Officials Accused of Abusing Right to Censor U.S. Employees

The government is abusing its power to screen books, articles, speeches and other forms of communication by its employees for classified information, a House committee chairman said Saturday.

“It is quite unnecessary and inconsistent with constitutional principles to have government censors determining what acts of expression and creation by federal employees may be permitted,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

The chairman of the House Government Operations Committee issued a statement accompanying the report by the General Accounting Office, the congressional investigative agency.

The report found that between Oct. 1, 1989, and March 31, 1990, federal agencies conducted 10,598 screenings, including 163 books, 2,915 articles, 1,752 speeches and 5,554 miscellaneous writings.

The reviews cost an estimated $750,722, the report said.

Conyers said the CIA had reviewed 214 submissions, including a poem, an outline for a television program, a letter to an editor, an editorial and a computer game scenario. Almost half of the CIA-generated reviews involved people no longer associated with the agency, he said.

“This is a clear inhibition of the activities of whistle-blowers who wish to expose waste, fraud and abuse in government agencies,” Conyers said. “It is intolerable in a democratic society to have one group of government employees censoring the expression of former employees.”

Steven Garfinkel, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, which administers the government’s secrecy program, said whistle-blowers still have “ways . . . to disclose information, including classified information, without acting unlawfully.”

Agencies have inspectors general, general counsels and other officials with authority to hear such reports and to act on them, Garfinkel said.

Before gaining access to classified information, government employees and contractors must sign agreements to keep it secret.

The agreements have been used for many years, but became standard policy at then-President Ronald Reagan’s direction in 1983, the GAO report said.

The GAO obtained its data from questionnaires sent to 54 federal departments and agencies that handle classified information, 48 of which responded. Among them were the 14 Cabinet departments, the FBI and the Peace Corps.