New Procedures For an Old Worry

A directive to close the book on future memoir writers?

Ronald Reagan, who takes pride in his efforts to "get Government off the backs of the people," has been much less vocal about another campaign he has been waging: to get people off the back of Uncle Sam by vastly expanding the amount of information about the Government that cannot be made public.

Since the struggle to plug leaks in Washington is certain to be a losing one, there was no great alarm in the capital when the President on March 11 signed a new National Security Decision Directive. It gave various department and agency heads the right to force lie-detector tests on employees suspected of passing classified information to reporters. The announcement was greeted with puzzlement, since many leaks come from these same officials when it suits their purpose. Last week, on closer scrutiny, the order took on a more ominous hue.

Instigated by National Security Adviser William Clark at Reagan's urging, the directive actually extended longstanding secrecy procedures that formerly applied mainly to employees and officials of the CIA and the National Security Agency. Anyone in any part of the Government who handles "sensitive compartmented information" hereafter will have to submit every speech or manuscript in its entirety to his department head for review. This screening would be required after the employee leaves Government, even throughout his lifetime if his employer so decrees. Said one of the President's close aides: "When I understood the meaning of it, I just couldn't believe it."

While the Justice Department contends that the new procedures apply to only about 1,000 Government officials and employees not previously required to get advance approval of writings and speeches, those now covered include many of the highest officials in the Government, including the White House. Non-Government lawyers who have read the directive find its wording so loose as to be applied, perhaps capriciously, to almost everyone who has some kind of security clearance. This includes thousands of Government workers at all levels.

The new directive could, therefore, create a huge administrative chore for such departments as State, Treasury, Justice and Energy, which do not now have extensive screening procedures. In the past three years some 800 manuscripts have been subjected to CIA scrutiny. This consumes many hours of reading, then often protracted haggling with the authors over deletions or changes. The process can take a year or more.

An Administration official explained last week that the directive was designed to give the Government a simple way to block disclosure without charging offenders with criminal violations of secrecy laws. But critics of the directive regard the restrictions as a potentially dangerous undermining of the ability and willingness of officials to discuss what they learned in Government after they leave it and thus to enlighten public debate on future issues. "This is as close as an American Government has come to implementing an Official Secrets Act," argues Allan Adler, a counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Whatever the dangers to free speech and a richer historical record, the directive is a logical step in Reagan's drive to restrict the revelation of classified information. In 1981 the President sought to amend the Freedom of Information Act to limit the kinds of documents that Government must disclose when formally asked to do so by citizens, and to restrict the requests. When Congress showed no interest in tightening the law, Reagan issued an Executive Order to make it easier for bureaucrats to withhold such documents from disclosure. His order also made it more difficult for the Government to declassify information once someone had stamped a document with any of the various secrecy labels.

There are ironies in the President's latest attempt to put a lid on leaks. When such officials as Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger sit down to write recollections of their years in Reagan's service, they will apparently have to get their manuscripts approved by some official in a future Administration, possibly even a Democrat. But their boss is not covered. Reagan will be free, as his predecessors have been, to use his currently classified papers as he wishes in writing his memoirs. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.