The Nation - News from March 8, 1987

A high-ranking State Department official acknowledged he “wasn’t careful enough” and allowed part of a secret document on his desk to be photographed by a magazine journalist. The partially visible document--two pages of a top-secret daily intelligence briefing for the highest U.S. security officials--appeared in a photograph with Ronald I. Spiers, undersecretary of state for management, on the cover of the February issue of Foreign Service Journal, which has a circulation of 10,000. Spiers is shown seated at his desk with his hands folded over two pages of a booklet. On one page is a map of Lebanon, and the facing page is obscured by a piece of paper, but four lines of text are visible, although not legible with normal magnifying equipment.