THE PROBLEM OF LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100010022-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: June 5, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

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STAT
5 June 1986
Background Information on Journalism and Espionage
Introduction
Investigative reporters and intelligence officers operate in basically
similar ways. This is a logical result of having a similar objective of
obtaining information that is not normally available to the public.
The primary difference affecting their collection methods is the lack
of any stigma attached to journalistic inquiry, compared to the moral and
legal inhibitions against spying. Reporters have legitimate, sometimes
even praiseworthy, reasons for wide-ranging questioning. This gives them a
mantle of respectability that spies lack.
This paper discusses the working methods of American reporters and
foreign intelligence officers. It also compares their work with that of
intelligence analysts.
In conclusion, it discusses the greater opportunities available to
investigative reporters than to intelligence officers and some of the
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difficulties involved in trying to restrict them. The paper also suggests
approaches to trying to protect information.
Similarities and Differences
Investigative reporters and intelligence officers both cultivate
persons who can provide information which they cannot obtain from generally
open and readily available sources. They hope to find persons so
well-informed and helpful that one alone can supply enough material for a
complete news story or can fulfill an intelligence requirement. They are,
however, prepared to accumulate bits of information from various sources
until a complete picture emerges. They often benefit from the fact that
each source does not realize how his information might fit into that
picture, and therefore does not appreciate the significance of providing
Reporters and intelligence officers are also similar to intelligence
analysts. All three must sift through large amounts of information in
order to get what is pertinent to their needs: a media story, a response
to an intelligence requirement, or an analysis of a complicated problem.
An intelligence officer perhaps has to show little personal initiative
in deciding what is pertinent to an intelligence requirement that has been
shaped by the needs of an analyst who formulated questions, while one of
the basic qualifications for being an investigative reporter is a great
deal of initiative to develop a story. Although both spy and reporter are
constantly on the alert for unexpected information of value, the former
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STAT
probably has clearer orders on what he is supposed to collect than a
reporter at the beginning of a complex investigative story. But the type
of evaluation that is required can be the same.
There are also differences between reporters, intelligence officers and
analysts. Journalists rely almost entirely upon oral communication for
their information. They ask questions of those who they believe will know
the answers. There is no stigma attached to their asking, even if those
who are asked refuse to answer. Foreign intelligence officers have to be
more circumspect. They seldom can directly approach those in the best
position to provide information. Nor can they often use one source as a
springboard for identifying and trying to get information out of another
one, as journalists can play one source against another. Intelligence
officers have to seek indirect methods. One such method is to put greater
reliance on searching through written material than reporters usually do.
Analysts rely primarily on written material.
Reporters usually dig up all their material themselves. They rarely
have anyone whom they can task to seek out information that they want.
Analysts sit at the center of a network for collecting information, and
they are able to request answers to questions that seem pertinent to them.
Spies--or intelligence officers ho receive these
requests in the form of intelligence requirements fall somewhere between
the two. They try to develop their own collection networks of people who
will pass them the kind of information needed to fulfill requirements, but
they face many obstacles.
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Source Motivations
Before going into detail about the way each group works, it is
necessary to examine the motivations of those who provide information to
investigative reporters and intelligence officers. Understanding motives
helps to understand how both groups are able to prosper.
Ranked in order of their pertinence to reporters, to both reporters and
intelligence officers, and to intelligence officers--not in order of their
importance in leading to leaks--the main motives seem to be:
-- Trying to influence policy-making in the executive branch. This
applies less to intelligence leaks about past activities than to
administration debates over future policy. Intelligence material
is often used as part of the information made public in an effort
to support or scuttle a policy initiative--for example, on
capabilities to verify arms control agreements.
-- Trying to influence Congress or the public. As a subset of trying
to influence policy, some leaks are aimed at garnering support on
Capitol Hill or from public opinion--or to block support for
someone else. Some officials take it upon themselves individually
or as an institutional action to downgrade classified material for
use in public debate. An Air Force general who retired in the
early 1980s had as one of his primary duties the cultivation of
the technical press with controlled leaks that would support Air
Force budget requests to Congress in two ways: convincing
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congressional members and staffs of the need for and workability
of new weapons systems, and building a broader public constituency
for those systems. That general's successor probably has the same
job.
-- Letting the public know. While the constitutional argument is a
weak one for reporters to use, it should not be ignored.
-- Helping a friend. Sources are far more inclined to talk with
someone they know, and whose discretion they trust, than they are
with an unknown journalist. Once the talking starts, the line
between classified and unclassified information can easily become
blurred in the source's mind, resulting in a reporter's getting
more than he would through official channels.
-- Being patriotic. Although misplaced or incorrect, a feeling that
the country's best interests are being served can be a motive for
disclosing classified material. This amounts to the source's
feeling that his own judgment about what is good for the country
is better than the judgment of those who apply classifications to
the material being disclosed. While patriotism should lead to an
American reporter as the beneficiary of the leak, it can be
construed as a reason for passing information to a foreign power
in order to deter the United States from doing something that the
source thinks is wrong.
-- Feeling important. A desire for recognition, even though limited
by the necessity of hiding their actions, apparently motivates
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many people to leak information. The egotism involved in becoming
a valuable source could overlap other motives but often is
sufficient in itself. In most cases, this primarily benefits
reporters, but it can also be useful to intelligence officers--who
are probably better trained in trying to exploit this motive.
-- Finding excitement. Some sources apparently enjoy the thrill of
dealing in secrets. Providing leaks is a way of livening up what
might otherwise be a humdrum bureaucratic existence. But, while
leaking information to a journalist can provide thrills, the
thrills might be tempered by expectation of some constitutional
protection. However, the thrill could be intensified by dealing
with a foreign government in what is clearly an illegal activity.
-- Getting revenge. Persons who are aggrieved over policy decisions
or personal treatment are ripe for exploitation by either
reporters or intelligence officers--with the degree of ripeness
directly related to the level of anger.
-- Earning money. With possibly rare exceptions, journalists do not
pay for classified information. This motive benefits intelligence
agents, as in the Pelton and Walker cases. The disaffected
government employe who phones The New York Times knows he will not
get paid; the one who phones the Soviet Embassy usually hopes to
have his financial problems solved.
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Some of these motives that seem to benefit reporters the most might be
turned to intelligence officers' advantage by the use of "false flag"
approaches. However, most sources of sensitive information are probably
more likely to talk with an American reporter than with a foreigner, even a
West European journalist. And a Soviet correspondent does not have the
advantages of other reporters because he is correctly seen as a surrogate
for a KGB man if not actually an intelligence officer himself.
There is one further consideration that is related to motivation. That
is a tendency for people who have left sensitive government jobs to talk
more freely about classified material than those still at work.
Investigative reporters work former government people as major sources.
The tendency to talk more freely is not limited to the obviously
aggrieved persons who have been fired or retired against their wishes, and
who might be seeking revenge. It is also true of some who have been
appointed to policy positions for a few years. It is perhaps most
pronounced among those who have retired naturally from government careers
and feel relatively free to reminisce.
A number of past leaks have originated with retired persons. In some
cases, they might be trying to perpetuate their importance. In others,
they might see past events as now being history and therefore no longer so
much in need of classification protection. Besides, those who served in
organizations that use polygraph tests no longer have to be apprehensive of
them when they talk to reporters.
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The importance of retired people goes beyond their specific information
on classified matters to their sometime willingness to identify their
successors who are currently holding sensitive jobs. This is of
considerable significance because learning whom to target can be one of the
toughest problems in journalistic investigation of some particularly
closely held subjects.
Investigative Reporting
An investigative reporter sometimes pursues a story on the basis of his
or his editor's idea of what would be interesting or important, sometimes
because of information serendipitously acquired that needs further
elaboration, sometimes as a result of a tip volunteered by a source--for
one of the source motivations discussed above. Stories are rarely dumped
fully developed on a reporter, as were the Pentagon papers, for instance,
or some of the officially authorized leaks that an administration has given
to major newspapers for policy reasons. Those that are dumped full-blown
are probably not the ones that have caused the most security damage. The
stories that reveal sensitive security material usually are the result of a
lot of digging, of talking to many sources, of playing one source's
information off against another's. This is especially true because most
such stories are protected by security classifications.
For the kinds of stories that are of significance to the Intelligence
Community, there are six main categories of sources that investigative
reporters are likely to pursue:
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-- The executive branch of government. While this is the most
obvious category, it is easy to overestimate its importance.
Classified information might originate in the government, but it
does not necessarily reach a reporter directly. It could filter
through the other categories listed below.
-- Congress. Staffers, more than members, acquire considerable
security information. They sometimes try to pass it along to
journalists in a cautious form that is intended to influence
executive decisions or congressional voting.
-- Think tanks. People who work for them sometimes are more expert
on specialized subjects than rapidly rotating government, people,
and therefore can be more helpful to reporters. Even those who
work with classified material are usually willing to answer some
questions, apparently in confidence that they can avoid
overstepping secrecy limits.
-- The academic world. Some professors squirrel away bits of
material that get into the public domain and then years later
assemble it in ways that are more revealing than the bits had been
intended to be--just like investigative reporters.
This makes such professors useful sources of expertise
and guidance for reporters looking for material. Those academics
who have rotated in and out of government, or been given access to
classified material while serving as consultants, are also more
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willing to talk while not doing government work, and generally
take a more relaxed attitude toward security, than career
government employes.
Industry. Journalists who follow technical subjects like SDI are
invited to conferences attended by industry specialists. In
meeting such people, they find sources who are often prepared
later to explain complex problems to them--and in the process
might reveal enough classified information to enable a reporter to
ask pointed questions of the next source.
Foreign embassies. They are occasionally willing to pass along to
American reporters information that they have been given in
confidence by the U.S. Government, or that they have assembled
from their own sources, when they think it serves their policy
purposes or at least does not hurt them.
Some of the points just mentioned deserve further elaboration. One is
the importance of human nature.
People like to talk. They like to be asked questions because it shows
their importance. Very few government officials or others with access to
classified information flatly refuse to talk to a reporter, although that
would be the best defense. Once started talking, most people can readily
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be led into saying more than they originally intended to say. They might
try to talk around a sensitive point--but in the process give enough clues
for a perceptive reporter to get a lead that will enable him to put more
precise questions to another person.
An investigative reporter uses one source to locate others. He is
constantly asking for more names of people to contact on a subject. Even
those who refuse to tell him anything will sometimes suggest others to whom
he might talk. And those who tell him just a little, but who enable him to
contact others with the same kind of knowledge, might unwittingly be
helping him get another little bit that--when fitted into what has already
been collected--reveals a larger picture than the original source felt
should be disclosed. One man's innocent bit of information on the fringes
of classification can be a reporter's valuable piece of a jigsaw puzzle,
even the key to fitting together many other pieces.
Reporters have various approaches that can work on those who would not
be inclined to reveal secrets. Simply claiming a public right to know is a
bit too blunt, if not naive. Few if any sources of classified information
are likely to respond to that. Instead, reporters might try such
techniques as:
-- Exchanging information. Many policy-level government officials
are too busy to stay informed on everything of interest or even of
importance to them. Journalists can cultivate them by providing
tidbits of information that the media has acquired as leaks or as
unpublishable background supplied purposefully by other officials.
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Once a confidential relationship is established, the flow of
information can be two ways, leading to the reporters' getting a
kind of overview of subjects as well as specific facts that might
not be otherwise available. While major, damaging leaks probably
rarely occur this way, because a regular relationship between an
official and a reporter might be too well known for the official
to risk passing classified material, a lot of sensitive
information reaches the public by such a route.
-- Appealing for help in understanding a complex subject after
indicating what they already know, possibly from public material
or from fragmentary leaks from other sources. Many members of the
Intelligence Community have only a vague idea of how much material
on their subject is already in the public domain, so they can be
readily surprised by even a careful compilation of open
literature. Surprise can lead to talking.
-- Professing a desire to be responsible. Reporters might contend
that others are working on a story but are likely to distort it,
and therefore it would be better for a source to help get it
presented in an accurate, responsible form.
-- As a variation on the responsibility approach, warning that the
story is going to be published regardless of whether a source
helps, and it would be in the national interest to steer the
reporter along correct lines by giving more information or
confirming what the reporter already has. This amounts to a mild
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form of blackmail, wrapped in apparently high motives.
-- Claiming--truthfully or otherwise--that they already have
information from other sources about which they have doubts, and
asking for someone to talk because he is known to be more accurate
and trustworthy. This amounts to flattery, which sometimes can
be productive.
-- Using old-fashioned browbeating, including hollering at people on
the telephone (rarely in person). This is most likely to be
productive, rather than just counter-productive, with junior
officials who have some responsibility to keep the press informed
but are not authorized to give out the particular information that
the reporter is seeking.
The better known a reporter is, the more successful he might be with
these techniques. The celebrity status of a Seymour Hersh or a Bob
Woodward probably sometimes wins them access that would be denied to an
unknown reporter. Lower and middle-level workers in classified fields can
be flattered by their attentions without stopping to reflect on how
dangerous their fame proves them to be. Senior people might feel a need to
set them straight but in the process confirm suspicions or even give clues
to further information.
On the other hand, an unknown reporter might have more success with
those who are wary of the dangers of already successful investigative
reporters.
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The techniques discussed above are oral ones. As mentioned, reporters
depend almost entirely upon personal contact with those who have the
information they want. Although a few people like have made
notable journalistic careers by assembling information buried in written
records, and such investigative reporting projects as exposing municipal
fraud often have to depend upon detailed scrutiny of records, significant
disclosures of classified material depend upon finding someone to talk.
Published material is useful to investigative reporters mainly for gaining
background and knowing what questions to ask.
There is an important exception to this rule, however, which applies
more to the specialized trade press than to mass media. Newsletters edited
for experts in particular industries systematically go through obscure
Pentagon technical orders and similar sources to extract new information
about things like weapons' specifications. Writers for such newsletters,
as well as for magazines with wider audiences such as Aviation Week and
Space Technology, develop close relations with the industries and
government departments that they cover. As suggested above, such
familiarity easily leads to informed, insider discussions that overstep the
classified line. The result is that, even if no one specific classified
fact is disclosed directly, a perspective or interpretive framework is
obtained by the writers. It enables them to draw from sensitive but
unclassified material conclusions that can shed light on classified
programs and be of value to foreign intelligence officers. It also helps
them frame questions and target those who might be able to answer them.
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To summarize, the keys to an investigative reporter's success are his
basic legitimacy under the U.S. Constitution, the multitude and variety of
places where he can get information other than the obvious ones, the
willingness of people to talk even when uncertain about where the
boundaries lie between open source and classified information, the various
psychological games that can be played to weedle material out of sources,
and the many motivations that sources have for deliberately disclosing
secrets.
Espionage
A foreign intelligence officer in Washington lacks some of these
advantages. That lack is only partially compensated by special advantages
of his own.
Intelligence officers also work the six types of sources listed
earlier. To them, they add a seventh, the media itself. While other
embassies in Washington regularly cultivate the more important and
better-informed journalists in an effort to sell their national lines, the
Soviet Embassy pursues some reporters with a different motive. It wants to
find out what they have learned as official background information not for
publication or have picked up from leaks.
An intelligence officer faces obstacles little known to a reporter.
Rather than having some constitutional legitimacy, he is confronted by
espionage laws. He is not free to approach anyone he wants and ask
questions, although some KGB officers have tried such methods on Capitol
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Hill in the apparent belief that the atmosphere there is more conducive to
passing out information to strangers than in executive branches. He is
unlikely to be able to get someone working with classified information to
have lunch with him so that an acquaintance can be cultivated in hope that
it will now or later produce information.
This limitation on openly asking questions inclines intelligence
officers to put more reliance on searching written materials. The Soviets
read some in Washington and order many for dispatch to Moscow. They not
only get official publications for the general public and specialized
industries, but also subscribe to technical newsletters and other
commercial publications that in effect help them search for what is
important.
An intelligence officer can be expected to have a clear idea of what he
is looking for at all times. This is probably untrue of a reporter. He
might only periodically do investigative projects and is most unlikely to
have a good system for saving and being able to recover miscellaneous bits
of information that do not apply to a current project but might eventually
add up to something. Both can use scraps. An experienced reporter can
construct an interesting, comprehensive story out of just one new fact and
a lot of background. But the intelligence officer is more likely to be
working toward a long-term goal of fitting odd bits of information into a
valuable picture. He, or his headquarters, is therefore more inclined to
collect even seemingly insignificant scraps of classified or unclassified
information on subjects of current or potential interest.
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Intelligence officers have certain appeals that investigative reporters
lack. They range from the ideological to the mercenary. While Communism
has lost the kind of attraction it had for some in past decades, and the
desire to help the Soviet Union build a brave new world is now weak to
nonexistent in the United States, some people are still moved by the peace
front idea of helping prevent nuclear war. This can be played upon.
It is, however, probably of little importance compared with the
mercenary appeal. The willingness of the Soviets, Chinese or others to pay
for classified information is well advertised by trials of those who have
accepted the lure, yet the obvious fact of people being caught and put on
trial fails to deter some who are desperate enough for money.
Ethnic connections can also be important for intelligence officers but
not for reporters working in Washington. This has been shown recently by
the Chin case but probably has much broader applicability than just the
especially strong Chinese sense of ethnic and cultural solidarity.
Analysis
Investigative reporting is in a lot of ways similar to intelligence
analysis, which drives many aspects of intelligence officers' work.
In both fields, a broad overview of a subject is needed. This makes it
possible for the importance of particular facts to be recognized so they
can be fitted into a framework that utilizes them in all pertinent and
significant ways. Such a framework also makes it possible to determine
what further information is needed to give a comprehensive picture. A
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reporter will then contact his regular sources or try to establish new ones
to fill in the holes; an analyst will ask intelligence officers or such
other sources as technical collection systems to produce further material.
In some ways the analyst has a harder job. He has to dig through
written materials for his background. There is seldom much institutional
memory that will help him, and in any event he has to locate original
sources for most of his work. The journalist in a sense stands on the
analyst's shoulders. By asking questions of those who benefit from the
analyst's finished product, he gets the fruits of their labor without
needing to do the same research or locate the documentation. An
investigative reporter depends on others' expertise, while an analyst has
to be his own expert.
Both the investigative reporter and the analyst have to develop a
concept of the problem they are trying to solve. They have to be flexible
enough to reformulate the problem as they go along. Some media leaks have
been a result of a reporter, who was working on one subject, stumbling
across tangential information that led into a different subject. But the
analyst is usually dealing with a set problem and is not so free to switch
topics.
A reporter is likely to be pointed from one question to the next by his
sources. An analyst must do his own pointing, possibly with the help of
his management.
Conclusions
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Despite the similarities in their work, investigative reporters have
far more opportunities than do intelligence officers. They are an
accepted--even heroic in some eyes--part of the society, rather than being
almost universally seen as part of a foreign threat. They can go anywhere,
talk to anyone, ask any kind of question without being considered off
limits in the way that intelligence officers would be. While it might be
harmful to a government career to be seen talking to reporters, especially
if sensitive information is then published, it is rarely seen as being
illegal or even morally reprehensible.
The media's reluctance to pay for information, except in the show
business area that seldom delves into classified subjects, limits it in
obtaining some information that intelligence officers are eager to buy.
But this is more than offset by the advantages of sources' wanting to get
information into the press for a variety of motives.
There is also the major advantage that leaking information to the media
is a relatively safe activity. In comparison to the publicity given to
cases of providing classified material to foreign intelligence officers,
there has been little said or done about leaks to the media. This has the
apparent effect of making such leaks seem to involve low risks. Up to now,
the penalties for talking to investigative reporters have been mild
compared to those for talking to the KGB.
Being more numerous and wide-ranging than Communist intelligence
officers, reporters are harder to track for any attempt to detect leaks at
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their end of the connection. Aside from the legal problems that would be
involved, there is the physical problem of sheer numbers of media offices
to watch.
The problem is compounded by the fact that any
journalist, or even a free-lancer, can come up with classified information.
Although those journalists who specialize in investigating security
subjects would be obvious targets if surveillance were legally and
physically possible, the better to intimidate the rest, they alone are not
the whole problem.
These considerations make it more logical to look toward the motives
and mechanisms involved in providing leaks when seeking ways to reduce
them.
Suggestions
Some new approaches are already being followed. These include efforts
to tighten the handling of classified material and the wider use of
polygraphs in investigating leaks.
Other possibilities are:
-- Warn those working with classified material--including
policy-level political appointees, contractors and think tank
personnel in addition to regular government employes--of the
dangers of trying to talk around classified information. The best
defense for a holder of classified information would be to refuse
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flatly to discuss a classified subject in any form, because the
boundary between what is secret and what is in the public domain
is so vague and easily misjudged.
-- Discourage those contacted by the media from providing the names
of others who have some knowledge of the subject under
investigation. The importance to a reporter of being able to go
from one source to the next, collecting bits and pieces that each
feels is relatively innocuous but that might add up to something
significant, should be strongly emphasized. If the chain can be
broken, a reporter will have a hard time ferreting out complete
stories.
-- Keep in touch with retired people to remind them of the necessity
of not talking about classified subjects, no matter how old their
information.
-- Create an alert system for targets of investigative reporters.
Anyone who works with classified information, including
policy-level political appointees, or has worked with it in the
past, should be instructed to report to a central office any
queries on classified subjects--other than those obviously
involving current spot news developments. Such a report then
would be the basis for alerting others working on the same subject
or who have worked on it in the last few years, even if now
retired. The alert would have the effect of reminding the others
of their obligation not to talk about the subject. While this
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/06: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100010022-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/06: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100010022-6
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
could prove administratively difficult and expensive, and might
not reach everyone that an investigative reporter would try to
interview, even a limited effort to provide partial coverage of
potential press targets would be worthwhile.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/06: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100010022-6