NEWSWATCH by Thomas Griffith: Editors Telling Secrets

Ever since the Washington Post broke the story of the CIA’s secret payments to King Hussein, it has been besieged by angry letters describing its action as “unpatriotic … in the vilest taste … the pinnacle of irresponsible journalism.” The Post was apparently disturbed enough last week by the outcry to call front-page attention to a curious story inside headlined: POST ATTITUDE “VERY RESPONSIBLE” IN WHITE HOUSE DEALINGS ON CIA STORY. This story quotes Jody Powell, the presidential press secretary, in support of the Post, though Powell did not deny that the President himself in private meetings with Cabinet and Congressmen had called the Post irresponsible. Where does that leave everybody?

The issue of whether the press has a right to print Government-stamped “secrets” keeps bedeviling Government and journalism. It always will. High-minded, and sometimes high-flown rhetoric about the rights of the Government or of the press are heard; there also exists the public’s right, and perhaps its duty, to be skeptical of both sides.

In private discussions, investigative reporters like Bob Woodward of Watergate fame (who also broke the Hussein story) describe their role in cat-mouse terms: it’s the Government’s job to keep secrets, the reporter’s job to ferret them out. Editorially defending its story, the Post sanctimoniously praised President Carter for insisting “that a much better effort must be made by the Government to keep its secrets—especially the CIA’s.” This really isn’t satisfactory: even if the CIA were effectively keeping its secret, others who might be interested in leaking the story include Palestinian rebels, the Israelis, a disaffected official in the American or Jordanian governments, or the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, whose objection to the subsidy was overruled by Ford. Of course there are those like Columnist Tom Wicker who think that most secrets are dirty. Or those who think disclosure did no real harm, like Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, who wonders “how good the Brave Little King’s intelligence is, anyway. And with that $210 million in aid he gets from us, why does he need a million dollars in ‘walking around’ money from the CIA?”

To a man, editors feel burned by what they regard as odious past attempts to muzzle them in the name of national security. “Once something leaks out, it’s open season,” says Editor Tom Winship of the Boston Globe. “I always regret it when we’ve played games. I got my head clear on the Pentagon papers.” Over at the New York Times, the Bay of Pigs lesson was well learned. At President Kennedy’s personal request, the Times did not print what it knew in advance of the invasion, only to be told afterward by a rueful Kennedy that had the story been published, the misbegotten adventure would have been canceled. The news suppression that angered Bradlee most was the bombing of Cambodia: “The people who were being bombed knew it, the Godless Commies knew it, only the American people didn’t. In almost 20 years in a decision-making seat, I’ve heard lots of claims about the serious harm our stories would do, but not one panned out. People are always trying to get me to be a statesman instead of a journalist. It’s fine work, but not what I chose.”

On the other hand, Los Angeles Times Editor William F. Thomas finds so many challenges to gaudy details in the Woodward story “bugging me that if I were convinced this was a legitimate intelligence expenditure, I wouldn’t use the story—period.” The CIA isn’t any longer the unchecked “rogue elephant,” as Senator Frank Church once described it; it cleared the Hussein payments with President Ford and the appropriate congressional oversight committee; President Carter just hadn’t got around to finding out about it. When the CIA’S secret activities are properly monitored, a free press and a Government free to conduct covert intelligence ought to exist side by side in a democracy. In other words, who elected editors to decide national security matters?

This frequently asked question troubles editors (if there’s any skin thinner than a politician’s, it’s a newspaperman’s), but it does not deflect them from exercising their right to print. Actually, they are more cautious and seek more counsel than they readily admit. The public that knows about a reporter consulting Deep Throat in a dark garage to verify a point has little idea of what lengths editors go to—if only in self-protection—to consult those in authority and to hear out objections (but they don’t want to be required to do so). Before publishing the Hussein story, Bradlee and Woodward had an off-the-record session at the White House, where President Carter objected to the story’s timing, but did not try to stop its publication. Bradlee will say only that “I have it on the highest possible authority that the national interest was not engaged.” (A widespread criticism of the Post story was that it broke the day Secretary of State Vance arrived in Amman to see King Hussein; Bradlee holds that so much advance consultation with the Administration gave it time enough to alert everyone, including the King, in advance.)

“When a story is obviously sensitive,” says James F. Hoge Jr., editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, “chances are it wouldn’t be accurate without going to the highest authority—which can then expand your capacity to understand the situation.” (Bradlee agrees, but “I start with the premise ‘Now talk me out of it.’ “) Several years ago, learning that the U.S. had contingency plans to use atomic weapons against Hanoi, the Sun-Times satisfied itself that the plans were contingent, and waited until the war was over before mentioning them.

Editors are most easily persuaded to withhold information when lives are involved. Wartime censorship rules against reporting troop movements are scrupulously adhered to. Their peacetime equivalents are kidnapings, rapes and hostages, or an intelligence agent’s life in jeopardy. Though the notion may be strange to readers, editors start with the idea that to withhold valuable information—unless objections are overriding—is somehow immoral, like trying to play God. “No great disaster befell the American people from the publication of the Pentagon papers,” says A.M. Rosenthal, executive editor of the New York Times. “You can’t put things on a scale, and see whether a story would be great for Israel or bad for the Arabs. In almost every story you run, someone —politicians, judges—has a valid reason from his point of view for not running it.”

The courts have long upheld the rights of editors to decide for themselves. This privilege is not as cost-free as some editors argue: foreign political leaders often deplore and consider harmful the sievelike nature of the American Government and the blabbiness of the American press. The gain is in a public informed, in time to redress wrongs. Advantage and disadvantage are not always in neat balance. Where in other societies only authority prevails, here what is not authority’s domain is left to conscience. The heartening fact, to judge by the record, is that the graver the issue, the more the editor hears from his conscience.