The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. In the headlines this Monday the death toll in the Soviet nuclear disaster was raised by six. A GAO official said Michael Deaver appears to have violated conflict-of-interest laws. James Fletcher was sworn in as the new head of NASA, and Libya expelled 36 Western diplomats. We'll have the details in our news summary in a moment. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: After that news summary we have extended coverage of today's congressional hearing on Michael Deaver. Then a discussion on the threat by CIA Director William Casey to prosecute newspapers for leaks. Finally, we have a documentary profile of a high-tech inventor some call a new Thomas Edison. News Summary

LEHRER: The Soviet Union updated the Chernobyl death and injury today. An official Moscow announcement said six persons had now died from burns and radiation and 35 others remained in grave condition. The six are presumably in addition to the two who were reported dead shortly after the accident, and would thus bring the death toll to eight from the April 26th nuclear disaster. Today's report also said cleanup work at the Chernobyl site had been broadened int he last 24 hours and efforts to cover the damaged [TEXT OMITTED FROM SOURCE] and how we look at ourselves.

LEHRER: Meanwhile, the business of space went on today without NASA. A Houston aerospace firm announced it had signed a deal with China to launch its satellites. A spokesman said uncertainty about when the space shuttle would fly again caused the company to turn to the Chinese.

MacNEIL: The Associated Press reported that Syria's army is building new tank emplacements in eastern Lebanon. The news agency quoted Israeli military sources as saying that while defensive in nature they are viewed by Israel as preparation for war. The same sources said there was no other sign of a Syrian warlike buildup. Israel has blamed Syria for terrorist acts, including the atempted bombing of an El-Al plane last month. But Israel has denied reports that it is planning a military strike in retaliation.

Libya today expelled 36 West European diplomats following diplomatic sanctions imposed by their countries. Members of the European community decided after the U.S. air raid to limit and restrict Libyan diplomatic activity because of Libya's alleged support of terrorism.

LEHRER: President Reagan is determined to salvage the $354-million arms sale to Saudi Arabia. White House spokesman Speakes said Today Mr. Reagan planned a full-scale lobbying effort to overturn Congress' objections to the sale. Last week both the House and the Senate voted down the sale by overwhelming margins. Mr. Reagan is expected to veto the legislation next week and campaigns to gather two-thrids votes to override and then expectd to follow in both houses. Speakes said the United States must maintain its relations with moderate arab states and a turn-down of the arms sale would do serious damage to that relationship.

MacNEIL: A federal judge ruled today that billions of dollars in claims arisinf from the Bhopal chemical disaster should be decided by courts in India, not the United States. The decision was regarded as a victory for Union Carbide. Lawyers for Indian victims had argued that hearings in U.S. courts would produce speedier justice and bigger money settlements. Union Carbide recently announced a tentative $350 million deal, but it fell apart when the Indian government refused to support it.

The Environmental Protection Agency today reported potentially dangerous levels of the suspected cancer-causing chemical dioxin in Great Lakes fish. EPA officials told a news conference in Chicago that some fish contained dioxin concentrations far above levels considered safe for consumption by some states. The highest amounts were found in Lake Ontario. The EPA said people could still safely eat fish from the lakes but if they ate great amounts over a period of time, one official said, then it would be of great concern.

LEHRER: Medals of freedom were presented today to six prominent Americans. President Reagan did the presenting at the White House to Albert Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine; actress Helen Hayes, Senator Barry Goldwater; World War II General Matthew Ridgeway; West Point football coach Earl "Red" Blake; journalist Vermont Royster; and publisher Walter Annenberg.

MacNEIL: That's our news summary. Coming up, today's congressional hearing on Michael Deaver, the CIA and press leaks and a profile of a prolific high-tech inventor. The Case Against Deaver

LEHRER: The pile of particulars continued to grow today in the case of presidential friend and lobbyist Michael Deaver. Judy Woodruff has the update. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: As we reported a moment ago, the General Accounting Office, which is the watchdog arm of Congress, presented its preliminary findings today on whether or not Michael Deaver behaved improperly in representing Canadian interests with the U.S. government. Deaver left the Reagan administration last year to set up a public relations and lobbying firm with a client list that included the Canadian government. Among other things, the report prepared by the GAO appears to tie Deaver to Reagan administration decisions on a policy toward the form of pollution known as acid rain, including the decision to select special envoy, former Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, to negotiate with the Canadians. In an interview on this program last month, Deaver denied any substantial involvement in the acid rain issue.

MICHAEL DEAVER, former presidential aide: I've never talked to anybody in the administration about acid rain since I left. I attended two meetings in the White House where the subject of acid rain was discussed, and that was in my role of coordinating every summit the President had while I was there. I don't think to this day I could tell you what acid rain is. I was looking at it from the standpoint of the politics between our two leaders so that they would have a successful summit, so all you guys would be able to write something positive for a change. And I really didn't get into the substance of acid rain when I was in the White House, and, as I said before, I've never talked to anybody in the administration since I left about acid rain.

WOODRUFF: It was last December that the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Michigan Democrat John Dingle, asked the General Accounting Office to investigate Mr. Deaver's actions and determine if there were any possible conflicts of interest. The man who presented the GAO's findings today, its deputy general counsel, James Hinchman, first laid out for the committee the four areas where Deaver may have violated federal conflict-of-interest laws.

Mr. HINCHMAN: The first of these restrictions prohibits any former employee who participated personally and substantially in a particular matter involving specific parties while he was employed by the government from ever representing anyone before the government in connection with that same matter. Because Drew Lewis in his capacity as special envoy was an official of the United States, Mr. Deaver's participation in the October 25 meeting while he was under a retainer agreement with Canada raises a question as to whether he may have violated this restriction. The second restriction prohibits a former senior employee who participated personally and substantially in a particular matter involving specific parties from even assisting in representing anyone by being personally present in an appearance before the government in connection with that same matter. Now, this restriction runs for two years after the employee leaves the government. Because Mr. Deaver was a senior employee, his mere presence at the October 25 meetin with Drew Lewis raises the question of whether he may have violated this restriction.

The third restriction applies to a particular matter involving specific parties which was pending under the official responsibility of a former employee within the year before he left the government. Mr. Deaver shared overall responsibility for preparation for the U.S.- Canadian summit, and the special envoy issue arose and was resolved during those preparations. For this reason his participation in the October 25 meeting with the U.S. special envoy raises a question as to whether Mr. Deaver may have violated this restriction without regard to whether he parrticipated personally and substantially in the special envoy determination while at the White House. The fourth and last restriction, like the second, applies only to individuals who are former senior employees. This restriction is commonly known as the one-year no contact-ban. It prohibits a former senior employeefrom representing anyone before his former department or agency in conneciton with any particular matter, even a new matter, for a period of one year after leaving the government. Because the U.S. special envoy may have been an official of the White House office, the same agency in which Mr. Deaver served. Mr. Deaver's participation in the October 25th meeting raises a question concerning a possible violation of the one-year no-contact ban. It is these questions of possible violtion of the post employment laws which we've referred to the Justice Department.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Committee members were particularly concerned about Mr. Deaver's role in the administration's decision to appoint a special envoy to negotiate with Canada on acid rain issues.

Rep. JAMES SLATTERY, (D) Kansas: Mr. Hinchman, in reviewing your full statement to the subcommittee, it appears that the GAO has concluded Mr. Deaver was involved in at least 15 pre-summit discussions on acid rain. And I guess these discussions also involved the question of whether a spcial envoy should be appointed. These discussions were with officials either in our administration or with the Canadian government. According to your statement these discussions were held on December the 11th of '84; February the 28th of '85; March the 2nd of '85; March the 6th , '85; March the 12th, '85; and then 10 meetings at the White House that occurred almost daily, apparently, during the March 4th through March 16th, '85, two-week time period before the summit. Is that basically in accordance with your findings. Mr. Hinchman?

Mr. HINCHMAN: Yes, I think that's an accurate summary.

Rep. SLATTERY: According to your statement, two officials who participated in both the formal pre-summit meetings and the informal meetings -- those were the meetings that apparently went on about every day for that two-week period that I mentioned earlier -- told GAO that Mr. Deaver participated in those discussions by endorsing or actively supporting the special envoy approach. Could you identify the two officials who provided that information?

Mr. HINCHMAN: Mr. David Stockman and Mr. Robert McFarlane.

Rep. JOHN BRYAND, (D) Texas: Please state for me then at this time what your tentative conclusions are with regard to what Mr. Deaver's role was in decideing to appoint a special envoy or in any respect with regard to a special envoy.

JENNIE STATHIS, GAO Investigator: Okay. The evidence we have on that says that he participated in meetings where the special envoy proposal was discussed, that in those meetings he spoke, that he endorsed the special envoy proposal. We do not know that he also had a conversation with Mr. McFarlane endorsing two of the potential appointees to that position.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Questions were then raised abour Mr. Deaver's discussing the future employment by the government of Canada while he was still White House deputy chief of staff, Democrat Jim Slattery of Kansasalso pursued that issue.

Rep. SLATTERY: What information did you develop in the course of your investigation on the question of Mr. Deaver's discussion of post-government employment iwth the government of Canada or others?

Mr. HINCHMAN: We were told by one of the persons we interviewed that there were rumors that Mr. Deaver was discussing employment with the Canadian government while still at the White House. However, that person was unable to give us any source of those rumors and we have absolutely no evidence to substantiate it.

Rep. SLATTERY: Could you repeat that again, Mr. Hinchman?

Mr. HINCHMAN: Wehave absolutely no evidence to substantiate those rumors. None.

Ms. STATHIS: We wer told my the Canadian Embassy that their first converstion with Mr. Deaver about employment occurred on May 16th.

Rep. SLATTERY: Was that before or after Mr. Deaver left White House?

Ms. STATHIS: After Mr. Deaver left the White House.

Rep. SLATTERY: When did Mr. Deaver leave the White House?

Ms. STATHIS: May 10th.

Rep. BRYANT: Who told you that?

Ms. STATHIS: Pardon?

Rep. BRYANT: Who told you that?

Ms. STATHIS: The May 16th meeting?

Rep. BRYANT: You just said were told by whom?

Ms. STATHIS: By the ambassador to the United States from Canada.

Mr. HINCHMAN: Excuse me, Congressman. Do you mean, who told us of the rumors in the White House?

Rep. BRYANT: Yes

Mr. HINCHMAN: Mr. Stockman.

Rep. BYRANT: David Stockman?

Mr. HINCHMAN: Yes, sir.

Rep. BYRANT: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: The Deaver story is big news in Canada where interest centered on when the government tried to hire the American public relations expert. Over the weekend the Canadian ambassador to Washington said in a letter that "a light-hearted reference" was made to Deaver about working for Canada while he was still at the White House. And today in Canada's Parliament's question period attention was focused on the role played by Mr. -- or rather Dr. Fred Doucet, a close adviser to Prime Minister Mulroney.

MEMBER, Canadian Parliament: I would like to ask the secretary of state, was it Mr. Doucet of the prime minister's office who raised the question with Mr. Deaver concerning potential employment with the Canadian government?

Right Honorable JOE CLARK, Secretary of State for External Affairs, Canada: Mr. Speaker, I don't know who raised that question, but I know when it was raised. It was raised after Mr. Deaver left the White House.

SPEAKER: Brief supplementary?

MEMBER: Well, Mr. Speaker --

2nd MEMBER: How do you know that?

1st MEMBER: I'd like to ask a supplementary --

2nd MEMBER: We don't know who raised it.

1st MEMBER: -- to the honorable minister, when the ambassador from Canada to Washington referred to the fact that a senior official of this government raised the question of employment prior to Mr. Deaver leaving the White House, was that Mr. Doucet from the prime minister's office?

Sec. CLARK: Mr. Speaker, most things the honorable member does are inadvertent and so I assume that his twisting of the facts is inadvertent. The letter issued by Ambassador Gotlieb did indicate that a Canadian official in a light-hearted way made a comment to Mr. Deaver. That official was Dr. Doucet.

WOODRUFF: It also came out at today's Washington hearing that the oversight subcommittee is investigating possible improprieties by former White House legal counsel Fred Fielding, while Fielding was preparing an official interpretation of events for the investigation that would affect Deaver favorably, he was offered a job by Deaver's lobbying firm. Deaver himself is scheduled to testify before a closed session of the subcommittee this Friday.

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the CIA versus the press. We analyze the fallout from the recent threat that newspapers publishing leaks will be prosecuted. And we close with a documentary profile of an inventor some call a new Thomas Edison. CIA: Plugging the Leaks

LEHRER: Next, the case of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency versus the U.S. press. The charge? Illegally reporting on American intelligence methods and operations. CIA head William Casey is the main accuser. The accused are The Washington Post, The New York Times,The Washington Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Casey told the Justice Department he wanted the five criminally prosecuted for publishing certain leaked information concerning the Libyan bombing raid. The specific charge against the Post, for instance, centered on an April 15th front-page story which said, "The United States has the capability to intercept and decode Libya's sensitive diplomatic communications. Sources said the decoding was done by the National Security Agency whose code-breaking capability traditionally has been one of the most closely guarded intelligence secrets." Casey reportedly believes that violates a 1950 law called Section 798 designed to keep U.S. intelligence techniques secret. The Post says that law has never been used against news organizations, and besides, the story in question was merely a followup to what President Reagan said in his nationally televised address right after the raid.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN [April 14, 1986]: The evidence is now conclusive that the terrorist bombing of La Belle Discotheque was planned and executed under the direct orders of the Libyan regime. On March 25th, more than a week before the attack, orders were sent from Tripoli to the Libyan People's Bureau in East Berlin to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans, to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties. Libya's agents then planted the bomb. On April 4th, the People's Bureau alerted Tripoli that the attack would be carried out the following morning. The next day they reported back to Tripoli on the great success of their mission. Our evidence is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable. We have solid evidence about other attacks Qaddafi has planned against the United States installations and diplomats and even American tourists.

LEHRER: Nothing has happened yet except the exchange of Casey charges and the news organizations' defense, but many believe a formal criminal charge against a U.S. news organization may be coming soon, if not on the Libya story, another, because Casey's anger over the leaking of sensitive stories is shared by President Reagan and other high officials of his administration. We join the argument tonight with a former CIA official, a Washington Post reporter and a press scholar who has studied the anatomy of the Washington news leak. First, the former CIA man. He is George Carver, who spent 26 years with the agency serving, among other things, as special assistant to three CIA directors and as deputy for national intelligence. He is now a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Carver, you support the Casey position that news organizations should be prosecuted for certain stories?

GEORGE CARVER: Certain particular types of stories, Jim, that violate Section 798 of Title XVIII of the U.S. Code dealing with communications intelligence. I think that that violation of a law that's been on the statute books for 36 years should be prosecuted. Casey was firing a warning shot across various news organizations' bow. He has many admirable traits, of which subtlety and finesse are not always the chief and most notable ones. He was doing nothing that Justice Whizzer White, Byron White, didn't do in the Pentagon Papers case, when White put the newspapers clearly under notice about 798 and said they must face the consequences if they publish and he would have no difficulty sustaining convictions brought under that section of the U.S. Code.

LEHRER: Now, specificially it only deals with intelligence methods and techniques? Is that correct?

Mr. CARVER: Not, it's even more precise than that. If you have 20 seconds I can read the operative language.

LEHRER: I've got them.

Mr. CARVER: "Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States, for the benefit of any foreign government, or to the detriment of the United States, any classifed information concerning the nature, preparation or the use of any code or cipher or cryptographic system; design, construction, use, maintenance, repair of any cryptographic device; communications intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government or intelligence obtained by the process of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than 10 years. It's narrow, it's tightly drawn, but on that I think it's important.

LEHRER: Why is it important?

Mr. CARVER: It's important, Jim, because if you compromise communications intelligence you lose a facility that you cannot regain. The President spoke more than he should have. He should have stuck with his adjectives about direct, precise and irrefutable. The stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times would have told the Libyans and their East German advisers precisely which messages were compromised, and they have changed their procedures. It may be weeks, months or years before we ever get more information warning of attacks, and Americans may pay for that with their lives.

LEHRER: How? How would an American pay for this with a life?

Mr. CARVER: Because if we do not get a warning of a kind that we have gotten before and would have gotten if our ability to read certain types of Libyan communications were still intact, then lack of warning could easily cost people their lives.

LEHRER: What do you say to the news organizations who say, "Hey, wait a minute. You want to go after leaked information, go after the people who leak it, not the people who published it"?

Mr. CARVER: I think both should be gone after. I think people who leak in an unauthorized way should be fried in oil or something else should be done. But I think that you have a statute that was drawn to take care of and protect a particular kind of ultrasensitive ability; it specifically includes the word "publish" by congressional intent or design; it has been reviewed by the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco and by the Supreme Court, and I think it or the particular purpose for which it was drafted.

LEHRER: And against news organizations?

Mr. CARVER: Against news organizations. Who else publishes? And I think that the publication of communications intelligence which compromises our ability to get the same intelligence in the future is extremely damaging to the interest of us all and islp something that the government must protect.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Now a view from one of the newspapers named by William Casey, The Washington Post. Walter Pincus is that paper's national security correspondent.

Mr. Pincus, what do you think of the view George Carver just laid out?

WALTER PINCUS: Well, it's happened before and we've been through this before. I think in this particular instance this administration, like other administrations, has decided it wants to take a more active role and they are going to go about it publicly. But we have been threatened before, not just the Post but newspapers in general, for doing this. I'm slightly amused at this new approach of bringing up a piece of a statute that was passed 36 years ago that's never been enforced since. There have books written about communications intelligence that describe in exquisite detail what's gone on in the past and, as far as I know, no attempt has been made to move against any of those at the time they were brought out.

MacNEIL: Specifically Mr. Carver's point, which I suppose would resemble Mr. Casey's, that in this particular ultrasensitive area where publishing information about intelligence communications or the information that is the product of those communications compromises the ability to get similar information.

Mr. PINCUS: Well, it's a chicken and egg situation. The administration itself, through a series of its own spokesmen, made it abundantly clear, if not to the public at large, certainly to the Soviets and, through them, certainly to the Qaddafi government, that we were intercepting messages. Going back even before the President's statement, there was a statement by General Rogers, who spoke rather specifically about the types of information we had.

MacNEIL: He's the commander in Europe.

Mr. PINCUS: -- solid proof. The commander of NATO. I can't even remember that General Rogers had anything said to him about it, as far as I know. The President then takes it a step further. And what the Post was doing was really adding, as other people have, to the general background of this particular activity.

MacNEIL: What do you see as the press's responsibility in this area in deciding what to publish, in what it gets from officials who are leaking to the press, and what not to publish?

Mr. PINCUS: We do make decisions on those matters and there are things that we have not published. It is not difficult to make a decision, because it's obvious in many cases that things can hurt the public interest, and there are ways of avoiding doing some of the precise things that the President did to point to the fact that this kind of intelligence came through electronic intercepts. I think the press over the years, and I'm really talking going back 10 and 15 years, this is not a new kind of intelligence. It's been going on since the late '50s. So we've been dealing with it for a long time and I think we have withheld a great deal of information.

MacNEIL: Right now, the Post, according to the reports in your own newspaper, is sitting on another story which seems to be Mr. Casey's actual aim to prevent you from publishing. What is your decision at the moment? Is the Post going to publish that story or not?

Mr. PINCUS: Well, I think that's something you'll just have to wait and see.

MacNEIL: I see. Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Okay. Back to you, George Carver. You heard what Mr. Pincus said, that decisions are made all the time by news organizations not to print various stories. What's wrong with a news organization making that decision?

Mr. CARVER: Well, I think it's fine if it makes a decision not to print, but I think making a decision to print stories that could compromise communications intelligence techniques and capabilities is to my mind irresponsible.

LEHRER: Under no circumstances should any story, no matter what the prefaces have been to that particular story?

Mr. CARVER: Not if it -- Jim, I will take an extreme view. Not if it could do further compromise to this particular, narrowly defined type of intelligence capabilities. And I do not -- I hold the personal view that a newspaperman's rights under the First Amendment do not abrogate his orher responsibilities as a citizen, and I think that from a standpoint of a citizen, compromising our most delicate intelligence capabilities is a very irresponsible act.

LEHRER: How do you feel about that, Mr. Pincus? The differences in your role as a newspaperman versus that of a citizen?

Mr. PINCUS: I don't really see there's any difference. I think we act as journalists and citizens in the same way. I think journalists have a different kind of approach to some of these matters, but people like Mr. Carver avoid two specific things. One is by overlooking casually the idea that somebody did give us that information, somebody in this case who had access to what's supposed to be one of the most highly protected secrets around, spoke to a journalist. We didn't steal it, we didn't get it undercover; it was given to us. So somebody else made a decision, and I'm fascinated as this particular exercise is raised by this administration that they've been unable to sort of even make an attempt to indicate anywhere where this information came from. I'd like to point out one second thing about the so-called second story of the Post, and that is that it ought to be made clear to people that we, in determining what we're going to do with a lot of stories, go to the administration and tell them what we have and listen to what their arguments are, and we then do make a decision but we're not making them in the dark. And what's going on with this second story I think is a perfect example.

LEHRER: Is it your position, Mr. Carver, that the journalism organization should not make -- those kinds of decisions should be left to the government?

Mr. CARVER: I think that with respect to whether or not communications intelligence facilities and capabilities are going to be compromised, those decisions have to be left to the government because they are the only people competent to make them. Other decisions, no. Criticism, fine. But in this particular narrow field I think the government's right must be paramount.

LEHRER: Mr. Pincus?

Mr. PINCUS: I get down to these petty things because it's the way I write things. I'd be interested in knowing what specific capability was compromised.

Mr. CARVER: Two things, without compounding the damage. The story in the Post contained precise times of the dates the messages were transmitted that were intercepted, when they were intercepted, their precise length, and quoted from their text. The Libyans and their East German advisers would hence have known precisely which communications procedures were vulnerable and which codes and ciphers we could read. Those could be changed, as I believe they have been. And it may be a very long time indeed, as I said, before we get any further warnings of terrorist depredations. You know, that channel.

Mr. PINCUS: But you'd have to be a fool to believe that, given the President's statement, that they didn't realize that their codes had been broken. I mean, he talks about messages being sent immediately. They're not doing it by smokescreen.

Mr. CARVER: Walter, there's a lot of difference between knowing that codes have been broken and knowing precisely which messages have been compromised, and I really don't feel that it was necessary for Bob Woodward to do whatever damage the President himself had not already done.

LEHRER: Bob Woodward is the reporter for The Washington Post --

Mr. CARVER: Whose bylined front-page story is the story we are discussing.

Mr. PINCUS: And the source of that who you want to boil in oil, there is just no way to find that out?

Mr. CARVER: I'm a simple retired civil servant. I can't find him out. But if he is found I think that 798 should be applied to him, too, with its full rigor.

LEHRER: What about Mr. Pincus' earlier point that stories about this kind of spying by communications and electronic spying, there have been books written on it, exquisite detail about it; nothing new has come out.

Mr. CARVER: Well, that there had been books written in exquisite detail is true. Whether or not anything new has come out is another question. And I think we have been far too lenient in allowing people such as my friend Jim Bamford to publish books such as The Puzzle Palace --

LEHRER: That was a book specifically about NSA, the National Security Agency.

Mr. CARVER: -- specifically about the NSA.

LEHRER: Right.

Mr. CARVER: Which gave my friend Bobby Inman, who was then the director of NSA, a case of almost cardiac arrest, for understandable reasons. I think we are far too loose-lipped in this country, and as a result we compromise capabilities that we may one day desperately need and put American lives at risk in ways that I nd reprehensible.

LEHRER: Don't go away, gentlemen. Robin?

MacNEIL: Next we have the perspective of a political scientist who has done a study of press leaks in Washington. He is Stephen Hess, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Hess, you have actually classified leaks by the kinds of leaks there are. How is the press supposed to distinguish between leaks from officials that it should publish and leaks that it should not publish?

STEPHEN HESS: Well, I tend to think that the press doesn't give us much of a clue as to where the leak is coming from or why the person is leaking. The press seems to me to be interested solely in whether the leak is true or not. Now, there are some leaks that are plain ego leaks; in fact, I think that's the biggest category in Washington, people leaking information who are really saying in a sense, "I'm important because I have important information." There are other leaks that are straightforward policy leaks, other leaks that I call animus leaks that are aimed at an individual. They're to settle a grudge. There are leaks that are trial balloon leaks. You send something up and you see whether it's going to survive the publicity. I think that those leaks mostly tend to come from opponents of things because it's so much easier to shoot something down. And I think there are also whistleblower leaks. Those are the only leaks that come generally from civil servants. They get so frustrated with something that they go public on it. By and large leaks come from political appointees, and after awhile a president has to recognize that he can't keep attacking the faceless civil servants, that the leaks are coming from people that he appointed himself.

MacNEIL: What category would you put this leak into, the one that's caused the fuss with Mr. Casey and The Washington Post on the interruption of communications with Libyans in Berlin?

Mr. HESS: Well, I don't know, and the interesting thing about leaks is they are not mutually exclusive. They can have more than one reason --

MacNEIL: It could be an ego trip and a policy --

Mr. HESS: -- and a policy leak, or there can be sort of a daring reverse leak that looks as if it's going to do one thing but really doing another. A funny example like that also with Bob Woodward was several years ago when the Post printed the secret minutes of the secretary of state, Alexander Haig's, early-morning senior staff meetings in which, among other things, he called the British foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, a duplicitous bastard. Well now, we all assumed immediately that that was someone trying to do in Alexander Haig. We now tend to believe, at least it's the mythology in Washington, that it was leaked by someone who was friendly to Haig and he was indeed trying to show that Haig was still in charge. So it's very hard to really pin it down.

MacNEIL: In deciding how the national interest is served, in this particular case there were a lot of people calling -- I remember we asked questions on this program -- for more information to back up or give credibility to the administration's general claims that it had proof that the Libyans were involved.

Mr. HESS: Yeah, I think Mr. Carver is right in the case of this leak being -- he calls it a warning shot, I might call it a bluff. I think if you go after by name five major news organizations you're really not serious about prosecuting. If you were, you'd use a rifle and not a shotgun.

MacNEIL: Well, in the system, as the American system works, who is the better judge of what should be published, the press or the government?

Mr. HESS: Well, if you looked at most administrations you would find that they are more leaked for than against. They of course call it a plant. If it's an authorized leak it becomes a plant. But in general if we had a way of doing away with all leaks, I think it would be the President who would be by far hurt the mojFst by that practice.

MacNEIL: Mr. Hess, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Do you agree with that, George Carver, that most leaks are in fact authorized?

Mr. CARVER: Some of them certainly are, but I would not want to say that most of them are. And most of them, I think, come from people who are either on ego trips or trying to sabotage policies or are flattered by people in the press. You know, "You're not important enough to know about this," "Of course I'm important enough; let me explain to you how important I am." It's the oldest investigative technique in the government business.

LEHRER: George Carver, you were involved in this business for 26 years. When you read this story, the story we're talking about, the April 15th story in The Washington Post -- and the other ones, too -- it must have occurred to you, "Hey, I bet it was Sammy Sue or Billy Bob or a type who leaked that story." Who would have had a motivation for leaking that story?

Mr. CARVER: I don't know, but my suspicions instantly riveted on someone fairly senior, possibly on the White House staff, who didn't realize how much damage he or she could have been doing. I think that any professional intelligence officer, if he didn't have more sense than to do that, then he has no business drawing the government's money.

LEHRER: Walter Pincus, can you characterize the type of person who leaks this kind of information, intelligence information? Do they fall into all of Steve Hess's categories or mostly ego trippers, or what?

Mr. PINCUS: No, they fall into different categories. But when you get this specific my guess is that it clearly was -- and I don't know. My guess is that it clearly was somebody who had the information officially. If you look back at the time it came out, it came out at a time, as Steve has said, that they were trying to back up, there were beginning to be questions raised about why we had done it, and it fit into that kind of category. Also, I think I have to remind everybody, there was no talk about a violation of any security when the story came out. The story has only come out in connection with Mr. Casey raising the issue of the second story.

Mr. CARVER: Walter, that's not quite true. There's been a great deal of seething in the government which finally erupted.

Mr. PINCUS: But there was seething in the government prior to the President making his announcement. There was a fight within the administration, with the intelligence people, as they usually do and as you do, making a good case for keeping it secret. They lost. The President said more than he was supposed to say, and that was a calculated decision, and this one just took it one step further.

Mr. CARVER: And then, Jim, I think people on his staff wanted to show how able we were and thought they were doing him and the U.S. intelligence community a favor, but they were dead wrong.

LEHRER: All right, then why go after these five news organizations for a White House staffer who was --

Mr. CARVER: Well, I think you should also, if it is a White House staffer, go after him. You should go -- the old French practice, you know, the old French comment about the English who occasionally hang an admiral to encourage the others is, I think, necessary, and I think here a couple of admirals both inside and outside the government probably ought to be hung.

LEHRER: Steve Hess, what does history say about attempts of administrations to close leaks by whatever techniques?

Mr. HESS: They always fail. And every administration says, "We're the most leaked-against in history," and every administration is right. There is simply more and more classified documents today. There are more and more duplicating machines today. There are more and more government officials who have access to classified information than ever before. There are more and more journalists in Washington, and there are going to be more and more leaks. And to my way of thinking there really has never been a successful way of dealing with the news organizations. I tend to agree with, I believe, Walter Pincus earlier, the way you get at it is you go after the person in the government. And since these are the President's own people who do the leaking, presidents should consider this more carefully in terms of who they choose to represent them.

LEHRER: Walter Pincus, does even the threat of criminal prosecution have an effect on the way The Washington Post and other news organizations will function on intelligence type information like this?

Mr. PINCUS: One, I don't think so. Two, I hope not. Three, I don't think we'll change our system. I think we do weigh what we do.

LEHRER: Do you think a few criminal prosecutions would be good for the press, right, George Carver?

Mr. CARVER: I think a few focused on this particular topic would be salutary for the press and for the country; not general stopping of criticism but protecting communications intelligence, on which our survival could easily depend.

LEHRER: Do you think Steve Hess is right, that they're really bluffing, though? Do you think they really mean it this time?

Mr. CARVER: Well, I think as of today they mean it. The Justice Department would have to decide to prosecute if another story is published. There'd be a lot of discussion and it might come to naught. But I think that certainly Mr. Casey means it and the director of the National Security Agency means it, and I can well understand why.

LEHRER: All right, George Carver, Walter Pincus, Steve Hess, thank you very much. High-Tech Inventor

MacNEIL: Finally tonight we profile a man many are calling a modern-day Thomas Edison. His inventions have helped the blind to read and enabled many to hear a new kind of music. His name is Raymond Kurzweil, and our profile is by Paul Solman of public station WBGH in Boston.

PAUL SOLMAN [voice-over]: Stevie Wonder doing corporate PR for a promising new product.

STEVIE WONDER, musician: Now, this is -- today was my first time looking at this and already I've been impressed.

SOLMAN [voice-over]: The invention, the Kurzweil 250, is an electronic musicmaker that mimics a variety of instruments and allows a composer to be a one-man band. The rock star still draws the crowd here, but the man behind the event is this fellow, Raymond Kurzweil. He may seem a little short on charisma compared to your average media personality, but increasingly these past few years America has become infatuated with Raymond Kurzweil's brand of celebrity. Kurzweil is an entrepreneur and has become a high-tech hero despite his lack of luster. To understand his heroics, you have to back up a few years. Back before the days when Stevie Wonder was just becoming a mature musician; back to MIT in the 1960s where Ray Kurzweil, the undergraduate entrepreneur, was simply out of tune with the times.

AARON KLEINER, Kurzweil Music Systems: It was very hard to keep track of him because he was off doing businesses. I mean, everybody else was off either studying or partying, and he was creating companies. He created this computer matching company that matched high school students to colleges while he was at MIT.

SOLMAN [voice-over]: Which he sold to the Harcourt Brace publishing company for $100,000 in 1968.

Mr. KLEINER: And so he had that entrepreneurial spirit, you know, that says you can start things and do things with your own resources.

SOLMAN: [voice-over]: And so the entrepreneur graduated to a project worthy of his ambition. The climate for business was beginning to brighten and America was starting to notice its entrepreneurial efforts.

WALTER CRONKITE, anchorman [January 13, 1976]: In Cambridge, Massachusetts, today a remarkable computer displayed its talent for helping the blind acquire knowledge in a new way.

JIM KILPATRICK, CBS News [voice-over]: It may sound strange to most ears, but it is a machine actually reading a typed copy of the Preamble to the Constitution.

SOLMAN: The key to the magic reading machine was Kurzweil's ability to teach computers to recognize abstract patterns such as a letter in the alphabet. For instance, what makes an a an a?

RAYMOND KURZWEIL, inventor: The fact that an a has what we call a loop, which is a closed white region surrounded by black, it has an east-south and west-south loop extension, it has a concave region on the south. These are abstractions. It doesn't take a high level of intelligence to make those abstractions. It takes a low level of intelligence, and that's what computers are capable of today.

SOLMAN: A low level of intelligence but a high level of cash. And that's why this is as much a business story as a science story. Ray Kurzweil's reading machine was from the outset a technological marvel, but the question was and remains, can it pass the test of the marketplace? The ability to read different typefaces requires enormous computer power and that power is expensive. At $30,000 a machine, you pretty much have to be rock star to afford one.

Mr. WONDER: To know that I could actually read a book, a printed page, without the assistance of a sighted person, I mean, that's dream time. It's amazing.

SOLMAN [voice-over]: The Xerox Corporation thought it was also a real business opportunity. Xerox was looking to diversify beyond copiers and into the growing market for automated office systems. You see, Kurzweil's technology could not only read text for the blind, but could also read text for commercial office systems. Xerox was betting that it could transform the technology into a product that would more than pay for itself.

NARRATOR, Xerox TV commercial: The 40fi45 laser CP operates at 10 times the speed of a daisywheel printer.

SOLMAN [voice-over]: So in 1980, although Kurzweil Computer Products had yet to make a dime in profits, Xerox bought the company for several million dollars and tried to exploit the technology and turn it into a moneymaker. The Xerox deal made Ray Kurzweil a wealthy man, but like most entrepreneurs he was far too motivated, far too driven to find much appeal in a life of leisure. Instead he stayed on part time at Xerox and on his own soon cooked up another remarkable invention, namely, the Kurzweil 250, which brings us back to Stevie Wonder.

Mr. WONDER: Can you all hear that bass drum there?

Mr. KURZWEIL: I did have a conversation with Stevie Wonder which sort of sparked the idea. He was describing how he had these two different worlds of musical instruments. On the one hand he had acoustic, 19th-century-like instruments, pianos, violins, and so forth, that created deep, rich, complex sounds that are gratifying, musically satisfying, but you couldn't do much with them. You can't modify those sounds, you can't layer them, you can't do very much with them. Then there was the electronic world where you had a fantastic array of controls that gives you artistic control over the process. You can modify sounds, manipulate them in a wide variety of ways, so wouldn't it be worthwhile if we could combine these two worlds, have rich complex sounds like piano, human voice, and then be able to modify them and control them through electronic means, get the best of both worlds.

SOLMAN: Armed with a new idea, Kurzweil was off and running again. For starters he needed investors to fund a costly research and development phase, and although Xerox still hadn't seen any return on its investment in the reading machine or the commercial text scanner, Kurzweil had no difficulty attracting money. It sounds so seductive, after all. The highest technology put to the highest uses, a mass market, the electronic revolution and all that. Ray Kurzweil could be the next Thomas Edison, right?

Mr. KLEINER: People say, "Hey, when Ray says he can do something there's a good chance he can do it, even if it's seemingly impossible." So that attracts people. People want to get involved in that kind of process.

RANDY STERN, Kurzweil Computer Products: I think part of being an entrepreneur, part of being able to convince people of things is to be so optimistic that people don't really want to say no and break your optimism. I think that's part of his style, is to be optimistic.

SOLMAN [voice-over]: And, presto, two years later, Stevie Wonder's inner vision has become Ray Kurzweil's reality.

Mr. KURZWEIL: There are a million different ways you can play sound simultaneously. A simple way is simply to split the keyboard and put different instruments on different parts of it. Why don't you play a split between acoustic bass and the piano? [demonstration]

SOLMAN [voice-over]: No question the machine sounds great, in every respect but one, its price. Today the Kurzweil synthesize retails for about $13,000, and it has serious competition from synthesizers that can do many of the same things cheaper. But Kurzweil appears undaunted. He's launched yet another risky business, again in the field of pattern recognition. It's the voice-actvated typewriter. You talk, the machine writes. Big money is behind it; the business potential is staggering; it has received publicity galore. And yet, after 3 years of development, how many words can it recognize? About 1,000, the vocabulary of a small child. Clearly this machine too has miles to go before it becomes a breadwinner. The basic business issue confronting the voice-activiated typewriter is the same as for Kurzweil's other machines. Will computer power become cheap enough soon enough, and can Kurzweil exploit it efficiently enough to be able to sell at a price people are willing to pay with enough left over to keep his businesses running, his investors happy and his products ahead of the competition?

[on camera] Now, I hate to be the heavy here, but for all the hoopla it's just not clear that the Ray Kurzweil story will end on a happy note. It took scientific genius to conceive of this and his other machines, and it took business genius to get them off and running. The genius is Ray Kurzweil, an honorable entrepreneur doing well and doing good; in short, a walking billboard for the free enterprise system. The problem is, that system demands something more, namely, profits. And so far only one of Kurzweil's machines, the electronic text scanner, has made any. The rest, including this one, are still in the red. Kind of reminds you of the skeptic who said the road to ruin is paved with good inventions. Now, if Kurzweil does turn the corner, then he and his investors will be amply rewarded for the risks they took. Jobs will have been created, taxes paid, and most important of all, perhaps, you won't have to be a Stevie Wonder to afford one of these. But if Ray Kurzweil fails, well, then, it's back to the drawing board, which is in fact where most entrepreneurs wind up. And that's the point of our story. Our current romance with entrepreneurship tends to obscure the precariousness of any business venture. The truth is that in our economy a machine like this has got to make more than music.

MacNEIL: Tomorrow one of Raymond Kurzweil's companies, called Kurzweil Music Systems, hold its first shareholders meeting. The company started selling stock in December and shares now trade for about $6.

LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Monday. The Soviet Union said six more people had died from burns and radiation suffered in the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which presumably brought the death toll to eight. The Moscow announcement said another 35 persons remained in grave condition. An official of the General Accounting Office said it appears there is evidence former White House official Michael Deaver may have violated federal conflict of interest laws in his representation of Canada after leaving the White House. And Libya expelled 36 Western European diplomats in retaliation for similar action against its officials. Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.