GIVING THE ESPIONAGE LAWS A NEW LOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201830063-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 28, 2012
• Sequence Number: 63
• Publication Date: May 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201830063-2
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ON pAGE~ NEW YORK TIMES
25 May 1986
Giving the Espionage
Laws a New Look
j c=Bq STEPHEN ENGELBERG
WASHINGTON
THE issue of the hour was
spies and their relentless as-
sault on the national defense.
Every day, it seemed, came
fresh revelations about the hemor-
rhage of this country's most sensi-
tive secrets. America was in a panic
about threats from abroad.
That was in 1950, the year Con-
gress rewrote the nation's espionage
laws. Three-and-a-half decades
later, with the country once again ob-
sessed with spies, one of those stat-
utes has emerged as a central ele-
ment in a confrontation between the
press and Government. The law sets
a maximum sentence of 10 years in
jail and a $10,000 fine for anyone who
publishes classified information ob-
tained through intercepted com-
munications. It also covers similar
secret information on American
codes or techniques for intercepting
communications.
William J. Casey, the Director of
Central Intelligence, last week asked
the Justice Department to consider
bringing the first prosecution ever
under the law against NBC News for
a story it aired on the damage
caused by Ronald W. Peiton, a for-,
mer employee of the National Se-
curity Agency who is on trial for es-
pionage. The network broadcast a
one-sentence description of an eaves-
dropping project involving subma-
rines that he Is alleged to have dis-
closed to the Soviet Union.
After several weeks of negotia-
tions with the White House, The
Washington Post last week published
a story about Mr. Pelton, but without
many details officials had claimed
would be potentially damaging to na-
tional security. A spokesman for the
C.I.A. said a recommendation that
the newspaper be prosecuted was
under consideration.
Speaking to the American Jewish
Committee, Mr. Casey asserted
there had been "widespread viola-
tion" of the 1950 statute in recent
months and said this was hampering
American efforts to ward off terror-
ism. But thus far, the Justice De-
partment has been cool to Mr,
Casey's suggestions for prosecuting
the press. "Don't forget, we pride
ourselves on being an independent
? branch of the Government over
here," stressed one Department offi-
cial. Meanwhile, the National Se-
curity Council is said to have begun a
broad study to determine if new
measures to prevent disclosures of
sensitive information are needed.
The 1950 restrictions on communi-
cations intelligence were enacted id
the wake of a growing awareness of
the Government's abilities to inter-
cept transmissions and break codes
- and the need to keep those abilities
secret. A 1918 Congressional assess-
ment of the sneak attack on Pearl
Harbor, which- detailed American
cabilitles for reading Japanese codes
before and during the war, was fre-
quently cited-in the debate over. how
best to protect communications in-
telligence. Further proof of the im-
portance of eavesdropping on an
enemy emerged years later, when it
was revealed the allies had cracked
the mysteries of Nazi Germany's
Enigma encoding machine.
The report on Pearl Harbor con-
cluded with a recommendation that
the unauthorized publication of any.
classified material should be re-
garded as a crime. But Congress
eventually decided instead to limit
its law to what the House Judiciary
Committee termed "a small degree
of classified matter, a category
which is both vital and vulnerable to
almost a unique degree."
Since then, the press has come to
pay an increasing amount of atten-
tion to American foreign and defense
policies. And until recently, Govern-
ment officials had by and large been
willing to live with a certain amount
of disclosure of classified informa-
tion as the price paid for discussion
of such issues in a democracy.
Mr. Casey believes that, among
other factors, international terror-
ism has fundamentally changed the
equation. "If we are to protect our
security as a nation and the safety of
our citizens," he told the American
Jewish Committee, "the law now on
the books to protect a very narrow
segment of information, that dealing
with communications intelligence,
must now be enforced."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-009658000201830063-2
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