Bill Clinton Pardoned Nat'l Security Leaker

No wonder 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been silent as a churchmouse about Karl Rove while her Democratic colleagues call for his prosecution for leaking classified information about CIA employee Valerie Plame.

Turns out - in the only case in U.S. history of a person successfully prosecuted for leaking classified information to the press - Hillary's husband pardoned the guilty party.

On January 20, 2001, President Clinton pardoned Samuel Loring Morison, a civilian analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence. In 1984, Morison had been convicted of providing classified satellite photos of an under-construction Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Britain's Jane's Defense Weekly.

"We said we were obviously opposed -- it was a vigorous 'Hell, no," one senior intelligence official told the Washington Post at the time. "We think . . . giving pardons to people who are convicted of doing that sends the wrong signal to people who are currently entrusted with classified information."

Morison is the only person ever successfully prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, the law invoked by Democrats who want to nail Rove after it became clear that he didn't violate the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

But it's going to be difficult for Dems to feign national security outrage over Plame's outing when the husband of their party's presidential frontrunner let an actual convicted leaker off the hook.

Last week, when Sen. John Kerry called for Mr. Rove to be fired with Hillary standing by his side, she nodded silently. When reporters asked her what she thought of the alleged Rove outrage, she offered only, "I'm nodding."

Sickening.

Democrats obviously have no problem with people leaking classified information unless they think they are Republicans!

Check this out...

FAS Note: The Department of Justice recently released this 1998 letter sent by Senator Daniel P. Moynihan to the President. The letter was written in support of a pardon for Samuel L. Morison, the only individual ever convicted for "leaking" classified information to the news media. On January 20, 2001 President Clinton pardoned Mr. Morison.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan
United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

September 29, 1998

The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I write in my latent capacity as chairman of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. In the course of our enquiry it gradually emerged that for all the millions of secrets we create each year we have virtually no law concerning unauthorized disclosure. (The exception being matters covered by the Atomic Energy Act.) We remarked with specific attention to the fact that in the eighty-one years since the enactment of the Espionage Act of 1917, only one person has ever been convicted of passing on classified information (page A-62 of the Commission Report). That person, Samuel Loring Morison, had passed on classified photographs to the British publication Jane's Defence Weekly. The selective action against Mr. Morison appears capricious at best.

The Espionage Act has always been used to prosecute spies, those passing information to foreign powers. The exceptions are exceptional. President Nixon sought the prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo for leaking the Pentagon Papers. Their cases were dismissed. But the Reagan administration successfully prosecuted Mr. Morison.

What is remarkable is not the crime, but that he is the only one convicted of an activity which has become a routine aspect of government life: leaking information to the press in order to bring pressure to bear on a policy question.

As President Kennedy has said, "the ship of state leaks from the top." An evenhanded prosecution of leakers could imperil an entire administration. If ever there were to be widespread action taken, it would significantly hamper the ability of the press to function.

The desire for press censorship arises periodically in our republic. It was there in 1917, when Woodrow Wilson asked the Congress to take up what would become the Espionage Act. In his April 2, 1917 address to a joint session of Congress in which he asked for a declaration of war against Germany, Wilson cited spying as an example of the hostile intent of the "Prussian autocracy." On the same day an espionage bill, based on a draft by Assistant Attorney General Charles Warren, was introduced in the House. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate the following day.

It was Wilson's intention that the bill contain a provision which amounted to prior restraint of the press. The provision was in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, but the Senate voted to strike the provision. Henry Cabot Lodge, who originally supported the provision but later thought better of it, announced on the Senate floor that it would be better not to have any bill at all than to allow press censorship (Congressional Record 55, pt. 3: p. 2262, May 14, 1917). President Wilson was undeterred. He wrote a letter to Edwin Yates Webb of North Carolina, the Democratic chairman of the House Conferees, in which he stated "authority to exercise censorship over the Press to the extent that that censorship is embodied in the recent action of the House of Representatives is absolutely necessary to the public safety." To no avail. An espionage act was agreed to, without the censorship provision, and on June 15, 1917, President Wilson signed it into law.

Press censorship has been proposed since then, but never adopted. Ironically, we now have in Samuel Loring Morison a man who has been convicted for leaking information, while so many real spies are discovered but never prosecuted. Begin with the VENONA messages, Soviet spy cables intercepted during World War II and decrypted by the U.S. Army beginning in December 1946. VENONA exposed a network of Soviet agents operating in the United States, including at Los Alamos. Spies, such as Theodore Alvin Hall, who gave away our most sensitive atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were discovered, yet never prosecuted.

What a different experience from that of Samuel Loring Morison. I have been told, though I do not know it to be true, that his rank - - not too high, not too low - - was a consideration in the decision to seek prosecution. I would hope that in your review of Mr. Morison's application for a pardon you reflect not simply on the relevant law, but the erratic application of that law and the anomaly of this singular conviction in eighty-one years.

Respectfully,

[signed]
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

cc: The Pardon Attorney

Morison: Consulting
Led to Espionage

Samuel Loring Morison worked at the Naval Intelligence Support Center in Suitland, Md., from 1974 to 1984. The grandson of the famous naval historian Samuel Elliot Morison, he was an intelligence analyst specializing in Soviet amphibious and mine-laying vessels.

At the same time, Morison earned $5,000 per year as a part-time contributor and editor of the American section of Jane's Fighting Ships, an annual reference work on the world's navies published in England. There were repeated complaints about Morison using office time and facilities to do his work for Jane's and warnings to him about conflict of interest between the jobs.

In 1984, conflicts with his supervisors led Morison to seek a full-time position with Jane's in London. At this time, he began overstepping the boundary of permissible information that could be sent to Jane's. The case came to a head when Morison took three classified photographs from a neighboring desk. These were aerial surveillance photographs showing construction of the first Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The photographs were missed. Soon thereafter, they appeared in Jane's Defence Weekly and were traced back to Morison.

Morison was motivated by a desire to curry favor with Jane's to increase his chances of being offered a job. He also had a political motive for passing classified information to the media -- to influence American public opinion in favor of a stronger defense posture. He believed that the new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier would transform Soviet capabilities, and that "if the American people knew what the Soviets were doing, they would increase the defense budget." 1

Morison was sentenced to two years in prison for espionage and theft of government property. As a result of the Morison case, policy guidelines for adjudicating security clearances were changed to include consideration of outside activities that present potential conflict of interest.

Damming a leak; photo filcher found guilty. (Samuel Loring Morison)

«Read the Full Article, Sign up today»

Time Time; 10/28/1985

When Samuel Loring Morison, a ship analyst at the U.S. Naval Intelligence Support Center in Suitland, Md., noticed three photos of a Soviet aircraft carrier lying on a colleague's desk, he thought they might be of interest to Jane's Defense Weekly, a British magazine. Morison, a part-time editor of a sister publication, filched the photos, which had been taken by an American KH-11 satellite, clipped the "Secret" markings off the corners and mailed the pictures to London.

Such disclosures are often called leaks, but to a Government plagued by spy scandals, Morison's action ...

******

U.S. Supreme Court
MORISON v. U.S , 486 U.S. 1306 (1988)

486 U.S. 1306

Samuel Loring MORISON
v.
UNITED STATES.
No. A-896.

June 2, 1988.

Chief Justice REHNQUIST, Circuit Justice.

Samuel Loring Morison was convicted in the District Court of two counts each of espionage, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 793(d), (e), and theft of Government property, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 641. His conviction was affirmed on appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 844 F.2d 1057 (1988), and he now asks that he be allowed to remain free on bond pending the consideration of his yet-to-be- filed petition for writ of certiorari. The statutory standard for determining whether a convicted defendant is entitled to be released pending a certiorari petition is clearly set out in 18 U.S.C. 3143(b)( 1982 ed., Supp. IV), and the only real issue in this application is whether Morison's appeal "raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal, an order for a new trial, or a sentence that does not include a term of imprisonment." I agree with the courts below, however, that regardless of whether Morison has raised a "substantial question" with respect to the propriety of his conviction under the Espionage Act, he has not done so with respect to his conviction for theft of Government property under 641. Because Morison has not shown that his appeal is "likely to result in reversal" with respect to all the counts for which imprisonment was imposed, see United [486 U.S. 1306 , 1307] States v. Bayko, 774 F.2d 516, 522 (CA1 1985), his application is denied.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.