A tangled history: Publishing

[MDM4AU 332]

A tangled history: Publishing (and not publishing) government secrets 

By Scott Shane The New York Times

Published: July 2, 2006

WASHINGTON When government officials ask journalists to withhold information on national security grounds, they face a natural skepticism.

Many reporters believe that the government routinely exaggerates the need for secrecy. They suspect that security officials try to snuff reporting that is merely embarrassing or at most politically troublesome. And most journalists are deeply reluctant to pass up a scoop.

Yet, for decades, American newspapers and broadcasters have regularly censored themselves on security grounds, plucking compromising details from a story, delaying its publication or killing it entirely.

The New York Times has withheld articles that might have jeopardized counterterrorism programs or efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material. Reporters have removed details about invasion plans, military equipment, allies' assistance and much else.

None of those precautions, intended to protect American lives and intelligence sources, is visible to the public. But on vivid display are articles published over the government's vociferous objections, some of which have deeply angered the Bush administration and its allies.

The latest tempest was set off on June 22 by the disclosure in The New York Times, closely followed by The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, of a secret program that scrutinizes global money transfers by a Brussels banking consortium.

The article followed other exposés of counterterrorist tactics, including The Washington Post's on the CIA's overseas detention centers and The New York Times's on the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping.

Critics of the Bush administration say that extraordinary secrecy has generated the rash of disclosures.

"People in the government who believe something wrong or illegal is going on feel they have no recourse but to go to the press," said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel.

But some current and former intelligence officers express exasperation at what they see as journalists' arrogance.

"I'd say views are hardening," said Bobby Inman, former director of the National Security Agency and former deputy director of central intelligence, who is generally viewed as friendly to the press.

"If we're going to avoid an official- secrets act" - a British-style law far more draconian than anything in the United States - "we're going to have to have more discipline from the media," he said.

John Carroll, former editor of The Los Angeles Times, recounted an exchange last year with the CIA that illustrated the opposite instincts of the two sides.

Over CIA objections, the newspaper published an article about the agency's cultivation of sources in the Iranian community of Los Angeles. "If we felt it would seriously compromise national security, we would not have run it," said Carroll, adding that he never heard of problems resulting from the decision.

But a former CIA official said intelligence officers had been "furious," fearing the article would make it harder to recruit Iranian-Americans and put expatriates under potentially dangerous scrutiny if they traveled to Iran.

As publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham backed her editors during the Watergate era. But in a 1986 speech, she warned that the media sometimes made "tragic" mistakes.

Her example was the disclosure, after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, that U.S. intelligence was reading coded radio traffic between terrorist plotters in Syria and their overseers in Iran. The communications stopped, and five months later the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was destroyed, killing 241 Americans.

"This kind of result, albeit unintentional, points up the necessity for full cooperation wherever possible between the media and the authorities," Graham said.

But such cooperation can prove problematic, as The Post's former editor, Benjamin Bradlee, has recounted.

In 1986, after holding for weeks at government request a scoop about an NSA tap on a Soviet undersea communications cable, The Post learned that the Russians knew all about it already from an NSA turncoat named Ronald Pelton. NBC beat The Post on its own report.

"Officials often - more often than not, in my experience - use the claim of national security as a smoke screen to cover up their own embarrassment," Bradlee wrote in his 1995 memoir, "A Good Life."

In 1961, The Times learned of the planned Bay of Pigs invasion but removed references to the CIA and other details from its article at the government's request.

But after the attempted attack on Cuba proved a catastrophe, President John F. Kennedy told a Times editor that he wished the paper had ignored the government's plea because a more pointed article might have led the CIA to abort the operation.

Some countries try to regulate such exchanges. In Britain, skirmishing over secrets is mediated by the Defense Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee, with both press and government members. The group has no power to stop publication but advises journalists on what damage a report might cause.

No such system exists in the United States, but some years ago a group of about 20 journalists and officials met quarterly for dinner to discuss how a free press should cover secret agencies.

Some officials refused repeated invitations, said Smith, one of the organizers. But he said the meetings were useful while they lasted. "The idea was that each side didn't really understand the other very well," Smith said. "I'd say that's certainly still the case."

WASHINGTON When government officials ask journalists to withhold information on national security grounds, they face a natural skepticism.

Many reporters believe that the government routinely exaggerates the need for secrecy. They suspect that security officials try to snuff reporting that is merely embarrassing or at most politically troublesome. And most journalists are deeply reluctant to pass up a scoop.

Yet, for decades, American newspapers and broadcasters have regularly censored themselves on security grounds, plucking compromising details from a story, delaying its publication or killing it entirely.

The New York Times has withheld articles that might have jeopardized counterterrorism programs or efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material. Reporters have removed details about invasion plans, military equipment, allies' assistance and much else.

None of those precautions, intended to protect American lives and intelligence sources, is visible to the public. But on vivid display are articles published over the government's vociferous objections, some of which have deeply angered the Bush administration and its allies.

The latest tempest was set off on June 22 by the disclosure in The New York Times, closely followed by The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, of a secret program that scrutinizes global money transfers by a Brussels banking consortium.

The article followed other exposés of counterterrorist tactics, including The Washington Post's on the CIA's overseas detention centers and The New York Times's on the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping.

Critics of the Bush administration say that extraordinary secrecy has generated the rash of disclosures.

"People in the government who believe something wrong or illegal is going on feel they have no recourse but to go to the press," said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel.

But some current and former intelligence officers express exasperation at what they see as journalists' arrogance.

"I'd say views are hardening," said Bobby Inman, former director of the National Security Agency and former deputy director of central intelligence, who is generally viewed as friendly to the press.

"If we're going to avoid an official- secrets act" - a British-style law far more draconian than anything in the United States - "we're going to have to have more discipline from the media," he said.

John Carroll, former editor of The Los Angeles Times, recounted an exchange last year with the CIA that illustrated the opposite instincts of the two sides.

Over CIA objections, the newspaper published an article about the agency's cultivation of sources in the Iranian community of Los Angeles. "If we felt it would seriously compromise national security, we would not have run it," said Carroll, adding that he never heard of problems resulting from the decision.

But a former CIA official said intelligence officers had been "furious," fearing the article would make it harder to recruit Iranian-Americans and put expatriates under potentially dangerous scrutiny if they traveled to Iran.

As publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham backed her editors during the Watergate era. But in a 1986 speech, she warned that the media sometimes made "tragic" mistakes.

Her example was the disclosure, after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983, that U.S. intelligence was reading coded radio traffic between terrorist plotters in Syria and their overseers in Iran. The communications stopped, and five months later the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was destroyed, killing 241 Americans.

"This kind of result, albeit unintentional, points up the necessity for full cooperation wherever possible between the media and the authorities," Graham said.

But such cooperation can prove problematic, as The Post's former editor, Benjamin Bradlee, has recounted.

In 1986, after holding for weeks at government request a scoop about an NSA tap on a Soviet undersea communications cable, The Post learned that the Russians knew all about it already from an NSA turncoat named Ronald Pelton. NBC beat The Post on its own report.

"Officials often - more often than not, in my experience - use the claim of national security as a smoke screen to cover up their own embarrassment," Bradlee wrote in his 1995 memoir, "A Good Life."

In 1961, The Times learned of the planned Bay of Pigs invasion but removed references to the CIA and other details from its article at the government's request.

But after the attempted attack on Cuba proved a catastrophe, President John F. Kennedy told a Times editor that he wished the paper had ignored the government's plea because a more pointed article might have led the CIA to abort the operation.

Some countries try to regulate such exchanges. In Britain, skirmishing over secrets is mediated by the Defense Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee, with both press and government members. The group has no power to stop publication but advises journalists on what damage a report might cause.

No such system exists in the United States, but some years ago a group of about 20 journalists and officials met quarterly for dinner to discuss how a free press should cover secret agencies.

Some officials refused repeated invitations, said Smith, one of the organizers. But he said the meetings were useful while they lasted. "The idea was that each side didn't really understand the other very well," Smith said. "I'd say that's certainly still the case."

 

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