Creeping Censorship

In an age of cold war, the ideal of absolute liberty must inevitably yield to paramount considerations of national security in a number of sensitive areas of American life. A sense of proper balance between the claims of liberty and the demands of security is especially important in the government's relations with the press and other media of communication. For the public's natural desire for information presents an obvious challenge to government officials with their natural fear that vital national secrets may be delivered unknowingly into the hands of a potential enemy.

Unfortunately, recent events in Washington indicate that the Eisenhower administration has not yet attained that sense of balance. Administration officials, notably Secretary of Defense Wilson, have shown illogic and inconsistency in their attitude toward the release of information. Their desire to safeguard the nation's secrets is entirely commendable, but absolute security, after all, is as illusory as absolute liberty. And actions such as the Defense Department's effort to control the publication even of unclassified materials hardly further the national security in any sense.

As the American Society of Newspaper Editors' special committee on freedom of information points out, the Administration has in effect obliterated the distinction between classified and unclassified information. A whole new category, so-called "strategic information" has been created inside the area of unclassified material, with the apparent blessing of the President. Yet President Eisenhower has failed to issue an executive order defining exactly what constitutes "strategic information." According to Secretary Wilson, all news releases should be measured against the yardstick of "constructive service" to the defense effort. Other Administration officials undoubtedly have their own interpretations of what should or should not be released to the press and public. Only one clear fact emerges--the Administration has substituted the chaos of bureaucratic discretion for the rationality, however slight, which the classification system formerly afforded.

The potentialities for abuse in such a system are obvious. Security conscious officials can virtually cut off the flow of information to the public if they apply their new claims of authority arbitrarily. Over-zealous bureaucrats may be tempted to fasten the "strategic information" label on material of any kind, no matter how innocuous. And certain members of the Administration have long shown a distressing tendency to seek political advantage through selective leaks to the press; the release of the Yalta documents was only the most spectacular example. Under the new view of public information, the sphere of such political intriguing would be greatly widened. If the Administration sincerely believes that present security procedures are dangerously inadequate, let it undertake a systematic and logical revision of the classification system. Its efforts so far have only raised the ugly threat of censorship and have added to the national burden of insecurity.