OPINION.COMMENTARY SECRETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 15, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7
BALTIYURE SUN
1S June 1985
Opinion ? Commentary
Secrets
F OLLOWiNG the news that an American
family of espionage agents had been
routinely selling secrets to the Soviet
Union for 18 years, almost everybody In
Washington who claims to be anybody re-
By Lewis H. Lapham
leased thunderous statements to the press
about the need to get a firmer grip on the
national security. Mr. Caspar Weinberger, the
secretary of Defense, even has called for the
execution of those found guilty of spying dur-
ing peacetime.
The official alarm strikes me as excessive,
and I suspect that the military secret has be-
come as obsolete a weapon of war as the
crossbow. Consider the tonnage of secrets
lugged across International frontiers during
the last 40 years. Legions of agents working
two or three sides of every rumor have copied.
transcribed, edited, collated and sold enough
information to take up all the space on all the
shelves in the Library of Congress.
And what has been the result of this Im-
mense labor.) How has the exchange of classi-
tied news impinged. even slightly. on the
course of events? When pressed by questions.
they would rather not answer, the gentlemen
in Washington invariably make some kind of
specious case for the incalculable significance
of a particular scrap of paper.
But the knowledge of what secret could
He was fond of disguises, carried a sword-'
dering into Vietnam? The makers of policy for cane, styled himself with a code name,
both the Kennedy and Johnson administra- "
tions already knew what they thought. and no Jan.g ano thought himself engaged its
amount of contrary evidence could have dis- "damn associates regarded hi worm " At least one of , his
suaded them from embracing the beauty of man almost ne a deluded fool, -
their geopolitical romance. man almost as inept in his paranoid clever-as antic .
The acquisition or loss of what secret could During the
the p ri dector his service the United States from building its g thhe period of his service for the
prevent KGB, Walker also belonged to the John Birch
ch
arsenal of nuclear weapons as necessary to Society and the Ku Klux Klan. All three orga-
the American economy as to the American
theory of reality? What seven perfect secrets ai oMr. place
and the cur on s of the
Weinberger much
could have rescued the shah of Iran or as d do Mr. rger and the curators of the
e that by administering
changed Nicaragua Into a democratic suburb lie detector Pentagon who tests and believe
of Los Angeles? Assume that the Soviet Union ances to a o people track every American submarine or that ag mere 2 minion people they in loe>1c
the United States could decipher the launch cae vagaries of human nature safely in a fife
cabinet.
codes of every missile on the Sib
i
er
an steppe,
What then? Somebody still has to decide to
to do with facts, whether overt or covert. They
arise instead from passionate illusions, trom
dreams and the fear of the dark.
When presented with the discovery of
spies, the national media (as enthralled by
their love of secrets as any secretary of De-
fense) broadcast melodramatic reports of their
exploits, outfitting even the least among them
with vast and mysterious powers.
Together with the buyers and sellers of se-
crets, the media like to say that governments
without perfect knowledge of other govern-
ments take actions that otherwise they might
not have taken - with grave, far-reaching
ironic consequences. Precisely the same ob-
servation holds true for any government or
individual at any time under any set of cir-
cumstances. The available evidence is never
sufficient, the information always sketchy or
compromised.
Only people fool enough to play at being
gods imagine that they can obtain an Impreg-
nable state of omniscience. Malcolm Mugger-
Idge made the point in his memoirs. with ref-
erence to his employment during World War iI
with the British secret service.
"Secrecy." Muggeridge observed. "is as es-
sential to intelligence as vestments and in-
cense to a mass. as darkness to a spiritualist
seance. and must at all costs be preserved
whether or not it serves any purpose ... With
old hands it becomes second nature to com-
municate in codes and to use an accommoda-
tion address for perfectly innocuous commu-
nications: to prefer a cache in a potting shed
to a normal letter box and a diplomatic bag to
a suitcase for carrying blameless personal ef-
fects."
Muggeridge remembered that Kim Philbv.
the notorious double agent. sent his wife love
notes on tiny fragments of tissue paper that
could be easily swallowed in the interests of
security. John Walker appears to have operat-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7
? z
Of the 19.607,736 new documents that the
federal government last year classified as se-
cret. it's probably safe to assume that the ma-
jority were granted their honorary status for
one of two reasons: to conceal stupidity, irrele-
vance or chicanery from the embarrassment
of disclosure to the American public; or to
make the documents more precious, perhaps
sacred, thus adding to the store of religious
amulets with which to ward off the corruption
of the unclassified world and the malevolence
of the evil eve set In the head of an evil empire.
Lewis H. Lapham is the editor of Harp-
ers magazine.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7
E E APPEARED
A}TIG LOS ANGELES TIMES
ON pAAE ~T 11 February 1985
!icting the U. S. Government
Up for Sale: Deals to Ponder
:_By LEWIS H. LAPHAM
? Sooner or later it undoubtedly will occur
.somebody in the Reagan Administration se the entity, the acquisitors dismember tions might be inveigled into a ruinously
to serve '
to put the federal government up for sale in it, reducing its various productive organs to competitive auction.
a pa.riotic series of leveraged buy-outs. the liquid forms of cash and tax manipula- -The Internal Revenue Service: Either
The- deficit and the national debt would tion. Merrill Lynch or American Express' pre-
The process is not dissimilar to (lensing, sumably would wish to extend their portfo-
Jonis - as is in a mrage would The Dow boiling and drying out the carcass of a ' lios of "full financial services." k
4,000 ones- sand v eybod lucky enough whale. The acquisitors pay off the ! -The Postal Service: To the employees.
1361hts; and everybody lucky enough h to b loans with the money distilled from -The U.S. weapons arsenal: Obviously
command the necessary lines of credit and
p flft"ical patronage would make a truly the liquidation of 'the assets; they also pay the Soviet Union would make a generous
American killing. off the company executives who agreed to tender offer, but it is probable that the
't'he deal makes sense once government I the sale. After subtracting these opportu- more parochial members of Congress
is'defined as a "smokestack industry," like nity costs, the acquisitors divide the re- would object for reasons of fear or con-
t.he steel and shipbuilding industries that mainder of the spoils and issue a press -science. This might mean selling the
64? longer can weather the storms of the ' release about the great blessing that they inventory, in odd lots and at less attractive
free market Government so defined meets have conferred on the stockholders and the prices, to the Germans, the Japanese or a
a"U'the specifications of an old and dying American future. consortium of South American colonels.
e(i(~rprise: heavy debt, inflated wages and Before dissolving the federal conglomer- -The military services: They could be
pensions, incompetent management, non- ate into its multiple elements, it first would offered to the larger corporations, both
cpiijipetitive prices, dwindling markets for : be necessary to incorporate the entity in domestic and foreign. Given the fact that
its product. Delaware and to assign both a trading most wars come about as a result of
symbol (GVP or US) and an opening stock economic quarrels, the multinational cor-
.,,Toicernment's decline into senescence
and oblivion has been embarrassingly price. Some of the subsequent deals would porations-like the princes of the Italian
obvious for some time. It is the reason be easier than others. Renaissance-should pay their own con-
:Ronald Reagan was twice elected Presi- The-government owns one-third of the dottiere. The troops could be fitted out in
nation's land mass, and the real-estate splendid uniforms bearing the insignia of
dealt -Pwvate companies now operate pried and sales, especially along the California Sony, CBS, Volvo, IBM and British Air-control f rss,?a epart as tss. Relatively towers beaches, ought to attract syndicates organ- ways. (Some of the smaller military forma-
sue. take the trouble to vote, few ized by people like Frank Sinatra and tions-the Marine Corps, say, or the Coast
still take the trouble to ofand and last year . Johnny Carson. It also ought to be a fairly Guard-conceivably could be sold to indi-
opposed to simple -matter to sell the federal inventory viduals. Donald Trump or the Bass Broth-
of priivat ecu security protection billion for s the
$15 billion oe sor public c oposto of trucks, office space (2.6 billion square ers might enjoy the adulation of a house-
's for publaw enforcement feet) and hospitals. ~ hold regiment)
The Administration's eurrent budget The.sophisticated deals would require a -The CIA: Both HBO and Warner
proposals lack the courage of its greed as little more thought, but I can imagine at Communications look on the intelligence
well as its conviction. It isn't enough leastafew of the possible buyers: a ency as an archive of scri ts. William J.
merely to eliminate Amtrak and the Job -Mount Rushmore, the Washington r a
Corps, or curtail payments of student Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Me- enturv Cit? we l as a percentage of the
loans and crop insurance. Although admi- --1- Th
n;-aw and Marriott caromed hnx-office receipts.
e
b
d
f
f
h
enn o
ur
rom t
e
raDle as suoL acuuns
loss, none of these adjustments supply the
virtue of additional revenue. Nor do they
come up to the rapacious standards of the
Wall Street speculators who prey on the
assets-of undervalued oil or communication
companies..
The simplicity of the leveraged buy-out
complies with the norms of low cunning
customary among the gentlemen so com-
fortably sealed in the board rooms of the
Reagan Administration. The acquisitors
borrow the money to buy the property in
question-a real-estate trust, an insurance
company, a government, etc.-which holds
assets worth a good deal more than the
Lewis H. Lapham is the editor of Harpers.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403700004-7