THE POST AND PELTON: HOW THE PRESS LOOKS AT NATIONAL SECURITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870009-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: June 8, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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WASHINGTON POST
8 June 1986
The Post and Pelton:
How The Press Looks
At National Security
By Benjamin C. Bradlee
N ATIONAL SECURITY means pro-
tection or defense of the country
against attack, sedition, espionage,
or other forms of hostile interference.
It isn't a complicated concept.
It isn't just hard to be against national se-
curity; it's inconceivable.
And yet, why is the director of Central In-
telligence trying to get various news organ-
izations indicted for the treasonous disclo-
sure of information classified in the interest
of national security? Why does the director
of the National Security Agency threaten to
prosecute news organizations if they publish
information he feels threatens the national
security? What does the assistant to the
president for national security affairs have
in mind when he joins the battle with such
relish?
Why is the president of the United States
himself so concerned that he calls the chair-
man of the board of this newspaper and asks
that information be withheld in the interests
of national security?
What's all the fuss about? Do these men
really think the people who run this news-
paper would betray their country? What re-
porter and' what editor could betray this
trust, and look their owner in the eye?
It sounds so simple, but it isn't.
The Washington Post has been at the
center of some stormy national security de-
bates in the last 20 years. One of those de-
bates-the Pentagon Papers-went all the
way to the Supreme Court in 1971 before it
was resolved, in favor of the press.
The most recent, and the most anguish-
ing, of these debates surrounds the story we
published late last month about the Ronald
Pelton spy case, after eight months of inter-
nal discussion and six months of conversa-
tions with the highest government officials.
As usual, outsiders seem both fascinated
and mystified by how this newspaper han-
dles this kind of story.
The Pelton case illustrates two important
points about how The Post deals with na-
tional security issues:
^ First, we do consult with the government
regularly about sensitive stories and we do
Benjamin C. Bradlee is the executive editor
of The Washington Post.
wit "o stones for national security rea-
sons, far more often than the public might
think. The Post has withheld information
from more than a dozen stories so far this
year for these reasons.
^ Second, we don't allow the govern-
ment-or anyone else-to decide what we
should print. That is our job, and doing it re-
sponsibly is what a free press is all about.
Trouble starts when people try to
sweep a lot of garbage under the rug
of national security. Even some very
highly placed people.
Like President Richard Nixon in 1969,
when he described a New York Times ex-
clusive report on the secret bombing of
Cambodia as an egregious example of na-
tional security violation.
That's right out of Kafka, when you think
about it. The Cambodians certainly knew
they were being bombed, and since only the
United States was then flying bombing mis-
sions in Indochina, they certainly knew who
was bombing them. If the Cambodians
knew, the Vietcong knew. And if the Viet-
cong knew, their Soviet allies knew imme-
diately. So whit was all that about? Well, the
American people didn't know and, in fact
they had been told we would not bomb Cam-
bodia.
Here, national security was used to cover
up a national embarrassment: The president
had lied to the American people and to the
world. But the New York Times story, by
reporter William Beecher, was used by the
White House to justify creation of the infa-
mous Plumbers unit, ostensibly to plug the
leak that produced this dreadful violation of
national security.
This led us to Watergate, of course. Is
there anyone now alive and kicking in to-
day's national security debate who remem-
bers Nixon looking the world in its televi-
sion eye and telling us he couldn't tell the
world the truth about Watergate because
national security was involved?
The worst lie of all.
All of this is not to say that there is no
such thing as a legitimate claim of national
security. Of course there is. Ever since
World War II, a standard example of what
not to publish for reasons of national secu-
rity has been the sailing times of troopships
leaving American harbors for foreign battle.
But the world doesn't work that way any-
more. Another good rule for when not to
publish involves the risk of American lives
(though that one has been used in cases
where the risk was all but impossible to
conceive). In any case, this newspaper does
keep information out of print for reasons of
national security. I can't give you a list
without violating the national-security in-
terest that led me to withhold publication.
low
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a addition to stories that are withheld the next Discovery space shuttle mission
for reasons of national security, there carrying an intelligence satellite. "Specu-
are some close calls-stories that are lation by news organizations on military as-
eveatually run, aver long discussions where tents of the mission would result in a De-
oPPtasg views are vigorously defended. tense Department investigation, Abel said.
Svcs story appeared in The Washington Reporter Walter Pincus was asked casu-
Pat as Feb. 18, 1977, under the ally by one of his editors, "What the hell is
"C!A paid Millions to Jordan's King Hus- in that satellite, anyway?" He said he would
6seW and under reporter Bob Woodward's make a few calls" to find out. Two days and
by. Millions of dollars of "walking around three telephone calls later, a story appeared
moAey' (as distinct from economic or mil- under his and Mary Thornton's bylines, de-
itarr aid) had been paid to the king by the scribing in general terms terms its signals-intel-
CIA under the codeword project name "No ligence mission.
Bed" On that same morning, Weinberger was
Jbmay- Carter had been president less en route to a CNN early morning talk show
than a month. He agreed to see Woodward Defeview, where he intended to push the
and me, after we sought white House re- Defense Department budget, which was al-
actioa to the story before Publication. The ready under a certain amount of attack from
Pr'eajdeut totally disarmed us by admitting the Congress. He was interrupted by CBS
the story was true. He said that the pay- reporter Reid Collins and asked if The
ments had been stopped, and then stunned Post's story "gave aid and comfort to the
us by saying that he had known nothing enemy" (an odd question, it seemed then
about it until The Post had sought White and now). Weinberger replied that the story
H
during ouse reaction, despite multiple briefings did just that, and the fat was in the fire.
Of State the Preceding months by Secretary The Post issued a statement saying that
Henry Kissinger and CIA Director there was nothing in the Pincus-Thornton
that Bush. The President never asked story that had not appeared in bits and
story not be Printed, although he Pieces somewhere else. But the damage
made clear he hoped it would not. He told was done. More than 4,000 letters to the
us that the story, if printed, would make the editor were received. Some of the letters
progress he hoped for in the Middle East contained threats of bodily harm, even
harder to achieve. death.
The argument over whether to print or The story would die there, a minor, if
not to Print was spirited, to understate it. scarring skirmish in the battle over national
Some of us felt that the national interest security, were it not for a lecture given at
would best be served if the world knew that Emory University a few days later by Gen-
the CIA had a king on its payroll, and that eral Abel. The general was asked if The
neither the outgoing CIA director nor the Post had violated national security by pub-
outgoing secretary of state felt that fact fishing. He replied that The Post's story
was important enough to share with the contained little or no information not on the
new President. Others felt that anything public record. No Post reporter was present
that might make resolution of the problems at the lecture, but a student called the pa-
of the Middle East more difficult was not per to report both the question and the an-
worth the candle of publishing. swer. We smelled a hoax, and asked to lis-
There are no absolutes in such discus- ten to a tape. We listened. He said it. We
sions. Rightness or wrongness lies in the still wanted confirmation from General
eye of the beholder. Our decision was to Abel, and finally got it at 9 p.m., when he
publish. Hussein is still king. Bush is the returned to his home from Atlanta.
`ice President. Carter is the former pres-
ident. Some time in September 1985, reporter
nder President Reagan, there was Woodward came into my office, shut
U -
only one major point of tension about the door, and in almost a whisper an amazing top-secret Americn intel-
national d
national security between the White ligence capability that emerged in bits and
House and this newspaper during the first
term. It is hard to say whether this period pieces eight months later in the trial of Ron-
of
oomparative detente was the result of the aid Peyton. Woodward described in great
Presence in the White House of James Bak- detail how the communication intercept had
er as chief of staff and David Gergen as di- worked, where the communications were
every detail except Pelton's
rector of communications, both now labor- name.
ing in different vineyards, or the absence of name.
Washington Post interest in national secu- Woodward didn't have Pelton's name be-
rity matters. The latter seems unlikely. cause no American knew for sure at that
The one incident occurred in the waning Point that a man named Peyton had sold this
days--December 1984-of the first term intelligence gold mine to the Russians five
and involved Secretary of Defense Caspar years earlier. That didn't start to surface
Weinberger. The story stemmed from an until well after Vital' Yurchenko defected
extraordinary briefing at the Pentagon by last year and fingered Peyton. Yurchenko
Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard F. Abel about
W
off.
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had been Pelton's first KGB contact, the
man who had arranged for Pelton to spill
the beans. Pelton was arrested last Nov. 24.
But without knowledge of Pelton, back
last September, The Washington Post had
no knowledge that every detail of our story
was already known to the Russians. We
thought we had the highest national secu-
rity secret any of us had ever heard. There
was never a thought given to publishing any
of this information.
At one of our weekly breakfasts, I told
publisher Donald E. Graham about the sto-
ry, and about my concern that while the ad-
ministration was beating the press upside
the head for run-of-the-mill leaks, truly im-
portant national-security information was
floating around town. I wondered out loud
to him about trying to get an appointment
with President Reagan to inform him of our
information and our concern. We scrapped
the idea on the grounds that it would inev-
itably appear to be self-serving and grand-
standing.
About that time I did run into the national
security adviser, Vice Adm. John Poindex-
ter, at a dinner party, and asked him for an
appointment to discuss the same subject.
We did meet, and he suggested I talk to Lt.
Gen. William Odom, the head of the Nation-
al Security Agency. General Odom and I
first met at his downtown Washington office
in the shadow of the Executive Office Build-
ing on Dec. 5, 1985. Post managing editor
Leonard Downie and two members of
Odom's staff also were present. We told the
NSA chief the detailed information we had,
information we said that the Russians now
had as a result of Pelton's treason. We said
we felt extremely uncomfortable with this
information, but we had it, the Russians had
it, and we asked why it should be kept from
the American people.
General Odom shook his head in dismay.
He said the information was still extremely
sensitive. We didn't know exactly what the
Russians knew, he said. It was hoped, he
said, that Pelton would plead guilty, avoid-
ing any public discussion of the evidence
against him. He looked us in the eve and
told us that any story about this case would
gravely threaten the national security of the
United States.
We were to hear that claim many, many
times in the next five months, as we tried to
frame a story that would tell the American
people what the Russians already knew, and
only what the Russians already knew.
We were determined not to violate
the legitimate security of the na-
tion, but we were equally deter-
mined not to be browbeaten by the admin-
istration, which has from time to time ap-
peared to relish press-bashing, into not pub-
lishing something that our enemies already
knew.
The weapons of any administration in this
kind of a battle are formidable: presidents,
admirals, generals, CIA directors telling
you that publication would endanger the na-
tion and the fives of some of its fighters, and
ultimately threatening to prosecute you for
violating the law.
These are red fights that a newspaper
goes through only with a deliberate lack of
speed.
The weapons of the press in this kind of
battle are generally the reporters them-
selves and their facts, the First Amendment
and common sense.
These are the green lights that make de-
mocracy the greatest form of government
yet devised.
From the first session with General
Odom on December 5 to a final session with
CIA Director Casey in the bar of the Uni-
versity Club on Friday afternoon May 2, the
issue was joined. There were at least three
meetings between Odom and one or more
editors of The Post. At least four meetings
with Casey. One with Poindexter. One with
FBI Director William Webster. (One after-
noon Webster and Casey asked to see me
urgently, and walked through the city room
into my office surrounded by bodyguards,
while more than 150 reporters and editors
watched in astonishment. The subject was
national security, but the area was Central
America, not the Soviet Union.)
At each of these meetings, different ver-
sions of the Pelton story were discussed
with the government officials. In some
cases different versions of a written story
were shown to them, something this news-
paper rarely does in advance of publication.
Each time, the officials invoked national se-
curity. Each time, the editors felt that na-
tional security was not involved, but were
not 1,000 percent convinced that the So-
viets knew every single detail of The Post's
story, and publication was delayed.
(On one occasion on Feb. 20. 1986,
aboard Air Force One, a copy of tho latest
version of The Post's story was passed
around between Poindexter, Weinberger.
Secretary of State Shultz and White House
Chief of Staff Donald Regan, according to
reliable sources. These high officials talked
about how important it was to keep this ver-
sion of the story out of the paper, and they
felt it would not be published.)
I n February, at an editors' conference in
Florida, Washington Post editors held a
seminar on national security and the
press. Former CIA director Richard Helms
was present to give us the perspective of an
old intelligence hand. Later in a discussion
with only four editors, Helms was told the
story and asked what were the chances that
the Russians did not know the whole story.
He felt the chances were slim. He felt spe-
cifically that Gorbachev himself might not
bad
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know, but he would certainly know if the
Post published the story and his reaction as
the new leader was hard to predict, and po-
tentially volatile. Helms gave no advice.
In April, former NSA director Admiral
Bobby Inman met with an editor of The
Post to discuss the story in great detail. He,
too, felt it was unlikely the Russians were
unaware of anything in the Post's story, but
on balance argued against publishing.
On May 1, 1986, over breakfast, General
Odom was shown the penultimate version of
the story. For the first time, he mentioned
that he and others were looking to the pos-
sibility of using 18 United states Code 798
to prosecute anyone who published the Pei-
ton story. This law provides for a maximum
punishment of 10 years in jail and a $10,000
fine for anyone who "publishes ... any clas-
sified information ... concerning ... the
use ... of any device ... for communica-
tion intelligence purposes ...."
This newspaper's lawyers reported that
while the government would surely argue
that the story was a technical violation of
that statute, the fact that the Russians
knew the specific classified information
made the government's argument more
tenuous.
On Friday, May 2, CIA director Casey
called me from his car telephone. He said he
had heard we were going to run the story
on the next Sunday and he wanted to talk.
He suggested the bar of the University
Club. Downie and I met him there at 4 p.m.
He was shown the story, read it slowly,
tossed it aside and said, "There's no way
you can run that story without endangering
the national security." He then said he
didn't mean to threaten anyone, but he
would have to consider recommending pros-
ecution of the newspaper if we published
the story. "We've already got five absolute-
ly cold violations" of 18 USC 798 against
The Washington Post and four other news
organizations, Casey said.
Nine days later President Reagan, just
back from the Japan summit, called Kath-
arine Graham, chairman of the board of The
Washington Post Company, to impress upon
her his views that publication of The Post's
story would endanger national security.
That was the last red light. The post
withheld the story one more time, and
started working immediately on a version of
the story that removed all the "wiring di-
agram" details of the intelligence system, all
the details that might be prohibited by the
statute.
As a courtesy to the president, in light of
his call to Mrs. Graham, White House press
secretary Larry Speakes was informed on
Tuesday night, May 27, that The Post was
going to run its story without the wiring di-
agram details the next day, unread by any
government official.
And it appeared next morning under the
bylines of Bob Woodward and Patr.
Tyler.
Casey responded that day by saying that
the CIA was studying the story to see
whether it should be referred to the Justice
Department for prosecution. And there the
matter lay, until a few days later in the mid-
dle of the Pelton trial, Casey and Odom is-
sued a joint statement warning the press
against speculating about the Pelton evi-
dence, and implicitly threatening prosecu-
tion if they did.
Warnings against speculation are the fab-
ric of a Pravda editor's life. They are anath-
emas in a free society, and they were
greeted as such by the American press on
this occasion.
Pelton was convicted last Thursday, after
seven days of testimony RI a Baltimore
courtroom, where the government laid out
more information in a public forum about its
most secret intelligence gathering capabil-
ities than at any time since World War H.
(Some of the testimony produced informa-
tion that was not in the original Post arti-
cle.)
The role of a newspaper in a free so-
ciety is what is at issue here. Govern-
ments prefer a press that makes their
job easier, a press that allows them to pro-
ceed with minimum public accountability, a
press that accepts their version of events
with minimum questioning, a press that can
be led to the greenest pastures of history by
persuasion and manipulation.
In moments of stress between govern-
ment and the press-and these moments
have come and gone since Thomas Jeffer-
son-the government looks for ways to
control the press, to eliminate or to mini-
mize the press as an obstacle in the imple-
mentation of policy, or the solution of prob-
lems.
In these moments, especially, the press
must continue its mission of publishing in-
formation that it-and it alone-deter-
mines to be in the public interest, in a use-
ful, timely and responsible manner-serv-
ing society, not government.
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