
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 2, 1991                   TAG: 9103040277
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SPOOKS ON SPOT/ OKLAHOMAN SET TO POP SECRECY LID

THE TACTIC has worked well for them, so Republicans miss few opportunities to depict Democrats as soft on national security. That seemed behind the unsuccessful effort recently by GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee to require that all the group's members take an oath not to reveal any government secrets.

Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Pa., said the secrecy oath would "set a good example" for the defense and intelligence community in the national capital. He and other members of Congress are free, of course, to set such an example on their own, for whatever good it may do the cause of security. But the real target here was House Speaker Tom Foley's appointments to the committee, which Republicans reportedly considered too liberal.

They have a bigger target than usual, for among the appointed was Rep. Ron Dellums. This 10-term California Democrat has embraced many radical causes and expressed admiration for a number of Third World communists, including Fidel Castro. He is not a friend of the intelligence community, although he is not known to have revealed any truly sensitive information. If Foley erred in putting him on the committee, an oath is unlikely to seal his lips.

In fact, the cause of ironbound secrecy may be in greater jeopardy from a conservative who is the committee's new chairman. Dave McCurdy, D-Okla., has supported such causes as aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. Yet the 40-year-old lawyer talks tough about what he will demand from the intelligence officials who appear before the panel - mainly, straight answers.

As acting chairman in recent weeks, McCurdy announced that every witness would be sworn in - a counter, he said, to the time-honored practice of U.S. intelligence officers' avoiding direct replies and dealing in generalities. The spooks would thus be hoist on the GOP's petard - not precisely the Republicans' intention.

McCurdy also has said his first set of hearings will be devoted to reorganizing the entire intelligence community, so as to prepare it for the demands of a post-Cold War world. That can be done, he opines, even in the newly secretive atmosphere created by the Gulf War.

He expects William Webster, Central Intelligence director, to resist change. "I am going to give him an opportunity to respond. If he doesn't, I will take that as an opportunity to make the debate more public."

As a freshman on the Armed Services Committee in the early 1980s, the Oklahoman criticized the Pentagon's loose management and said Congress wasn't asking the military enough questions. In contrast with some of Dellums' statements, McCurdy believes the intelligence community has a useful role to play and that it needs most to shape up. It can play that role more effectively if it keeps fewer, not more, secrets from the American people. Our own freedoms will be safer for that, too.

by CNB