A Plug for Leaks

The U.S. press abhors the very idea of censorship, except where the nation's security is plainly involved. So does Defense Secretary James V. Forrestal, who has plugged for sensible security rules ever since he pried open the Navy's clam-tight policy in 1944. Military censorship ended with the war,* but the need for keeping military secrets did not. Last week Forrestal called in 22 press, radio and newsreel representatives to talk over ways to keep them.

The Secretary suggested that they set up some kind of "voluntary censorship" to keep willful or inadvertent "leaks" from reaching unfriendly eyes & ears. "Our lead over possible enemies," he said, "is often a matter of only a few months on the technical side, and it is extremely dangerous to sacrifice that advantage by showing our hand."

Dr. Vannevar Bush, chairman of the Research & Development Board, and some other top brass, seconded his motion. But newsmen were not so sure that even "voluntary censorship" was needed. Forrestal conceded that there have been only two major leaks since war's end. (One was Aviation Week's story on supersonic flight; the other, a Denver Post article on the disposal of atomic rubbish.) And many a paper feared that voluntary censorship would be an entering wedge. The answer, newsmen felt, is not voluntary censorship but a tightening up of Government organizations to make sure that secrets do not leak. Nevertheless, the group named the Washington Star's craggy Editor Ben McKelway as head of an eight-man committee to think things over and report next month.

For exposing another sort of censorship, Nat S. Finney, 44, Washington correspondent of the Cowles Bros.'s Minneapolis Star and Tribune and Des Moines Register & Tribune, last week won the $500 Raymond Clapper memorial award. Last fall, Finney reported, President Truman had approved a "security code" under which Government employees were forbidden to disclose stories "embarrassing" to Government officials. The code was dumped when Finney led the press howl of protest. At the White House Correspondents' dinner, Finney had the satisfaction of getting his check from President Harry Truman, who had made the bobble.

Except on restricted atomic information, whose disclosure "with the intent to injure the U.S." may be punished with anything from a $10,000 fine and ten years in prison, to death.

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