Word: subs
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...laid out the facts as he saw them, and we evaluated the facts as we saw them," Graham said. In his talk with executives at the Post and other organizations, Colby reportedly stressed that the sub affair was not yet over, that the CIA would try again this summer to raise the ship (the CIA brought only part of it to the surface last summer). By reporting the story, Colby said, news organizations would inform the Soviet Union about the salvage operation, and thus prevent its success...
That was apparently the clincher, because Colby received cooperation from the news executives he contacted, and later, executives would cite the continuing nature of the sub salvage as reason for holding their stories. As Times managing editor A. M. Rosenthal told one of his reporters, who used his boss's quote in a story headlined "C.I.A. Tried to Get Press/To Hold Up Salvage Story." The Times "believed that in this case the advantage of immediate public disclosure did not outweigh the considerations of disclosing an important ongoing operation...
...only if the consequences of disclosure are certain and disastrous. (The classic example is that a newspaper should not publish in advance the details of troop movement during wartime. Fair enough.) But there was nothing certain or disastrous about the consequences the CIA claimed would follow publication of the sub salvage story...
...delay the story--which included Time, Newsweek, CBS and NBC--took Colby's word that the operation was important. There is no evidence that any organization tried carefully to establish, on its own, exactly why the CIA needed to recover the codes and warheads from a 17-year-old sub that sank seven years ago. Most of them apparently took the Colby briefings on the importance of the whole affair at face value. Jack Anderson found some experienced naval sources who scoffed at the intelligence value of the sub, which is one reason he felt free to break the news...
With that in mind, it's worth noting that the sub story isn't the only CIA news The Times has kept from the public recently. Alexander Cockburn, The Village Voice's excellent press critic, reports that President Ford told The Times's editors about two weeks ago that the CIA might have planned and even carried out assasinations of foreign leaders. The editors did not print a story about the Ford disclosure. Instead, the information leaked from Times man to Times man, and finally, to Daniel Shorr of CBS. He broadcast the story, and the next morning. The Times...