REMARKS BY KATHARINE GRAHAM CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00777R000302440003-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 29, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 16, 1988
• Content Type: MISC

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1150 15TH STREET, N.W. ? WASHINGTON,.D.C.. 20071 ? [phone]
Secrecy and the Press
Remarks by
Katharine Graham
Chairman of the Board
Tho Washington Post Company
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington
November 16, 1988
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THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY
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Good afternoon. I'm delighted that so many of you have come
to hear about secrecy and the press. And by that, I don't
suppose you mean Ben Bradlee's retirement date or the
subject of Bob Woodward's next book! I confess I haven't
been able to learn the answer to either question.
Rather, I'm here to discuss serious issues of fundamental
concern to you -- and to the American people. I'd like to
introduce them by recalling a tragic episode in the
country's recent history.
You no doubt remember that in April 1983, 63 people were
killed in a bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut,
including the CIA station chief, his deputy and other key
CIA personnel.
At the time, there were coded communications between Syria,
where the terrorist operation was being run, and Iran, which
was supporting it.
One television network and a newspaper columnist reported
that the U.S. government had intercepted the communications
traffic. Shortly thereafter the traffic ceased. This
undermined U.S. efforts to capture the terrorist leaders and
eliminated a source of information about future attacks.
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Six months later, apparently the same terrorists struck
again, this time at the Marine barracks in Beirut; 241
servicemen were killed. No one is absolutely sure the news
reports caused the traffic blackout. Some suspect they did.
Whatever the answer, the detailed news reports didn't help.
This tragic episode raises, in an extreme way, the basic
questions that arise when freedom-of the press and official
secrecy intersect. How can national security be preserved
-- and national interests advanced -- when the press decides
what to print, even about the most sensitive government
secrets? Why is the press insistent about preserving this
right, when mistakes can be made that potentially harm
national security?
Today I'd like to share our viewpoint on these questions,
which I realize are complex and difficult -- and subject to
intense debate. I'd like to tell you how we go about
deciding what, when and how much to publish -- and why.
I'll touch on both our.decision-making process and the
criteria we use when making judgments about what and what
not to print.
Let me begin by saying that I have the greatest admiration
and respect for the dedication and courage with which you do
your work, under difficult, dangerous and even
life-threatening circumstances.
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3.
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Moreover -- and I hope this does not surprise you -- I
firmly believe the government has a right, and an
obligation, to keep certain information secret.
It's an inescapable irony of democratic government that
official secrecy is necessary to preserve liberty. We live
in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the
general public does not need to know and shouldn't. The
government must have a classification system and should
discipline employees who violate security regulations.
At the same time, deciding what and what not to print is the
nature of journalism, underlying every subject about which
we write. Every day, we have to make judgments about what
is or is not accurate, what is or is not fair, what is or is
not complete, what is or is not good journalism on stories
ranging from a drug-related homicide to a politician's
personal life.
National security issues are part of this decision-making
process, but in a heightened, more sensitive, more critical
way. It begins when we obtain information that might affect
the country's security.
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Let me state emphatically: the press is not in the business
of stealing information. And rarel , if ever, do people
appear in the newsroom armed with briefcases full of
classified documents.
Some of the information we print that causes trouble is
there for the taking in public documents. One of the more_
prominent examples occurred in 1977. A Washington Post
reporter, Walter Pincus, was covering water projects, which
fell under the purview of a certain House Appropriations
Subcommittee. It happened that this same subcommittee also
was responsible for nuclear weapons.
One day while Pincus was waiting for a subcommittee meeting
to start, he was reading through records of previous
hearings. Buried in the middle of an enormous document was
a hearing on the building of nuclear weapons. Much of it
was classified, but one sentence in particular was not. It
said that the United States was going to begin production of
"enhanced radiation warheads" for the Lance missile. That
is how The Post discovered the neutron bomb story.
The story was easily, indeed eagerly, confirmed by the
Pentagon, Hill sources and the Lawrence Livermore
Laboratories, all of whom were proud of this technological
achievement. However, the story caused an uproar and had
great consequences, which some of you will remember.
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Careful screening of public documents is not the only
obligation of good reporters, although it is an important
and frequently overlooked one. Good reporters also have a
sense of what information means and how to piece it
together. And they know and can find people and -- this is
critical -- are contacted by people who want to reveal
information to the press.
We do ask ourselves about the motives of our sources. They
vary. Some sources are just trying to win an argument they
lost inside, get an enemy in trouble, show off or ingratiate
themselves with reporters. Others are conscientious people
who want to influence the way a particular program or
project is being formulated, positioned or carried out.
They believe that by telling journalists carefully selected
information, a higher purpose can be served.
The important point here is that someone inside or outside
the government, with legitimate access to the information,
has chosen to give it to the press to help inform the public
debate.
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I believe the reluctance our sources might feel to take the
frequently risky step of leaking information is diminished
by the fact that too much material is classified. Almost
7,000 government officials in 29 agencies have the authority
to classify information. In 1987 alone, the government
generated nearly 12 million secret documents. When material
that clearly is not worthy of being withheld from the public
is classified, it devalues the case for secrecy about truly
sensitive data.
Moreover, the government itself regularly uses
declassification as a tool to advance its own policy
interests. The government is the biggest leaker of all --
from background briefing sessions to anonymous sources,
including the president himself on occasion. When the
government routinely declassifies information to achieve
policy goals, it's not surprising that news sources consider
themselves more savvy than sinful.
Once the press acquires classified information, we need to
determine its accuracy, its true meaning and its possible
impact on national security. These are hard questions, but
we do our best to answer them before we decide whether, when
and in what form we should make the information known to the
public.
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Many people -- including, I suspect, many of you here --
believe the government should make this decision, not the
press. If the government believes publishing something
would endanger national security, the argument goes, the
press should fall in line. This is the law in some
democracies, like Great Britain.
Why don't the American media agree with this line of
reasoning? Why do we listen to government explanations in
general -- and claims of national security in particular --
with a great deal-of skepticism? There are two reasons.
First, our founding fathers wanted the press to be an
aggressive and unfettered critic of government activity.
That is the reason for the First Amendment.
Meg Greenfield, editor---of The Post's editorial pages,
explained it this way:
"Our cynicism is easy to account for. We would be crazy to
approach public life in any other way. The political
history of our time has been, it seems to me, a chain of
surprises and inversion of accepted truth."
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8.
Second, the government has been too quick to use "national
security" as an excuse to keep. secrets when, in fact, it
only wants to protect itself from embarrassment, make its
job easier, stifle debate, or carry out a policy or program
that could not win Congressional or public support.
In 1971, the government, citing national security concerns,
went to court to keep the Pentagon Papers secret. In fact
only a few paragraphs in 47 volumes were truly sensitive,
and they were never considered for publication.
Since then, there have been many cases in which the
government has wielded national security to avoid explaining
or justifying its actions to the American people or to carry
out programs that could not survive public scrutiny -- and
in which, as it -turned out, the classification was not
warranted but was being-used to cover an embarrassing
Most recently, Oliver North told a number of journalists
that his covert operations were authorized and legitimate --
and then pledged the reporters to secrecy in the interests
of national security. The real story turned out to be quite
different, and North is under indictment for what he did.
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I can't say journalism ended up looking very good in the
Iran-contra affair, either. We failed to live up to our
responsibilities, before the story broke in a Lebanese
magazine.
So experience makes it clear that it's unwise to take
official explanations at face value. Our professional
obligation is to go beyond private assurances and, to the
best of our abilities, weigh the evidence independently.
Several of our reporters and editors have knowledge and
experience that come from dealing with intelligence matters
for many years.
We also consult with experts outside the government, or at
least not directly involved in the matter at hand. They can
help piece together seemingly unrelated information.
However, before publication, The Post's policy is always to
go to the government officials responsible for the
particular issue for their official views and comments. We
do this to help determine accuracy and also to know how they
regard the information we have, what their concerns might be
about the possible impact of our information on national
security.
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10.
Some officials cooperate and others don't. Some, even when
they are unhappy that we are working on a story, are willing
to help us do our jobs as journalists and believe they can
help make the story less risky.
For example,.in The Post's Outlook section two weeks ago, a
story by two free-lance journalists appeared about U.S.
covert aid to rebels in Cambodia. The story was based on
documents and other information obtained by the writers. We
talked to government officials about the contents, to hear
if they were concerned that any details might be genuinely
harmful to national security.
Following these discussions, we concluded that publishing
certain verbatim quotes could, in fact, help someone trying
to break our codes. So we eliminated those direct quotes.
We also left out other information, because the government
official made a good case that disclosure would. be harmful.
The Post's publisher, Don Graham, is informed when stories
with national security implications are in the works, and
Don participates in the decision-making process, as do I on
occasion.
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The ultimate responsibility for what is printed lies with
the newspaper's owners. But editors decide what and what
not to publish. Over the years, I have never told Ben
Bradlee to put something in, or take something out of the
paper. But I have expressed my views and concerns. I have
wanted to make sure that proper, professional journalistic
procedures are followed.
Instead of rushing to print everything we discover, an
opposite tendency more often is at work: the tendency to
proceed cautiously, deliberately and, when there is
substantial doubt about the potential impact of our
information, to delay publishing-or not publish at all.
We want to do all we can to ensure that the information we
have meets three standards, or criteria, before it is
printed.
First, the press wants to publish nothing that would
endanger human life.
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For example, we learned,in 1984 that William Buckley, who
had been taken hostage in Beirut, was in fact the CIA
station chief. We prepared a story about his identity, but
Director Casey told us that publication could get Buckley
killed. We knew that many people were aware of Buckley's
true job, but we were told that the terrorists holding him
may not have known. Therefore, we held the story for many
months.
Then we heard that Buckley was, in fact, dead. Again we
planned to run our story, but Director Casey said no one was
absolutely sure that Buckley had died. This time, we held
the story for many more months until Mr. Buckley's tragic
death had been confirmed.
A second criterion is that we want to publish no national
security secrets whose possession by the Soviet Union, or--a
third party, could damage American interests.
This includes, most obviously, technical data about our arms
and defense systems, facts about troop movements or various
intelligence operations and procedures.
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I realize we may have made mistakes in this regard over the
years. However, the reasons why some cases cause an uproar
are harder to understand. I would include, in this
category, the disclosure, in 1984, of the purpose of the
first military satellite to be sent up in the space shuttle.
The Pentagon attempted to forbid those news organizations
that attended a technical briefing on the launch to announce
the function of the satellite. The official said that
anyone who wrote or even guessed its purpose would be
investigated for violating security.
This aroused'the curiosity of our editors, who had not
attended the briefing. In a rather offhand way, our
national editor asked Walter Pincus what kind of satellite
it was.
Pincus said he would make a few calls. In fact, he made two
-- one to someone in the government and one to an outside
expert. They both told him what kind of satellite was
involved -- primarily because the government, more than a
year before, had announced it was going to be an electronic
listening device. This had been reported in Aviation. Week.
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Early on the day of The Post's story, before he had read it,
Secretary of Defense Weinberger was asked at a CNN interview
if The Post's story could give. aid and comfort to the enemy.
He said that it could. In fact, The Post reported no
classified information that was not already available to the
Russians, or any other readers of the magazine.
That brings me to a third criterion: keeping our readers
We don't publish secrets just to publish secrets. However,
when we discover bungling, incompetence, controversial or
illegitimate activity, we believe the public has a right to
know about it. The challenge -- and I admit it is a
difficult one -- lies in knowing where to draw the line --
publishing enough to convey the import of what is taking
place, without damaging the national security.
These were the issues we addressed in the Ivy Bells, or
Pelton, spy case which began in 1985. This case has given
birth to two opposing myths: one is that we published
everything we knew and helped the Soviets. The other is
that Director Casey talked us out of publishing anything.
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After we had taken our information to a series of government
officials, I personally received a telephone call from
President Reagan, who told me that publication of the story
would endanger national security.
I responded that I would tell the editors of his concern and
my own, but that both he and I would be better off if the
decision were made by the Executive Editor, Ben Bradlee,. as
it finally was, taking into consideration the reasons for
concern.
We wound up publishing only that information which we
thought necessary to convey to readers how serious the
breach of security actually was.
And we raised what we thought were legitimate questions
about how well the government was managing security issues:
whether too many people have security clearances, whether
they are cleared properly, whether their financial and
psychological background is sufficiently examined, whether
the government keeps track of them adequately. These issues
are still the subject of a national debate.
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We withheld from those stories the technical details about
the electronic surveillance methods we knew, through our
sources, that Pelton had given the Soviets, but which we did
not know if they understood completely or if some other
country might find useful. I might add that a lot more
information was withheld than was eventually divulged by the
government itself during Pelton's trial.
A final First-Amendment obligation of the press, as I see
it, is to publish information that, without endangering
legitimate security interests, bears on issues of public
policy or public debate.
This is why, for example, we reported in 1982 that the
Reagan Administration had secretly approved a 19 million
dollar CIA plan to train the contras to wage a covert war
against Nicaragua.
Again we left out the operational details but tried to
inform the public of a major foreign policy decision. This
country's positions and policies on Central America are
among the most important and contentious we face. We
believe the American people should know, if possible, what
the government is doing or planning to do in that critical
region.
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In the final analysis, this is what the press is trying to
do: to give people information so they can make their own
judgments about critical issues -- and so that government
action can and does reflect the desires of the people.
Once covert operations that involve legitimate public issues
are revealed, one of two things almost inevitably occurs.
Either there is public disapproval of the policy and it
eventually ceases. This is what happened to the secret
Contra funding. Or there is public support for the policy
and it continues. This was the case, for example, when we
reported covert aid to the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan.
Either way, the people, through Congress, have a voice in
determining the policy.
In closing, I believe democracy flourishes when the
government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets,
and when the press can decide whether to print what it
knows.
When national security issues are at stake, this is a
humbling responsiblity. Despite our best efforts, we never
fulfill it as well as we would like. We do make mistakes,
which we deeply regret. But the alternative casts a dark
.and dangerous shadow.
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The record of history shows that a government that operates
in secrecy, hidden from scrutiny, shielded from examination,
is neither accountable nor ultimately faithful to the people
it exists to serve.
Jefferson said: "I know of no safe depository of the
ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves;
and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise
their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not
to take control from them, but to inform their discretion."
Secrecy has its place. But I hope you agree it should not
be at the expense of a vigorous, free and independent press.
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