TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/091189/09118900.014

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 101 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.