IS TV NEWS REVEALING TOO MANY GOVERNMENT SECRETS?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807280002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 21, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Amice,
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ARTICLE APPEAL
ON PA
Network correspondents on the
intelligence beat walk a fine line
between informing the public
and jeopardizing national security
By John Weisman
February 1983: The U.S. secretly de-
ployed four AWACS early-warning aircraft
to Egypt and made other clandestine
moves in order to monitor a Libyan mili-
tary buildup on the Sudanese border. ABC
national-security correspondent John
McWethy learned about the U.S. moves.
But at the request of high-ranking Pen-
tagon officials, who told him that if he
broadcast it, American intelligence
sources and methods would be compro-
mised, McWethy sat on the story for 24
hours. "The assessment," says former State
Department spokesman Alan Romberg,
"is that [McWethy) perhaps helped save
somebody's life."
May 1983: CBS correspondent David
Martin, citing "Administration sources,"
reported that U.S. intelligence intercept-
ed a series of cables sent from Tehran to
Damascus: cables that implicated the
government of Ayatollah Khomeini in the
April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy
in Beirut in which 17 Americans died. CIA
spokesman George Lauder says Martin's
report "caused us to lose the manner in
which the intercept was made within 10
days after the story ran."
"If that's true," says Martin, "I cost CIA
a source. Not a human source, a source
which I'm sure they have replaced by
now. But it probably cost them some mon-
ey to do it. If, in fact, that is true, then
obviously that is a story I shouldn't have
done."
TV GUIDE
25-21 February 1986
During the hijacking of TWA Flight 847
last June, all three networks reported on
the movement of Delta Force, the U.S.'s
elite counterterror strike force, to the Med-
iterranean. Even though CBS, ABC and
NBC's reporting was nonspecific, Sec-
retary of State George Shultz and other
Administration officials accused the
press of jeopardizing the hostages.
NBC correspondent Fred Fran-
cis says that before airing his
report he called "a ranking officer in the
Army" for confirmation about Delta's
movements. The officer, says Francis, "told
me flatly . . . 'we'd rather you didn't [re-
port] it, but frankly [Delta] isn't going
anywhere near that plane'." Francis claims
U.S. intelligence knew TWA Flight 847
was going back to Beirut before Delta
could stage a rescue operation at Algiers,
and the press disclosures jeopardized
nothing.
According to a high-ranking intelli-
gence official, at one point during the
seajacking of the Achille Lauro by PLO
terrorists, CBS's David Martin gathered
information for a report about "'SIGINT'
[signals intelligence) information on the
methods we were using" to learn what
was taking place aboard the ship. Ac-
cording to the official, CIA director Wil-
liam Casey placed a personal call to
then-CBS News president- Edward Joyce
and convinced Joyce (who declined to
be interviewed for this article) not to tel-
evise Martin's exclusive. (Martin says he
decided independently not to broadcast
the spot.)
There is a constant battle over sensitive
information going on these days. In one
camp are the networks, whose news op-
erations want to inform viewers about de-
velopments within the intelligence and
national-security areas. In the other are
officials at the CIA, the White House, the
State Department and the Pentagon.
"The press," says CIA spokesman
George Lauder, "says that the public has
a right to know everything. That's a load
of garbage. The public has a need to
know that it is being protected, but there
is a constant tension between that need
to know and what the press so often de-
cides to report."
How responsible is television when it
comes to reporting national-security and
intelligence-based stories? A. good per-
centage of those charged with keeping the
Nation's secrets will tell you that often it
is not responsible at all. "There is a lot of
reporting of classified information that is
damaging to us, which we don't know about
until we see it on the air," says chief Pen-
tagon-spokesman Robert Sims. --
But those who cover the beat say that
the Government tends to overreact when
it comes to intelligence reporting, crying
wolf too often to protect, not national se-
curity, but incompetence and embarrass-
ing intelligence failures. ABCs John Scali,
who has covered the national-escaxity and
intelligence beat for more than 40 years,
says, "News organizations have a re-
sponsibility to help maintain the Nation's
vital secrets in a world where nuclear
weapons can incinerate a hemisphere.
But this doesn't mean we have to stand
mute and salute every time somebody
demands a story be killed."
"I don't know how strong I can be on
this," says NBC's' Fred Francis. 'They
classify too much. They scream too much
about what they read in the papers or see
on television, when in fact most of what
they see or read has already been pub-
lished before, or reported in testimony
before some Senate committee."
As evidence, Francis cites a two-part re-
port he did in January 1985 on the Pen-
tagon's special-operations forces. He and
his producer, Bob Windrem. came across
an article in the periodical Naval Pro-
ceedings that reported about two nuclear
submarines, the John Marshall and the
Sam Houston, which were being con-
verted by the Navy for special-operations
commando use.-
Francis says when he went to the Navy
to ask aboutthe program, wnich had also
been discussed on Capitol Hill, he was
told it was classified. "I said, 'Nah, guys,
it's not classified. Look at May 1984 Naval
Proceedings.' But they refused to talk
about it. Well, the day they refused, we
were flying over the two submarines on
the West Coast, filming them."
Mark Breeder, a former Naval officer who
is the Washington national-security as-
signment editor for ABC News, cites an-
other example. "I'm dealing with the USS
Samuel Raybum, which, under the SALT
agreement, is now dismantled-its hatch-
es are lying open and the missiles are out.
The sub is sitting at the Charleston, South
Carolina, Naval Shipyard right now--oit-
ting in the water alongside a pier, no tent
C
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over it, so the Soviets can fly over and
verify, through their national technical
means that yes, the Rayburn is in fact dis-
mantled. I asked the Navy to let us go in
with a camera and shoot a picture of the
sub. Their response has been, 'No-it's a
controlled area, no photography allowed.'
'Well, here the Soviets are, [satellites]
flying over, making passes all the time,
taking all the pictures they want, but I
can't get in with a camera to get an
establishing picture of the ship, even
though it really epitomizes what arms
control is all about."
According to the correspondents who
cover national security, many of the sto-
ries they do have already been made
public, either in testimony on Capitol Hill,
or in one of the defense-related publi-
cations such as Aviation Week. If it hasn't,
they insist they are cautious. "Here's the
bottom line," says NBC's Francis: "If I get
information that I can't find as a matter of
public information anywhere-if it's not
buried in some staff report from some
obscure committee in Congress, or in a
scholarly dissertation from one of the think
tanks-and it's a national-security issue,
we don't go with it. That's the bottom line:
we don't go with it."
Even so, stories such as those about the
space shuttle Discovery's military pay-
load drew fire from Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger, who tried to pressure
the networks not to report about the shut-
tle's top-secret cargo despite the fact that
articles on the subject had appeared prior
to the spacecraft's launch. NBC, at Wein-
berger's behest, held the story.
Intelligence professionals, however,
disagree with Francis's point of view. "'Just
because the other fellow did it' is a lousy
argument." says William Coenen, a re-
tired Marine officer with strong ties to the
intelligence community. "This sort of thing
gives a tremendous advantage to our So-
viet adversaries. It enables them to spend
a hell of a lot less money than we for the
same facts."
Adds former deputy CIA director Ray S.
Cline, "The freedom we give the press ...
does assist the Soviet Union and other -.
hostile nations in collecting information.
... The intelligence agencies accept that.
It's the price you pay for living in an open
society.... But if you wrap everything to-
gether and put it on a silver platter on the
front page of The Washington Post, you
can be very-sure that every aspect of that
problem will be [discussed] in Moscow
the next day."
Correspondents dispute Coenen and
Cline. "In my pieces on the TWA 847
hijacking," says ABC's McWethy, "I re-
ferred to the fact that the U.S. dispatched
the Delta team to the Mediterranean. I did
not say where they were. I knew where
they were. David Martin knew where they
were. Neither one of us put it on the air."
There have been a number of stories
known to intelligence correspondents that
were not reported at the time because
they would have endangered lives. All
three networks knew about the six Amer-
icans who took refuge in the Canadian
Embassy in Tehran when the U.S. Em-
bassy was taken over in November 1979.
The identity of a National Security Agency
employee who became a hostage of Shiite
terrorists on TWA Flight 847 also was
known but not reported.
And one retired Army officer, who has
extensive experience in clandestine op-
erations, says that when he worked for a
television network as a consultant during
the TWA Flight 847 crisis, the network
had a folder full of sensitive information
that it did not put on the air.
ABC's John Scali says that in fact the
biggest problem with intelligence report-
ing is not the press, but the intelligence
community itself. "William Casey has tried
to build a no-information wilderness
around the agency," he says. "This ap-
proach is failing. It's an outdated view of
a fast-moving world." Indeed, argues Scali,
Casey's "ancient no-comment policy" ac-
tually encourages irresponsible leaks.
"There's not too little information," says
Scali, "there's too much-just too little of
the responsible kind."
David Martin adds that sensitive ma-
terial is often leaked for political reasons.
"Like the Carter White House leaking the
fact that they were supporting the rebels
in Afghanistan at a time when Carter was
under widespread accusations of being
a wimp." Reporters who cover national
security believe the Reagan Administra-
tion selectively leaked information from
the debriefings of Soviet defector Vitaly
Yurchenko to bolster the image of Amer-
ican intelligence in the wake of a number
of embarrassing spy scandals.
"Sometimes," says McWethy, "the peo-
ple who provide you with information have
huge axes to grind-against the Admin-
istration, or against other countries-and
they're giving you information to grind that
ax. You have to be careful."
But, say intelligence professionals, more
than care is needed. When security is at
stake, reporters should remain silent. "The
responsibility of the media is to tell the
truth," says William Coenen. "We all agree
with that. But sometimes the situation de-
mands that-for the safety of the citizens
of this country-the media keep things
quiet for a certain amount of time. I think
there has to be responsibility on the part
of the fourth estate to recognize that and
handle it appropriately."
Most journalists, however, are uncom-
fortable with the role Coenen proposes
for them. Says John McWethy: "We're all
citizens of the United States. The job of
the Government is to deal with national
crises and dispatch military forces, and
collect intelligence and so forth. My job
as a responsible citizen and as a re-
sponsible journalist is to chronicle what
the Government is doing."
Which is why career intelligence offi-
cers like George Lauder throw up their
hands in frustration. "We're trying to pro-
tect this country, not screw it," he says.
"All too often I get the idea journalists are
out to screw this country, not protect it."
Will this often bitter relationship ever
change? Neither reporters nor intelli-
gence professionals think so. As former
CIA director William Colby puts it: "Peo-
ple in the national-security area have a
responsibility to protect secrets. News
guys have the responsibility to find them
out. They're natural antagonists."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807280002-8