Safire Media Attacks Began When Inman Blocked Israeli Access to U.S. Satellite Intelligence

Excerpts from transcript of televised news conference by Admiral Bobby Ray Inman in Austin, TX, Jan. 18, 1994

. . . To move away from the theoretical to the specific, when I went through confirmation in 1981, I'd been nominated by the president to be the deputy director of Central Intelligence. Mr. Casey didn't want me as his deputy, but the Congress did. The president wanted me.

Mr. Casey had a tough confirmation hearing, but he was a friend of the president's and, therefore, the agency and the community strongly supported it. I had a two-hour hearing and a 98-to-0 vote in confirmation, and I also had real power in dealing with the problems of the intelligence community and was able to lay out a long-term strategic plan...

Let me turn to two issues which have troubled me greatly. One is the perception that's been created in the media of "a manipulator of the press" and tell you some history that most of you may not know. In 1977, when I'd just become the director of the National Security Agency, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both got a story about a U.S. congressman providing information of discussion going on in committees, providing that information to a foreign government.

The Wall Street Journal checked with the Pentagon. Would it be damaging if they told how the U.S. knew? Assistant Secretary of Defense Tom Ross told them it would be, and so they elected not to detail how the government knew, but they printed the story on what the congressman had been doing. Twenty-four hours later the Times, distressed they'd been scooped, headlined how the government knew. And we promptly lost our ability to provide any intelligence to the government on that situation.

For Attorney General Griffin Bell, cause and effect were very clear. He went to President Carter and said, "We need to do something about this." At breakfast with those two and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, the decision was made to send a delegation to see the publisher and editors of The New York Times and tell them what had occurred. That delegation was composed of Dee Ann Seymour, the general counsel at DOD, Tom Ross, the assistant secretary, and Vice Admiral Inman, the director of the National Security Agency.

It was a somber lunch as I detailed for Mr. Sulzburger and his colleagues exactly what had occurred. At the end, when I finished, the publisher said, "Admiral, if this is a pitch for censorship, forget it. " My response was if it was a pitch for censorship, we wouldn't be there.

If it was an effort to try to say how could we avoid needless damage to intelligence sources and methods, they'd be willing to try. And a fascinating conversation ensued for half an hour between the publishers and the editors, at which they ultimately concluded what they needed was the ability at 7 to 7:30 in the evening, when they were putting together the paper, to call and say, "Will it be damaging if we say the following?" And to get a straight answer. Not just, "We don't want the story because it would be embarrassing," but specifically, would it be damaging or not.

The three of us agreed to take that back. Secretary Brown reported it to the president and attorney general. The attorney general urged President Carter to try, and so they made the decision to do it, and the issue was who would be that point of contact? And President Carter decided that Vice Admiral Inman would be that point of contact.

So, from the late summer of 1977 until I retired 1 July 1982, this carried over in an exchange between Secretary Brown and Secretary Weinberger, as an important function to keep underway. I responded on a great many evenings to editors working stories. There were a lot of stories that I let go through, even though people didn't like it. There were others where the editors made the decision to alter the terms of the story to protect intelligence sources and methods.

In that process, I got to know a lot of editors. But there was one requirement from the outset. Working reporters could not use that channel as a way to go find new stories or confirm stories. There were occasions that reporters tried, and particularly that a couple of columnists tried, and I always referred them off to their editors.

When I retired from government in 1982, Mr. Casey decided he wanted to pick up that role, and it very quickly died. But I suddenly found, living down here in Austin, Texas, that I continued to get calls from editors asking for advice because they couldn't get an answer from the government; and then from time to time from working reporters, asking then to understand backgrounds for stories. I hope I have provided a useful service. I stand here very confident in saying publicly to all of you that I never used that process to manipulate any news story. And if you would ask the editors and those who were involved, I think you would find the same answer from them...

Finally, to the specific relationship with a columnist—and here I had a number of wise old friends tell me this is the part of this press conference I should avoid, that I'm opening up a hornet's nest. But I want to talk to you for a few minutes about the new McCarthyism.

When I was a young naval officer, this country was subjected to a period that was very corrosive to democracy when Senator Joseph McCarthy would make outrageous charges, largely against public servants. And for a very long time, those charges went unanswered, until finally at television hearings, the Army-McCarthy hearing, a lawyer, Joseph Welch, finally said directly, 'Have you no decency?" And finally others began to stand up and respond.

In ultimately researching my decision that I'm simply not prepared to pay the current cost of public service in distortion of my record, I want to dwell briefly on my past experience and history with Mr. Safire. After the process had been set up for editors to call to check out stories, I received a call from Mr. Safire seeking information, not to confirm, and I declined to be a source. He was very direct that if I didn't become a source, I would regret it in the subsequent coverage. Then he later wrote an article that contained information that indeed caused us to lose critical access that gave us a lot of information on terrorists. I went to the editors of the Times to say, "Why didn't you call?" And they said, oh, they don't touch his [Safire's] material in the process. So I called him and was very direct in my view about damage done. That did not endear me to the columnist.

Subsequently, in early 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, I looked at the distance on the map from Israel and Baghdad and thought, "I wonder how and where they got the targeting material?" We had long-established procedures that in honoring our commitment for Israel's defense, we permitted Israel to requisition satellite photography of potential direct threats to their systems. When I asked what materials had been drawn under that process for the last six months, I found not only a lot of information on Baghdad had been drawn, but also on other countries substantially removed from Israel—Pakistan, Libya. And I made the decision as the deputy director of central intelligence, the acting director, to limit the process, to say that in the future they could draw material within 250 miles of the border, but beyond that, they would have to ask.

The defense minister, General Sharon, was so furious he came to the U.S. to protest to Mr. Weinberger. The secretary of defense supported my decision. Casey had been on a trip down to Australia and New Zealand. When he came back, his favorite journalist and former campaign manager, Mr. Safire, complained to him about the decision. When we had a rather heated discussion, I recommended that Mr. Casey talk to Mr. Weinberger, who had supported me, and he elected not to override the decision. But from that point on, if you will trace the coverage, it's been hostile.

What troubles me in this era of modern McCarthyism isn't the daily press. It's my judgment, valid or otherwise, that the daily working reporting coverage of my nomination has been extraordinarily fair, that the television coverage, the news coverage of it has been uniformly fair; my problem is with the columnist who is afforded the pages of the newspaper and the syndication and the talk shows to carry on attacks with no one responding.

When the column came out that so agitated me for, I thought, its unfairness, the old friends in Washington said, "You shouldn't respond; let us." But it turned out no one wanted to be the new target.

Now, why does this trouble me so deeply? Because I have a fundamental sense of ethics and fairness that those who elected to try to inform by opinion should hold themselves to the same standards that they're holding those in public service. Mr. Safire's characterization of me as a tax cheat, from a man who has hidden his own plagiarism by an out-of-court settlement with sealed documents, does not, in my judgment, put him in a position to frame moral judgment on any of us in or out of public service. And at that point I'll pause and I'll be happy to try to answer your questions."

Relevant excerpts from questions and answers:

Inman: I know for a fact, because I have gotten copies, that there have been a large number of letters to the editors, specifically objecting to substantial portions of the columns of not only Safire, but also of Tony Lewis, and to the Boston Globe on Ellen Goodman's column. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, only one single letter was ever printed in the whole time frame. So is this an attack on the whole press? The answer IS no..

Question: Had you not found such negativity, would you have kept going? Inman: The answer is yes. . .

Question: When you say the new McCarthyism, are you referring specifically to the columnists?

Inman: Yes, columnists. And the issue is where is there some balance? If they're going to be permitted to make absolute scurrilous charges, where is at least some balance of giving the individual who is going to be the target the opportunity to write something that can be put parallel to it at the same time frame. Notwithstanding my decision earlier to say I wasn't going to be interviewed, had I been told that that specific article was going to occur, I would have told the story I've told you here today to go parallel to it in the paper. . .

Question: Why not do that after his column?

Inman: First, you never know. I know letters [inaudible] that were never published. Question: Are you talking about one columnist, or—

Inman: Well, there were three that specifically—there were a number of others. If you stand back—let me take a different slice and offend some more. I would say that it's somewhat surprising to me, having lived there so long, I would say The Washington Post coverage on this, as best I can tell, has been very balanced and very fair to me, notwithstanding a few jibes, some of which I probably deserved, in the process. L.A. Times certainly has been. The Texas newspapers have been. I've been struck both by The New York Times and the Boston Globe in, again, the columns. . . So again, this isn't a blanket allegation everywhere. . .

Question: Admiral, isn't your decision another setback for the president on the defense program? You were supposed to lend some credibility in that area.

Inman: It clearly does not help the president that I've left, and that troubles me. . .