Storm over Censorship

When Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks set up the Office of Strategic Information two months ago, he stirred up an unexpected storm. The announced purpose of OSI was to furnish "guidance" to newsmen, thus keep "unclassified strategic data" from reaching the Russians. But many U.S. publishers rightly saw the Commerce Department's OSI as a means of censoring the U.S. press.

Last week, with the approval of OSI, the Commerce Department issued its first restrictions on printing nonclassified information. Magazines, newspapers and books cannot be exported, the Department announced, if they contain unclassified technical information on 53 categories of products, ranging from rubber hose and tubing to polytrifluorochloroethylene. The new regulations make it mandatory for exporters to get approval from OSI before exporting such technical data, or face the possibility that their publications will be seized.

But from a security standpoint the regulations made little sense. There was nothing in them to prevent the Russian embassy, for example, from buying in the U.S. and shipping abroad the same technical journals that Weeks would prevent U.S. publishers from exporting.

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