WHY I TELL SECRETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170011-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 28, 2011
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: November 30, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-R
A i- I C' E A:'r: a.h!;s7
ON PAGF_y~_,
THE WASHINGTON POST
PARADE MAGAZINE
30 November 1980
Tell Secre
by Jack Anderson
As a confessed' muckraker, I hold
no security clearance. Most govern-
ment officials, if possible, avoid me.
The mere mention of my name has
caused them to shut their doors and
lock their files. Yet I am privy to some
of the most sensitive information in
their security vaults. I have regular ac-
to documents so secret that the
cess
classification stamps are themselves-
classified.
PARADE has asked me why I seek
out the secrets of government.. There
are; I- believe, sufficient reasons. But .
first a word of orientation.
One of the seemingly irreversible
currents I have observed during 32
years of covering Washington politics
is the hankering- of our leaders to
transform themselves from-servants
into sovereigns, to replace Abraham
Lincoln's "government of.the people,
by the people and for the people"
with a government of privilege, majes-
ty and omnipotence.
There is still an occasional tribune
who lives simply in some Washington 'l
hostel and goes about his business*!
with a minimum of pomp, presump-
tion and freeloading. But the common
practice has been-to pursue aggran-
dizement and usurpation, often with
mock humility.,.,
Permeating it all is the aura of
pseudo-divinity with which govern-
ment these days surrounds' itself-
its denial, whenever it can get away
with it, of the right of the citizen to
know or of the press to publish; its
hostility toward any attempt to hold it
to account or question its motives.
At the_center is the President with
his battalions of courtiers, program-
matic lying to the public, seduction of
the press. Around. the President are
grouped the - bureaucratic' princes,
ever more impervious to public con-
trol. And ensconced on Capitol Hill
are the Congressional barons, con-
tinually building their private fief-
doms I
while surrendering the legit-
imate powers of the people to the Ex-
ecutive Branch.
Our modem Hohenzollerns reveal
themselves most characteristically"
when a reporter charges the govern-i
ment with deceit or dishonesty, or
presumes to give the public news that
does not come from palace sources.
Then our elected leaders, instead of
rushing to correct the abuses, are con-
cerned more with chastening the
reporter and exposing the identity of
the varlets who squealed.
Most of the information that is fun- I
neled into the White House is protec-
tively classified. This leaves the Presi-i
dent free to manipulate the news, to
release selectively those facts that"
make him look good. Through his
press spokesmen, he controls most of
news that emanates from
the the','
White House. Even the leaks- are
usually orchestrated by his news
managers.
I have a duty to report what the
government is doing, which is not al-
ways what the authorized spokesmen
say it is doing. They will say only what
the President wants them to say. I
have learned to rely, therefore, on
unauthorized sources. They are the
professional civil servants whom the
public never sees. They know what I
the intelligence reports really show
and what the Administration's
policies really are. Some are willing to
tell the truth, at great risk to
themselves, because they believe
their first loyalty should be to the
citizens who pay them. The informa-
tion these sources possess-and the
documents, mostly classified, they
produce to back it up-is often the 1
opposite of the kind of news that is t
officially leaked or passed out at press,
conferences or. printed : in _ press 1
releasesj
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170011-4
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170011-4
The people in power do not relish having their
cozy relationships exposed, their blunders, waste
and wrongdoing brought to light. But given our dem-
ocratic traditions, they cannot properly censor the
news-so they simply classify it, using the cloak of
official secrecy to cover up their embarrassments.
Yet the President does not hesitate to release clas-
sified information if it will win him support. Few mill=a,
tary developments were more-secret, for example,
than the "invisible plane" which. can elude enemy
radar by absorbing its rays. Technicians had to agree
to let the government tap their telephones before
they were allowed to work on the project But Presi-
dent Carter, under fire for letting our military de-
fenses lag, needed a dramatic headline to persuade
voters that he had not neglected national security.
He got the headline, thanks to some suspiciously op-
portune leaks about the new technology.
Undesirable leaks are abhorred by the Administra-
tion. To stop them, Jimmy Carter required two dozen
of his top administrators to sign unprecedented,
gratuitous affidavits. But if the leaks benefit the Ad-
ministration, they are embraced by the abhorrers. In
the matter of the ghostly flying machine, for exam-
ple, Defense Secretary Harold Brown not only con-
firmed the leaks but added triumphant details.
Admittedly, reporters are not security experts,
and the publication of military secrets is always a
thorny question. What qualifies a lowly reporter to
judge whether a bold military venture is bound to
end in catastrophe and whether to publish the plan
before it becomes a fait accompli? Certainly I am not
competent to outguess the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But I
am in close touch with military experts whom the
Joint Chiefs themselves consult. At the risk of ap-
pearing immodest, let me briefly review my record:
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson decided to draw a line
in Vietnam. But he needed an incident to build
national solidarity. The opportunity came when
Communist patrol boats, looking for ships that
raided the North Vietnamese coast, made a run.
against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
No one was hurt; no damage was done. A second
dark-of-night "attack" probably never even oc-
curred but was the result of faulty radar. With these
dubious ingredients, Johnson created a phony inci-
dent and stepped firmly onto one of history's great
banana peels.
I reported, citing secret naval documents, that the
incident had been contrived. The Senate, neverthe-
less, gave President Johnson the resolution he sought
as a license to expand America's role in a stalemated
war from which there was no satisfactory exit.
1. tried, with a journalist's presumption, to in-
fluence the Vietnam decisions by hoisting a number
of alarms based on classified information. But the
war turned into a debacle so gloom-laden as to spoil
the I-told-you-sos.
During the Richard Nixon regime, I continued to
report war news that the President wanted to sup-
press. I reported in March 1971 that, despite White 'I
House assurances that the war was being wound I
down, the Pentagon had prepared detailed plans for
bombing North Vietnam and mining Haiphong har-
bor. The story did not stop the final frenzy of warfare
before the painful American withdrawal.
The following December, I reported that Richard
Nixon was secretly supporting Pakistan in the India-
Pakistan conflict and that he had ordered a carrier
task force under wartime conditions into the battle i
zone. Top Soviet officials assured Indian leaders that
any Chinese intervention would be offset by a Rus-~
sian attack on China and that any moves by the i
American task force would be opposed by the Soviet
fleet.
It seemed tome that Russia, China and the United
States were maneuvering dangerously near the edge i
of world war. Yet President Nixon never told Con-
gress of the dangers, instead putting out the word
that America was keeping hands off. He personally
advised the top leaders of the Senate and the House
that his only interest was to bring peace. "We are
neutral," he said to them. "We are not taking sides."
This, I charged, was a lie. My stories hopefi illy helped
to persuade Nixon to back away from this crisis.
The.stakes are enormously higher in the Persian
Gulf, where the oil price explosion has brought ten-
sions to a boil. Secret documents reveal that the late
Shah of Iran was "the dominant force" behind the ru-
inous price increases. Washington had the leverage
to pressure the Shah to join Saudi Arabia in its re-
peated offers to stop the price leap, yet this was op-
posed by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
who hoped the oil revenue would finance the Shah's
arms buildup.
orc
e a s
owdown in the Persian Gulf ~O ITT
today, that now is a time to practice
When I broke this story in 1976, an
anguished Kissinger requested the
right to dispute -my evidence. So I
showed his-aide, William Hyland, a
folder full-of-top-secret documents
backing up-the allegations.. Hyland
was aghast-- "Someone must have
given you-the whole computer print- I
out on"this," he said. It was the last I
heard from. Kissinger on the subject.
With Jimmy Carter in ' the White
House, trying to keep his equilibrium
in the Iranian hostagecrisis, I reported
once again that the President was
preparing for military action and that
the Soviets had 23 divisions just across
Iran's border ready to respond. The
White House issued angry denials, .
though many of the details were later "j
confirmed. My sources believe pas-
sionately
that the United States' J
doesn't have the military power to
f
h
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170011-4
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170011-4
The way an investigative reporter is
compelled to operate, of course, is an
imperfect system of news-gathering.
Sometimes the sources do not have all
the details. Sometimes the jigsaw
pieces of information do not.form a
complete picture and the missing
pieces are buried too deeply. Investi-
gative reporters must work without
the power of subpoena. They lack the
money and manpower that the gov-
ernment can marshal to counter their
efforts.
They must also work harder, dig
deeper and verify their facts more
carefully thanreporters who follow
the official Iine. Preposterous Iies can
be told to make. the, powerful look'
good; grievous blunders can be com-
mitted by officials in the name of the
government; the public can be cheat-
ed by men sworn to uphold the public
trust. But let an investigative reporter
make a mistake, -and there are howls-
1r'
rom time' to time, I have!
found myself the object of
their zeal to disc
federal agencies h
violating U.S. law.
certain discomforting atten-
tions. My house has been
under surveillance by men with binoc-
ulars sitting in parked cars. The CIA
has dispatched radio cars to tail peo-
ple from my office. A CIA camera
crew has taken photographs of visi-
tors at my door, an electronics crew
has eavesdrop , on my conversa-
tions; the FBI has seized records of my
telephone -calls, tax agents have ;
combed through my financial rec-~
orris; the Pentagon has conducted one+
investigation of me after another.
Persons within the government
suspected of having contact with me'
have been subjected to phone taps, lie
detector tests and other indignities. In
e in America have
evolved an entire insti- i
tution to undertake a
mission that in a tyran-
ny falls to the solitary genius and hero
-to give the people an alternative to
the official version of things, a mea-
sure by which to judge the efficacy of
rulers and whether the truth is in them.
Long ago, the role of the village
editor and dissenting pamphleteer
as monitor, critic and rival of the
politician-was a fundamental part
of the American system. It was of this
role. that Thomas Jefferson. spoke.
when he declared that if he had to
choose between a government with-
out newspapers and newspapers with-
out a government, he would take his
morning paper.
Because our country was formed
by a scattering of peoples with no
common, denominator- of religion,
geography or ethnic origin, American
patriotism is grounded in common ad-
herence to a distinct set of ideas. Ex-
pounded by Jefferson and popular-
ized further by Lincoln, they concern
the rights of the people-to know, to
dissent, to be treated equally, to rule
themselves, to run their ?govem.ment
processes, to be the judges of govern-
ment and not its subjects. It is this
distinctively American ideal that
lends nobility to the endeavor of the
investigative reporter and raises- it.
above its grubby appearances: -
This concept of patriotism is-in
direct confrontation with the monar-
chic version we hear every day from'
on high-namely, that the national in
terest'-is embodied in the particular
Administration in office, that it is
damaged by the disparagement of
government leaders and by exposing
scandals, acts that create a spirit of
cynicism about the government.
This.-'alien "hands off' patriotism
preached bygovernment officials will
lead only to the eventual collapse of
an uncriticiied, corrupt shell. But if.
the American idea is. valid, an? ex-
posure once in a while can only make
the nation stronger- just as the Arun-1
ing of a rotten branch strengthens a
great tree, one that grows not in dark-11
ness but in sunlight
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100170011-4