Word: caseys
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...begun raising problems for the press as well. In covering spy cases, the media face a delicate dilemma: How much can they report about the secrets involved without further harming U.S. security? Two news organizations grappled with that question last week under the hostile gaze of CIA Director William Casey...
...first report to rouse Casey's ire came on Monday's edition of NBC's Today show. Giving a preview of the Pelton trial, Correspondent James Polk reported that the accused spy "apparently gave away one of the NSA's most sensitive secrets--a project with the code name Ivy Bells, believed to be a top-secret underwater eavesdropping operation by American submarines inside Russian harbors...
Polk's report gave Casey a chance to act on a warning he had issued three weeks earlier, when he said that he was weighing legal action against several publications for allegedly printing details of U.S. intelligence-gathering operations. His weapon: Section 798 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Passed into law in 1951, the statute forbids the disclosure of classified information about secret codes and other communications intelligence. Though no news organization has ever been prosecuted under the law, Casey cited the Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, TIME and Newsweek for unspecified violations...
...Casey formally asked the Justice Department to consider prosecuting NBC for its report. Meanwhile, the Washington Post on Wednesday published another sensitive story on the Pelton case. The front-page article, however, had been abridged after numerous discussions with Casey and other Administration officials. The published story, written by Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward and Reporter Patrick E. Tyler, provided a relatively innocuous account of Pelton's encounters with Soviet agents. Removed were any technical details of the spying techniques that Pelton allegedly betrayed...
...thing the article did include was a revealing description of the Post's own encounters with Administration officials. Originally scheduled to run on May 4, the story was delayed after Casey met with editors to warn them of possible prosecution. On May 10, President Reagan took the extraordinary step of telephoning Post Chairman Katharine Graham. In what Graham described as a "very civilized, low-key conversation," Reagan stressed that the matter was of the highest security importance and warned that he would support prosecution if the Post printed the full account...