Samuel L. Morison and the Government Crackdown on the Leaking of Classified Information

Abstract

In July 1984, Samuel Loring Morison took several satellite photos from the desk of a colleague at the Naval Intelligence Support Center, clipped off the secret classification, and sent the photos to a British military magazine. The magazine, Jane's Defence Weekly, published the photos which showed the Soviet Union's first nuclearpowered aircraft carrier under construction in a shipyard on the Black Sea. Morison was arrested, charged with espionage and theft, and convicted. He served eight months of a two-year sentence before he was paroled. Morison was the first person convicted under U.S. espionage laws for releasing classified information to the news media. Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo were tried under the same laws for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1970. But the case against Ellsberg and Russo was dismissed because of government misconduct after it was revealed that people working for the government had broken into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. The purpose of this study is to answer the following research question: What circumstances led to the first successful prosecution for leaking to the news media under the Espionage Act? This article adds to our understanding of the prosecution of Morison by examining internal Justice Department memos obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, some of them previously classified as secret. The article also draws upon the Willard Report, an internal government document prepared by an interdepartmental team appointed to find ways to stop leaks of classified information. Research has tended to focus on the implications of the Morison case for the news media and not on the circumstances leading to Morison's prosecution. Eberhard discussed the case in some detail and concluded that it was basically a minor skirmish in the continuing war over secrecy between the government and the news media.1 Teeter and Le Duc stated that the case was important because it marked the first use of the Espionage Act to prosecute someone for leaking information to the media.2 Burkholder suggested that much of the press was slow to realize the significance of the Morison case for itself and for the public as a whole. 3 In an article in Harper's, Philip Weiss argued that the case was a quiet coup that gave the federal government a powerful weapon to use against leakers.4 Curry suggested that the implications of the case were enormous because it gave the executive branch almost total control over what information is released to the public.5 On August 8, 1984, a satellite photo of a nuclear aircraft carrier under construction in a Soviet shipyard appeared in the Washington Post. The same photo, along with two others, appeared in the August 11 issue of the British magazine Jane's Defence Weekly. At about the same time, one or more of these photos appeared in the New York Times and on the evening newscasts of the three major television networks. The photos showed a 75,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier being constructed in two large sections at the Nikolaiev 444 shipyard on the Black Sea.6 The photos in Jane's Defence Weekly reveal a level of detail that comes as a surprise to viewers accustomed to seeing previous satellite photos in the news media. Two of the photos were taken from a satellite at an oblique angle, and they clearly show large gantry cranes rising above the carrier in its dock at the shipyard. Captions published with the photos point out that the carrier was being built in two sections because it was too large to fit in the standard shipyard dock. The captions report some interpretation of the photos by analysts, including the statement that the carrier flight deck amidship appears to have been completed. Investigators for the U.S. Government identified the photos as classified photographs assigned to the Naval Intelligence Command for analysis and reported as missing on July 30, 1984. Samuel L. …