Button Your Lip

Carter fights press leaks

It was scarcely the most burning issue of foreign policy. Some members of a Cabinet-level policy review committee favored selling military equipment to King Hassan II of Morocco; others on the panel feared that doing so would tie the U.S. too closely to another shaky throne. When a story about the disagreement appeared in the Washington Post last October, hardly anyone noticed--except Jimmy Carter, whose wrath led to an extreme step that no other Administration had taken to try to stop leaks to the press.

That, too, was dug out by the Post last week. Some six months after the initial story ran, the White House asked that more than 20 top officials sign affidavits that they had not been the source of the leak. Hodding Carter, then the State Department's spokesman, refused. Says he: "I don't believe in signing a piece of paper that says I am innocent. That's not how things are supposed to work in this country." All the others signed, including Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher; CIA Director Stansfield Turner; National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

There had been earlier warnings of the President's attitude toward unauthorized disclosures. On Feb. 5, 1979, CBS-TV carried a report that Administration officials were worried, and rightly so, about the stability of the government of then Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in Iran. On Feb. 6, Carter called in 16 top State Department officials for what several described as a "tirade." With Vance standing by, the President told Vance's subordinates, "If there are any leaks out of your area, I am going to fire you, whether or not that's fair." Then Carter stalked out before anyone could say a word. For Vance it was one of the most painful incidents in his difficult relationship with Carter.

In the past two years, the FBI has conducted 25 criminal investigations of leaks in areas of military and foreign policy--two specifically ordered by Carter. No one has been indicted, but several State Department officials have lost their security clearances, and several persons have quit voluntarily.

The atmosphere is hardly comparable to the paranoia in the Nixon White House, where the telephones of some officials suspected of leaking were secretly tapped. Says a State Department official: "Carter believes fiercely in the chain of command: once policy is set it has to be followed down the line." Still, Carter's preoccupation with leaks has worsened the already low morale in the State Department. Says a former official: "The message is, 'I don't trust you,' and it is damn hard to work for someone on those terms." qed

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