PRESS: Schorr and a Free Press

...The speed of collapse of our chosen ally ought to suggest that we got out of that one by the skin of oar teeth...

...When they slip secret funds to foreign politicians, they support the toadies and the self-seekers...

...When they undermine governments, they replace them with military dictatorships or right-wing oligarchies which will only make things worse later on...

...I am indebted for most of this account to a story by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post of last December 22...

...Dick Clark, a Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on Africa, learned of the CIA's embryonic program in Angola last July...

...In short, that when they commit assassinations, they kill the wrong people...

...Really, one hardly knows what to make of such a plan...

...Hence the unexpected vigor of the House's attempt to find out who leaked the intelligence report, and to make sure that he (or she, of course) becomes an instructive example...

...the intelligence community, which does not think secrets can be kept without extremely sharp limits on the number of people who know the secrets...

...If you still have doubts on this matter, take a look at David B. Ottaway's excellent story in the Washington post of February 19...

...The new system of oversight will be better than the old system, but that is about all you can say for it...

...As with similar provisions of S.1., the main legal tool in Ford's law would not be the threat of imprisonment, but the right to use the FBI, grand juries and the like to discover the source of a leak...

...might intervene on the side of white Rhodesia, if Russia or Cuba join their black enemies...

...Ford's position on this has been tougher than the Senate's, but even the Senate has taken strong steps to end leaks of secret information from CIA briefings...

...Government and its covert instruments actually know how to defend American interests...

...This did not seem like a good idea to him, so he asked for a thorough CIA briefing on the situation for the full Foreign Relations Committee...

...What the dissident faction suspects is that our covert- operations create more problems than they solve...

...It is, in fact, so inexplicable, that one suspects the CIA must actually, for once, against all odds, have known something we didn't know...

...Somehow . .. I doubt it...

...But even if Schorr avoids answering the painful question and going to jail alike, the chilling effect on freedom of the press will be substantial...

...What did we gain when the CIA replaced a coalition Laotian government in 1960 with a right-wing regime, which eventually lost the whole country...

...The most recent example of U.S...

...There is no other possible explanation for the decision to secretly intervene in Angola on the side of...

...On this issue the Congress seems to have two factions, one which shares the basic aims of the administration and the intelligence community, but wants to be in on the secrets...

...The reason he learned of it is that a 1974 law says the CIA has to brief six separate congressional committees on covert operations, and when that many people know about something, the word gets out...

...In a sense, it doesn't much matter how Daniel Schorr decides to answer that painful question...

...But even so it would be a mistake to take Kissinger at anything less than his word...

...I don't know how these strike you, but they strike me as very strong steps...

...South Africa...

...The struggle over the intelligence community which has been going on for the last year is nearly over, and from here it looks as though secrecy won...

...Thomas powers TIME AGAINN...

...Perhaps the most significant power of the new committee, however, would be its right to take steps against Senators who leak information on their own...

...The important thing is not whether the House Ethics Committee decides to destroy Schorr, a brilliant but unlucky man...

...The issue, basically, is whether the U.S...

...The public, according to the pendulum theory, does not really care what was in the House report, and is tired of smart-aleck reporters showing up the establishment...

...So strong, in fact, they might reduce leaks to zero and persuade the administration and the intelligence community that congressmen can safely be trusted with the secrets of foreign policy...

...This, in my usual round-about way, brings us back to the question of leaks and Daniel Schorr...

...Neither does the rest of the Ford administration...

...On February 19, the House voted 269-115 to find out who gave the report to Schorr...

...it would provide for legal action to prevent such disclosure before it happened-that is, prior restraint of the press...

...Before going on to explore what is behind the House investigation we ought to recapitulate how Schorr got into this awful jam: -On January 29, the House voted nearly two to one to accept a request by President Ford to suppress the final report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence until it could be "sanitized" of classified information...

...Daniel Schorr will then be faced with what will surely be the most painful moment of his career: Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, he will have to answer the question, or go to jail...

...In mid-December William Colby, then still director of the CIA, and Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco, held the briefing, at which Clark raised objections...

...On Wednesday, February 11, the Village Voice published a long section of the report and two days later Schorr admitted he was the source of the Voice text...

...and congressmen who want to know more about what the administration and the intelligence community are up to...

...One is a lawyer, going through his briefcase...

...Any five Intelligence Committee members, or any sixteen senators at large, could force a hearing on charges of disclosure, and the possible sanctions on conviction range from a vote of censure all the way to expulsion from the Senate itself...

...The pendulum has swung all right, but the public has had nothing to do with it...

...The real parties to this struggle are the administration, which does not want to lose its power to take secret and unilateral action...

...Schorr, remember, has already lost his job for his temerity and independence, and it will be some time before he is allowed to get back to reporting...

...Is Guatemala more stable now, for having been saved from Arbenz in 1954...

...It also established a procedure for the release of classified information against the President's will, so long as the President had a chance to argue his case first, and so long as a minimum of three Intelligence Committee members could not persuade the Senate as a whole to override the Committee majority and vote against release of the information...

...On February 20, Schorr was taken off the intelligence beat by CBS and three days later he was suspended from reporting altogether...

...What happened, apparently, was this...

...Because so many people were present, word of the meeting, and of the CIA operation in Angola, eventually got out and was published...

...It's hard to say just when the climactic scene will begin, but when it does it will probably go like this: A crowded committee room in the office building of the House of Representatives...

...The executive branch may have to surrender a point or two, and Congress may learn a bit more than it used to, but the press and the public are going to be left on the outside, as always...

...What he did not say was who gave it to him...

...It is that the House and the Senate alike have come down firmly on the side of secrecy...

...It is quite possible that Schorr's troubles mean a period of valuable but much-exaggerated investigative reporting is coming to an end...

...They want a leak-proof national security apparatus, which explains Ford's proposals for "reform" of the intelligence community announced on February 19...

...It would not be another Vietnam in scale, but in wisdom...

...It would be nice to think that a majority of Congress would disdain violence and other black arts even if they always worked to our benefit...

...In front of the assembled committee is a smaller table with a microphone, a pitcher of water, and a glass or two...

...Walls lined with reporters and photographers...

...If Schorr refuses to answer, whatever the ultimate consequences, his own troubles will make reporters think three times before risking a similar fate...

...Since the executive is not notably susceptible to oratory, that leaves only one-resort to the press-and yet the Senate is trying to ensure that its only effective weapon cant be used...

...Everyone seems to agree that knowledge makes the world a safer, more stable place, on the theory that it's what you don't know which scares you...

...On March 3, the House voted 321-85 to give a broadened subpoena power to the Ethics Committee...

...He will do it, if he is allowed to do it at all, with the CIA...

...At the head of the room, behind a long table, the members of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct...

...Once the operation was public it collapsed of its own weight...

...John J. Flynt, Democrat of Georgia...

...This meant the Committee could question more or less anybody, and in particular Schorr...

...covert intervention is the most disturbing yet...

...But not only did Kissinger suggest that the MPLA's victory in Angola was an important defeat for U.S...

...Kissinger does not agree...

...The question everyone has come to hear will be asked by the Committee's chief counsel, or perhaps even by Representative Flynt himself...

...There are two men at the table...

...Mossadegh was going to nationalize the Iranian oil companies, so the CIA replaced him with a man who thinks he is the new Xerxes, who helped raise the price of oil four-fold, and who nationalized the oil companies...

...Even this time the Committee, for reasons of its own, may never call Schorr, and if it calls him, it may not ask the fatal question, and if it asks the fatal question, Schorr might fight a contempt citation on constitutional grounds for a year or two in the courts...

...Without that "leak"-that is, without public knowledge of the intervention-the U.S...

...On February 24 the Senate Operations Committee voted to create an 11-member Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee, although Ford had pressed for a joint House-Senate committee to reduce the possibility of leaks by reducing the number of overseers...

...Committee members have insisted they are not out to get Schorr personally and they are probably telling the truth...

...The investigation of Daniel Schorr by the House Ethics Committee is thus only one more step in a broader government campaign to reimpose discipline on its employes, to protect its freedom to act as it thinks fit, and to prevent the truth of its actions from becoming public...

...In some ways Ford's proposed legislation would eliminate past abuses, in most it would merely legalize what has' been standard operating procedure all along, and in one important respect it would establish at least part of the Official Secrets Act contained in Senate I. [See Commonweal of February 13.] This last provision would outlaw disclosure-that is, 'leaking"- of a broad range of "national security" information by officials and employes of government...

...Now, Mister Schorr," the question will begin, "will you please tell the committee who gave you the draft report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence...

...The genius of American democracy is that it generally avoids confrontations of this sort, or blurs them when they cannot be avoided altogether...

...It is not intelligence-gathering which is under dispute...

...If there is anything certain in this world it is that the 278,000 whites in Rhodesia are going to pack up and leave one of these days, just as a half-million Portuguese left Angola and Mozambique, and just as a million Frenchmen left Algeria...

...interests, he has also gone on to suggest that the U.S...

...and finally, it would restrict judicial consideration of the propriety of classification to in camera-that is, secret- proceedings...

...In the center is the Committee's chairman, Rep...

...He means to intervene if it comes to that, and he is not planning to do it with National Guard units from Illinois and suburban Los Angeles...

...This sounds incredible...

...Thomas powers TIME AGAINecrecy...

...His informant may soon be collecting unemployment, and there cannot be many other House or Senate committee staffers willing to run similar risks...

...My intention here is not to make fun of Holden Roberto and the cause he led-we have no reason to take pleasure in his defeat-but to point out that choosing the side of South Africa in southern Africa is so reckless of reality as to be suicidal, the Nationalist Chinese and the South Vietnamese were sure things by comparison...

...That is, something loosely called "public opinion" has swung sharply away from both aggressive reporting and official investigation of the intelligence community...

...This theory is only partly right...

...This is all the more puzzling when you consider that a senator has only two weapons against a nutty foreign adventure: his own eloquence, and public disclosure...

...and another-of uncertain size and determination-which is suspicious of the utility of secret diplomacy, if diplomacy is the word...

...Sen...

...Clark began asking questions and in August, during a trip to Zaire, he actually saw American arms being shipped to Angola...

...Schorr simply stumbled into the way, or, in his own words, he "got hit by a swinging pendulum...

...If he tells the Committee what it wants to know, he will be humiliated and his informant's example will put the fear of die Inquisitor in every other government employe...

...Was it a good idea for General Lansdale to put sugar in North Vietnamese gas tanks back in 1954...

...The Angolan initiative was halted before it got out of control by a leak...

...might now be mired in a senseless, self-defeating War on the side of South Africa...

...The other, white-haired and no doubt smoking his pipe, is Daniel Schorr...