290,000 Held Subject to U.S. Censorship

At least 290,000 people with access to classified information have signed agreements requiring that their speeches and written articles be submitted to federal officials for clearance, a General Accounting Office study released Thursday said.

The contracts were signed in the last five years by former or current federal employees as part of the Reagan Administration’s efforts to reduce the disclosure of sensitive information, the study by the congressional watchdog agency said.

Congressional critics of the contracts said they amounted to unnecessary censorship.

All people who signed have access to what is classed as “sensitive compartmented information,” a phrase that normally refers to highly classified intelligence-related material.

Figure Omits CIA

The 290,000 figure does not include employees of the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency, the GAO noted.

The study was prepared at the request of Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Government Operations Committee.

The policy of requiring the lifetime written contracts was started in 1981, but President Reagan suspended it in 1984 after complaints from Capitol Hill that it was unfair censorship.

But Reagan’s suspension affected only one part of the policy, Brooks said. Reagan’s action “has not changed this Administration’s policy one iota,” he said. “It was all a charade.

“It is apparent that this Administration has begun a massive censorship campaign throughout the federal government, and, while many thought that the President had decided to abandon the policy, it has not stopped,” Brooks charged.

Would Change Emphasis

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) also criticized the policy.

“In light of the major spy scandals of the past few years,” she said, “I would think our limited resources ought to be directed at ferreting out spies, not at establishing elaborate bureaucratic mechanisms to avoid the inadvertent disclosure of information through a book or article.”

The GAO report said that the exact total of lifetime censorship contracts in effect is unknown but that “at least 240,776 individuals have signed the agreement” at 20 federal agencies and that about 45,000 FBI employees and 4,300 workers at the Defense Intelligence Agency also have signed them, for a total of at least 290,000.