The Price of Secrecy

...He knew when he embarked on his course of conscience that he was jeopardizing not only his brilliant career but his personal liberty...

...For the first time in the history of the Republic, the Govern- ment succeeded, at least temporarily, in enjoining newspapers from publish- ing the news...

...Only a few weeks ago, for example, a dispatch from Vientiane in The Washington Evening Star reported on the Nixon Administration's "new gim- mick...

...From Justice Hugo L. Black's concur- ring opinion, in which Justice William O. Douglas joined, in the Supreme Court's decision in the case of the Pentagon Papers...

...The gimmick is to hide payment to the Thai troops serving in Laos in funds earmarked for Thailand itself...

...Only the two senior members of the Court, Justice Hugo L. Black and Justice William O. Douglas, affirmed their unequivocal and unswerving de- votion to the constitutional principle of freedom of the press...

...Our relations to our Government must be governed by skepticism, not confidence...

...We are suggesting that men whose gross defects of both character and judgment now stand exposed before the world should have no further role in determining our destiny...

...Indeed, the episode provided disturbing evidence that the First Amendment is in serious jeopardy...

...In revealing the workings of gov- ernment that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did pre- cisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do...

...But the disclosure, however tardy, makes it plain that the role of the press in our society and its rela- tionship to our power elites is far more complex than is usually suggested either in simplistic and paranoid rad- ical analyses of a "kept press" or in publishers' self-congratulatory bom- bast...

...It is a matter of protecting our future...

...It is our duty, therefore, to demonstrate to these in- dividuals that we, as citizens, will ac- cept their acts of courageous dissent with gratitude and not with scorn or indifference—that we will, as Hans Morgenthau suggested, "remember and honor" them for their "example of what individual conscience can do...

...We must deprive them of that opportunity...

...As for the "institutional and polit- ical changes" that Ellsberg mentioned, our next obligation is to mount a full- scale attack on the monstrous system of official secrecy which shields the American people from knowledge of the momentous decisions being made in their name...

...No one should draw undue comfort from the fact that the Government's attempts to suppress publication of the Pentagon Papers were thwarted by the Supreme Court...

...The extent to which that power has eroded is made manifest in the Penta- gon Papers...

...Daniel Ellsberg, the former Penta- gon war planner who arranged for dis- closure of the Government's secret his- tory of American involvement in Viet- nam, is that kind of hero...

...to pay for Thai troops in Laos if the Senate prohibits funds for the Thais...

...It only aids and abets the doubts, cynicisms, and suspicions about government...

...Institutional and political changes are essential...

...He knew that many of his former associates and friends, as well as millions of Americans whom he had never met, would regard his act of patriotism as an act of treason...

...At the "liberal" end of the Court's spectrum, Justice Thurgood Marshall saw "some situations"—unspecified— in which the First Amendment might not prevail...

...He estimated the cost of the classification system at $50 million a year...

...In varying de- grees, the other seven justices all im- plied that there might be circum- stances in which they would assign the Government's wishes precedence over the people's rights...

...He knew, nonetheless, that his first obligation was to make the truth known to the American people...

...In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly...

...In attacking the problem of secrecy, we must reject the suggestions being advanced by some well-intentioned persons, and some not so well-inten- tioned, that what we need is some sort of commission or committee of "wise men" to screen the Government's secrets and ascertain which of them can safely be divulged to the people...

...The PROGRESSIVE "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The Price of Secrecy At a Congressional conference on war crimes held in Washington a year and a half ago, political scien- tist Hans Morgenthau called on his fellow citizens to "pay tribute to that small but courageous number of the American armed forces who have re- fused over the years to follow orders when it came to the indiscriminate killing of civilians...

...The Pentagon Papers have shown us how far America has traveled down the road to Empire, and how many of its "leaders" are ready, willing, and eager to shoulder the burden of im- posing their will throughout the world...

...We are equally convinced that crimes of the kind he exposed are even now being planned and per- petrated in our names...

...Under the guise of "na- tional security," vast areas of the pub- lic's business—including virtually the entire scope of military and foreign affairs—have been removed from pub- lic scrutiny...

...Like slaves who learn to beg for the lash, some members of Congress seem to revel in their own loss of authority...

...Our second obligation, it seems to us, is to encourage and protect the free press that has served the people of the United States so admirably in recent weeks...

...There is no reason to as- sume that such deception has abated...

...At the "conservative" end, Justice Harry Blackmun, Pres- ident Nixon's most recent appointee, cavalierly dismissed the First Amend- ment as, "after all, only one part of an entire Constitution...

...We must regain control over our own govern- ment, and the way to begin is to insist on opening its processes to the light of day...

...It is precise- ly for this reason that freedom of the press is under relentless official attack, and that Administration spokesmen, led by the Vice President, have worked so hard to discredit the media with the public...

...The press was to serve the governed, not the governors...

...We are certain that there are men now serving the Government who possess, at least potentially, the courage and integrity he has dis- played...

...When the Court had handed down its judgment, the Solicitor General of the United States remarked, "Maybe the newspapers will show a little restraint in the future...

...we do not need another filter—even a filter of "wise men"—through which the truth must pass before it reaches us...

...What cannot survive public de- bate—as the experience of Vietnam shows—we must not do...

...Our burden and our obligation must be, first, to make them stop, and, sec- ond, through the electoral process, to remove them from their positions of power...

...As we ponder the record of arro- gance, duplicity, and deceit that emerges from the Pentagon Papers and wonder how we can best put our new knowledge to use so that our na- tion and the world will gain something from America's catastrophic Indo- china adventure, it occurs to us that our first obligation is to Daniel Ells- berg and those "many individuals within the Government" to whom he referred...

...The Pentagon papers make clear that crimes have been committed in our name—America hanged men in Nur- emberg and Tokyo for conspiring to plan and wage aggressive war—but we are not suggesting that anyone be hanged...

...Yet even if these changes do occur, I be- lieve that we cannot avoid much, much worse war crimes and horrors than we have seen in the past unless many individuals within the Govern- ment do assume greater risks and a greater sense of responsibility than has been shown in the past decade...

...Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government...

...The Chief Jus- tice of the United States, Warren E. Burger, advised the press that it ought to consult with the Administration on what it should and should not print...

...And two justices who voted with the majority, Byron L. White and Potter Stewart, invited the Government to institute criminal proceedings for dis- closure of the Pentagon Papers and served notice, in effect, that they would vote to sustain ensuing convic- tions...

...Some have withdrawn, temporarily, to the acad- emies or the foundations or the corpo- rations, where they await their next turn at the levers of power...

...Honoring the Founding Fathers In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy...

...They show how Congress has been manipulated into giving its consent, explicit or implicit, to actions of the Executive Branch it did not know about, or did not understand, or misunderstood because of deliberate deception...

...In the Defense Department alone, six million cubic feet of filing space are crammed with about twenty mil- lion classified documents—including newspaper clippings stamped Top Se- cret and "sensitive" papers pertaining to the Spanish-American War...

...We do not need another elite group making decisions for us...

...Our fourth obligation is to re-estab- lish the role of Congress as a co-equal branch of government...

...Senator Hum- phrey was mistaken...

...The true price we have paid for se- crecy, however, is incalculable...

...It is our responsibility to help ourselves by helping them, and to elect to Congress men and women who will proudly serve our interests instead of abdicating responsibility to the men in the Executive Branch...

...As John Kenneth Galbraith re- cently observed, "Our safety lies, and lies exclusively, in making public de- cision subject to the test of public de- bate...

...The Star's correspondent, Tammy Arbuckle, said his sources "had no doubt this scheme would succeed...

...The press was pro- tected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people...

...We hope they will do otherwise...

...The opinions of most of the justices thus suggested that when the First Amendment is subjected to its next crucial test, it may not fare so well...

...As it happens, Ellsberg was also a participant in that Congressional con- ference on war crimes, and he made this comment in the course of its de- liberations: "Individual acts of initi- ative and courage cannot, of course, bear the burden of preventing catas- trophes like Vietnam...

...The raising of doubts about government is not sad —it is a sign of hope...

...Our obligation is to be true to our- selves...

...And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the Government from de- ceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell...

...This is not, as some former officials and their apologists are suggesting, a matter of finding "scapegoats" for the war, or 'of "witch-hunting," or of practicing a kind of "McCarthyism of the Left...

...If our nation is to be a representative democracy in any- thing but name, the people's represen- tatives must have not only full access to information but power to act on it...

...Others chafe under it but make no meaningful attempt to re- dress...

...In his first reaction to the Vietnam papers, for- mer Vice President Hubert H. Hum- phrey said it was "a sad day" because "what's in these documents will do a great deal to damage confidence in government...

...We have turned over our sovereignty to an intellectual elite of cold-blooded Pres- idential advisers, to arrogant bureau- crats and megalomaniacal politicians whose every move has been guided by their profound conviction that they know what is best for us—and for all of the peoples of the world...

...We must disabuse ourselves of the myths in which our politics have become encrusted—especially the myth of a noble America doing its best to do good...

...Some of these men are still in office...

...A re- tired Pentagon security expert told Congress recently that less than one- half of one per cent of the classified material contains information that might justify its being kept secret...

...The Govern- ment's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government...

...We have an obligation to assess re- sponsibility for what was done...

...It is our duty to help the press resist Government pressure—to encourage it not to exercise more re- straint but more initiative and inde- pendence...

...We must do this despite the fact that the principal culprit in the decline of legislative power in the United States has been Congress itself...

...Such men, he said, "are heroes whom we ought to remember and honor—not only for their own sake, but because they pro- vide us with an example of what in- dividual conscience can do against the immorality of an act of government...

...A few seem to have acquired new determination from the Vietnam disclosures to reassert their jurisdic- tion...

...It is all too true that much of the Vietnam record that has unfolded so dramatically since The New York Times published the first installment of its series on the Pentagon Papers on June 13 should have been exposed long ago by a press with the imagination and initiative to ferret out the facts without dependence on official doc- uments...

...It is a fact that the First Amend- ment's guarantee of freedom of the press remains our strongest safeguard against authoritarian repression and our most effective device for promot- ing democratic change...

...And even as this effort was being overturned by a six-to-three decision of the Supreme Court, the Count gave distressing testimony that its own commitment to the First Amendment can no longer be taken for granted...