identified
The Washington Post, The New York
Times, The Washington Times,
Newsweek and Time magazine.
Shortly afterward, Casey and Lt. Gen.
William E. Odom, the NSA director,
"cautioned" reporters "against specula.
tion and reporting details beyond the in-
formation actually released" at the espio-
nage trial of accused Soviet spy Ronald
W. Pelton in Baltimore.
Although Casey soon moderated his
firm warning, he had made his point.
Then, in late June, he warned two jour-
nalist-authors, Bob Woodward of The
Washington Post and Seymour M. Hersh
of The New York Times, as well as their
publishers, that they could be violating
the law if books each is writing contained
secret "communications intelligence."
Woodward is writing a book on Casey
and the CIA and Hersh is working on a
book due to be released in late summer or
early fall on the downing of the South
Korean passenger jet by the Soviets in
1983.
Clearly, a pattern had been set, with
Casey the chief antagonist.
"This Administration has gone top-se-
cret crazy," said Kirtley of the reporters'
committee. "The longer an Administra-
tion is in office, they have a tendency to
take a proprietary interest in information:
they shall decide what the public should
know."
Attorney Abrams said that "Casey's
threats at the very least are an attempt to
pressure if not muscle the press into silence
in areas he believes should not be dis-
cussed. He wants to let them know if they
publish or broadcast things he does not
believe should be, they'll be in trouble."
Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson,
famous for his investigative exposes, con-
2
ceded that the Administration's series of
actions "affect me a little. It scares me,
also, to have an Administration conduct-
ing wholesale lie detector tests and eaves-
dropping on their own people. It occurs at
the highest level because they're frus-
trated."
Anderson suggested that Casey's
"threats" have already had a "chilling
effect" on the news media. He specifi-
cally referred to a June 8 article in The
Washington Post in which Benjamin C.
Bradlee. the newspaper's executive edi-
tor, emphasized that neither the govern-
ment nor anyone else is allowed "to de-
cide what we should print" while
acknowledging that his newspaper regu-
larly consulted with the government
"about sensitive stories, and we do with-
hold stories for national security reasons,
far more than the public might think. The
Post has withheld information from more
than a dozen stories so far this year for
these reasons."
Anderson's view of Bradlee's article
suggested to him that the newspaper "has
been chilled a little. I don't mean they are
not doing their job: they are. But they are
examining procedures much more closely
and being more cautious than before
Casey's threat."
Los Angeles Times Washington bu-
reau chief Jack Nelson said that the news
media have generally been passive in re-
butting Administration efforts to con-
strict the free flow of information. "Cer-
tainly. there has not been any strong
editorial outcry, maybe with some papers
but not many." he said. "Why? For the
same reason that people like the Presi-
dent but oppose his policies. The econ-
omy is not bad, there is little inflation,
people are fairly happy. That feeling per-
meates the news media."
On the perennial question of govern-
ment over-classification, Richard K.
Betts, a Brookings Institution
Intel igence specialist and former
staff member of the National Se-
curity Council and Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, con-
tended that it is not done "out of
malevolence or to hide things
from people because it would be
embarrassing"-an impression
widely held among critics. In-
stead, he said, "there is a ten.
dency when in doubt to err on the
side of caution. Sometimes the
classification is handled by low-
level people who don't know any
better. Also, it is being done at so
many different places."
Betts suggested that perhaps a
"special court" working with
Congress might be established to
deal with government classifica-
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Lion. "I don't know how it wuuld
work; it would probably be
swamped," he said. "But it might
reduce some of the abuses and
take the burden off the press."
Meanwhile, Weinberger, writ-
ing last October in Defense/85, a
Pentagon publication, stated that
the role of the news media in U.S.
society had to be weighed against
competing national security re-
quirements-that depending on
national priorities, one constitutional
right sometimes superseded another con-
stitutional right. "Freedom of the press
has never been universally defined," he
said. "We are still debating those 13
simple words written two centuries ago-
'Congress shall make no law. . . abridg-
ing freedom of speech or of the press'-
with regard to what the founding fathers
meant by them and how they apply to-
day."
Weinberger argued that while the
press is protected by the Ist Amendment,
"such protection cannot diminish the
other legitimate functions of good govern.
ment," including "the equally legitimate
tradition of the government's need for
secrecy, especially in national defense."
But, he added, "unfortunately, some
reporters and their editors do not agree.
Some act as if they are in an appropriate
position to decide for themselves whether
information that we have classified
should actually be protected."
In so saying, Weinberger articulated
the Administration's position, while
pointing up the uneasy balance between
two legitimate and vital interests.
the British magazine Jane i veteran Defence eteran who formerly directed the ages.
weekly, for whom he moonlighted, a fact Ws operations dealing with photographic
known to his Navy superiors, satellite reconnaissance.
For leaking the classified photos to the In his testimony, Inlow said that based
press. Morison was charged with theft of on his professional and technical expert.
government property and espionage. It ence, the disclosure of the three satellite
marked only the second time since the photographs in Jane's would not cause
Espionage Act was enacted in 1917 that damage or injury to the security of the
the law was used to prosecute someone United States.
for leaking classified information to the In a lengthy account featured in "First
press rather than to foreign agents. The Principles," published by the ACLU's
earlier case, dismissed by the Supreme Center for National Security Studies,
Court, involved the prosecution of Daniel Inlow wrote, "Morison clearly had com-
Ellsberg and Anthony Russo for mitted a misdeed; but what he did was
releasing the Pentagon Papers. not 'espionage.' "
5 In effect, said David Wise, Inlow testified during the Morison trial
who frequently writes on espio- that the Soviets had earlier acquired a
nage and CIA matters, "the Ad- KH-I I technical manual and that "the
ministration has sought to marry photographs, as printed in Jane's, would
the classification system to the have revealed no technical characteristics
espionage laws." about the imaging satellite that the So-
The ACLU's Adler said that viet Union did not already know about in
"the Administration's efforts detail.... The potential for damage from
come into sharp focus with the the disclosure of these three photographs
Morison case: they do not distin- was zero."
guish between government em- He suggested in his written account
ployees who leak information to that the government had decided to
the press and those who engage in "make an example" of Morison. He
espionage. They equate leaking added that "the guilty verdict in the
with espionage." Morison trial, if upheld on appeal, would
Last October, Morison was establish precedents in more than one
convicted and is currently free on direction. It clearly offers a-precedent for
bond pending appeal. indicting persons who leak information
The Morison affair, Adler said, under many types of circumstances."
"represented a clear turning
point for the Administration. SECRETS AND RIGHTS
They decided to go ahead and try Spelling out the differences between
their luck in court. It was a calcu- the press and government, a Washington
lated gamble. Their first step was Post reader wrote in a July I letter to the
to secure a conviction. When that editor: "The intelli
gence community
THE MORISON AFFAIR proved successful, an embold- ened Case wet f serves the governmental consumer, em-
no
p ua
er ploys mostly clandestine sources and pr
For the ast
p year or so, a rash of and applied more pressure on the s
ne ste
th
o-
ects those sources by means of a legally
espionage cases has become a steady press itself." sanctioned classification system. The in-
news diet, including those involving re- Wise similarly saw the Admin. formation itself is protected largely be.
tired Navy communications specialist istratiun's strategy behind the cause it can reveal sources.
Jerry Alfred Whitworth, former CIA Morison case as a two-part process-"to "The press, on the other hand, serves
agent Edward Lee Howard, former NSA intimidate officials for unauthorized the public at large (including those same
intelligence official Pelton and ex-Navy leaks at one end and intimidate reporters governmental consumers), employs
chief warrant officer John A. Walker. All at the other end." mostly open sources and, while it protects
involved government employees who had Adler said he was convinced that the the sources, serves the wider audience by
access to top-secret intelligence and who Administration went beyond the intent of printing the information."
were charged with selling out to the So" the Espionage Act in prosecuting Mori- In essence, the press-government issue
ets. Although spiced with drama and son for leaking information to the press. revolves
intrigue, each of the cases from a con- around the demand to reconcile
"Casey," he said, "did a magnificent job national security requirements with con-
stitutional standpoint were mostly cut of salesmanship." stitutional rights.
and dried. During the Morison trial, government Casey has asserted that the way to
Ironically, the most significant and prosecutors stressed the undeniable, that accomplish this is "to tighten up within
complicated case was the least publi- he had willfully transmitted photographs the government."
cized-that of Navy intelligence analyst and documents related to national de- Wise interprets that as a move toward
Samuel Loring Morison. A Vietnam vet- fense to someone not entitled to receive the British Official Secrets Act, which
eran. grandson of naval historian Samuel them. The critical question of whether imposes strict limitations on the ability of
Eliot Morison and a ID-year employee of the transmitted material could cause the press to divulge national intelligence
the Naval Intelligence Support Service, damage or injury to the United States or information.
he was paccused of labeled th"secret" eeKI I be of potential advantage to a foreign The Brookings Institution's Betts qucs-
satellite
Black photographs ho llite phoa
aircw raft carrier was cases-was never passed upon. stitutional rights. "I'm not sure the press
under construction and mailing them to A key witness for the defense was Ito- r
land S. Inlow, a retired, 28-year CIA
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should be exempt from these questions
any more than other institutions," he
said. While acknowledging the difficulty
involved, he suggested that "there ought
to be some other check on the discretion
of the press other than the press itself."
Contributing to the dilemma is the
climatic condition that prevails between
the press and this Administration, under.
scored in Secretary of State George P.
Shultz's comment following the media
criticism of the Grenada invasion: "It
seems as though the reporters are always
against us, ... always seeking to report
something that's going to screw these
things up."
Central to the Administration's cam-
paign to contain national intelligence in.
formation are its efforts to plug leaks by
reducing the number of officials with
access to classified documents and impos-
ing stricter security curbs on military and
civilian employees who handle secret
codes and cryptographic devices.
In former CIA director Colby's view,
"the leakage problem has gotten more
serious. The general problem is the lack
of standards and discipline in society.
There are whistle-blowers and inquiring
reporters.... There is a contempt for se-
curity."
Albert R. Hunt, Washington bureau
chief of The Wall Street Journal, how-
ever, offered a different view. Adminis.
tration officials, he said, typically will
"draw a distinction between good and
bad leaks. Good leaks are those which
help and support their policies: bad leaks
are those which don't put them in a good
light."
Joseph F. Laitin. a former assistant
public affairs secretary at Defense and
Treasury and now the ombudsman at The
Washington Post, said, "While Casey
threatens The Post and other newspa.
pers, he should look within the Adminis.
tration for leaks."
James R. Schlesinger, the former De-
fense Secretary who briefly served as
CIA director in 1973, said: "The problem
of leakage is generally a problem of the
executive branch. I think the press is
generally responsible."
Casey, nonetheless, insists he will not
retreat from his hard-line position and
will seek to prosecute anyone, including
members of the press, whom he believes
has violated laws covering secret commu-
nications intelligence.
Adler, meanwhile, expressed doubt
that Reagan would want to go down in
history "as the first President since the
Alien and Sedition Act to try to prosecute
a news organization.... The decision to
prosecute The Post or any of the other
newspapers will hgve to come from the
top."
The anomaly, Abrams said, "is not so
much Reagan as the 'Great Communi-
cator' but that of an Administration that
wants to get government off the backs of
people in the economic sphere but is
unwilling to take a position like that in the
area of Ist Amendment rights." 71
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When Casey's at the Bat
Despite a lifetime on the cut-
ting edge-u a World War 11
agent in the Office of Strategic
Services, as a Wall Street ven-
ture capitalist who became a
multimillionaire, as chairman
of the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), as Ronald
Reagan's 1980 campaign chair-
man and finally as CIA direc-
tor-William J. Casey has re-
mained an enigma.
An unimposing, slightly rum-
pled man, he does not carry his
73 years lightly. His glowering
gaze through thick glasses and
his tendency to mumble as he
speaks, as though he is conspir-
ing aloud to himself. serve to
obscure rather than reveal. Im-
patient and intimidating. Casey
could easily be cast as a
worldly, autocratic bishop addressing one of his rustic parishioners.
While he can be courtly among his peers, he is not one to stand on
ceremony at other times. Albert R. Hunt. Washington bureau chief of The
Wall Street Journal, recalled: "I met him at a party one time; he came over
and in dark tones asked me if we had ever violated the Agents Identity Act. I
told him no."
The puzzling question within the Washington press corps these days is
whether Casey is sincere in his threat to prosecute the news media should
they disclose classified information that bears on national security or is
simply trying to chill the media into paralysis.
"Whether he is bluffing or not, I'm not sure," Hunt said. "But you have to
take Casey seriously."
According to syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, "Casey sincerely
believes the public and press ought not be shown the secrets of government
and that the government ought to operate in the dark. Obviously, you can be
more effective operating in the dark-but the cust is too high in terms of
freedom and the people's right to know.... I think it is his nature. He
behaved the same way during the Nixon Administration when he was SEC
chairman. He went to elaborate lengths to put documents into safe keeping
so they couldn't be subpoenaed.... He's a security nut; he believes only
those in power should know what's going on.... But I don't think they are
going to prosecute any newspaper."
Joseph F. Laitin, a former assistant public affairs secretary at the Defense
and Treasury Departments and now the ombudsman at The Washington
Post, said: "Casey's threat was part bombast and part showboat, with a
menacing backdrop to it. He was testing the waters. If it had caught on
publicly, the way (former Vice President] Spiro Agnew's attack on the press
did (in 1969], there would have been real trouble. But the American public
was too smart to buy it."
It is unclear whether Casey is a maverick motivated by personal convic-
tions and prejudices or is acting as a stalking horse for an Administration that
wants to see how far it can go in challenging the news media.
"Part of it is ideology," said 1st Amendment legal expert Floyd Abrams of
Casey's duel with the press. "He genuinely believes it is wrong and dangerous
for the press to say these things [about classified intelligence] and displays a
marked insensitivity to 1st Amendment rights. It is still too early to say if the
Justice Department and the White House fully support him. To the degree
that he is the point man for the attack on the press, or is doing it on his own,
the Administration is content to let him take the lead."
5
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