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Freedom of the Press
The Most Serious Threat Is
THE SECRECY OBSESSION
by Angus Mackenzie
Mackenzie is the author of Secrets, a book that traces the rise of censorship in the United States, to be published in 1992.
The greatest threat to the First Amendment is the government's obsession with secrecy. To keep its secrets, the government tries to silence its employees who are in a position to alert news media and the public about questionable policies and misspent money. The government's first line of defense against disclosure is the lifetime secrecy contract that encourages employees to submit their books, articles, and speeches for censorship prior to publication. Those who fail to comply may be sued in court. In this manner, nearly four million officials and contractors have lost their First Amendment rights.
The move toward enforceable secrecy contracts gained momentum in 1972. That year the government won its suit to compel former highlevel Central Intelligence Agency official Victor L. Marchetti to submit his manuscripts, which were critical of the CIA, to the CIA for censorship. An appeals court ruled, in effect, that Marchetti had surrendered his First Amendment rights by signing a CIA secrecy contract in exchange for employment.
Censorship was reinforced when, in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that former CIA officer Frank W. Snepp III was obligated to obey his secrecy contract and submit his manuscripts to the CIA for censorship, even if his writings contained no secrets.
In 1983, under the provisions of National Security Decision directive 84, the Reagent administration expanded its use of secrecy contracts from the CIA and the National Security Agency to more than fifty agencies. The directive also spread other CIA secrecy techniques throughout the bureaucracy. For example, it ordered federal agencies to limit reporters' access to government experts, the aim being to stop news leaks that develop when mid-level bureaucrats dissent from official policy.
The trend toward routine censorship has been obscured by several factors, including haphazard and sloppy reporting. Thus, for example, while the press gave prominent coverage to legislation passed by Congress that was designed to ban the spread of secrecy, it paid little attention when Presidents Reagan and Bush instructed the executive branch to ignore the ban.
A more egregious error occurred when the media reported that the Reagan administration had rescinded NSDD 84. In fact, only two out of the secrecy directive's thirteen provisions were withdrawn. Misleading reports about the demise of lifetime censorship live on in newspaper morgues and have even found their way into journalism textbooks.
Meanwhile, the signing away of First Amendment right continues unabated. Steven Garfinkel, director of the federal Information Security Oversight Office, says his campaign to have government employees sign secrecy contracts is now nearly 100 percent compete. In response to a General Accounting Office query, forty-eFreedom of the Press
A FUNNY THING IS HAPPENING TO TV'S PUBLIC FORUM
PBS funding comes with strings attached. Could that be why the "safely splendid" is driving out bolder fare?
by Patricia Aufderheide
Aufderheide teaches at the School of Communication at The American University in Washington, D.C. and is a senior editor of In These Times.
This past July, public TV's P.O.V. (for "point of view") aired Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied. But eighteen of the Public Broadcasting Service stations in the top fify contracts from their employees. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, twenty-one officials signed secrecy contracts in 1989, according to the GAO study. At the Department of Energy, an agency plagued by hidden cost overruns and human-health scandals, more than 900 employees signed secrecy contracts that year.
Private industry is following the government's lead in obtaining the surrender of employment's lead in obtaining the surrender of employees' First Amendment rights. Secrecy contracts were signed by 1,455,430 government-contract workers in the private sector during 1988 and 1989, mostly in the defense industry, the GAO reports.
In an effort to enforce the contracts and stop leaks, about two years ago the staff of the director of Central Intelligence began investigating news stories and reporters' sources to identify leakers, discipline them, and recommend them to the Justice Department for prosecution.
The expansion of censorship and secrecy is far from over. To "increase accountability," Garfinkel says he is now looking at methods of rating government workers on how they manage secrets. He is also investigating how to expand a CIA computer database that tracks declassified information. He wants agencies to use the proposed database during prepublication reviews to make clear to employees precisely what they are allowed to reveal -- namely, that which has already been made public. "This would be the same thing as the CIA has, but on a broader scale. We would want to know what every agency has put out there," Garfinkel says.
Secrecy contracts are spreading from the executive branch to Congress. Already the staffs of the Iran-contra committee and other congressional investigative bodies have signed such contracts. Minority representatives on the House Intelligence Committee are pushing, with increasing success, to have its members take secrecy oaths. These secrecy agreements, essentially obligating the legislature to abide by executive classification decisions, signal congressional acquiescence to presidential sovereignty over information. this represent s a profound, if largely unnoticed, shift in the balance of power -- away from the legislature and the people to an increasingly secretive executive.
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