Semon Es EDITORIAL Sources Every staff writer on every newspaper has, at one time or another, been asked to reveal names of those who supplied him with information. Most of us say: ‘“‘Sorry, I can’t reveal my source’’---and that’s the end of it. However, in recent months, two reporters have been subjected to imprisonment because they re- fused to name sources. New Jersey newspaperman Peter J. Bridge served 21 days in jail in October. Subpoenaed by a New Jersey grand jury, he re- fused to answer questions about a story he wrote concerning a $10,000 bribe offered to a housing au- thority commissioner. Mr. Bridge confirmed the contents of his story to the grand jury but would not answer further questions. In California, William T. Farr is still incarcerated. In November he was given an open-end sentence for contempt of court when he refused to disclose his sources for an ar- ticle on the Charles Manson trial in 1970. His open- end sentence means the judge can keep Mr. Farr in prison for the rest of his life---if the judge so chooses. In 1971 the Supreme Court held that a reporter may NOT refuse to appear before a grand jury to answer questions about the sources of his informa- tion. We believe this is a wrong decision by the Supreme Court. Decisions to jail reporters can eventually deplete the confidential sources on which they rely to fulfill their responsibility to the public. With these jailings in mind, it was gratifying to us to read of a public poll taken recently. Of the adults interviewed almost 60 percent believed a news- paper reporter should NOT be required in court to reveal confidential sources. We are pleased to this important matter. We are afraid, however, that already there is too much of George Orwell’s “Big Brother.”’ Freedom of the press is being nibbled away---one small por- tion at a time. Itis imperative that members of the fourth estate and those who believe in freedom of the press begin to fight this encroachment of freedom now. The Big Bluff In its opening days last week, the 93rd Congress made great strides at trying to show constituents that it was going to put its house in order by taking its authority away from the all-powerful Richard M. Nixon. But Congress is probably just tooting its horn to get off to a roaring start, and does not mean to take a real slap at Mr. Nixon no more than its counterpart did with Franklin Roosevelt 30 years ago. | During the FDR years, Congress slipped in retaining its constitutional powers, partly because it was made up of a group of men faced with problems so vast that it was incapable of withstanding the load. The same continued throughout the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Things aren’t much different today. Simple solutions don’t seem to fit complex problems. And Congress recognizes that the more it puts its best foot forward, the more responsibility its going to acquire. The war this country is waging in Indochina, particularly the increased bombing of the last nine months (equivalent to 20 bombs the size we dropped on Hiroshima in World War II days) has irritated a segment of the hierarchy in both Houses (like the other day when Senate Minority leader Hugh Scott refused to grant an audience to 4,000 Pennsylvanians who wanted to talk about the bombings). But the fact remains that Congress is tooting its horn in demanding its constitutional authority from the President because of the war and the wanton death and destruction caused by the recent bombings, and not because it intends to assume the responsibility our forefathers granted to the Congress. On the contrary. Things haven’t been, in generations, as bad at home as they were in the last congressional session, from the economic in- stability of the nation to the problems created by Congress ignoring such broad domestic problems as race relations, environmental quality, welfare and education, and resource and energy policies. And we dare say, that if Congress was faced with opening the 93rd session of Congress without the bombing and the war issue to contend with, that it “would have admonished its power to the executive, just asithas been doing since the days of FDR. Pillar to Post by HIX Harry S. Truman would have approved the simple dignity of the Memorial Service held to do him honor in the Washington Cathe- dral Friday morning. His weary body, racked by illness, had been buried in the soil of his own home town in Missouri, but his intrepid spirit was here in the vaulted vastness of the Great Cathedral, dictating the simplicity of the Memorial. And to those who knew him best, there was a silent whisper of a wry little chuckle, floating in the air, at the thought of flags flying for 30 days at half staff, and the Great and the Near-Great gathering to do him honor, a Son of the Soil. Someone has said, ‘There are no extraor- dinary men, there are only ordinary men faced with extraordinary circumstances, challenges which must be met.”’ The thirty- third President was such a man. A devout man, he walked humbly with his God, asking for guidance in the dark hours of ending the Second World War. But he could express himself pungently in the vernacular: ‘“The buck stops here,” and “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kit- chen.” His feet were firmly rooted in the soil. A homespun man who has broad experience in government at every level, one who said, ‘Do your duty and history will do you justice.” A tribute to Missouri was a part of the service, one of the prayers offered up in memory: ‘Bless us now as we seek to retrace the mighty sweep of Thy making; possessing our inheritance to the little step of mules, or the roar of city wheels, by the flutter of a steamer upon the river, or the cry of some distant train across the night.” : For the Nation: ‘Keep bright in our hearts, O Lord, the openness which Thou didst spread before our forebearers upon this Con- tinent. Let freedom be fresh kindled, and courage given for the new day.” And for Harry Truman himself, ‘We Thy people, Lord, do praise Thee for a fearless son of simple soil. By what good Providence Thou didst raise him to be our leader in time of peril and of peace; by what plain and honest grace did he respond. Steady was his hand to Thine annealing fire; open his heart to Thy healing provision for all mankind. He wore the mantle of our trust with truth; and bore his solitary power with humility.” Officiating clergy were: the Rev. John E. Howell, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Washington; the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre TRB from Washington We have a dilemma here in Washington— the President's aloofness. Certainly the President has a right to secrecy in foreign affairs but certainly also the public has a right to know, within limits. Mr. Nixon is the most aloof President in history. In Vietnam, there has beef a ' resumption; then a cessation, of murderous bombing above the 20th parallel. What rights do you and I have as citizens to know what is going on from the. President himself? Peace talks resume this week in Paris and, within a fortnight, Mr. Nixon gives his Inaugural Address, Jan. 20. Presumably he will disclose his hand then, if he hasn’t before. We have a hunch about this, but it is only a hunch. If there is one group in the country pinching itself, rubbing its eyes, and won- dering how long this Presidential blackout can continue, it is the Washington press corps! Our hunch is that Vietnam can’t last long. It is based on the TRB Elastic Band Principle. If you stretch an elastic band long enough you don’t know when it will snap but you are sure it will snap. Everything we see and hear now makes us think that the snap- ping point is near. “I am confident now as never before,” said Ted Kennedy, quietly, last month, ‘that if the President and Dr. Kissinger can’t end America’s role them- selves, then Congress will end it for them. In one way or another we must be out of Vietnam in early 1973.” : That’s a good quote to remember; even better, perhaps, is Sen. Saxbe’s, of Ohio, a member of Mr. Nixon’s party, that to have resumed bombing ‘‘the President must be out Footnotes by J. R. Freeman Public disclosure, as the term now goes, use to have a resounding effect when some high government bureaucrat was caught violating the public interest. Interior Secretary Albert Fall, in President Harding’s day, went to jail on circumstantial evidence he had taken a bribe from oilman Harry Sinclair in the Teapot Dome episode. The latter left the country hurriedly for the remainder of his natural life, and all over a piddling $200,000. The newsman who exposed the secretary went to the U.S. Senate for more than 30 years (Sen. Clinton Anderson, who retired last year), while the President died mysteriously on a boat off the West Coast. Public disclosure certainly has changed. James Boyd exposed his boss, Sen. Thomas Dodd, only to see himself and his wife sub- jected to harrassment from the FBI and others. Mr. Dodd, meanwhile, died in office years later. Atty. Gen. Richard Kliendist was linked to the famous ITT case, but still serves as the top legal representative in the Federal Government. Members of the President’s own staff were linked to the famous Watergate bugging in- cident, but the President hasn’t said a word about it. The trial for the six culprits began Monday. The Pentagon Papers revealed clearly that we should drop President Thieu and get out of =r Jr., Dean of Washington Cathedral; and the Right Rev. William F. Creighton, Bishop of Washington. Paul Calloway accompanied the Cathe- dral Choir, and the entire assemblage joined in singing ‘‘He who would valiant be.” The eulogy was by Dean Sayre. To The Post: In the belief that nobody from Dallas was present in an official capacity at the mem- orial services held in honor of Harry S. Truman Friday, Jan. 5, 1973, Hix is reporting the event for her hometown newspaper in the hope that this material will arrive on time to be of some small use. This newspaperwoman from. the State of Pennsylvania owes her presence at the cere- monies to the courtesy of Sen. Charles Waddell of the 33rd Senatorial District of Vir- ginia, who not only conveyed her from Hern- don, Va. to Washington, but offered his arm to an elderly woman in mounting the long flight of granite steps leading to the Cathedral doors!” = I' had been asked to cover the story for the Herndon Tribune, because of the illness of Agnes Deviney, editor, who normally would have attended the ceremonies and written the story. It was an impressive ceremony, with the approaches to the Cathedral blocked with chartered buses and official cars such as Sen. Charles Waddell’s, servicemen in spic and span uniforms and mirror-polished shoes acting as escort to invited guests, the subdued tumult of thousands of people finding their seats, the processional of the choir through the transept, the grinding of television cameras, the dazzling spotlights, the hush of the National Cathedral shattered by the triumphant notes of the organ, and the chant- ing of the choir. One of my grandsons used to sing in the Cathedral Choir. Howard Harding always considered the Cathedral his own personal property. Stationed now with the Air Force in Germany, he will receive a copy of the invita- tion in its black-bordered envelope and of the program. He expects to be called back to Vietnam shortly, along with his twin brother, Todd. Both boys are captains. They will be remembered by many Dallas people as the red-haired twins who always aftended the Library Auction. \N \ Todd was the one who, at the &geYof four, got lost on that lonesome stretch of road lead- ing through the woods towards Huntsville Dam. The account of his loss and recovery was the foundation for the first major prize in newspapering ever won by his grandmother, a two-weeks’ workshop session at Columbia, and the title of ‘‘Newswoman of Pennsylvania for 1952." A totally unexpected honor. HIX (Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks) Editor Emeritus The Dallas Post B73 THE aS MELE TRESS SADIATE “The DENVER. Tor — 0. f a NIXON- CONGRESS of his senses.” Mr. Nixon isn’t out of his senses, but sup- pose he were; what would we know about it? He is an invisible President holding in his almost beyond the, immediate reach of the Cabinet, the Court, the Congress and you and me. He leaves explanations to others. His aloofness exposes him to attack. ‘‘But at least Lyndon Johnson gave a convincing im- pression that Vietnam was for him a personal agony,’ said the London Sunday Times; ‘“‘the chilling truth about President Nixon is that he has shown no such personal concern.” Unfair, perhaps, but partly the result of White House There are ways outside normal politics for the public to express powerful displeasure. If it hadn’t been for Vietnam, Mr. Jonhson would be finishing his second term, and Hubert Humphrey would now be polishing his Inaugural Address! LBJ couldn’t settle the war and decided to quit. We suspect that if Mr. Nixon wants a favorable place in history he will get the war behind him, fast, and that he is aware of it. We think he has stretched his own aloofness about as far as it can go. It’s worth a look. As a candidate in 1968, Mr. Nixon promised an ‘‘open government.” But in four years he has held only 28 press con- ferences. FDR had two a week. He told the White House Correspondents’ Association, May, 1971, with one of those electric smiles that he wanted ‘tough questions’ and “I like them that way: Don’t give me a friendly question; only a hard, tough question gets that kind of answer...that tests the man. And it is the responsibility of the press to test the man, whoever he is.” It’s not easy to test the man if you don’t see him. The President has changed his views on So ‘many things. Take the cabinet. When he introduced his first’ cabinet in an un- precedentéd nationwide TV broadcast in December, 1968, he said, ‘‘every one of these men...is an independent thinker”’ who would provide “superior or even great leadership.” He said he didn’t want ‘“yes-men,” but men who would “speak their minds.” Alas, today, for the second term, only two of the original 12 are left. Secretary of Interior Walter Hickel couldn’t even see the President to ‘‘speak his mind.” The cabinet concept faded, and the fortress concept took over. Former Lyndon Johnson aide, George E. Reedy, calls the American Presidential system, at best, ‘‘a form which isolates the man who holds the nation’s highest office, and shields him from reality.”” And Messrs. Rowland Evans Jr. and Robert Novak (“Nixon in the White House”) call Mr. Nixon's isolation ‘‘more pronounced than any President’s since Hoover.” This is certainly an arguable case. But consider how cut off the President is:no cabinet meeting up to last week anyway since Nov. 8; no news conference since Oct. 5; no meeting of the National Security Council since May 8. Does the President have his finger on the public pulse? He got a huge landslide, didn’t he? But was that for Mr. Nixon or against George McGovern, and why did they elect a Democratic Congress? Here are two recent comments: “The sec¢recy system has become much less a means by which government protects national security than a means by which government safeguards its reputation, dissembles its purpeses, buries its mistakes, manipulates its citizens, maximizes its power and corrupts itself”: Arthur Sciig¥inger Jr Dec. 11. 2 “Never, in my 21 years in Washington and 33 years in the news business Jgfve I seen such a blatant attack on the First"fmendment as we are witnessing today. Ladies and gentlemen, the press is in trouble. And while we won’t win any popularity prizes among the people, if the press is in trouble, then the people are in trouble’: Warren Rogers, outgoing president of the National Press Club, Dec. 13. The White House will argue that the Ad- ministration has explained itself; look at the Kissinger statements. But this is a President- ‘oriented democracy, and the Kissinger on- again, off-again ‘peace’ comments produced one of the gloomiest reactions we have ever seen, at home and abroad. As to world opinion, we have always been sensitive to it whatever we pretend, since the Founding Fathers referred to “a decent resf 3 to the opinions of mankind.” We doub¢’ ) We have ever had a worse press abroad than now. We try not to be unfair. Being President is a tough job.. We suspect Mr. Nixon hopes for some grand surprise peace spectacular and is registering feigned uncoucern by osten- tatiously hailing football winners. We prayerfully hope he gets peace this time. If he can’t, we think Congress will. Indochina immediately, but Mr. Nixon ap- pears to be waging a one-man war there all his own. The U.S. has recently admitted killing a French ambassador when our bomb hit the Hanoi French embassy. We admit to bombing hospitals, and killing innocent civilians by the thousands. But the President is refusing to even mention it to the American public, or even to Congress. Meanwhile we hear about wheat deals with Russia that make millionaires of government bureaucrats; the new chief of the Office of - Management and Budget, Roy Ash (himself not even an accountant) is linked to a huge scandal in the Hughes Aircraft Corp.; and Presidential contributions are smuggled across the border into Mexico, and then back again. Had such occurrences been made public even a decade ago, our seat of government would have been shaken to its very roots, and resignations would be laying around aplenty. Now, on the contrary, resignations abound, alright, but mostly from the lesser bureaucrats, such as HUD Secretary George Romney, who realized his own inef- fectiveness. Why couldn’t we have Frank Carlucci’s instead, for his botched-up job of flood recovery? John Mitchell resigned as head of the President’s election committee because of his wife. But why can’t we have Mr. Kliendist’s instead. We don’t need an Alaskan pipeline, but Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton is so steeped in influence of big oil that he is okaying the pipeline on the assumption that the rank and file American could care less about the Alaskan environment. His resignation has never been mentioned. Daniel Ellsberg brought about public disclosure in the Pentagon Papers episode, and now must stand trial for revealing that the leaders of his country have made a mistake. Our government poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Lockheed Aircraft and the Penn Central, while ignoring the economic plight of the small farmer, the small businessman, flood victims, and property owners. John Q. Public, meanwhile, does little but turn his head. Closer to home, things are perhaps a little better. Gov. Milton Shapp was obviously em-- barrassed by the public disclosure that his chief policeman, Rocco Urella, was caught bugging the quarters of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission. The commisgioner ob- viously lied to the governor and | he public. And Mr. Shapp promptly fired i#%¥‘top cop, and got his mostly do-nothing attorney general, J. Shane Kreamer, caught up deeply enough to drop him, too. In this instance, at least, the public stands to gain because of public disclosure. per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. Editor Emeritus: Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin Advertising Manager: Dan Koze
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers