Justice Awry

The conviction of Samuel Loring Morison for espionage because he gave classified photographs to the press is a miscarriage of justice and a serious threat to an informed public. It represents an intolerable expansion of the government’s efforts to control information.

Morison was a civilian intelligence analyst for the Navy who gave the authoritative British publication Jane’s Defense Weekly three photographs of a Soviet aircraft carrier under construction at a shipyard on the Black Sea. The classified photographs had been taken by a KH-11 reconnaissance satellite, and the Justice Department contended at Morison’s trial in Baltimore that publication of the pictures revealed to the Soviets just how sophisticated and capable those spy satellites are.

The Morison case is only the second time in history that the government has used the espionage laws to prosecute someone for leaking information to the press--and thereby to the public. The only previous case involved Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo, who were charged with espionage for leaking the Pentagon Papers, a case that was thrown out of court because of government misconduct before the judge could rule on whether the espionage laws were properly applied to leakers.

Morison is no more guilty of endangering the nation’s security than Ellsberg and Russo were. The capability of American spy satellites to photograph Soviet activity was well known before the latest pictures were published. The Soviets already have a technical manual for the KH-11 satellites, which they purchased from an ex-CIA agent. In any case, pictures from the satellites have been made public before. What, then, was the damage to secret technology in the publication of the aircraft carrier pictures?

More important is the danger to an informed public if the conviction of Morison is upheld. Government employees who seek to put important defense information before the public will fear being charged as spies. Morison, who is to be sentenced on Nov. 25, faces up to 40 years in prison for the crime of telling the public what Moscow and Washington already knew.

The government’s prosecution of Morison was an attempt to clamp down on the free flow of defense information to the people, who need to know as much as they can in order to make informed judgments on national security issues. What’s more, the Reagan Administration has left open the possibility that a reporter who receives a classified leak or a newspaper that publishes it could also be charged with spying.

Using the espionage laws to plug leaks is a perversion of what those laws were intended to prevent. If Morison’s conviction stands, the United States will have the equivalent of an official secrets act, which Congress has repeatedly refused to enact. The public will be the losers.

Whatever Morison may have done wrong, it wasn’t espionage.