European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 12, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday april 12,1967 Anthony Lewis administration s secrecy Campaign backfires for six years president Reagan and his administration have carried on an obsessive Campaign for secrecy i government trying to keep information from he press and the american Public meanwhile real secrets intelligence secrets were pouring out to the soviet Union in a flood. Trial is the wonderful irony in the russian spy scare hat now grips Washington the zealots who thought up new ways to keep administration policies secret hounding suspected leaders an threatening he press sat by in seeming indifference or incompetence As espionage reached record Levels. The penetration of the . Embassy in Moscow is he latest in a series of humiliating american Security failures Over the last three years this country has seen 26 espionage convictions. Edward Lee Howard worked for thecia handling critical material about operations in the soviet Union. The Agency put him in Ibal Job despite indications that he was a heavy Drinker and might reusing drugs. Finally Howard was fired in Stead of being eased into a non sensitive Post a step less Likely to arouse resent ment when he said he had contemplated going to the soviet embassy thecia did not pass thai alarming tact on to the Fri for nearly a year. Nor after hews fired did the Agency recover his Reg ular passport or a phony one it had Given him. The Fri had just one Man watching his Home in new Mexico when he slipped away. He surfaced in Moscow on aug. 7.1986. Howard is believed to have betrayed the Cia s ways of reaching its assets in the soviet Union at least one such source was executed after Howard s flight. He wiped out Moscow station an intelligence official said. Some of Washington s current Indig nation at soviet tactics has to be taken with a Good Deal of Salt. Bugs in our new embassy building in Moscow we George will tried to Plant bugs in he new soviet embassy in Washington. And we used to preen ourselves on overhearing conversations among Kremlin Leaden in heir cars. Bui the Howard Case shows there have been genuine blows to our Security. Communications around the world. The problems did not Start in the Rea Gan years. Concerns about the present and future . Embassy buildings i Moscow for instance go Back a Long time. But urgent warnings to the Reagan administration produced no effective action. Reagan his attorneys general and his White House staff were Busy instead trying to close Down legitimate sources of information to he american Public. The administration told officials to re Spond less generously to requests under the Freedom of information act. It tight ened classification rules to let bureaucrats keep More documents secret longer. It has asked the courts to expand he espionage an so it coven  president tried by executive order unlit Congress made him pull Back to impose lifetime censorship on More than 120,000 officials so they would have to Clear Book and articles even after Leav ing the government. Officials also worked zealously to enforce censorship of the one american on whom the supreme court has imposed for life a system of prior restraint. His Frank Snepp a former Cia official who angered the Agency by publishing a Book on the last Days in Vietnam without sub mitting it for clearance As he had prom ised to do. The court in addition to enjoining Snepp for life turned his grow earnings from the Book Over to the government about $ 180,000 so far. When Snepp makes a speech he has to submit a text to Cia censors first. When he wrote a Book review for the Losangeles times he had to show it to the Agency before he sent it to the newspaper and when the editor asked for a change he had to show that to the Cen sors Loo that is How officials defend our Secu Rity by censoring the comments of Snepp a Patriot who wrote his Book to deplore . Abandonment of our friends in South Vietnam and by trying to Stop leak most of which Tell the Public about policy debates on which we should be informed. To preserve essential Security. Justice Potter Stewart wrote we must avoid secrecy for its own Sake because when too Many things Are made secret nothing is. It is time to Stop Irving to keep policy criticism from reaching the Public time to focus on protecting the real secrets. Cd now Voik Tamoj detente thrives in fawning attitude toward soviets grim new sin the glasnost front. It seems that one meaning of glasnost openness is open Access for soviet spies to the . Embassy in Moscow. And this episode has knocked reason from her throne in the while House. Questions of embassy architecture Donot bring out Ronald Reagan s Best. When a criminally negligent approach to the con Siru Clion of Security barriers made the . Embassy in Beirut Lebanon vulnerable to a devastating bomb attack the president said shucks you know How hard it is to get carpenters to step Lively when you want you Kitchen fixed. Now he says that cancelling Secretary of slate George Shultz s trip to Moscow merely because the embassy has become a plaything for soviet Intelli gence operatives would be allowing the soviet uni onto run us out of  get a blackboard the size of Montana and a piece of Chalk the size of Connecticut and diagram Reagan s reasoning unless we ignore the humiliation of being effectively evicted from our embassy we will not seem Manly. The state department which sometimes seems Tobe a Bermuda Triangle into which National resolve disappears without a inter has been passive in the fac of the soviet assault on the . Embassy. And while the assault on the old and the new . Embassy asunder Way the soviets were allowed to build a new embassy on a Washington Hill perfectly suited for elec tronic espionage. The new . Embassy Structure in Moscow is Large broadcasting studio for the Benefit of soviet in . It is composed of modules built by soviet labor with evidently Loving care Over a 15-Ycar period. It should be razed and the soviet Union which ruined it with electronic penetration devices should pay for it 1191 million. Pending that payment their Washington embassy should be reduced to a Skeleton staff. That will not happen because the United Stales re fuses to learn the lesson that the economist of London put succinctly the Folly of 1970s detente was the belief thai Western Plancy would help soviet Reform ers. It does t. It helps soviet  the spirit of detente produced a new soviet embassy on a Washington Hill and a Shell of a , embassy in a trough in Moscow. The spirit of detente is a spirit of a reciprocated , concessions and unanswered soviet aggressions. In that spirit the Secre tary of state is going to Moscow in the Middle of this scandal thereby communicating the message that nothing can interfere with our desire for business As usual and for an arms control agreement Hal the so Viet Union will treat As they treat . Embassies. The Reagan administration s posture is that of the character in an Alan Bennett play i m not Happy. But i m not unhappy about  which Means detente Misback and standing tall. The idea of detente is the cockroach of american intellectual life an idea so Hardshell cd and Imper Vious to conditions that one wonders if it cannot be destroyed other than by nuclear Winter if that. The idea Hal reforms mellowing liberalization democratization peaceful coexistence detente is just around the Corner received particularly Memora ble expression 43 years ago. In july 194-1, writing with characteristic Confidence Walter Lippmann said in a letter to a Friend that after the War the soviet Union would certainly move far toward democracy Why else do you suppose they keep talking about democracy they Don l have to talk about it but they do and they can t be such fools As to talk about democracy in Poland and Italy and elsewhere unless they intend to have a Good Deal of it at  unless they count on foolish people in the West Tobe mesmerized by their talk. Today a  non sequitur is heard Gorbachev talks about democracy so he must intend democracy. But listen to Galina  formerly a  Soprano with the Bolshoi opera. She and her Hus band cellist Mstislav Rostropovich were deprived of their soviet citizenship in 978. In an interview in encounter Magazine she Speaks of the difficulty West Erners have in making the imaginative leap to under stand what goes on under soviet  what goes on Isth sour Spring from which flows soviet bin Savior a steady inculcation of hatred of the West. She says if a shared christianity was not enough to Stop monarchs from doing very unchristian things to one another through the centuries we can imagine in deed we can Sec what the principle of hatred elevated to the governing Creed of one of the world most powerful countries will do to the lives of ail of  the hatred is compounded with the Contemp two Cam by our fawning Over half measures the economist s words of Gorbachev reforms and our half hearted responses to episodes like the assaults on our embassies. 1=1 Wang Lon Pool