REAGAN MOVES ON JOURNALISTS IN WAR AGAINST LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000200900004-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: May 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP91-00587R000200900004-9
ARTICLE APPEAR~tED~
ON PAGE
Reagan moves eon journalists
in war against leaks
AARON EPSTEIN
raid Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Speaking
idly and carrying a tough crimi-
I statute, the Reagan adnUnis-
ttion has stepped up its crack-
wn on national security leaks by
neatening to prosecute publish-
i and broadcasters of govern.
ant secrets.
ronically. CIA Director William
Casey chose to confront the
tss over the oublication of
elligence Information that is
ther fresh news to the public
r a secret unknown to the
viet Union.
Moreover, the Justice Depart.
at had shown little interest, up
now, is prosecuting journal sts.
the latest episode Involved a
ommendation by Casey for
al action a ainst NBC and an
,eemeat under pressure by The
ishingtan Post to remove mate-
I from an article about U.S.
resdroppin . It underscored a
swing tension between the gov.
ment's responsibility to protect
nation's secrets and the free-
n of the press to report what
U.S. government is doing.
dany analysts describe Casey as
embarrassed and Infuriated by
ks and spy cases that he has
sided to try to intimidate the
as into withholding information
ut U.S. intelligence operations
including the covert operations
oad that the CIA is vigorously
king to expand.
The White House is not wor-
I about what the Soviet Union
y learn," said Thomas; Polgar.
,red CIA official. "It Is embar-
sed by all the bad publicity and
rying to take countermeasures
keep the bad news out of the
vspapers and off the air."
Lsey meets editors
n May 2, Casey met with Post
tors after learning that the
vspaper planned to publish an
cle stating that Ronald W.
ton, a former National Security
mncy employee on trial for
lonage, had Informed the Sovi-
Jnion about U.S. eavesdropping
Soviet communications. Casey
ed the Post editors to withhold
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:
STAT
"Pelton apparently -gave away
one of the NSA's most sensitive
secrets. a project with the code
nape 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 veer. the newspa-
per agreed to comply with re-
quests not to identify an individual
whose life could have been endan-
ggeera by publication. a Post editor
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
W-a
STAT
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP91-00587R000200900004-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP91-00587R000200900004-9
STAT
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
chief counsel to the CIA, noted
that 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.
e
intelligence statute.'
William J. Casey,
CIA director
you've got to know that if you
publish this, I would recommend
that you be prosecuted under th
"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 ins the media who won't
hat.
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
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP91-00587R000200900004-9