SECRETS CUBED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807640002-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 3, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807640002-8
,~yE A /SIRED
5 Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
Secrets Cubed
It isn't easy to make sense of the bizarre
game the administration is playing with the
press-and itself-over secret intelligence-
gathering methods. But since the alternative
0. seems to be jail, perhaps we'd better try.
CIA Director William Casey has lately
"warned" five newsgathering organizations (in-
cluding The Washington Post, The New York
Times and a few TV networks) not to reveal
certain information that has come their wd'
about signals intelligence, on pain of prosecu-
tion under a 1950 amendment to. the Espionage
Most of the stories at issue arise from the
case of Ronald W. Pelton, a former National
Security Agency employee (at $24,000 a year!)
who is now being tried for selling secrets to the
Rti salans; 'TM' NSA, 36irietimes called?:!'the
puzzle palace," is- the government's' prime:
code-breaking agency.
But despite a Casey recommendation, the
Justice Department has not yet moved against
NBC, which defied the ban. Moreover, the
prosecutor's opening statement at the Pelton
trial indicated that the government would delib-
erately risk compromising some of the very
"assets" it has been threatening the press over.
What is going on here?
I hold no brief for the view that the First
Amendment entitles the press to treat espio-
nage laws casually, even if they do raise First
Amendment issues. The First Amendment bars
prior restraint. Casey's threats are censorious
in spirit, and perhaps intent as well. But Casey's
blunderbuss threats hardly make reporters and
editors wise or competent judges of what is or
isn't in the national interest to reveal about
codes and code-breaking.
The issue does, after all, have a history. It is
only now coming to be generally understood
how critical was the breaking of the German
army's "Enigma" code to the Allied cause dur-
ing World War IL It was even more important
than the breaking of Japanese codes, which
enabled the U.S. Navy to get the jump at the
tide-turning battle of Midway. Such distant if
memorable precedents may not settle present
cases; they do counsel caution.
Yet a plaintiff must come into court with
clean hands. When it comes to the disciplined
use and protection of intelligence secrets, this
administration's hands are absolutely grimy.
One fatuous inconsistency was that the White
House allowed itself to be badgered, no one
knows why, into disclosing (in the president's
speech justifying the bombing raids on Libya)
the dates of intercepts of Libyan messages
between Tripoli and East Berlin, making it far
easier to guess which codes we had broken.
And now, after internal' argument that must
have left a lot of blood on the floor, the decisign
-haw been made to eacAfice-yet mocg-sensitive
information in order to prosecufe Pelton.
The implication is irresistible-that the se-
crets at issue here are substantially less valu-
able than Casey and others pretend. Otherwise,
it would be' gross irresponsibility to compro?
m18e them for the satisfaction of sending a
single spy to prison. 1
Like last year's Walker spy case, the flatter
and flap over code-breaking is in part another,
telltale symptom of the lunatic excess of secre-
cy. Classification has far outpaced the ability of
government to warrant its integrity. (U.S.
News & World Report says that 4.3 million
persons hold security clearances, and 22 million'
more documents were classified last year.)
The Reagan administration has doubled the,
intelligence-gathering budget, with its usual.
inattention to perverse and paradoxical results.
When it doubled the budget, it probably cubed,
the number of underpaid hirelings who, like
Pelton, are told more than they should know ,
'
and earn less than the Soviets can pay them to
sPY-
This:mindless, growth industry demands that
u91gkable gtie 4ions Me. -such. as how`'
much secrecy` we really need. f, for instance, it
is considered important that the telemetry of
U.S. or Soviet missile tests (under SALT II) not
be coded, how much else about our weapons'
'systhms or.6niMidd"and control'would it really
be more sensible to leave open and uncbded?
A very real barrier to reform is that the-
possession of secrets, if only for the purpose of
leaking them, is a prized badge of power iri-;
Washington. The best way to keep secrets is to
have fewer. But it will not be easy weaning the
small-time power-players from the small
change of their cloak-and-dagger games.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807640002-8