WHITE HOUSE AND ITS NEWS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260009-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: October 3, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

3
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260009-3
ARTICLEA NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE 3 October 1986
White House 'Most Favorable Light' Beyond this, Government officials'
Any organization, Government or agreed today that the Reagan Adminls-
corporate, tries to present its message tration's information policies were
in the most favorable light," Mr. highly selective and marked by broad
And Its Ne ws Speakes said. "That doesn't mean contradictions on the one h th
Disclosures on Libya
Raise Credibility Issue
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - In consider-
ing "disinformation" as a means to un-
dermine the Libyan leader, the Reagan
Administration has not only risked
damage to its credibility but also cast
News
Analysis
doubt over its overall news
policy.
On the one hand- the Ad-
ministration has encour-
aged selective leaks of in-
telligence information, some of it of
questionable accuracy. But it has cou-
pled this with a concerted effort to pun-
ish journalists and newspapers that
seek to publish accurate information, if
the Administration finds the disclosure
sensitive or potentially embarrassing.
This two-pronged approach to the
news was underscored today as the Ad-
ministration virtually conceded that it
was practicing "disinformation" in
seeking to topple the Libyan leader,
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
At the same time, it was disclosed
that a newly formed team of Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents was,
looking into about a dozen cases of dis-
closures of sensitive information to
news organizations. This investigation
came after aggressive moves by the i
Administration to dismiss officials ac-
cused of having made sensitive ma- ,
terial available to reporters, as well as
efforts to put pressure on major news-
papers to withold or alter possibly
sensitive articles and generally to con-
trol access within the White House and
elsewhere to information and officials.
These developments underscored a
general pattern that has emerged in
the last six years in which President j
Reagan and his staff have stbstan-'
tially altered - and successfully lim-
ited - the kind of information the pub-
lic receives about the Government.
e
managing the news. Look at those libel. Administration, which publicly de-
suits against Time magazine and CBS. pounces and threatens Government of-
There were an awful lot of no com- ficials for giving secret information to
ments' by them, which we would get reporters, has disclosed - nrhin.l
' , aGILVU IVI.
"This Administration, no more than
any other, has tried to present its mes-
sage in the most effective way, and that
doesn't mean lying or misrepresenting
the facts. We don't do that."
Senior White House aides say pri-
dum about Libya, which appeared to-
in recent years - highly sensitive in-
formation for the sake of policy and
politics.
The Administration made public
reconnaissance photographs in 1982
that intelligence officials said proved
Nicaragua, with Cuban and Soviet
as
i
t
s
s
ance, was assembling the largest
day in The Washington Post, was both j
military force in Central America and
'embarrassing and potentially damag- helping guerrillas in El Salvador.
ing, especially abroad. In 1983, after the Soviet Union shot
The memorandum, by Vice. Adm. down a South Korean airliner, killing
John M. Poindexter, the White House tag people abroad, the United States re-
national security adviser, reportedly vealed that American listening posts
urged a campaign against Colonel Qad- had intercepted radio conversations
daft involving "real and illusory events, between the Soviet fighter pilot and his
- through a disinformation
ro
ra
p
g
m
intended to undermine and eventually
to. topple the Libyan leader.
'All Right With Us'
"We think for domestic consumption
there will be no problems," a White
House official said. "It's Qaddafi. After
all, whatever it takes to get rid of him
is all right with us - that's the feeling,
we think, in the country. On the foreign
scene it will cause problems, though.
We're constantly talking about the
'Soviets' doing disinformation. It's
going to cause difficulties for us. We
don't think it's a major, lasting fire-
storm, but there will be some ripples."
Publicly, White House officials
sought to play down the notion that the
United States was engaged in deceiv-
ing American news organizations in an
effort to unsettle Colonel Qaddafi. Mr.
Speakes, during nearly three hours of
briefings on the issue today, repeated
two points on many occasions.
The first point was that "Poindexter
says there was no attempt to provide
disinformation to the U.S. media."
The second concerned a lengthy arti-
cle in The Wall Street Journal on Aug.
25 that said the United States and
Libya were on a "collision course,"
This was an article that The Post's re-
port today implies was a direct product
of a disinformation campaign and the
article that led to other newspaper and
television reports about possible
Libyan plans for new terrorist activity.
Disclosures 'Not Authorized'
I The revelation that some of the infor- Mr. Speakes denied that The journal
mation provided to the press about was the target 'of disinformation about,
Libya may have been purposefully Libya. "Poindexter said this morning
flawed underscores the pitfalls of a to me that the disclosures to The Wall
policy whose hallmark is control, with Street Journal were not authorized by
few news conferences and public ap- the U.S. Government, but were gen-
pearances by Mr. Reagan, limited op- erally correct," Mr. Speakes said.
portunities to question the President He also declined to confirm or deny
and what the White House spokesman, that foreign news organizations were,
Larry Speakes, says is a corporate- involved in a disinformation campaign. j
style approach to the news.
controllers, a disclosure'that may have
told Moscow that the United States
could intercept important Soviet mili-
tary communications,
Libyan Interceptions Revealed
Earlier this year, Mr. Reagan pub-
licly spoke of the Administratioin's
knowledge of messages sent between
Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and its dip-
lomatic posts - messages, the Presi-
dent said, that proved Libyan involve-
ment in the terrorist attack April 5
against a discotheque in West Berlin, in
which two people were killed and 230
others wounded.
Some intelligence officials said they
thou ht the disclosure would allow
the
Libyans to wart similar tercep ton
in the future.
"People have their own agenda." a
In Washington, the official noted. The
tion by officials or groups seeking to
express a point of view, and The Wash-
ington Times, which has a conservative
editorial policy, is viewed as a vehicle
for conservatives in the Administra-
tion.
'Sort of Entrapment'
Senator Daniel Pa ri k Mot ihanti
Democrat of N w York, a former vise
chairman of 1l14LSenate Intelligence
Committees. said " k you o
more leaking of intelligence informa-
tion now than at other times But when
somone leaks what they don't like,
the
inistrationaces after them aces after them." .
"By apparently using unwitting
American journalists and newspa-
pers," the Senator said, "the Adminis-
tration is going against the rules." "If
the journalist doesn't know it, the Ad-
ministration is compounding the in-
fraction. It's sort of entrapment."
Continued
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 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260009-3
More than any other Administration
in recent times, the Reagan Adminis- _
tration has exerted its muscle, often
successfully, against newspapers.
After several weeks of negotiation with
the White House last spring, The Wash-
ington Post published a story about
Ronald W. Pelton, a former employe of
the National Security Agency who was
found guilty in June of selling sensitive
intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union.
The Post published a story about Mr.
Pelton, but without details that Admin-
istration officials argued would be
potentially damaging. The article was
published after threats that the news-
paper would be prosecuted and after a
phone call from President Reagan to
Katharine M. Graham, the chief execu-
tive officer of the Post Company.
'The President's Position'
"On the basis of what I've observed
over a series of Administrations, I
don't think this one is all that different
from the others," said Joseph Laitin,
who served 17 years in key posts in the
Defense and Treasury Departments
and other agencies and who is now the
ombudsman at The Washington Post.
"People still leak to reporters, and
what reporters tend to forget is that
press secretaries are not there to give
information. They're there to give the
President's position, his point of view."
The view was echoed by Austin Ran-
ney, a political scientist at the Univer-
sity of California in Berkeley and a for-
mer president of the American Politi-
cal Science Association.
Mr. Ranney said: "Compared to the
ineptness of the Carter Administation
in dealing with the press, and the hos-
tility of the Nixon and Johnson Admin-
istrations, the Reagan Administration
has been remarkably shrewd and suc-
cessful. The news media are not ene-
mies to them. They've tried to use the
media to promote their goals, to ad-
vance their own ends."
"Whether they've been able to use
news policy in a less-defensible way
than other Administrations, by leaking
false information, for example, is an-
other question," he said. "F.D.R. did it
in World War II, and L.B.J. during Viet-
nam. But that was war. Of course it's
different now: we're not in a war."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260009-3