TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091189/09118900.014

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.7 KB | 114 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 67

Neo-Plumbers on the Attack


Leaks plus bum scoops add up to official overkill

By Laurence I. Barrett


    Disclosures of sensitive or embarrassing information make
political leaders do strange things. Lyndon Johnson
occasionally changed plans rather than validate leaks. Ronald
Reagan attempted through a cumbersome procedure to check them,
then backed off. Richard Nixon launched the notorious White
House Plumbers, who ultimately led to Watergate and his
downfall. Now the Bush Administration, with Attorney General
Dick Thornburgh out front, is trying its own white-knuckle
operation to close the spigot. As usual where leaks are
concerned, the ostensible solution is more dangerous than the
problem. Further, the Government's misguided pressure diverts
attention from the press's recent habit of overplaying
pseudosensational stories.

    In the most visible case, Thornburgh is combing his own
department for the source of a CBS exclusive last May. The
story reported that Congressman William Gray had just been
visited by the FBI. True enough, but the implication that Gray
was cooking on the investigative griddle was false. While
Thornburgh's search is justified, his legal means are dubious.
The department, in a drastic policy change, intends to prosecute
the as yet unidentified leaker under a law covering theft of
Government property. Moreover, Thornburgh says it would be
proper to subpoena CBS's phone records. Those techniques, if
widely employed, could choke the flow of many kinds of
legitimate information.

    Chairman Don Edwards of the House Subcommittee on Civil and
Constitutional Rights was initially irate enough on Gray's
behalf to demand action from Thornburgh. Edwards, along with
many journalists, is aghast at the result. Using the theft law,
he says, "would be almost like having an Official Secrets Act.
We don't want that." If necessary, Edwards says, he will "stomp"
on the Thornburgh approach with legislation.

    Meanwhile, dozens of FBI agents have been rummaging through
the State Department and the CIA. Their quarry: whoever gave
ABC News sufficient corroboration to broadcast the first story
about the investigation of diplomat Felix Bloch. What the FBI
has learned so far is that about 150 officials knew that Bloch
was under suspicion. That large number virtually guaranteed
early disclosure. The threats of prosecution and the FBI's
requests that officials submit to lie-detector tests may cow
would-be leakers for a time. But if history is any guide,
today's neo-Plumbers will have no more durable success than
their predecessors.

    The irony is that the press these days seems to be
competing with officials for the role of heavy. The leak-fed
scoops of Nixon's day rightly penetrated gross deceptions. Some
of the recent gee-whiz tales have been unfair, exaggerated,
wrong or all three. Reuven Frank, former president of NBC News,
points out that the original source of the Gray story "was out
to get him. The story leaked truly was vicious and incomplete."
Yet CBS went with it. NBC in May broadcast a more lurid tale,
implicating a sailor as a possible mass murderer in the
explosion on the battleship Iowa; the Navy later exonerated the
man. Last month NBC named an Air Force officer as a suspected
spy. All three stories were widely picked up before being
deflated.

    Nor was this trio of tinny exposes unique. Two years ago,
after the initial disclosures about Soviet penetration of the
U.S. embassy in Moscow, several news accounts trumpeted a
worst-case assessment of the damage to security . That estimate,
which proved excessive, was apparently peddled by hawks who
wished to discredit State Department moderates. Some of the
stories in the John Tower confirmation dispute and the Jim
Wright investigation, based on partisan leaks, were
underreported and overblown.

    Why all this shooting from the hip? Joan Konner, dean of
the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, says TV coverage
"is heating up in a jazzy way that we haven't seen before," at
least partly because network news divisions are suffering from
financial pressure. Under that influence, she says, "the whole
ethic of news and public affairs has changed." But television
isn't the only offender. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post,
the country's best-known investigative reporter, says one cause
for what he calls "a lot of dud stories" is a decline in
reportorial skepticism. Bizarre events such as Gary Hart's
downfall and the Iran-contra scandal, he thinks, have
conditioned journalists to suspend disbelief.

    But there has been no suspension of competitive zeal. Both
networks and print have moved dramatically toward a star
system. The fastest way to stardom is to produce pizazz early
and often; the worst sin is being second. This trend discourages
solid investigative work with its prolonged drudgery. The
national press corps played no part in the initial disclosures
of the three biggest scandals since 1985: the Iran-contra
debacle, the savings-and-loan implosion and the HUD quagmire.
Each of these genuine horrors festered for years without serious
press scrutiny.

    It is much easier to score quickly with a tip about a
criminal investigation or a suspected espionage case than to
delve into dense layers of financial arcana. In running
heedlessly with one-shot leaks, regardless of the informants'
motives or the stories' fairness, journalists take the easy way
out. But it is the self-damaging way. Shallow scoops and empty
exposes undermine the press's credibility. They also reduce
public support for the news business when it attempts to defend
itself from overkill by the leak police.