Selective Secrets

Governments love to keep secrets, not because they make things more secure, but because it makes them more convenient. The governing of people, particularly free people, is a cumbersome, messy business. Free people are always snooping around, trying to find out what’s being done in their name. And, when they do find out, they form opinions and make judgments. They grumble and complain.

When that happens, even well-intentioned public officials begin to mutter as Cromwell did, “I am as much for government by consent as any man. But where shall I find consent?” Cromwell, it may be recalled, began as leader of the parliamentary faction and ended as his countrymen’s self-styled Lord Protector.

The road to such mischief and misrule is paved with secrecy, and Atty. Gen Dick Thornburgh has set the Bush Administration upon it with his rash decision to abandon a well-tested, 11-year-old Justice Department policy of not prosecuting government employees who leak information to the public through the press. Thornburgh, ignoring precedents set by administrations of both parties, now says he will seek to penalize such whistle-blowers for theft of government property. He also said that, while the Administration currently has no plans to prosecute journalists for receiving that stolen property, they may, at his discretion, be subpoenaed to appear before grand juries and forced to choose between betraying their sources and facing contempt charges.

People with even a casual interest in news are by now aware that journalists cannot provide an accurate account of how the government conducts the public’s business without the facts provided by anonymous officials, some of whom are public-spirited, some of whom are mean-spirited, some of whom are merely self-interested. The exposure of scandals from Watergate to Iran-Contra would have been impossible without the use of confidential sources who told their stories with the expectation that reporters in the full exercise of First Amendment freedoms would keep their names a secret.

We shall pass over the logical absurdity of prosecuting public servants for “stealing” information on behalf of its owners, the public. What cannot be passed over are the dangerous implications of the policy Thornburgh has adopted. He does not propose to prosecute every official who leaks information, but only those who displease or discomfort the Administration. He does not propose to subpoena every journalist, but only those he personally chooses as targets. The potential for abuse is clear.

It is tempting to label this new policy an Official Secrets Act, but it is nothing so grand. It is, in fact, a Selective Secrets Act and, as such, is as shabby as it is perilous.