REAGAN MOVES ON JOURNALISTS IN WAR AGAINST LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100700002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 26, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: May 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ON PAGE
_
Reagan moves journalists
in war against leaks
By AARON EPSTEIN
Herald Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Speaking
loudly and carrying a tough crimi-
nal statute, the Reagan adminis-
tration has stepped up its crack-
down on national security leaks by
threatening to prosecute publish-
ers and broadcasters of govern.
ment secrets.
Ironically. CIA Director William
J. Casey chose to confront the
press over the oublication of
intelligence Information that is
neither fresh news to the public
nor a secret unknown to the
Soviet Union.
Moreover, the Justice Depart-
ment had shown little Interest, up
to now, in prosecuting journalists.
The latest episode Involved a
recommendation by Casey for
legal action against NBC and an
agreement under pressure by The
Washington Post to remove mate-
rial from an article about U.S.
eavesdropping. It underscored a
growing tension between the gov-
ernment's responsibility to protect
the nation's secrets and the free-
dom of the press to report what
the U.S. government is doing.
Many analysts describe Casey as
so embarrassed and Infuriated by
leaks and spy cases that he has
decided to try to intimidate the
press into withholding information
about U.S. intelligence operations
- including the covert operations
abroad that the CIA is vigorously
seeking to expand.
"The White House is not wor-
ried about what the Soviet Union
,\may learn," said Thomas Polgar, a
retired CIA official. "It is embar-
rassed by all the bad publicity and
is trying to take countermeasures
to keep the bad news out of the
newspapers and off the air."
Casey meets editors
On May 2, Casey met with Post
editors after learning that the
newspaper planned to publish an
article stating that Ronald W.
Pelton, a former National Security
Agency employee on trial for
espionage, had informed the Sovi-
et Union about U.S. eavesdropping
on Soviet communications. Casey
urged the Post editors to withhold
the story.
"I'm not threatening you," The
Post quoted Casey as saying, "but
you've got to know that if you
publish this, I would recommend
that you be prosecuted under the
intelligence statute."
He cited an espionage law,
enacted in 1950 and known as the
COMINT statute, which bars the
unauthorized disclosure of classi-
fied U.S. communications intelli-
gence, such as codes and other
secret messages. No news organi-
zations have been prosecuted un-
der the statute.
Casey told Post editors that
"we've already got five absolutely
cold violations" of the COMINT
law against The Post, The Wash-
ington Times, The New York
Times and Time and Newsweek
magazines. He mentioned stories
about U.S. interception of Libyan
messages.
But, as it turned out, the Justice
Department was cool to Casey's
"absolutely cold violations."
Said a Justice Department
source, who asked not to be
identified: "We haven't moved
forward with it. That should tell
you something."
Reagan's phone call
On May 10, President Reagan
reiterated Casey's point in a call to
Katharine Graham, chairman of
the board of the Washington Post
Co. In what Graham later said was
.'a very civilized, low-key conver-
sation, the president asked that
The Post not publish its scheduled
intelligence story and said it might
be prosecuted if It did.
Boisfeuillet Jones Jr., attorney
for The Post, explained that the
newspaper's editors, with the
COMINT law in mind, had
weighed their story's potential
threat to national security against
the public benefit of publishing it.
Jones noted that, in recent
rulings, the federal courts have
been "very deferential" to national
security interests.
Last Tuesday, Casey asked the
Justice Department to prosecute
NBC News for broadcasting the
following sentence:
"Pelton apparently gave away
one of the NSA's most sensitive
secrets, a project with the code
napte Ivy Bells believed to be a
top-secret eavesdropping program
by American submarines inside
Soviet harbors."
The next day, The Post pub-
lished its story, headlined "Eaves-
dropping System Betrayed." It
said that, for $35,000, Pelton had
sold to the Soviets Information
about an intelligence operation
that used a "high-technology de-
vice" to intercept Soviet communi-
cations.
The Post story said a description
of the technology was excised.
Post editors explained later that
they could not be sure that its
disclosure would not harm nation.
al security.
A Justice Department official
said Friday that Casey had not yet
proposed prosecution of The Post,
although he said The Post's story
contained as much, if not more,
intelligence information as the
NBC report.
Policy at The Post in such.
situations was expressed last
month by Graham.
"I want to emphasize," she
wrote in The Post, "that the media
are willing - and they do -
withhold information that is likely
to endanger human life or jeopar-
dize national security." (Twice
within the past year. the newspa-
per agreed to comply with re-
quests not to identify an individual
whose life could have been endan-
gered by publication, a Post editor
said.)
William Terry Maguire, vice
president and general counsel of
the American Newspaper Publish.
ers Association, said there are no
general guidelines for editors, that
each case must be decided sepa-
rately.
James Bamford. author of The
Puzzle Palace, a study of the
National Security Agency, said
that the NBC and Post stories did
not add to public knowledge.
Information that U.S. submarines
had planted eavesdropping devices
near the Soviet coast has been
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published since 1975.
But Bamford and several law-
yers with backgrounds in national
security said it may be no defense
to a COMINT violation for a news
organization to contend that its
unauthorized disclosure of classi-
fied communications intelligence
was previously published or al-
ready was known to the Soviet
Union.
Anthony A. Lapham, former
hief counsel to the CIA, noted
at the only court to have
interpreted the statute - the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
California - appeared to have
ruled out all claims that, due to
previous publication or for some
other reason, the government
? should not have kept the published -
information a secret.
"But," Lapham added, "that is
not the final word. It is still an
open question."
Meanwhile, said media lawyer
Bruce Sanford, "I think it's foolish
and futile for the government to
threaten prosecutions. What we
need is greater cooperation on
sensitive information ...
"It is not going to be helpful for
the Bill Caseys of the world ... to
tell the news media that they can't
print things because you know
darn well there are all kinds of
bpeople in" the media who won't
But Polgar observed: "I've
known Casey for a number of
years. Sometimes he's wrong but
he's never unsure. He sees things
in black and white. Gray is not in
his color scheme."
I'm not threatening you
but
,
you've got to know that if you
publish this, I would recommend
that you be prosecuted under the
intelligence statute.'
William J. Casey,
CIA director
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