LEAKY GOVERNMENT RESIST PATCHWORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560048-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 48
• Publication Date: June 2, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560048-7
INSIGHT
2 June 1986
4
Leaky Government
Resists Patchwork
SUMMARY: Ones, aaost A=k aces
bonornd wanting. about "loose
lips." ?roday eAk1als an no loos
oosooaned abort On daagsr, but
MOM aw sprom" aces n ofon
am~. 0a wior so Cont,al
Inslllgsnos MlUlkrn Casey,
angs d by room downs, Is
dobsnainui M sup tb?a - &N
Past by assklnt P :Alen of
an do-1 rows afanlsatlons.
wring World War II the saying was
"Loose lips sink ships:' It was
on posters and bill-
boards over the country. The idea was
that repeating any bit of news you picked
up - from down at the shipyard, from a
lonely GI's letter, that your boy was ship-
ping out soon - might be overheard by an
enemy agent who could put all the pieces
together. And an enemy submarine would
be lying in wait. The most effective version
of this warning was the one shown in movie
theaters. It had the cautionary words voiced
over a scene of American bodies face down
in the sand and surf of a distant beach.
It was a grim admonition, and most
Americans took it seriously. The same mes-
sage is going out today in different form,
but the patriotic fervor and sense of danger
are lacking. So is the cooperation. Official
Washington, led by Director of Central In-
telligence William J. Casey, is declaring
war on leakers and threatening to prosecute
newspapers, broadcasters and magazines.
Casey's wrath was aroused over infor-
mation printed and broadcast at the time of
the U. S. bombing raid on Libya. Casey said
he had "five absolutely cold violations" of
a little-known 1950s law against disclosure
of information about the country's commu-
nications intelligence capabilities. He later
called the Libya stories spilled milk but said
the law must be enforced in the future. The
future arrived May 19. Casey said he was
asking the Justice Department to look into
an NBC news report on electronic eaves-
dropping by U.S. submarines in Soviet har-
bors - with a view to prosecution.
The State Departrnent issued a blunt
object lesson May 16 by firing an em-
ployee, speechwriter Spencer C. Warren,
who admitted leaking a classified cable.
State Department spokesman Charles E.
The late Sen. Sam Ervin at Watergate
hearing: Leaks tllneled the story.
Redman added emphasis to the dismissal
by opening his daily news briefing with the
announcement, an unprecedented action.
Said Redman: '"The department is dismiss-
ing a mid-level employee because he made
an unauthorized disclosure of classified in-
formation to the news media."
A favorite weapon against internal leak-
ers is the lie detector test, the use of which
the administration is trying to expand. Last
month the Pentagon fired Michael E. Pills-
bury, an assistant under secretary of de-
fense for policy planning, because he had
leaked news about a secret decision to send
American-made Stinger missiles to anti-
communist forces fighting in Angola and
Afghanistan. The Pentagon said he flunked
a lie detector test.
Samuel Loring Morison, a naval intelli-
gence analyst, was prosecuted by the jus-
tice Department last year and convicted of
selling satellite photos to Jane's Defence
Week, a British magazine. The government
said this gave away secrets about U.S. sat-
ellite photography.
Some leaks can be deadly: U.S. agents
overseas have been murdered after publica-
tion of their names and identities.
But if leaks are sometimes matters of
grave national security, at other times they
are just another way in which official Wash-
ington talks to the rest of the world. Wash-
ington probably couldn't function without
certain kinds of leaks, and the government
above all knows that.
"Very little of it is leaked by faceless
civil servants,' an informed source says. "It
is leaked at a fairly high level. So, for
presidents to be suddenly terribly upset
about it borders a bit on crocodile tears,
since, in fact, they do more leaking than
they're leaked against:'
"Bureaucrats, civil servants, don't
British war poster warm
inadvertently tipping off enem .
Continues
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560048-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560048-7
Ellsberg: Source for Pentagon Papers
really do that much talking to reporters;'
says a former bureaucrat. "Reporters in this
country tend to call political officials.
Those are the people they've met in cam-
paigns. They are the ones who they think
have power. So they're the ones doing the
leaking.
Says a Washington insider about leaks:
"They're just so messy. Unless you're the
one doing the leaking. they seem so de-
structive. There's so much wasted effort to
knock them down once they're in the press.
So many calls from reporters come in after
something is leaked. So much time has to
be spent. All sorts of public officials,
presidents on down, get very upset about
it',
N ws leaks take two basic forms; in-
formation the government wants
spread but; does not want to an-
nounce officially and information the gov-
ernment would prefer the public not know
but which is leaked by someone who thinks
it should be known. Leakologists call these
..authorized leaks" and "unauthorized
leaks:'
Officials in power love authorized leaks
and deplore unauthorized ones. Official-
dom despises all leaks not of its own mak-
ing. There is a famous story, confirmed by
unimpeachable sources, that President
Lyndon B. Johnson once refused to go
through with a personnel appointment just
because a newspaper printed news of it
before he could announce it. Johnson may
have been the biggest leakophobe of them
all.
Stephen Hess, a resident scholar at the
Brookings Institution who worked in press
offices throughout the government in the
Eisenhower and Nixon administrations,
has made a study of leaks and breaks them
down into seven types:
The ego leak: Giving out informa-
tion, often without even being asked. just
to prove you are a big shot with access to
things worth leaking.
TIN goodwill leak: Similar to the
above but with the aim of winning friends
or at least cultivating useful reporters.
The policy lock: Can be either for or
against a particular policy but leaked for the
pupose of boosting or discrediting.
rQ animus leak: Grudge leaks used
to get even or hurt a threatening rival.
The trial balloon: One of the most
common. used when the government wants
to test public reaction to something before
it makes the official announcement. Many
a trial balloon has burst a grand design.
The withdie?blower: Someone in-
side government knows something is going
on, thinks it's wrong and thinks the public
will never know unless he speaks out.
Whistle-blowers sometimes go public with
their protests. As a result, they often lose
their jobs, which is why many still prefer
the leak.
The no-purpose leak: Some people
just love to talk.
Perhaps the most famous "policy leak"
of recent times came during the Vietnam
War. On June 13. 197 1. The New York
Times began publishing stories based on a
47-volume government study of U.S. in-
volvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.
Similar articles followed in The Washing-
ton Post, other newspapers, the major wire
services and broadcast networks.
The classified documents quickly be-
came known as the Pentagon Papers, and
they revealed a tangle of governmental
stumbling and fumbling into war, covered
up by deliberate deceit. The revelations
caused a sensation and had a major role in
increasing support for the antiwar move-
ment.
All this broke during the administration
of President Richard M. Nixon, but the
embarrassing revelations concerned things
that had happened before he took office. If
anything, the leaking of the Pentagon Pa-
pers provided a marvelous opportunity for
a Republican administration to embarrass
its Democratic predecessors. For a time.
Nixon seriously considered declassifying
these and all similar documentations of
blunders, principally committed by Demo-
crats, going all the way back to World War
11. But in the end. Nixon. a lawyer as well
as chief of the government from which the
papers had been purloined, hated the
thought of breached security more than he
savored the grief it could cause his foes. He
went to court in an effort to stop publication
of the material and set the FBI on the trail
of the leaker.
The administration lost its fight to stop
newspapers from publishing stories based
on the top secret documents. The Supreme
Court said the Constitution prohibited prior
censorship of news stories in all but the
most dire circumstances.
Eventually, the leak was traced to Daniel
Ellsberg, who had helped compile the re-
ports as an employee of the Rand Corp.. a
think tank consultant to the Pentagon. In
June 1971, Nixon created a White House
unit nicknamed the "plumbers" because its
mission was to stop leaks. The plumbers
quickly got out of hand, even burglarizing
the office of a psychiatrist who had been
treating Ellsberg. They were looking for
material that might be used to discredit
Ellsberg.
Ellsberg was the first American to be
prosecuted on espionage charges for releas-
ing material to newspapers. But when the
federal judge trying the case heard of the
plumbers' shenanigans. he dismissed the
charges. This left Nixon facing the most
massive leakage of classified documents in
U.S. history and helpless to do anything
about it, even to punish the leaker.
Ironically, the downfall of Nixon was
brought about by another leak - either of
the "whistle-blowing" or "animus" variety,
in Hess's typology. depending on whom
you ask. Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob
Wood wrote story after story through
1972 and 1973 about slush funds at the
Nixon campaign headquarters, dirty tricks.
political sabotage and more. The stories
Nixon: Ruling left him heipiess to do
anything about Pentagon Papers leak.
Continued t
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560048-7
This administration has done more
leaking than any other past
administration that I know of."
were based on various unnamed sources provided the story of the hour. The source
but were corroborated principally by one had no immediate interest in the affair. The
code-named Deep Throat. reporter had simply asked if the source
could get the information. The source got
their book, 'All the President's Men;' it and passed it on. There was no tit-for-tat,
the two Washington Post reporters de- only the knowledge that the reporter would
scribed their key source as someone be grateful - a "goodwill leak" in Hess's
"in the executive branch who had access to 'description. If the source later wanted
information at the Committee for the Re- something leaked, the reporter would re-
election of the President as well as at the member the favor and at least give it a
White House. His identity was unknown to hearing.
anyone else, including their editors. He When this reporter first arrived in Wash-
could be contacted only on very important ington, an older and wiser editor advised
occasions. Woodward had promised never him, "You live and die in this town by your
to identify him or his position to anyone. sources." The suggestion was clear, Get
Further, he had agreed never to quote the around and develop some. Without sources
man, even as an anonymous source." ' - or leaks - reporters wouldn't get their
Reporters refer to fonts of leaked in- best stories and the public would know a
formation as "sources" rather than leakers, lot less than it does. This reporter remem-
But whatever the terminology, news that bers another time in the Watergate era when
one reporter has and no one else does is the he wanted very much to find certain elusive
sweetest kind. Most such stories come documents. Everyone insisted they did not
from sources who provide information but exist; he believed they did and called every-
ask not to be named in the stories. Most one he knew who might have knowledge
reporters take pride in stories the 1-1,
f
h
.7 1
but they clam up about the sourc
e. That
makes it difficult for one reporter to write
about other reporters' sources. But there
are a million such stories floating around
the bars and newsrooms of Washington.
This reporter recalls receiving a plain
brown envelope behind the potted palms in
the Muehlebach Hotel lobby in Kansas
City, Mo., at 6 a. m. one day many yeaas
ago. In the envelope was information that
media of
for storing intelligence leaks
o
t
em. Initially, nothing. Then one day
the phone rang - a source had what he
wanted. One of the seeds he had sown had
4#
Carl Bernstein (left), Bob Nbodwaard
blossomed. Another story had appeared `-live pause to people in the administration
that would not have come from the informa- contemplating future leaks.
tion mill by which official Washington But the growing leak traffic does make
daily inundates the press corps. the government nervous. It was one of the
This points to another aspect of leak reasons reporters were not taken along on
journalism: Most leak stories rely on a the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. The
variety of sources, not just one superleak. Pentagon's judgment on that may have been
Woodward and Bernstein talked to many confirmed when it later tried to arrange a
more sources than Deep Throat. In fact, pool coverage system for future military
these reporters say, Deep Throat would actions: A f
ew journalists, selected in ad-
only discuss information already obtained vance. would be mobilized in secret to
elsewhere. Most publications will not print accompany U.S. forces. A test alert of the
a story based on one anonymous source. pool was a total debacle; minutes after the
In 1984 Rnh Pa. , of Th
e
Press began pursuing a report that -a manual the whol
t
k
lip
e
own
new about it. Loose
s.
had been prepared by the CIA for the rebels An informed Washington source, asked
fighting the Sandinista government of about the current leak crisis, responds:
Nicaragua.'The document became known "I'm glad that this whole business has fo-
as the "murder manual" because of some cused attention on the question of leaks,
of its harsher suggestions. Parry consulted because it's a way of life here and maybe it
a variety of sources in tracking down the really has gotten out of hand. My point is
manual. He says he was surprised to learn this administration has done more leaking
that he knew more than many people in the than any other past administration that I
CIA about the agency's own document. know of. And probably the next admin-
The story resulted in a White House repri- istration will do more leaking. Every ad-
mand and disciplining for the agency work- ministration does more than the past."
ers involved in producing the manual. Hess himself was accused on occasion
The most common threat hanging over of being the biggest leaker in the Nixon
leakers and leakees is an FBI investigation, administration. "It's not true;' says Hess.
though such inquiries are only rarely pro- "1 didn't when I was a government official.
ductive.. In 1983 the FBI probed a leak of What I did was talk to an awful lot of
information about U.S. military options in reporters. But that's not necessarily the
Lebanon. The leaker was never discovered, same as leaking; it was a way to get our
but administration officials said quite story out."
frankly that the investigation at least would - Don McLeod J
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807560048-7