News Reports of ‘Secret Mission’

Your editorial deftly put the Pentagon in its place for its recent high-handed attempt to muzzle the press.

Now that our Washington warlords have begun commandeering NASA’s space-shuttle flights for their own high and mighty purposes, they begin to act as if respecting the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press is beneath them. Their success at controlling the news during the Grenada escapade apparently has gone to their heads.

In its mystagogic wisdom, and in the name of national security, the Defense Department defends its imperious action by claiming it’ll keep the Soviets from discovering exactly what’s aboard the Discovery flight.

The fact is that nearly anything anyone would want to know about this geosynchronous spy satellite we plan to bug Moscow with has long since been reported in the Congressional Record and trade journals.

So what are our military masterminds trying to prove by dictating a news blackout on something that’s not all that much of a secret? And why the carefully staged televised briefing where an Air Force general all but dared the media to defy the Pentagon’s dictate?

Here’s a guess: This whole flap was concocted to make certain the Soviets clearly know what it is we’re up to. This would then give Secretary of State George P. Shultz the advantage while meeting with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to do the superpower tango.

Whatever it is that moved the Pentagon to try and impose a prior restraint on the press, and wag a threatening finger at any journalistic transgressors, it would do well to heed the words of Thomas Jefferson: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

ED MITCHELL

Los Angeles