SWORN TO SILENCE

...Radical lawyer Leonard Bou-din, for example, "became my hero," Shea says...

...He is contesting his dismissal...

...If someone comes to me and says he doesn't want to sign, I say, 'You have to decide how much you want to risk your job for principle.'" One long-time employee of the State Department recalls that when he was directed to sign Form 189, "I asked for certain changes, as I would even with my mortgage, but they said no...

...Richard Rhodes, who left the CIA in 1970, later submitted for agency review a spy novel that described technical equipment "which I had either made up from whole cloth or had seen in other books or periodicals...

...Before long, she found herself out of a job...

...In 1975, he was placed in charge of FOIA appeals at the Justice Department, and held that position through the Ford and Carter Administrations...

...There is a convergence of secrecy constraints all happening together which make universities, faculty, and students more vulnerable to outside control...

...Our people feel terribly threatened," says Neva Miller, an official of the Navy Department local of the American Federation of Government Employees...

...Some universities have always been outhouses of the Pentagon," says John Ullmann, a computer engineer at Hofstra University...

...Shortly after the Reagan Administration took office, Shea wrote a memorandum on the tightened secrecy provisions then under consideration in the Justice Department: "My overall impression is that many of the proposed changes could not possibly be supported by factual judgments that our national security has been endangered by the absence of the language from the existing executive order...

...One staff member of the U.S...

...Today he turns down all work related to the military...

...This exemption, Blaylock says, "encourages people who see censorship as a way of life—Big Brother at its worst...

...Since last year, Shea has been special counsel to the National Security Archive, a public-interest office established by former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong...

...Moreover, says Carol Van Aiken of the university's Office of Sponsored gle causes...

...The point is that if you don't have the right WASP profile and weren't born in a medically sealed bag which was opened just before the polygraph, you won't pass...

...Shea used to tell us, 'Some day you won't have me in here, and you'll be sorry,' and he was right," recalls Ann Marie Buttriago of FOIA, Inc...

...The implications of the secrecy campaign are particularly far-reaching for universities, which derive about 65 per cent of their research funds from Federal sources...

...today, researchers need big computers and big facilities to put them in...

...Any such releases, using this methodology, are then equated with peril to our national security...

...Information Agency tells, for example, about suppression of a paper on US1A broadcasting to Central America: "There was no secrecy issue here at all, but they didn't think much of the people who would be attending the conference...

...Leonard Saxe...

...Though the great majority of employees who have signed prepublication-review agreements insist on anonymity, many offer first-hand accounts illustrating how readily the secrecy strictures can be abused...

...But his first-hand observation of discrimination against black troops in Korea persuaded him to resign from the Army and join the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division...

...The companies they work for are the enforcers...

...It's clear that company executives are not in charge...

...No one in his position has been as accessible to public-interest groups, as genuinely interested in the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act...

...military installations and private-sector labs conducting research for the Pentagon...

...In 1983 Congressional testimony, Rhodes condemned the broad scope of the prepubli-cation-review process as an excessive and misdirected way to protect secrets...

...The ruling in Snepp applied only to intelligence agents, but it has been given much broader application by the Reagan Administration...

...There is clearly some authority for what is being attempted here...

...I was told, 'If you tell the truth everything will be fine,'" Johnson recalls...

...The Justice Department's position is that the contractual obligation of an employee overrides any First Amendment considerations...

...It seemed to bother the examiner that I was thirty-seven and not married and not living with someone...

...Though some employees seem to regard the form as nothing more than a broadly stated nondisclosure agreement, its essential component is the threat of Federal prosecution...

...In 1971 and 1972 he was legislative liaison officer to the Secretary of the Army...

...Employees who run into trouble with Government security procedures are unlikely to get much support from their employers...

...MIT, for example, has an off-campus facility called Lincoln Lab which is totally funded by Federal grants—primarily for classified research...

...When I resisted, he asked me obscene questions: 'Have you ever put your mouth on another women's sexual parts?' I couldn't believe it...

...The scope of this provision is so broad that it covers much material routinely published in the press...

...But Douglas Pruett of the Office of Personnel Management says the polygraph "could be used in the case of leaks...

...They appear, rather, merely to reflect judgments as to what kinds of information the intelligence community would prefer not to have to release...

...Before Reagan issued the directive, polygraph exams could be administered only with an employee's consent, but NSDD 84 authorized agencies to penalize employees who refuse to submit to lie-detector tests when a leak is under investigation...

...NSDD 84 caused an uproar within the Federal bureaucracy and in the news media, and in February 1984 the President announced he was suspending those sections of the directive that called for pre-publication review and polygraph testing...

...Early last November, in a little-noticed expansion of its secrecy campaign, the Reagan Administration ordered everyone who has access to classified informationauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws...

...You have to look at the political climate...

...This request was denied...

...Shea's commitment to an open flow of information is all the more surprising since he spent the first dozen years of his career as a military lawyer...

...D.D...

...I have been advised and am aware," the contract reads, "that direct or indirect unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause irreparable injury to the United States...

...Federal law puts Government security practices beyond the reach of union grievance procedures...

...Under NSDD 84, employees handling highly sensitive information were to sign lifetime contracts requiring them to submit for prepublication review all articles, books, or speeches that might relate to what they learned on the job...

...test administered during a leak investigation...

...The use of polygraph tests was also on the rise, the GAO reported...

...On one occasion," this person recalls, "the NSA examiner spent two hours accusing me of lying about everything, even my name...

...The Court ruled that Snepp had violated a fiduciary obligation, written into his CIA contract, to submit both classified and unclassified material for advance review...

...In 1985, while employed at Bendix Field Engineering Corporation, Johnson applied for a higher-level security clearance and was subjected to a polygraph test administered by the National Security Agency...

...The union, Blaylock adds, is usually powerless to help its members in such cases...

...The legal basis for the secrecy agreements is the Supreme Court's 1980 decision in the case of Frank Snepp, a former CIA agent who had written a book about his experiences in the agency...

...The Government," says Davis, "tells people they must surrender basic freedoms and subject themselves to conditions of isolation and secrecy in order to pursue their chosen fields...

...Now, with Star Wars opening up and conventional funding sources disappearing, more universities are facing offers they can't refuse...

...Johnson was offered an opportunity to take the test again, but she insisted on having an observer present...

...Shea's specialty is negotiating with Government agencies about release of previously classified documents...

...By the late 1960s he was a major and house counsel to the Army Intelligence Command...

...Washington reporters and public-interest groups regarded Shea as an ally in their attempts to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to unearth documents about illegal intelligence programs...

...He came to admire some of the people battling the Government for access to information...

...Steven Garfinkel of the Information Security Oversight Office says the form serves an "educational" purpose: "to alert people that they have a responsibility not to disclose, and to make it easier for the Government to take action if it decides to prosecute...

...he says...

...a psychology professor at Boston University who directed a comprehensive study of polygraph testing for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, finds it "shocking that such unreliable measures are being used to decide the fate of innocent people...

...contractor personnel, university professors, scientists, medical researchers, and others whose work depends on Government support—to sign a Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement that is binding forever unless revoked by an "authorized representative" of the U.S...

...Classified research is banned by some universities, but academics and their institutions have found ingenious ways of circumventing such restrictions...

...I thought he was the finest attorney in the country...

...One former employee of a Government contractor was subjected to three polygraph exams administered by the National Security Agency and two conducted by the CIA...

...In fact, however, the secrecy provisions remained in force...

...Wanda Johnson, an electrical engineer with twenty years' experience working for Government contractors, is also no longer doing classified work, though in her case the severance was not voluntary...

...I felt physically threatened...

...The work he does for the Archive, says Shea, is "a license to do the right thing on the right side at the right time...

...Mark Lynch, who headed the ACLU's legal staff in Washington, says Shea was "in a very important position, working out what the Department's view was going to be...

...The polygraph is a new basis for arbitrarily firing people," says Kenneth Blaylock, president of the American Federation of Government Employees...

...Richard Ferguson, deputy director of the FBI office in charge of polygraph testing, claims Reagan's suspension of his 1983 directive has blocked the use of lie detectors in investigations of information leaks...

...That it has, in fact, been used is beyond doubt...

...But Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland, notes that even in such circumstances, pre-publication review can have a chilling effect on a researcher's freedom to communicate with others in his field or with the public...

...Prior review limits what gets written as well as what the scientist decides to work on...

...In the corporate world, secrecy provisions are more common than in academia, but the restraints being imposed by the Government exceed the norms of business confidentiality, and the secrecy formerly imposed on military contractors now affects enterprises dealing with civilian agencies as well...

...Park argues that universities should establish firm policies in opposition to prepublication review...

...The Administration mounted the secrecy campaign shortly after taking office in 1981, ostensibly to curb unauthorized leaks of official information...

...Under the prepublication-review requirement of NSDD 84, all Government employees who have access to "Sensitive Compartmented Information" must sign contracts pledging to submit, in advance of publication, all newspaper columns, magazine articles, scholarly papers, works of fiction, and any other material "which derives from intelligence sources or methods and is classified or classifiable...

...As you know, I am simply unable to view those things as essential equivalents...

...In 1983, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 84, which significantly enlarged the security apparatus within agencies of the Executive Branch...

...was the United States of America and this examination was a class in sexual de-viancy...

...Many other universities now insist that prepublication review is permissible only when it is expressly called for in the original research contract...

...Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington, D.C...

...I went in and told the truth and I was brutalized...

...This will mean that there is less and less one can work on that is not classified or restricted in some other way...

...Attorney Quinlan Shea was director of the Department's Office of Privacy and Information Appeals when he proposed the strategy of relying on contract law in the landmark Snepp case...

...Because of the secrecy surrounding such inquiries, little is known about the extent of polygraph use, and there are conflicting reports even within the Administration...

...The Government requires extensive surveillance," says a Raytheon engineer...

...It is to be found in the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll): 'Words mean precisely what I intend them to mean.' Contra, of course, is Abraham Lincoln: 'Calling a dog's tail a fifth leg doesn't make it one.' " Within a week, Shea was relieved of his duties as director of the Office of Privacy and Information Appeals...

...But she comments, "You can't look at sinThe use of lie detectors, like prepublication review and nondisclosure contracts, received a strong boost from NSDD 84...

...Also, the days of Einstein at the blackboard are over...

...Never before, at least in peacetime, have such severe measures been taken to keep a lid on Government information...

...Use of the secrecy agreement, known as Form 189, has spread from the CIA to such domestic offices as the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Education...

...The Court also upheld the "constructive trust" remedy that gave the Government the right to claim all proceeds Snepp received from his book...

...Johnson and Davis are among hundreds of thousands of Americans employed by the Government or by Government contractors who have been affected by the Reagan Administration's obsession with official secrecy...

...Like Wanda Johnson, many individuals subjected to polygraph exams complain that those doing the questioning seem to be obsessed with life-style questions...

...The campaign encompassed a classification order expanding the volume of restricted information, as well as diverse efforts to curtail media access to Government sources...

...Employees handling less sensitive classified information were expected to sign nondisclosure agreements, though these did not specifically call for prepublication review...

...Such employment, he believes, entails a Faustian bargain that exacts too high a price...

...Where there is secrecy there will be abuses, that's the nature of it...

...And all employees were to submit to polygraph examinations, if necessary, to establish the source of leaks...

...Guards patrol the corridors...

...They're now acting as if, since you have the benefit of Government employment, they can demand anything...

...We don't have much of a role," admits Martin Mayer, director of labor relations at Bendix Field Engineering, where Wanda Johnson encountered the intrusive polygraph exam...

...The form has been fully implemented in most agencies," acknowledges Steven Garfinkel, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, which operates under the supervision of the National Security Council...

...Michael Pillsbury, a Defense Department employee, was fired after failing a lie-detector Behind the Lines in the Information War The Government's use of former CIA agent Frank Snepp's job contract to override his First Amendment rights was suggested by a Justice Department lawyer who, ironically, has campaigned inside and outside the Department for greater access to information...

...He kept trying to convince me that I was homosexual...

...Any unPrograms, "MIT doesn't mind prepublication review so long as the contract doesn't allow the Government to suppress the results...

...The Archive serves journalists and others as a clearinghouse for Government documents dealing with foreign policy...

...They didn't like-the fact that I had moved many times and had a number of different jobs," one person remembers...

...Even then...

...This Donna Demac is the author of "Keeping America Uninformed: Government Secrecy in the 1980s...

...Dorothy Nelkin of Cornell University, an expert on the impact on science of national-security regulations, agrees that university policies in this area are weak...

...I was on one of those fast tracks, going to be a general type," he says...

...By the end of 1985 more than 290,000 individuals had signed lifetime prepublication-review agreements, and 14,144 articles and speeches had been submitted for review, according to a report issued last September by the General Accounting Office (GAO...

...Kurt Weissmuller, an attorney in the Justice Department office that conducts prepublication review, says those signing nondisclosure agreements are "not required, but are strongly encouraged, to submit any material which may contain classified information for review...

...He was directed to make deletions, and he complied...