[Exhibit 74e] THE SECRECY DISEASE [From New York Times, October 31, 1977] (By Anthony Lewis) Boston, Oct. 30-For 39 days in the winter of 1975 the C.I.A. kept the lid on the story of the Glomar Explorer: the operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine. A number of newspapers, magazines and broadcasters had the story, or parts of it, but they were persuaded by William E. Colby and other agency officials to suppress it on national security grounds. The C.I.A.'s campaign of media persuasion is detailed in some documents just obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and a fascinating tale they tell. After these papers, it will be harder for journalists to believe in their self-image as a tough, skeptical lot, immune to government cajolery. One hopes it will also be harder for anyone to believe official claims, so often made, that the sky will fall in if some secret document is disclosed. The 1975 campaign to silence the press was itself treated as a grave national security secret. When Harriet Phillippi of Rolling Stone asked for records of the effort, the C.I.A. refused even to confirm that there had been one-though the fact of Mr. Colby's approaches to editors had been widely reported. Government lawyers, resisting a suit for the records, said it would be dangerous even to say whether or not any existed. An affidavit by Brent Scowcroft, President Ford's Assistant For Security Affairs, said any further disclosures about the Glomar affair "could in my judgment severely damage the foreign relations and the national defense of the United States." That extreme legal position won in the trial court was rejected, by a 2-to-1 vote, in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The majority said the government must at least explain why confirming that there were contacts between the C.I.A. and the press would endanger the national security. The court said the government might abandon the position if forced to explain it, and something like that evidently happened. Last April government lawyers admitted for the first time that the C.I.A. had tried to suppress the Glomar story and that records of the attempt existed. After blanking out many names and other passages, the government then turned over 64 documents: stenographic transcripts of Mr. Colby's telephone conversations with some press people, reports to him on meetings with others, comments on their weaknesses and so on. The papers picture Mr. Colby in increasingly frantic efforts to keep the Glomar story from appearing. By the end, as word of it spread through the press, one wonders what he had time to do except talk to editors. Mr. Colby's actions were hardly surprising, or blameworthy. It was natural for an intelligence chief to try any way he could to keep the Glomar operation secret. What was surprising was that the establishment media-the leading newspapers, the news magazines, the television networks-without exception went along with him. Some of the press executives, as reflected in these pages, seemed embarrassingly easy to convince. One from The New York Times wrote a letter to Mr. Colby formally undertaking "to withhold publication" on condition that others did. One from The Washington Post told Mr. Colby, "it is all agreed with you that it is not anything we would like to get into." One from The Los Angeles Times gave C.I.A. officials broad hints who his reporters' sources on the story were. Not everyone in the press was so uncritical. Seymour Hersh of The New York Times kept relentlessly after the story, and Mr. Colby and others worried a lot about him. In the end Jack Anderson refused to withhold it. But on the whole the Glomar affair suggests-as The Washington Post's press critic, Charles B. Seib, put it-that "The press, at least at its upper reaches, is easy to con." Because the press criticizes others so freely, its performance in the case of the Glomar Explorer is bound to get a certain amount of wry attention. But I think the more important moral of the tale lies elsewhere, in what it says about the whole question of official secrecy. When a defense or intelligence agency says that something must be kept secret, it starts with a great advantage. The rest of us are likely to be unfamiliar with ཝཱ the subject, and we defer to the supposed experts. "National security" is a worrying phrase; who would want to risk that? But bitter and recent experience teaches that "national security" is often a cover for a desire to avoid awkward questions. The most extravagant claims of risk turn out to be hollow. For years officials resisted disclosure of Presidential directives to intelligence agencies, saying they would put individual lives in jeopardy. When published, they turned out to have nothing to do with individuals. It is not the press alone that should be skeptical of demands for official secrecy. Judges are very often too trusting of such claims, as the Glomar case itself shows. Many would benefit from reading this curious story of William Colby and the press-and remembering that its publication was said to threaten the national existence. [Exhibit 75] COLBY CALLED GLOMAR CASE "WEIRDEST CONSPIRACY" (By William Claiborne and George Lardner Jr.) At the height of his efforts to suppress the Glomar Explorer story in 1975, Central Intelligence Agency then Director William E. Colby described the effort to a White House official as "the weirdest conspiracy in town. . . an American conspiracy." The official with whom Colby was speaking, Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, then deputy director of the National Security Council, was clearly impressed. "Do you really think you could do that? . . . It sort of takes my breath away," Scowcroft told the CIO director. The telephone dialogue within the upper reaches of the government's intelligence directorate was recorded by a stenographer just four days before publication of some of the details of a secret CIA mission to pluck portions of a sunken Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean floor. That stenographic account and other documents that portray a comprehensive CIA cosmetic operation to suppress the Glomar Explorer story-code named Project Jennifer-are included in additional papers obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They were made public as a result of a U.S. District Court lawsuit brought by Mark H. Lynch, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and for Ralph Nadar's Public Citizen Litigation Group. As previously released Glomar papers have done, the new documents depict a determined effort by Colby and his assistants to persuade some of the nation's most influential editors and broadcast executives to keep the lid on the Glomar story for "national security" reasons. Most of the new documents cover the period between March 12, 1975, when a self-imposed censorship of the press began to crumble, to March 18, when syndicated columnist Jack Anderson broke the story on a Mutual Radio Network show. Up until then, editors and publishers of the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and Parade magazine had assured Colby that they would withhold the story as long as the pact was not broken by one of the participants. In some conversations with his CIA subordinates, Colby seems to marvel at his own successes, such as after a transcribed telephone conversation he had on March 13 with an unidentified news executive whose publication is not named but which becomes apparent in a follow-up call four minutes later. "I would hope you could agree to sit on it. I have a deal with two or three other journals to do this, and I have a corresponding obligation to call each of them if the thing does explode. And I would propose to make the same arrangement with you," Colby said. "That is fine," the news executive said. "If you could hold it, I would appreciate it. I do not often ask this, but this one is rather important." The news executive answered, simply, "I agree." Moments later, according to the transcripts, Colby telephoned Carl Duckett, one of his high-ranking deputies and said, "Times agrees." Duckett responded, apparently facetiously. "Great. There are only 93 more that I can think of.' Then one of the two officials-apparently Colby, but the stenographer indicated uncertainty-asserted a seemingly sincere appreciation for the behavior of the press in the whole Glomar affair. "The main story in this one will be the way the American press showed its great responsibility, and they will have to catch me as their witness," the speaker said. An hour and a half later, according to the transcripts, Colby expressed the same kind of appreciation in a telephone conversation with Parade Magazine editor Lloyd Shearer. When Shearer asked the CIA director, "Do you have Boston?" Colby answered, "No, you sound like you are urging me to get into domestic activities." After discussing commitments by other publications to suppress the story, and being warned by Shearer that "whole [news] bureaus know about it," Colby suggested that the cooperative press might ultimately get its reward of praise. "And that is, I suspect, the best story-maybe in a year or so-the performance of the press. It will make a hell of a story, and I would be the first to give it," Colby told Shearer. If Colby was impressed with the performance of the press, Shearer seemed equalled awed by the lengths to which the CIA had gone to keep the story secret. "If you contain this, there will be a medal for you in Garfinckels window," Shearer said. But Colby's praise of the news executives' cooperation waned in his conversation the next day with Scowcroft. After briefing the White House national security adviser on the various news organizations that had agreed to withhold the story, Colby said he was “carrying around a list of telephone numbers in [his] wallet", which he would use to call the editors once the lid was off the story. "They are all just waiting to write that great, sanctimonious, sickening prose about. .," Colby said. The end of the sentence was deleted. The arrangement fell apart on March 18, 1975, as the result of a chance phone call by newspaper columnist Jack Cloherty, who was then a reporter on Jack Anderson's staff. Shortly before noon, he called a source, whom Cloherty still declines to identify, on another subject. The man told him about the Glomar's secret sub-raising mission, and added that, "It's all over town. The Times is sitting on it. The Post is sitting on it." As soon as Cloherty finished the conversation, he hurriedly told a colleague, columnist Les Whitten, about it. By 5:25 p.m., the two reporters were on the phone with Colby to get some final comment. He asked them to join the crowd and keep the secret. The CIA director said he felt "like a boy in front of the dike, and I am running out of fingers and toes." "I urged with you to sit with it [a] little bit," Colby told Whitten and Cloherty. "You are in good company. Everyone else is sitting on it. That is one of the most fascinating parts of it-the whole press [next word indistinct] has been just splendid." Replied Whitten: "We are all doing a half-assed job." According to Whitten, the CIA director told him and associate columnist Anderson that evening of his concern for "the national security" aspect of the Glomar case. They resolved it for themselves, said Whitten, after calling a highlevel Navy source, who advised them: "Oh, go ahead and do it . . . Enough people know about it already." Anderson broke the story that night on his 9 p.m. radio broadcast, 10 minutes after having informed the CIA's official spokesman at the time. Angus Thuermer, of the decision to publish. 21-656 0 78-44 GENERAL OVERSIGHT JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DIRECTIVES [Exhibit 76] FLAHERTY MEMO ON ILLEGAL GOVERNMENT ACTIVITIES Memorandum to: Quin Shea, Director, Office of Information and Privacy Appeals. From: Peter F. Flaherty, Deputy Attorney General. Date: June 2, 1977. Subject: FOIA Appeals. The protections of 5 U.S.C. 552(b) (7) (A)—intended to preclude interference with law enforcement activities-should not be used to conceal unlawful activities, regardless of the intent with which those activities were conducted. Similarly, just as this Department will not obtain information directly by means of unlawful activities, we will not shield with 5 U.S.C. 552(b) (7) (D) information which was initially obtained through the use of such means by other persons or law enforcement organizations. Neither the use nor methodology of unlawful investigative techniques or procedures is to be protected by reliance on 5 U.S.C. 552 (b) (7) (E). [Exhibit 77] SHEA MEMO ON THIRD PARTY INFORMATION Memorandum to: Professional staff. From: Quinlan J. Shea, Jr., Director, Office of Privacy and Information Appeals. Date: May 25, 1977. Subject: The Privacy Exemptions, 6 and 7(C). At the same time we strive for the maximum possible "openness" within this Department, we cannot forget that we are also charged with protecting legitimate personal privacy interests. After reviewing with me the manner in which we have been applying the privacy exemptions, Deputy Attorney General Flaherty has given me certain general, preliminary guidance in this area. To the extent it differs from our prior practice, this guidance is effective immediately and, for the purpose of adjudicating administrative appeals, retroactively. In the context of the "naked" third party request, the rules are unchanged. Almost any invasion of privacy can be termed "unwarranted" and most can be called "clearly unwarranted," if there is no offsetting public benefit flowing from release, or a private need so strong that it can be viewed as supported by a public interest, etc. Accordingly, we will continue to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of F.B.I. or other investigative files on the subjects of requests, who are not also the requesters (or in privity with them). Vigorous assertion of this "threshold" privacy position is to continue. Putting it bluntly-in the absence of a reason making it someone else's business, it is the business of no one but the subject whether we do or do not have an investigative file on him. Under our precedents, the "reason" for making or considering release of requested records on a third party can arise from the historical nature of the material in a file, the public figure status or other notoriety of the subject, etc. But, if the balancing test does not produce a result where the "reason" outweighs the protectable privacy interest-however slight it may be the privacy interest will be asserted. This will also continue to be our position as to requests "without reasons" seeking |