GOVERNMENT STEPS UP CRACKDOWN ON PRESS LEAKING SECURITY SECRETS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850004-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: May 27, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850004-4
DETROIT FREE PRESS (MI)
27 May 1986
GovernTent steps up crackdown
on press leaking security secrets
BY AARON EPSTEIN
Free Press Washington Staff
WASHINGTON ? Speaking loudly
and carrying a tough criminal statute,
the Reagan administration has stepped
up its crackdown on national security
leaks by threatening to prosecute pub-
lishers and broadcasters of govern-
ment secrets.
CaLdirector William Casey chose
to Fonfront the press over the publica-
tion of intelligence information that is
neither fresh news to the public nor a
secret unknown to the Soviet Union.
And up to now, the Justice Depart-
ment has shown little interest in prose-
cuting journalists.
The latest episode involved Casey's
recommendation for legal action
against NBC and the agreement the
Washington Post made under pressure
to remove material from an article
about U.S. eavesdropping. They under-
scored a growing tension between the
government's responsibility to protect
the nation's secrets and the freedom of
the press to report what the U.S.
government is doing.
MANY ANALYSTS say Casey is so
embarrassed and infuriated by leaks
and spy cases that he has decided to try
to intimidate the press into withhold-
ing information about U.S. intelligence
operations ? including the covert op-
erations abroad that the CIA is vigor-
ously seeking to expand.
"The White House is not worried
about what the Soviet Union may
learn," said Thomas Polgar, a retired
CIA official. "It is embarrassed by all
the bad publicity and is trying to take
countermeasurts to keep the 1ad news
out of the newspapers and off the air.
"They are able to intimidate quite a
few people. Even the Washington Post
backed down," Polgar said.
On May 2, Casey met with Post
editors after learning that the newspa-
per planned to publish an article stating
that Ronald Pelton, a former National
Security Agency employe on trial for
espionage, had informed the Soviet
Union about U.S. eavesdropping on
Soviet communications. Casey urged
the Post editors to withhold the 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 pros-
ecuted under the intelligence statute."
HE CITED an espionage law, en-
acted in 1950 and known as the CO-
MINT statute, that bars the unautho-
rized disclosure of classified U.S.
communications intelligence, such as
codes and other secret messages. No
news organizations have been pros-
ecuted under the statute.
Casey said to Post editors that
"We've already got five absolutely cold
violations" of the COMINT law against
the Post, Washington Times, 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 "abso-
lutely cold violations."
Said a Justice Department official,
who asked not to be identified: "We
haven't moved forward with it. That
should tell you something."
Last Tuesday, Casey asked the Jus-
tice Department to prosecute NBC
News for broadcasting the following
sentence:
"Pelton apparently gave away one
of the NSA's most sensitive secrets, a
project with the code name Ivy Bells
believed to be a top-secret eavesdrop-
ping program by American submarines
inside Soviet harbors."
THE NEXT DAY, the Post published
its story, headlined "Eavesdropping
System Betrayed." It said that, for
$35,000, Pelton had sold the Soviets
information about an intelligence oper-
ation that used a "high-technology
device" to intercept Soviet communi-
cations.
The Post story said a description of
the technology was excised. Post edi-
tors said later that they could not be
certain that its disclosure would not
harm national security.
A Justice Department official said
Friday that Casey had not yet proposed
prosecution of the Post, although he
said the Post 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 Katherine
Graham, chairwoman of the board of
the Washington Post Co.
"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
jeopardize national security." (Twice
within the past year, the newspaper
agreed to comply with requests not to
identify an individual whose life could
have been endangered by publication, a
Post editor said.)
William Terry Maguire, vice-presi-
dent and general counsel of the Ameri-
can Newspaper Publishers Associa-
tion, said there are no general
guidelines for editors, so each case
must be decided separately.
"I THINK our feeling is that it is
usually appropriate for newspaper edi-
tors to discuss these issues with the
government, then make the determina-
tion of what to publish and what not to
publish, based on a more complete I
understanding of what's involved,"
said Maguire.
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. sub-
marines had planted eavesdropping de-
vices near the Soviet coast have been
published since 1975 and had been
"rehashed" many times since.
He said he believed that 'Ivy Bells'
was the NSA's way of "attaching a
new code word to an old operation."
News organizations may find that
defending a COMINT violation of un-
authorized disclosure of classified
communications intelligence because it
was previously published or was al-
ready known to the Soviet Union won't
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850004-4
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850004-4
Many analysts say
Casey is so embarrassed
and infuriated by leaks I
and spy cases that he
has decided to try to
intimidate the press
into withholding
information about U.S.
intelligence operations.
work, said Bamford and several law-
yers with backgrounds in national se-
curity.
AnthonyLa ham, former chief
counjTTo the CIA, said the on y courr
to have interpreted -the statute ? the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
California ? appeared to have ruled
out all claims that, because of previous
publication, the government should not
have kept the published information a
secret.
That court wrote in 1977 that it was
irrelevant whether the information
was properly classified or not. "The
fact of classification. . . is enough," the
court wrote.
"But," Lapham said, "that is not the
final word. It is still an open question."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000301850004-4