The Duplicitous and Innocent

By Thomas Griffith

Of all the tidbits leaked to the Washington Post of what Secretary of State Alexander Haig said privately to his senior staff over the course of a year, the most memorable was his description of the British Foreign Secretary. He called Lord Carrington a "duplicitous bastard." The Post was so proud of its sneak look at what it called the "unvarnished Haig" that it devoted about 300 sq. in. of one day's paper to Haig's "private and apparently candid pronouncements." It proved a damp squib.

As serious practitioners of the art of insult, the British probably dismiss Haig's testy comment on Carrington as hardly in the same world class as the invective of Lloyd George, who said that Winston Churchill would "make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises"; of World War Fs Field Marshal Haig that he "was brilliant to the top of his army boots"; of Lord Derby that he was "like a cushion who always bore the impress of the last man who sat on him." Devastating ad libs and insults are carefully crafted in Britain; Haig's was an impulsive throwaway. So there is no direct damage, except in embarrassment to Haig the next time he greets Carrington. It may even be mildly reassuring to learn that the unvarnished Haig still exists, since in television interviews lately, Haig has been imitating Ronald Reagan's low-key, ho-ho evasions of tough questions. Reagan inhabits the role; Haig uncoavincingly feigns it.

The real damage of such journalism is what it does to trust among colleagues in Government. Shouldn't a Secretary of State be able to meet confidentially with his top assistants without having his exact words appear later in print? Haig's angry description of Lord Carrington more justly fits the person who leaked a year's notes of private meetings. Haig may now find himself driven to confiding in an ever smaller circle of advisers at some cost to other officials' knowing his views firsthand, and to his hearing theirs.

This is a question the press self-righteously does not much concern itself with: it's up to the Government to keep its own secrets. Reporters are surprised and incredulous when Reagan tells Barbara Walters that what troubles him most after a year in office is leaks. The press looks the other way when the Pentagon asks senior officials to take humiliating lie-detector tests in a futile effort to stop leaks. Nor does it worry too much about the motives of a leaker, only whether he is peddling trustworthy goods.

In a Washington atmosphere where the swamp gas of Watergate and Viet Nam still lingers, the press is generally convinced that much of what is classified secret hi the name of security is really designed to conceal mistakes and protect reputations. In this mood, coverage becomes a somewhat playful cat-and-mouse game, as the press ferrets out secrets, while arguing high-mindedly that the real winner is the public. This is true only when the public is learning what it had a right to know and was not being told. The rest is headlines, titillation and gossip, whose place in journalism is less entitled to such solemn defense.

The Post story was written by Bob Woodward, who, though a millionaire from his Watergate books, still likes to go out and amass facts and seek out Deep Throats to confide in him. Ben Bradlee, the Post's executive editor, says that Post editors spent some hours considering the ethics of publishing the story, and concluded that it revealed something about "the mind and behavior and language of one of the most important people in Government. As to the ethics of the guy who leaked it, I leave that one to others." Bradlee says he wouldn't like his own private meetings made public, but (here it comes again) he believes it is not the press's role "to police the behavior of people in the State Department."

Oddly enough, had Haig's private comments been more at variance with his public positions, a case could be argued for publishing them as something the public should know. To print confidential remarks that merely confirm Government policy in more colloquial language seems a gratuitous violation of confidentiality. Perhaps this is why the American press made so little of the story, while foreign newspapers and television delightedly played up the kind of morsels of gossip they don't get from duplicitous civil servants in their own countries.

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