Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1951-09-30
Security and Embarrassment

About four years ago an inter departmental
committee distributed among Government agen-
cies proposed guide for the classification of
secret or confidential information, involving
security, which should not be released to the
public.
This plan had not received the Presidents
approval and he seems not to have known about
it. When an enterprising Washington corre-
spondent, Nat S. Finney, now editorial editor of
the Minneapolis Star, exposed the existence OF
such circular it was disclainfed by the White
House MIR. Finney won the Clapper journalistic
prize for his revelations. 1t fell to MIR. Truman
to make the presentation. which he did, referring,
however, to Mr.. Finney's having demolished a
straw man."
The Washington Star had furnished evidence
that the plan had more substance than straw,
however. For The Star revealed the Veterans
Administration had already put the tentative
plan into effect, unknown to General Bradley,
who was then Veterans Administrator One of
the provisions of this plan forbade the release
of papers which would cause administrative
embarrassment or difficulty" to the Veterans
administration The publicity on the plan killed
it and it was rescnded.
That incident is recalled by the short-lived
directive sent out to employees of the Office of
Price Sterilization last week and promptly with
drawn on orders of President Truman The
directive instructed employees OF OPS to with
hold information that might prove embarrassing
to the OPS"
This background is enough to explain the
skepticism, especially among newspapermen,
over the Presidents executive order last week
establishing uniform standards in Government
agencies for classifying and protecting security
information.
The order itself is carefully drawn and its
real purpose is sound There is some informa-
ton, especially in scientific weapon development
and related fields, which should not become
public. For its publication could concevably,
be prejudicial to the security of the country.
What the President is trying to do is to estab-
fish uniform procedure for classifying this
type OF material and to get some order into what
is now rather chaotic system.
The danger is that the intent of the Pres
ident's order will be misunderstood It is
instructive in Government to- suppress any
information that can be embarrassing" to the
officials involved. Yet it is often the case that
such information is precisely what the public
should be told. One reason that the President
so quickly jumped on the OPS for its ill-advised
circular was his fear that this ban on "em-
barrassing" information would be confused with
his own executive order. Fer the President has
correctly emphasized that his order deals only
with information which affects national security,
and he has expressed the hope that the effect of
his order, if correctly carried out, will be to
release more, rather than less, information a
Administration of the Presidents order is
left pretty much to the heads of the Government
agencies. There is no overall supervision. But
newspapermen must be more vigilant than ever
to prevent, by their exposure, the bottling up of
information by Government which has no rela-
tionship to national security The OPS has
given an excellent illustration of what can
happen in any Government agency.