Schorr Under Siege

At first it seemed unlikely that CBS Correspondent Daniel Schorr would face problems on Capitol Hill as a result of his role in the publication of the embargoed report on CIA and FBI operations by Representative Otis Pike's Select Committee on Intelligence. But last week, by a vote of 269 to 115, the House ordered its twelve-member ethics committee to investigate the "Pike papers" leak. Conceivably, the committee could recommend to the House almost anything, from no action against Schorr at all to removal of his accreditation to the House press gallery. A citation for contempt of Congress is an outside possibility.

CBS promised to back Schorr against efforts to force him to disclose his sources, but the network last week moved him from his intelligence beat to general assignment, ostensibly so that he could report on stories in which he is not personally involved. CBS executives in New York are reportedly deeply displeased by the Pike papers episode, partly because Schorr gave the papers to the Village Voice, a Manhattan weekly tabloid. One executive explained that Schorr's link with the "ant10-Establishment" Voice had political overtones that might be unsettling to some CBS affiliates.

Troubling Question. Dan Schorr has never been known as thin-skinned, but he seems genuinely wounded by the ruckus over the leak. Some journalists are troubled by the question of whether Schorr acted properly in making available the Pike report to Voice Editor in Chief Clay Felker in exchange for a donation to the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (which says it has yet to receive any funds). Some journalists side with New York Daily News Editor Michael O'Neill, who argues that Schorr's act was simply "a freelance deal." But others strongly disagree. Chicago Tribune Columnist Bob Weidrich complained that Schorr's decision to sell the Pike papers made him a "journalistic prostitute." And a New York Times editorial bluntly accused Schorr of "selling secrets," no matter what his motives were.

In a letter to the Times, Schorr reminded the editors that they had lost no time in publishing the Pentagon papers as a paperback, presumably not at a loss. He argued that his moral problem was "how to avoid making a profit." He had to find a publisher but did not see why that publisher "should be the sole beneficiary."

Schorr's rebuttal, replies Times Editorial Page Editor John B. Oakes, is "irrelevant. What we make money from, which is publishing the news, seems to me totally a different context from what Schorr did, which was to traffic in the news." As for the Pentagon paperback, Oakes argues, all the Times did was to publish in more permanent form what had already appeared in the newspaper; what the Times opposes, says Oakes, is "selling to a third party, no matter for how lofty a cause."

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