There’s No Holding Back This Tide

The administration’s thunderous crusade against the fine old political art of leaking is a strategy born of desperation rather than of any realistic notion of actually discovering the covertly talkative rascals.

President Clinton urgently needs to change the subject from Monica Lewinsky and sexual dalliance to what the White House calls the operating excesses of independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr and his allies.

As a temporary distraction, the officious pursuit of anonymous leakers has its public relations uses. It even throws up some badly needed legal dust about the sin of intimidating witnesses. Harrumph, harrumph.

Never mind the fact that the administration itself is renowned for selectively dribbling out gossipy information to suit its own purposes. This current spin campaign at least gives the president’s supporters something else to talk about.

None of this is a surprise. The ship of state, it has been said, is the only boat that leaks mainly from the top, icebergs tending to come at boats sideways.

However, as a practical matter, history indicates that government efforts to root out the evils of unofficial chatter to the press about backstage events is an exercise in futility.

Clinton’s lawyers may be genuinely outraged at premature and potentially slanted accounts of testimony given behind closed doors. But they know perfectly well that the legendary Washington sieve is a long political tradition that is generally happily tolerated.

Insofar as anyone can remember, no culprit has ever been brought to justice, let alone exposed, for telling tales out of school to media folk. The bipartisan habit serves too many people, and too many causes, too well.

Confidentiality between source and recipient is the grease of the political wheel, like it or not.

Regularly, government investigations are launched by outraged officials who find themselves the target of leaks rather than in control of them. This has been going on for a long time, and it has more to do with politics than with supposed legal violations, such as those now being cited by Clinton’s lawyers.

Until now, the most recent highly charged leak controversy was the unauthorized disclosure of a secret confession by then Oklahoma University law professor Anita Hill. She told Senate committee investigators in 1991 that she had been sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas when they worked together years earlier. She had testified only on the condition of confidentiality, but the disclosure trapped her into going public, embarrassing Thomas and his mentor, President Bush, and jeopardizing but not blocking the appointment.

The Senate, propelled by Republican anger, launched an official search-and-destroy mission against the evil leaker who eventually cost taxpayers $550,000. Predictably, it never established the source of the leak.

President Ronald Reagan once complained about being “up to my kiester” in leaks, particularly one that disclosed a pending naval bombardment of guerrilla positions in Lebanon. Several FBI investigations never turned up the source.

President Richard Nixon established the infamous “plumbers” unit in the White House primarily to plug leaks. The agents wiretapped associates and friends in the cause of finding out who was talking to whom. Mostly the taps turned up prolonged, politically dangerous negotiations for tennis dates.

President Jimmy Carter wrote in his memoirs that he considered opening Cabinet meetings to the press but retreated when members said they couldn’t speak freely. He found that most of what went on was reported anyway, “often in a highly distorted form.”

Leaks are a two-way proposition. Anyone with information, an ax to grind and access can play. Whistle-blowing by well-intentioned officials concerned about what they think is official corruption is one motivation. This can be healthy for the nation, or not. It depends.

Discrediting political opponents is another, less noble motive. The simple goal is to get out your own version in the most favorable way. This, too, has its upside and downside.

The Clinton White House routinely leaked documents subpoenaed by the GOP-controlled Senate campaign finance probe committee in advance of that committee’s hearings last year so that the information disclosed would be dismissed as old news.

Presidents themselves have been prone to passing along helpful tidbits to the press, sometimes without vile motivation. President John F. Kennedy once asked me where I had learned in advance his pending choice of a Cabinet nominee. I did not betray any journalistic principle by reminding him that he had told me himself in the course of a conversation about other things a few days before.

The finger-pointing over leaks is as traditional as the leaks themselves. It goes on now, as Starr’s friends contend the White House knows things that are being leaked and could be behind the present gossip about witness testimony to discredit the probers. The White House, of course, sees it otherwise. And the only folks who really know, the sources and their recipients, won’t talk.