NEWSWATCH by Thomas Griffith: A Sinking Feeling About Leaks

Newswatch

Already the press is getting used to the way the President-elect—at least before taking office—stays in seclusion, says nothing or prudently contents himself with brief, noncommittal, cameo appearances. In his silence, others, perhaps hoping to speak for him or eager to influence him, fill the gap. The sounds to be heard all over Washington are of trial balloons collapsing and the steady drizzle of leaks.

Much of the press lives by leaks these days, but it pays a price for them that it may not want to think about. With increased frequency, the New York Times's front page quotes from documents "made available to the Times." By whom? Not stated. That was part of the bargain. Motivated by what? Also not stated. Last week one such leak created a damaging flap around Illinois' Charles Percy, who is first in line to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After more than nine hours of talks with the highest Soviet leaders in Moscow, Percy predicted that the two nations would soon be discussing arms control again. Brezhnev and Reagan, he said, were sending "signals to each other ... in a sense through me." But then, to contradict such euphoria, "parts" of highly classified cables to the State Department from Ambassador to Moscow Thomas Watson, who had sat in on the talks, were "made available to the New York Times." The cables made the Soviets seem less eager to resume SALT. They added the piquant news that Percy told the Soviets he favored a separate Palestinian state, headed by Yasser Arafat. That did it. The Reagan people denied that Percy spoke for anyone but himself.

Who would have reason to embarrass Percy in this fashion? And why? The Times was not about to tell its readers. But Times Reporter Bernard Weinraub was more scrupulous than journalists usually are in such cases. He indicated that the leak had not come from Ambassador Watson or the State Department, but from the Republican transition team, some of whose members ardently oppose SALT. Weinraub even listed six members of the transition team most dismayed by Percy's performance. Two days later the Washington Star identified one of the six—John Carbaugh, an aide to North Carolina's archconservative Senator Jesse Helms—as the leaker. In high dudgeon, Carbaugh demanded a lie detector test. The State Department asked the FBI last week to investigate the leak, after both Percy and Helms separately called for an inquiry. Conspiratorial types, however, suspect that Helms, who will be the second ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, is anxious to cut Percy down.