[Mb-civic] The press and classified information - The Boston Globe
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Tue Jan 17 04:21:43 PST 2006
The press and classified information
By H.D.S. Greenway | January 17, 2006
I MAY BE like a lot of Americans who believe that the kind of computer
eavesdropping that the top-secret National Security Agency is involved
in is probably a good thing, given the nature of the threat against this
country, but would like to see the government stay this side of the
Constitution and preserve the rule of law.
Whether or not the Bush administration did break the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act is being hotly debated, but President Bush
has said that he considers the leak ''a shameful act." It was clear that
he was not talking only about the individuals who leaked the classified
information, but the newspaper that published the information, The New
York Times.
The balance between the public's right to know, which is the raison
d'etre for a free press, and the government's right to keep its secrets
has a long and tumultuous history in this country. It is not uncommon
for the executive branch to ask a newspaper publisher or an editor to
quash, or at least hold, a story because of national security. The
newspaper must then decide whether the story really would harm the
country or whether the government is trying to cover up malfeasance or
mistakes.
In the current eavesdropping case the pressure was as intense as it can
be, with the president of the United States calling the publisher,
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and the editor, Bill Keller, down to the White
House to get them to stop publication.
Although all the facts have not all been revealed, The New York Times
did hold the story for almost a year to get the facts right, and certain
things the White House asked to be removed were removed.
Whether or not the reporters who wrote the story will eventually be
required to reveal their anonymous sources, or go to jail, as in the
Judith Miller-Valerie Plame Wilson case, will depend largely on whether
the government's eavesdropping is deemed to have been legal or illegal.
Revealing an illegality is one thing, while revealing a legal
intelligence operation is another. One wishes the White House had been
as judicious about revealing the name of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA
operative in the first place, but that is another story.
The most famous case involving the press and classified information was
the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, in which Sulzberger's father had to
decide whether to print the purloined, secret history of the Vietnam
War, which the Pentagon had written, or do the Nixon administration's
bidding and remain silent. He chose the former, and the government
stopped the presses for a while. But the Supreme Court eventually
decided in the newspaper's favor. Other papers, including The Washington
Post and The Boston Globe, took up printing the Pentagon Papers during
the time the Times was silenced.
Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee agreed to a CIA request in 1974
not to reveal the mission of the Glomar Explorer, a secret ship designed
to reach down with giant claws to bring a sunken Russian submarine to
the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The CIA wanted to capture the sub's
code books without the Russians knowing it. The Post printed the story
the following year, once the operation was over.
More than one paper was asked not to publish the story of ''Ivy Bells,"
an operation tapping into underwater cables in Russian harbors that
carried vital information on Soviet submarines. In the end it turned out
that the secret had been revealed by a US Navy traitor.
I was asked by the Israelis not to reveal the existence of their airlift
of Ethiopian Jews out of Africa some decades ago when I was foreign
editor of The Boston Globe. I complied, but said I wanted to be first to
print the story when the rescue operation was over. I wasn't. I was
beaten to the punch.
Certainly the Chicago Tribune's decision to print a story of how we had
broken a Japanese code turning World War II was reprehensible. I suspect
that the Washington Times's decision to reveal that we could listen in
on Osama bin Laden's cellphone hurt the nation too. But publishing the
Pentagon Papers did nothing to harm US security.
As for the current NSA eavesdropping expose, there was enough evidence
of government wrongdoing to justify publishing the story, but the
decision cannot have been easy.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/17/the_press_and_classified_information/
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