CASEY THREATENS PROSECUTION - IS WASHINGTON 'POST' ABOVE THE LAW?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230016-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2011
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/09/27: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100230016-1
AIPr10.E HUMAN EVENTS
nri o?~r Y
TNI8 W[[I('S NEWS FROM
-_ 1
Cases' Threatens Prosecution
Is Washington `Post'
Above the Law?
A former top intelligence official has charged
that the Washington Post, in its drive for sensa-
tional headlines and a Pulitzer Prize, has threat-
ened the lives of American citizens.
ry George Carver, a former deputy director of the
CIA and acknowledged expert on intelligence and
national security issues, says that a recent Post
story by Bob Woodward detailing U.S. intelligence
intercepts of Libyan terrorist messages has resulted
in "the loss of a facility that we have used to obtain
prior warnings of terrorist attacks."
"That loss can cost American citizens their
lives,'' Carer said during a recent appearance on
Cable News Network's "Crossfire" program.
"And I do not regard one American life as being
worth a byline for Bob Woodward or a Pulitzer
Prize for the Washington Post.
But Woodward, contacted by HL%t:\N EvENTS,
insisted that he had only "added some detail" to
what the President had already said about the Li-
byan messages. He denounced Carver's accusa-
tions as "scurrilous."
Woodward, of course, is one of the Post report-
ers who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the
Watergate scandal that brought down President
Richard Nixon. Woodward, who is now in charge
of investigative journalism at the Post, has since
developed a notorious reputation among conserva-
tives for writing stories that experts believe have
compromised secret operations and damaged na-
tional security.
Woodward, for example, has attempted to ex-
pose secret Western assistance to the Afghan resist-
ance and U.S. plans to destabilize the Qaddafi
regime in Libya. Woodward was the co-author of a
May 12, 1985, Post story about secret U.S. coun-
ter-terrorism operations in Lebanon that may have
inspired last year's terrorist hijacking of TWA
flight 847 and the murder of Navy diver Robert
Stethem.
The criticism of Woodward by George
Carver came in the wake of the revelation by
the Post that it was recently warned that it
may be prosecuted if it proceeds with yet
another story about secret U.S. intelligence
activities.
In"
The Post reported that it and severai other pub-
lications were accused by Casey of already hav-
ing violated Section'798 of the U.S. Code, which
prohibits the disclosure of such information in a
manner harmful to the U.S. The Post said Casey
was referring to stories about intercepted Libyan
messages.
President Reagan justified the April 14 attack on
Libya by revealing that the U.S. had conclusive
evidence that "the terrorist bombing of the La
Belle discotheque was planned and-executed under
the direct orders of the Libyan fegime." The
bombing killed an American serviceman.
"On March 25," the President said, "more than,
a week before the attack, orders were sent from
Tripoli to the Libyan People's Bureau in East
Berlin to conduct the terrorist attack against Amer-
icans to cause maximum and indiscriminate casual-
ties. Libya's agents then planted the bomb.
"On April 4, the People's Bureau alerted Tripoli
that the attack would be carried out the following
morning. The next day, they reported back to
Tripoli on the great success of their mission."
Former CIA Deputy Director Carver said that
"the President spoke more than he should have"
in going public with information about the nature
of the evidence. However, the President obviously
did so to avoid criticism from the media and else-
where that his attack on Libya was without justi-
fication.
But Carver charged that the Washington Post, in
an April 22 follow-up story by Bob Woodward
that went into extraordinary detail about the inter-
cepted messages, "then compounded the problem
by pinpointing what' Libyan messages had' been
intercepted [andj what Libyan codes had. been
broken, thus denying us in the future the kind of
warning of terrorism we've had in the past."
Carver drew a sharp distinction between what
the President had said and what the Post had pub-
lished. In contrast to the President, Woodward
had quoted directly from the Libyan messages, had
referred to the times during the day that they had
been sent, and had described the length of one of
them.
According to Carver, "we have grounds for,
prosecution (of the Post] right now" under Section
798.
Sen. David Durenberger (R.-Minn.), chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, seems to
agree. He was quoted in-o,ff, 411 places-the Post
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as saying that he didn't think the President's dis-
closure had "legitimized [the Post) story. He
(Woodward] quoted from a (Libyan] communica-
tion, and the statute prohibits doing that."
Woodward, when asked if he were aware of Sec-
tion 798 when he wrote the story, replied, "Mr.
Casey has made us aware of it." This was a refer-
ence to the subsequent meeting between Casey and
Post editors, where the Post was warned about
publishing another such article.
Woodward defended his article about the Lib-
yan messages, saying, "Im mildly amused that
the first call I get from HUMAN EVENTS is because
I've written something that totally supports what
Ronald Reagan has said."
"We live in a world of skepticism," he added,
"and everyone we talked to said that the Pres-
ident's right on this, and 'we're going to give you
more detail.' The barn door was already open, the
sides were kicked down, and the roof was blown
off after he spoke. And we said, `Here's an
important public issue, and this is a little bit more
about the nature of the evidence.' It's a story we
should do as a newspaper."
In regard to stories involving national security,
Woodward insisted that "We always try to weigh
carefully what we do."
This is, indeed, at least the public position of the
Post. Last year Post Chairman Katharine Graham
herself warned the media against revealing infor-
mation that could undermine the war against
terrorism.
In a London speech, Graham said that "We in
the media have made mistakes," and she cited an
example: "You may recall that in April 1983, some
60 people were killed in a bomb attack on the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut. At the time, there was coded
radio traffic between Syria, where the operation
was being run, and Iran, which was supporting it.
Alas, one television network and a newspaper
columnist reported that the U.S. government had
intercepted the traffic. Shortly thereafter, the traf-
fic ceased. This undermined efforts to capture the
terrorist leaders and eliminated a source of infor-
mation about future attacks. Five months later,
apparently the same terrorists struck again at the
Marine barracks in Beirut; 241 servicemen were
killed."
The concern raised by George Carver about the
stories on the Libyan messages is that the added
details provided by the Post have also eliminated
an important source of information about terror-
CIA Director Casey obviously shares the con-
cern. He met with Post Executive Editor Benjamin
Bradlee and Managing Editor Leonard Downie on
Mai 2 to warn them against publishing another
story about U.S. intelligence activities that he had
found out about.
During the discussion, Casey reportedly also
told the Post editors that the Woodward story on
the Libyan messages constituted one of five
"absolutely cold violations" of the law that his
agency had identified.
Carver believes that Casey delivered a "clear
warning shot" to the Post editors, implying that
prosecution will be sought if the Post violates the
law again.
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