By Bill Schaap

            It is a political error to practice deceit

If deceit is carried too far.

— Frederick the Great, 1740

To dismiss unpleasant truths as lies spread by the opposition is a political reflex, but the Reagan administration has elevated this reflex to an obsession. Those who agree with the government's ideological underpinnings are telling the truth: those who disagree are lying. They are not only liars but also, as we shall explain below, foreign agents.

The current craze centers around the formerly obscure term, "disinformation." While the U.S. government takes the position that disinformation is a Soviet invention and that the Soviets are the major practitioners, in fact disinformation has been a U.S. specialty since the days of World War II OSS, which had an entire branch devoted to it.

Current estimates of the CIA's budget suggest that earlier figures were far too low.  While studies of material  relating to the late 1960s and early 1970s suggested an annual CIA budget of one to two billion dollars [ see CAIB Numbers 4 and 7], current  conservative estimates, such as that of Defense Electronics (December 1981), indicate that a figure of ten billion dollars is more accurate for the CIA, and  "in excess of $70 billion annually" represents "the overall intelligence budget." Perhaps one-fourth of the CIA's budget, nearly three billion dollars, is being devoted each year by the CIA to the spread of disinformation, through what it terms "deception operations." This is exclusive of the expenditures in this are by the State Department itself and its subsidiary, the International Communications Agency (ICA), parent of the Voice of America (VOA).

The first major disinformation operation of the Reagan administration was the El Salvador campaign, epitomized by the State Department's "White Paper." The second was the Libya campaign, exemplified by the "hit squad" story.

Early in the Reagan administration the State Department launched its campaign to "prove" that the Salvadoran revolutionary forces were creatures of external forces, most notably the Soviets and the Cubans. The flimsy "evidence" presented in the White Paper was subsequently demolished, most notably in Philip Agee's "White Paper? Whitewash!" Within a few months the establishment media joined in the attack, and despite sporadic attempts to revive it, the White Paper is no longer taken seriously. The Libya campaign is another story.

The Libyan Hit Squad

            In the Spring and Summer of 1981 numerous news reports circulated suggesting various U.S. plots against the Libyan government, and its leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi. While U.S. hostility was the real point of paranoia, and while many of the reports were undoubtedly true, most perplexing was the public nature of the disclosures. In light of subsequent events, it now appears that the threats and plots were publicized in order to argue later that they formed the "justification" for Libyan actions against the United States. As early as April 6, 1981, U.S. News and World Report said that the U.S. with Egyptian logistical support, funneled arms to anti-Qaddafi forces in Chad and the Sudan. At the same time, the U.S. openly made major arms deals with Morocco, another bitter foe of Libya. In May the U.S. expelled all Libyan diplomats from the country, and stories circulated that the U.S. planned to assist Egypt in a move to overthrow Qaddafi.

            On July 8 Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker testified before Congress that the U.S. would "help" any country that opposed Libya, and announced the sale of weapons to Tunisia "to defend itself" against Libya.

            Then, on July 26, details were leaked of the CIA's plans to destabilized the Qaddafi government. Although this plot was denied by the U.S. administration (see article on the Seychelles in this issue) the complicated plans surely had a basis in fact. Indeed, as Don Oberdofer reported in the Washington Post (August 20, 1981): "The first interdepartmental foreign policy study ordered by the incoming Reagan administration early this year considered what the United States should do to oppose  Libya and its militant, unconventional leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi. A few month later, authoritative sources reported that the administration had drawn up plans to ‘make uncomfortable,' at a minimum, for the leader of radical Libya."

            Also in August, U.S. planes shot down tow Libyan aircraft in the Gulf of Sidra, after creating a deliberately provocative situation — announced two days in advance by the Newsweek magazine.

            Jack Anderson elaborated in his August 25 column, noting that, despite the Mauritania-Mauritius explanation, "the CIA plotters still have Qaddafi in their sights." There have been, he said, "whispers about slipping an assassin into Libya to do away with Qaddafi. One scheme would be to have the hit man pose a s a mercenary and join a ring of mercenaries in Qaddafi's employ."

            According to the Oberdorfer article, and the October 4 Parade Magazine, a Libyan group called the Free Unionist Officers responded to the revelations by issuing a statement which concluded, "we will physically liquidate anyone who may even think of harming Qaddafi, beginning with Ronald Reagan and ending with the smallest agent inside Libya or outside."

            Anderson followed the Parade item with a self-described "bombshell" in his October 8 column. Col. Qaddafi, he reported, "has placed President Ronald Reagan at the top of a hit list and is plotting his death." He said that the National Security Agency and advised the White House during the summer that Reagan was the target of an assassination, and that this was why the President would not be attending the upcoming funeral of Anwar  Sadat.

            It took nearly two months for the bombshell to have any real repercussions, some of them instigated Anderson himself. In late November both NBC news and Newsweek reported unusual security precautions involving President Reagan and Vice-President Bush, and linked the precautions to intelligence reports that a Libyan hit squad was on its way. On November 22 the Secret Service — whose responsibilities include protection of top officials — reported that it was "aware" of the reports, and investigating them. On November 27, the FBI confirmed the heightened security measures, but said they were a "precaution, not a reaction to specific information that a band of foreign terrorists is roaming the countryside."

            On November 28 the Washington Post reported that Middle East intelligence sources had provided a list of six names, comprising a hit team entering, or already inside, the U.S.  On December 4 the New York Times reported that the team was made up of five people, and the same day ABC News reported that the government had "names and pictures." Shortly thereafter, Jack Anderson released the pictures — rough drawings — which were being circulated to police and immigration authorities.

            Although the Libyan government vigorously denied the reports, the U.S. insisted it had detailed evidence of what was now described as a "10-man squad." The government refused, and has continued to refuse, to reveal any of the details.

            The first real skepticism in the establishment media was found in a December 7 Washington Post article by Michael Getler. The reports, he said, were "a source of puzzlement." Some analysts doubted, he pointed out, that Libya would back such scheme, which, if discovered, could lead to massive retaliation by the United States. Moreover, Getler continued, "if such an assassination plan actually were in effect, it likely would be a most closely guarded secret, and the ability of an informant to obtain the kind of detailed information on each squad member, as is now circulating, is viewed by some specialists as too large, offering too great a chance for slip-ups by one or two members." It was also pointed out that the reliability of the informant, who was allegedly in CIA custody and asking for both asylum and money, was questionable.

            Doubts were so widespread now that the December 8 Washington Post carried a page-one commentary by Haynes Johnson entitled, "The Believe It or Not Show." The hit squad stories, Johnson noted, " are setting a new standard of incredibility." He was most concerned about a possible U.S. military action against Libya: "It's almost as if public opinion were being prepared for dramatic action — say a strike against Libya or Qaddafi himself...the U.S. rhetoric about the threats emanating from Qaddafi's Libya has been increasing in volume and severity. It is reminiscent of the talk about Castro in the days when the United States was planning the Bay of Pigs invasion, and, in fact, commissioning assassination schemes against Castro."

            Editorials varied; some applauded the precautions, some thought they were overdone; but none would dismiss the allegations, because as Haynes Johnson had put it, "we in the press are hardly capable of proving or disproving the case." The government asserted that the mysterious Carlos was a member of the hit squad. In Robert Ludlum's 1980 bestseller, "The Bourne Identity," a captured terrorist bargains for his life by promising information about Carlos. And disinformation master Robert Moss's new book includes a Libyan plan to send a hit squad into the U.S. But truth is stranger than fiction, as a December 14 Los Angeles Times story demonstrated. The initial leaks about the hit squad had not come from the administration directly, but from Mossad, Israeli intelligence. As Robert Toth and Ronald Ostrow reported, "among the possible explanations for the tips to the news media was that the Israelis wanted to intensify the U.S. public's concern about Col. Qaddafi so that Americans would support a strike at Libya."

            On December 10 President Reagan invalidated U.S. passports for travel to Libya and ordered all Americans there to leave, knowing, according to Secretary of State Haig that U.S. allies would not go along with similar actions.

            As late as December 17, the President insisted at a news conference that the intelligence information on the hit squad was solid — while still refusing to reveal any of it. He denied overreaction by the U.S.

Now You See Them, Now You Don't

            Only one week after the President's news conference, the December 25 Washington Post carried this headline: "Libyan Hit Men Are Reported to Suspend Activity." The article said that "U.S. analysts with access to the latest top-secret intelligence now say the alleged Libyan hit squads — two of them, with five members each —have suspended their operations, at least temporarily. "Secretary of State Haig refused to comment on the report, but said that "if such reports are true, it underlines the validity of the steps taken by the President," Abracadabra!

            It became fashionable to brag if you had never believed the hit squad was here at all. FBI Director William Webster told ABC News that it was "a possibility" that the entire story was a plant, and stressed that the FBI had never confirmed it. White House officials tried, unsuccessfully, to fend off further press skepticism: "This was not an artificial affair created by the White House to justify punitive action against Libya. We believed the threat was real when it first appeared, and we now believe it has receded." However, they still refused to release any evidence of the threat or of its "receding." They simply stated that the new information came from another source.

            Jack Anderson, who was responsible for more of the hysteria than any other individual, was understandably miffed, and in his January 7, 1982 column described how everyone had been duped — failing, of course, to mention his own role. He gave six reasons why the credibility of the threat had diminished. The source of the allegation had demanded $500,000 for his information; he gave the names of others who also had information for the CIA and they turned out to be "hustlers who had been peddling phony documents for years:" two of the names on the list of the hit squad members were members of a Lebanese Shiite Moslem sect who were sworn enemies of Qaddafi; some of the informers had connections with Israeli intelligence "which would have its own reasons to encourage a U.S. - Libyan rift;" the original reports said that more detailed information was forthcoming and nothing materialized; and, significantly, the government's allies found the  CIA findings unconvincing - in a class with the white paper on El Salvador earlier last year, which was later shown to have relied on highly questionable and probably forged documents."

            But it is the close of Anderson's column which is most enlightening: "Footnote: There is a possibility that the CIA was played for a sucker by its own ‘disinformation' campaign directed at Qaddafi. The campaign, ordered by CIA Director William J. Casey last May, used foreign nationals for the dirty work. Knowing what the CIA wanted, and without proper supervision by American agents, it's possible the CIA's foreign hirelings cooked up the ‘hit squad' on their own. It fit neatly in the Reagan administration's political scheme of things, and — voila! A full-blown international incident was born."

            There are rumors that the disinformation was "confirmed" by Mossad and by Frank Terpil, who is reportedly in their custody now.

Whose Disinformation?

            Readers of this magazine need no elaboration of the proposition that the U.S., and particularly the CIA, have been masters of disinformation. Abundant detail is recorded in the books of Agee, Corson, Marchetti, Marks, Stockwell, and others. But the ideologues of the Reagan administration and their more wild-eyed supporters have taken to spreading the line that disinformation is a tactic exclusive to the Soviets and their allies. For example, Reed Irvine, chairman of perhaps the most falsely-labeled organization in Washington, Accuracy in Media (AIM) began a recent column: "By now a lot of Americans have heard about disinformation —  the measures taken by the Soviet Union to deceive and confuse public opinion in ways that benefit Soviet foreign policy objectives." As C.T Hansen pointed out in the Columbia Journalism Review (September - October 1981): "According to AIM, virtually every story that seems to slant leftwards or is critical of the military or of business, amounts to disinformation."

            The Bible of those who foster this line is "The Spike" by Robert Moss and Arnaud de Borchgrave (see CAIB Numbers 10 and 12). A similar theme is found in "Target America," by James L Tyson, a "non-fiction" version of "The Spike". These works and the daily outpourings of right-wing columnists hammer the message: virtually all media workers in the U.S. are witting agents or at best unwitting dupes of the KGB. (Since hundreds of newspapers carry the syndicated columns of these right-wing journalists, the charge is a bit silly on its face.) A comment by Adam Hochschild in the New York Times (October 14 1981) noted that when de Borchgrave accuses virtually every liberal publication in the U.S. of disseminating KGB disinformation, he provides " no specific examples of facts or articles." And when he accuses "skeptical journalists of being unwitting purveyors of disinformation, the accusation is more slippery, less easy to definitely disprove, and less subject to libel law than if he were to accuse them of being conscious Communist agents."

            Indeed, the accusations of the de Borchgrave, Moss, et. al., are singularly lacking in any up-to-date support. Most of the "evidence" is ten to twenty years old. De Borchgrave and AIM continually cite the testimony of Ladislav Bittman, a former Czech intelligence officer who defected many years ago. Bittman gives no specifics, simply claiming that the "Soviet Union" had many agents of influence in the Western media. "Target America" stresses the revelations of Alexander Kaznecheev, an alleged KGB officer who defected in 1959, and spoke only of trying to get articles friendly to the Soviet Union in the press. And Secretary of State Haig, in his fulminations about Soviet support for international terrorism, evidently relied on the testimony of Jan Sejna, a Czech army officer who fled to the U.S. in 1968. According to the October 18, 1981 New York Times, even the CIA criticized Haig for relying on "10-year-old testimony." "There is no substantial new evidence," an Agency official said.

            Some of the ardent proponents of this thesis are the "former" CIA officers turned journalists, such as Cord Meyer and Jack Maury. One former CIA officer who did not toe the line, Harry Rositzke, had the temerity to question the message of Claire Sterling's turbid book, "The Terror Network." He did not believe that the Soviet Union was behind all the terrorism in the world. For this he was harshly attacked by Reed Irvine and Jack Maury, among others. Maury's response, in the September 23, 1981 Washington Post, contained some bold disinformation of his own. He detailed the confessions of a "defector" from the Cuban Mission to the United States: only the person about whom he spoke, Nestor Garcia, never defected and remains an official in the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

            Newspapers, large and small, have been running features with headlines such as "Soviets Embark on New Campaign of Anti-American Lies" [Norwich, Connecticut Bulletin, April 14, 1981), Newsweek devoted its cover and many pages (November 23, 1981) to " The KGB in America." Both the State Department, which periodically produces reports on what it considers Soviet disinformation, most recently issued Special Report No. 88, "Soviet ‘Active Measures:' Forgery, Disinformation, and Political Operations." The Soviets, the Report pointed out, "Use the bland term ‘active measures' (aktivnyye meropriyatiya) to refer to operations intended to affect other nations' policies." (Why this is more "bland" than  "special activities," the term the United States uses for covert actions, is unclear.) Among the active measures attributed to Soviet disinformation are the opposition to the NATO theater nuclear force in Europe, opposition to the neutron bomb, and opposition to "U.S. efforts to assist the Government of El Salvador." That the U.S. government views these positions, held by millions of people around the world, as Soviet disinformation would be humorous, were the stakes not so high, and the Reaganites not so serious. It was President Reagan, after all, who saw an international conspiracy to oppose U.S. policy on El Salvador because demonstrators in Canada carried "the same signs" as demonstrators in the U.S.: "U.S. out of El Salvador."

            Reports of a similar nature appear periodically in the Congressional Record; right-wing legislators such as Larry McDonald, John Ashbrook, and John Porter insert copies of the more lurid columns into the pages of the Record as well as the publications on this theme from the International Communications Agency — publications which by law the ICA cannot circulate within the United States.

            Tensions between the administration and Congress are also growing. On December 10 Constantine Menges, the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America, gave a "briefing" to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which so incensed some of the members that they complained in writing to Director Casey. They called the session "a policy statement" which "seriously violated" the Agency's obligation to provide them with objective analysis. Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachussetts was so angry that he called the presentation  "an insult" and walked out on the briefing.

The Voice of America and Radio Martí

            A major concern of the Reagan supporters is the Voice of America. During the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the Voice of America had become such a blatant propaganda machine that efforts had been undertaken to "reform" it, to make the news somewhat more impartial, and even to report, albeit gently, on matters of some embarrassment to the U.S., in the interests of establishing credibility. Although these reforms were minimal, they were clearly too much for the new administration, Reagan appointed as head to the International Communications Agency (ICA), the Voice of America's parent organization, his close friend Charles Z.Wick, a California nursing home magnate whose main qualifications appeared to be the fifteen million dollars he had raised for the Reagan presidential campaign. By mid-year, Wick moved into high gear, vowing to make the VOA a weapon in the campaign to counter Soviet propaganda. He accused the VOA of "erring on the side of imbalance against our Government."

            Congress, at the urging of Senator Jess Helms, insisted that propaganda aimed at Cuba was insufficient. Although the VOA had been beaming Spanish-language broadcasts on both medium wave and short wave to Cuba for over twenty years, this was not enough for Helms and his supporter. They urged the creation of a special Cuban service, to be named "Radio Martí." (Commentators pointed out that, ironically, José Martí is venerated by the present Cuban government as an intractable foe of U.S. imperialism who coined the phrase, "the belly of the beast.")

            As plans for Radio Martí developed, the ICA inaugurated, in November, "Project Truth." Project Truth is a program designed to "provide a fast reply service to posts abroad when rumors or news reports about American activity thought to be untrue begin to circulate." (New York Times, November 4, 1981.) Under the project, a monthly bulletin, "Soviet Propaganda Alert," is sent to all ICA posts overseas. Another feature of Project Truth is a "news feature service" called "Dateline America" which will be disseminated through the ICA to foreign media willing to run it. The National Security Council has directed all government agencies to "cooperate" with Project Truth.

            Wick, apparently subject to emotional outbursts, created some media incidents of his own. At an October 23 meeting of the National Council of Community World Affairs Organizations Wick announced, "We are at war." This startled participants so much that Wick was later forced to explain that he only meant a "war of ideas." At the same meeting, a participant questioned the accuracy of the White Paper on El Salvador, and Wick exploded, suggesting that the questioner was spreading Soviet disinformation. When someone at the meeting asked Wick about plans to cut drastically the ICA's budget for scholarships and student exchanges while keeping all the funds for propaganda. Wick called the question a "crypto-communist remark" and refused to answer. According to the Washington Post (November 10, 1981), Wick later apologized for the outburst.

            Fears that academic programs may be subject to political tests also increased. On November 7 the ICA cancelled an African lecture tour it was to sponsor because the speaker, John Seiler, had published an article critical of Reagan's policy toward South Africa.

            Editorials questioned Wick's "zeal," and suggested that he has a "weakness for simplistic approaches to complicated subjects like Soviet ‘disinformation.'" Wick simply escalated the battle. On November 10 his subordinate,  VOA chief James B. Conkling, announced the appointment of Philip Nicolaides as VOA coordinator for commentary and new analysis. Nicolaides was the author of a September 21 memorandum to Conkling, circulated within the VOA, which described the VOA as "a propaganda agency" which should function like an advertising agency selling soap. It called for the VOA to become more "hard-hitting" and to abandon the contention that VOA is a "journalistic enterprise." Conkling and Wick defended the appointment, praising Nicolaides as a "creative writer." They insisted that the recommendations of the memorandum — which Nicolaides said had been "stolen" from his office — had not been followed. The memorandum clearly stated that the goal of the VOA should be "to destabilize" the Soviet Union and its allies, to "portray the Soviet Union as the last great predatory empire on earth."

            VOA staff were dismayed by the controversy, but those most concerned were eased out. Conkling's deputy, M.William Haratunian, was replaced, and said in his farewell memorandum that the VOA was "deeply troubled by recent personnel actions." Rumors circulated that there was a "hit list" at VOA of personnel who would not toe the Wick line. On December 21 the VOA's chief news editor, Bernard H. Kamenske, announced that he was quitting, after more than 28 years. The New York Times editorially grieved his departure and the program of "over-eager ideologues."

            On December 9 Wick announced the "formation of the first of four advisory committees of private citizens to provide advice and expertise to the agency." This first group, the "New Directions Committee," is comprised of individuals who run the gamut of political persuasion from right-wing to extreme right-wing. They include Norman Podhoretz, the neo-conservative editor of Commentary magazine; Michael Novak, the rabidly right-wing columnist who most recently promoted the hoax that Cuban soldiers had blown up a bridge in El Salvador; Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and long suspected of having been a CIA agent; and Edwin J Fuelner, Jr., the president of the Heritage Foundation.

The Attorney General and the Executive Order

            Two significant events in December together help explain the dangerous direction in which the administration is really heading and underscore the preoccupations with disinformation. On December 4 the President signed Executive Order 12333 on United States Intelligence Activities; and in a December 18 speech in Los Angeles Attorney General William French Smith delivered what the New York Times described as "the first comprehensive discussion" of the order.

            The Executive Order itself, repealing President Carter's 1978 order on the same subject, makes profound changes in the scope of authorized intelligence activities. [See sidebar for details.] As we have noted previously (CAIB Numbers 12, 14-15), the Reagan administration always intended to replace Carter's order, which it viewed as overly restrictive. Drafts were leaked in March and again in August; Carter, the Justice Department insisted, "Had set up a burdensome array of requirements" which had to be changed.

            During October and November there was an open debate, primarily through newspapers, over the most egregious aspect of the original drafts, provisions to allow the CIA to engage in "special activities" in the United States. As we suggested in our April issue, this appears to have been a tactic —quite a successful one — to deflect attention from the many other evils of the proposed Executive Order.

            Congress and most commentators focused on two aspects of the proposed Executive Order. These were the provisions allowing the CIA, as well as the FBI, to infiltrate and manipulate domestic organizations, and those allowing the CIA a free hand to "collect foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information" within the United States.

            Controversy raged. No less an authority than former CIA Director Stansfield Turner wrote, in a November 1 Washington Post commentary: "Why should we be concerned about [authorizing the CIA to look into the activities of Americans]? Because CIA officers are not trained to operate in the domestic environment, where regard for law is a primary consideration. The ethic of intelligence is to get the job done in spite of local laws. It is unwise and unfair to force CIA operations into the domestic arena. It isn't necessary either, for that is exactly where FBI officers are trained to operate."

            Turner pondered "the risks that the CIA would be overly zealous in the domestic arena," and worried that "information gained about Americans might be utilized for domestic political purposes." He feared, "the politicization of intelligence. " Critics of the CIA have worried about that, of course, since the Agency's inception, with activities such as Operation CHAOS justifying such concerns.

            According to Ronal J Ostrow of the Los Angeles Times , the CIA insisted that the change would give the Agency no greater latitude than it has at present, but that it wanted only to "maintain our capabilities to do the kinds of things we do abroad." However, as Admiral Turner pointed out, what the CIA does abroad is break the law constantly.

            Although Justice Department officials belittled Turner's fears, real cause for concern became apparent in late January. At that time CIA Director Casey wrote to the Attorney General asking that the federal criminal code be amended to provide complete immunity for intelligence operatives' conduct while on the job. This startling request, which was barely reported in the media, has ominous implications. As it is, there is little control over CIA operatives; if they also are given immunity from prosecution there will be no limit to the enormity of the crimes they could commit, at home as well as overseas.

            The outcome of informal negotiations between Congress and the administration was minimal. The CIA cannot conduct domestic operations to collect foreign intelligence unless it is "significant foreign intelligence." "Significant" is not defined, and would seem to include anything the CIA desires. The CIA was given approval to infiltrate domestic organizations, but not, as contrasted to the FBI, the authorization to manipulate them, unless the organization is "composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power." This provides little consolation to exile groups and various international solidarity organizations. Moreover, the express authority given he FBI not merely to infiltrate but also to influence domestic organizations is a frightening break with precedent. Not that it hasn't happened all along: but now it has been legitimized by the President. In addition, the distinction — that the CIA can infiltrate, but not influence — is specious. It is impossible to infiltrate an organization without influencing it to some degree. Otherwise the infiltrator would be obvious.

The Spreaders of Disinformation

            But it is the gloss given the Executive Order by the Attorney General's speech which highlights the administration's focus on "disinformation." A connection with "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information" is enough to subject one to CIA domestic action. Counterintelligence is defined as "information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers." And foreign intelligence means "information relating to the capabilities, intentions and activities of foreign powers, organizations or persons."

            When the Attorney General made his speech, on December 18, he discussed the threat of foreign agents. He talked about international terrorism and he spoke of the theft of technological secrets. But then he went on: "Perhaps even more insidious is the threat posed by hostile ‘active measures' in this country, which are aimed at influencing public opinion and the political process through ‘disinformation' and ‘agents of influence'.

            The implications of this remark are staggering. Spreading disinformation is tantamount to espionage; those who spread disinformation are fair game for the CIA and ,as we have noted above, the administration's ideologues believe that everyone who disagrees with U.S. foreign policy is spreading Soviet disinformation. Most critics of the Executive Order have focused on the threat to the Fourth Amendment —freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They must contemplate also the threat to the First Amendment — freedom of expression.

The Clampdown

            The clampdown has already begun. In our last issue we describe "the retune to super-secrecy," and outlined a number of steps taken and proposed by the administration to make it more difficult for the American people, and of course the rest of the world, to learn of the activities of the government.

            Three major developments occurred in January 1982. First, on January 6 the administration announced that it was ready to brief congress on its new proposed Executive Order on classification, versions of which had been circulating since October. Almost immediately, the briefing was cancelled, and the draft was circulated to government agencies for comment. Here too the plan is to replace, by executive fiat, a Carter Executive Order on the same subject. The move, in the words of the Associate Press, "would reverse a 25-year-old trend toward restricting the power of government officials to shelter information from public view." The new proposal reverses the presumptions of the Carter Order and specifies that when there is "reasonable doubt" about the need to classify a document, it should be done.

            Moreover, while the Carter order had spoken of the need to balance government secrecy against the public's right to know, the new draft makes "national security" the sole basis for classification decisions. It may also have the of exempting completely the CIA and the entire intelligence complex from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act,, since it mandates the withholding of "information relating to intelligence source and methods. "As critics noted, the CIA can claim that virtually all of its material relates to "intelligence sources and methods." Since the FOIA itself exempts form disclosure material which has been properly classified according to law, this provision would allow the CIA and the other agencies to remove themselves from the coverage of the FOIA without specifically amending that law, something the Agency has called for, but until now been unable to obtain.

            A second draft was discussed in an Associated Press bulletin January 21. The revised version, just submitted to Congress, still contains all of the objectionable provisions noted above.

            On January 7 the CIA launched an unprecedented attack on the scientific community. Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman addressed the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and demanded that scientists submit their research papers for CIA review prior to publication to curb Soviet acquisition of technological developments. If scientists would not submit to censorship voluntarily, Inman noted, they face a government crackdown, and will be "washed away by the tidal wave of public outrage."

            Representatives of the scientific community called the proposal "disastrous," "a nightmare." As one university spokesman observed, if scientists do not publish, "we would lose the science ourselves. We would be the bigger loser."

Plugging leaks

            Then, in mid-January, reports circulated indicating that the administration was incensed over leaks to the media, and intended to "use all legal methods" to stop the problem. The irony is that for decades the biggest leaker in this country has always been the administration in power. Leaking proposed government plans is often the best way to gauge public reaction ad allow for changes before final action is taken.

            The new requirements were extremely sweeping. All government departments were told that every major interview must be cleared with the White House, and those involving national security issues would require detailed advance information on the substance of the proposed interview, and if approved, a comprehensive memorandum of the interview afterwards. Following the extensive press criticism, the administration dropped these provisions but instituted a new form for keeping track of every individual's access to all classified documents. Each reader will have to sign a cover sheet acknowledging that it is against the law for them to discuss the contents of the item with any unauthorized person.

            The concept that government employees must get advance approval to leak information is of course self-contradictory, and the notion that this administration will be able to prevent leaks any better than previous ones is far-fetched. But that it is serious is clear. The Pentagon, for example, is planning to reverse a 1965 ruling that its employees could not be forced to take lie detector tests. Polygraph examinations, highly suspect by almost every agency except the CIA, are already under way. Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci, a former deputy CIA Director, was reportedly "enraged" when details of a January 7 meeting of the Defense Resources Board appeared in the press. He magnanimously took a lie detector test and "offered" one to others with knowledge of the meeting. A Defense spokesman acknowledged that no national security information was involved in the leak, but went on. "It's the principle of the thing that we strenuously object to — the expression of minority opinion via leaks to the news media designed to influence the course of events."

            There have been a few other developments in this area. Last issue we noted that the CIA was "curtailing" the extent of its publication of reports and analyses. On November 10 the Agency announced that it will stop such publication completely, because "they take too much time to prepare and draw too much attention to the agency." Among publications to be discontinued are the CIA's studies of international terrorism and estimates of future Soviet oil production, two sources of extensive embarrassment to the Agency last year.

            Finally there is a bizarre and little noticed provision in a proposed revision of the immigration laws submitted by the administration to Congress in October. The bill would allow the President to declare "immigration emergencies," such as uncontrollable influxes of immigrants from Cuba or Haiti, for example. These emergencies could last up to an entire year and would activate various emergency powers. Among these powers would be the right of the President to restrict the domestic travel of Americans, previously unknown in peacetime.

Conclusion

            What does it all mean? There is little hope that the trends of the new administration discussed in previous issues have lost any momentum. On the contrary, the Reagan team seems bent on overreaching, overreacting, and infusing an ideological narrowness into all aspects of government. Clearly, national security has become a shibboleth by which all manner of unprecedented restrictions on the democratic rights of Americans, such as they are, will be imposed.

            It is not rhetoric to claim that "thought control" is on its way. The massive campaign to equate dissent with disinformation has ominous overtones when taken in conjunction with the Executive Order as interpreted by the Attorney General. COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS are alive and well. The government wants, on the other hand, a blank check to spread its disinformation, and on the other, vast powers to prevent anyone from accusing it of doing so. Clearly, truth is the first casualty of cold wars as well as hot wars.

            Massive resistance to this trend is necessary. Journalists, scientists, whistleblowers, everyone must continue to fight to expose the government's lies. People cannot accept the proposition that telling the truth is a crime. If they do, the country and the world are in big trouble.