Presswatch/Treason and Accountability
Ledeen, Michael
.................................................................................................................. PRESS WATCH TREASON AND ACCOUNTABILITY E arly in April, an appeals court in...
...The judge is right and the media brief was wrong...
...There isn't room here to cover all the angles, but here are a few thoughts to keep you going for a month: There is going to have to be some kind of mixed government/media/legal panel to give advice (or actually make decisions...
...There are two serious questions at stake here: Who defines what is damaging to national security...
...T he media don't like that because they want to decide what should be published and what should be secret-they don't want anyone else horning in on their act...
...will not immunize him from responsibility for his criminal act...
...It was the first time a foreign journalist or photographer had been charged with participation in a violent disturbance, according to Israeli radio...
...Plus $4.00 shipping & handling, ca...
...Journalism today is the only profession with no procedure for enforcing accountability...
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...That phrase about "unauthorized persons" is almost never quoted in the newspapers, because it makes it clear that journalists, just like any other citizen, are covered by the Act...
...There is a law that forbids publication of information about "Signals Intelli gence...
...The issue is whether it is a good law, and whether the decision of the appeals court threatens freedom of the press...
...Yet any journalist who writes about intelligence could very easily be prosecuted under the law...
...But that last move isn't even crucial, for Morison could have been charged with espionage if he had given the photographs to some friend of his...
...To use the First Amendment for such a purpose would be to convert the First Amendment into a warrant for thievery...
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...PRESS WATCH TREASON AND ACCOUNTABILITY E arly in April, an appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, upheld the conviction of Samuel Loring Morison, for violation of the Espionage Act...
...The photos appeared in the American media some weeks later...
...It's the government's problem...
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...A minor, intriguing, possibly irrelevant footnote: the EFE correspondent in Guatemala City was at the time sharing an office with the Prensa Latina (Cuban) correspondent...
...Morison had given secret satellite photographs of a Soviet shipyard to Jane's Defence Weekly, a British pub lication...
...And what really worries the media-as opposed to all the philosophical talk about "how the public learns about its government"--is that if this decision sticks, it may frighten some leakers away, and it may lead editors to think twice about publishing certain kinds of national securi ty revelations...
...For Michael Ledeen is senior fellow in international affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C...
...But we have it already...
...The problem, according to the media brief (as reported by Stuart Taylor, Jr...
...It has never been applied, so nobody knows whether it would stand up in court, how sweeping its scope really is, or anything else about it...
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...Unreported Story of the Month A fellow named William Biggert, who entered Israel in early March with documentation showing he was a staff photographer for the Village Voice, was found to have joined local Arabs in throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers in Nablus...
...That Morison is guilty of espionage, as defined by the law, is hard to doubt (although the Supreme Court may manage to find a way...
...Charges were filed against him, and he was ordered to appear in court, but Biggert left the country before the hearing...
...You can display it with pride, secure in the knowledge that it will be treasured by future generations...
...Journalists are just like the rest of us...
...Let them take steps to stop the leaks at the source, but let them leave us alone to publish what we think is responsible...
...As usual, it took some time for the truth to catch up with the front page, and by the time the United States and Israeli embassies had asked the Guatemalan officials to investigate the charges (the allegation had appeared once before, and believe it or not, the U.S...
...It will be argued that this is censorship...
...It may be that these laws need some changes, but at present the media are acting like ostriches, hoping no one will notice them since they have put their heads in the sand...
...My own view is that, while I'm nervous about the implications of the decision, the participation of the media in Morison's appeal is one of the worst decisions they have made in a long time...
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...Thousands Have Sneaked Across Border in Flight From Alleged Repression...
...The story was picked up by the joint Spanish-Central American news agency ACAN-EFE, and wired all over Central America and Spain...
...The basis for the media concern is not the law itself, but that it has, for the first time, been applied to a "journalist...
...In short, if you don't like the news today, pretend it's only a matter of time before things get better...
...As the ACLU's Morton Halperin put it, "There's nothing in the statute that distinguishes between government officials and the press, and under the court's legal interpretation it could be used against the press...
...It is...
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...Essays by Dick Armey, Stuart M. Butler, Allan C. Carlson, John C. Goodman, J. Peter Grace...
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...government actually had the FBI investigate it), and the Guatemalans had assured the world there was no truth to the story, the damage was done...
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...801 HILLSDALE COLLEGE PRESS Hillsdale, Michigan 49242 IM, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1988 33 ernment thinks only it should decide when things are "properly classified...
...The media say-and they are undoubtedly right-that if the decision stands, it will have a chilling effect on the way they do business...
...And how can the media and the government reach a working relationship in which reasonable decisions on publication or broadcast of potentially sensitive information are made, and there is a mechanism for enforcement (that is, penalties for those who break the rules...
...Jewish Ritual Murder, Updated On Sunday, January 24, the secondlargest newspaper in Guatemala, El Grafico, ran a sensational story, according to which Guatemalan babies were being purchased by Israelis and then shipped to the United States and Israel where they were dismembered in order to provide transplants for local babies...
...If citizens are forbidden to reveal damaging information to unauthorized persons, then no class of citizens is exempt...
...Most American newspapers (including the Washington Post and the New York Times) are worried, deeply worried, about the precedent set by this case, for Morison is the first American ever convicted for turning over classified information to the media...
...The broadcast said that the executive editor of the Voice confirmed that Biggert worked for them, but said he was not a staff photographer...
...We need some Supreme Court decisions, and with the Morison case on the books, the government should quickly charge some journalist with a violation of the SIGINT law and get a ruling...
...The government did not take the press to court...
...That is the sum total of it...
...Heretofore, "espionage" was restricted to handing state secrets directly to the enemy...
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...The fact that Morison was moonlighting as a free-lancer for Jane's is interesting, but irrelevant...
...That is precisely what has happened in the Morison case...
...U.S...
...Headline of the Month From the New York Times, Saturday April 2, the (three-column) headline on the "jump" for a story reporting that Independent Counsel McKay had no reason to indict Attorney General Meese: "No Indictment of Meese Planned Yet...
...Runner-up goes to the Washington Post, April 1 (but they missed the joke): "Hungary Welcomes Refugees From Rumania...
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...But it seems clear enough that journalists are covered by the law, which makes it a crime for anyone to provide secret information, which he has reason to believe would harm the national defense, to "unauthorized persons...
...His crime was, as a government employee, to pass information damaging to the national defense (it told a great deal about the capabilities of our spy satellites) to unauthorized persons at Jane's...
...Why should journalists be different...
...in the April 10 New York Times), is that the decision "will affect, and perhaps dramatically alter, the way in which government officials deal with the press, the way in which the press gathers and reports the news, and the way in which the public learns about its government...
...El I f there's a place for him in your heart, there's a place for him in your home...
...George Marotta, and Arthur Shenfield, it cans -for a restc*atlon needed if we are to prosper as individuals and as a nation...
...on whether a given story is publishable or not...
...years now, whenever people like me have warned that it will not do for the press to publish all manner of classified information, the media's response has been (with lots of modulation): "That's not our problem...
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...Thus, lots of newspapers filed briefs asking the appeals court to overturn Morison's conviction...
...And, of course, from Jane's to, inter alia, the Soviet Union...
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...their qualifications and their standards of performance...
...I guess it's the latest in advocacy journalism...
...I believe that most informed people of good will agree that there are certain kinds of information that should not be published or by Michael Ledeen broadcast, for precisely the same concern that led to the passage of the Espionage Act...
...Lawyers, doctors, even college professors have to respond to professional boards that evaluate I enclose my: Check Please Charge i Mastercard Li Visa Card No...
...The comparison that comes to mind is the Ratings Board for the Motion Picture Association, except that the media board will have to have some enforcement capability...
...To which Judge Donald Stuart Russell implicitly replied in his decision: "The mere fact that one has stolen a document in order that he may deliver it to the press...
...Exactly right...
...Both sides will hate it, because the media want to decide these things themselves, and the gov THE PRIVATIZATION REVOLUTION Volume XIV in the Champions of Freedom series on free-market economics examines the greatest political and economic success story in years...
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Vol. 21 • June 1988 • No. 6
