Secrecy Means Big Things Get Little Thought

This commentary is an excerpt from a speech given Tuesday as part of the Frank E. Gannett lecture series on press issues sponsored by the Washington Journalism Center.

Something distinctly unhealthy has taken place in our public policy-making of late. Fifteen years ago presidential aides felt free to write candid memos and have serious, far-reaching disagreements with each other--and the President.

Watergate put a stop to that: One quickly learned never to write anything on paper that you would be unhappy to see on Page 1 of the Washington Post. Now, that did make for a more efficient government--memos grew considerably shorter--but it also meant far less dissent and less open dialogue. By the time of the Reagan Administration, leaks had become so bad that one had to learn a new lesson as a White House aide: Never say anything controversial in a conversation where more than one other person was present. Presto, super efficiency.

Along the way, however, we invented an absolutely insane way to run a government. Now, when the really inconsequential issues come along, an army of bureaucrats moves in to consider it. But the more important the issue, the fewer the numbers involved--almost solely because of the fear of leaks. On important issues only a handful of aides ever discuss the issue, and those down the line who know the most about it are shut out. The Strategic Defense Initiative was born almost in complete secrecy. So was the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua. So was Iran. And, apparently, so was the Iran arms-sales money funneled to Nicaragua.

Presidents can be forgiven for their frustration when they are up to their keisters in leaks. They become penned in, feeling unable to consult widely and think through clearly the results of their actions. They have every reason to seek more discipline and loyalty within their ranks.

But the quest for secrecy has led more than one Administration astray--most recently the current incumbent’s in particular. The Reagan Administration seems altogether too willing in recent days to exalt one value, secrecy, at the expense of another, accountability. It forgets our democratic tradition of Federalist Paper No. 10, the checks and balances so vital to the Republic.

Yes, Congress had meddled too deeply in foreign policy in past years, but by bypassing Congress on Iran the Administration now opens the door to even more congressional control over policy in the future. The rough balance struck between the executive branch and Congress over these past years will probably be upset unless the White House makes a clean breast of events and takes actions on its own to curb future covert operations by the National Security Council staff.

Executive accountability runs in a second direction that also has been ignored or forgotten of late--to the public. The President, to his credit, has given a televised address and a televised press conference on Iran. But let’s remember that it was his first press conference in more than three months.

In its zeal the Reagan Administration has succumbed to another temptation that tugs upon every Administration--the temptation, almost the compulsion, in a tight situation, to lie. How else can one explain the disinformation memorandum? Or some of the public statements when the story concerning Iran first broke? To be sure, there is a long history of Administrations saying that they had a right to lie, stretching back a lot farther than Arthur Sylvester, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in Lyndon B. Johnson’s Administration. Even Jody Powell, an honorable man, was trying to make that argument in the Carter Administration.

The temptation is especially great in today’s public life when what counts most is the appearance of things--not the underlying reality. That’s the lesson one sees in a Congress that lies without compunction about its budget cuts. That’s the lesson insiders on Wall Street have been teaching each other, too.

But if there is any lesson we should have learned from the past, especially Vietnam and Watergate, it should be very simple: Governments lie only at their peril. Moreover, governments do not have a right to lie. They have a right to remain silent; they have a right not to answer sensitive national-security questions. But, once and forever, let a President make it plain: The government has no right to lie. And it won’t.