August 2004 Newsletter
A Protocol for Leaking: Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and the View
from Saigon
by John M. Carland
As Lyndon Johnson's man in Saigon in 1966, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge advanced an intriguing constitutional notion about who in the government could and could not leak information to the press. His view on leaks, which occurred as regularly then as they do today, and the action he took to stop them nicely illuminate key elements in the justification for and nature of "official" leaking.
Once the American intervention in Vietnam was in full swing in 1965-66, hundreds of reporters flocked to Saigon to report on the conflict. Many of them cozied up to possible sources-mainly American officials, civilian and military, working in the South Vietnamese capital-and courted them as best they could. Inevitably, some of the courtships produced leaks of information from officials to journalists, and the leaks became the basis of stories the journalists sent back to the United States. Understandably annoyed and often embarrassed by such unwelcome disclosures, Ambassador Lodge also worried, quite properly, that the leaks might reveal operational movements of American forces. Accordingly, in an April 1966 meeting of the Mission Council in Saigon, the ambassador directed the heads of American agencies in South Vietnam to issue firm injunctions against such behavior to those in their charge. "U. S. Military representatives and government civilians," he admonished, "must be careful lest they be taken in by smooth press operators." At the same meeting, Lodge also clarified the principle that underscored his objection to unauthorized disclosures. "Leaks to the press," he said, "are a presidential prerogative." Only the president or his representative could constitutionally leak. If anyone else in the government leaked information, he or she "would be usurping Presidential prerogative." (1)
To his chagrin, Lodge discovered in November that the result of his April injunctions had been to put but a little finger into a huge hole. The leaks continued unabated. As a result, Lodge told his colleagues, "highest authority," meaning President Johnson, had shown increasing concern over the disclosures. A message from the president to the American embassy in Saigon specifically mentioned three such leaks, one of which reported the deployment of American forces to the Mekong Delta. Lodge, attempting to lead by example as well as by precept, then stated emphatically that he "would never leak any information to the press without the President's express approval and that no member of any [American ] Mission Agency had the right to do so" unless Lodge, as the president's representative in Saigon, first gave his approval. Those in the government simply could not pre-empt the president's right to choose what and when to leak. In his last words to his colleagues on this topic, delivered more in sorrow than in anger, Lodge concluded that "conduct of this sort showed a disregard or ignorance for constitutional prerogatives of the Executive Branch of Government and shows a lack of restraint which is not only unfortunate but reprehensible." (2)
What is interesting about Lodge's comments is that the ambassador did not argue against the propriety or legality of leaks per se, as long as the president or his representative authorized them. As a matter of fact, Lodge worked from the premise that leaks, some perhaps of a confidential nature, played a recognized part in the policy process and that the president could leak information to the press whenever he believed it necessary to do so. This stricture, applied to the present, surely enables one to say, as our occasional friends the French do, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
1. Mission Council Action Memorandum 60, 6 Apr 1966, sub: Minutes of the Mission Council Meeting of 4 Apr 1966, p. 1, Historians Files, United States Army Center of Military History.
2.Mission Council Action Memorandum 142, 30 Nov 1966, sub: Minutes of the Mission Council Meeting of 28 Nov 1966, p. 7, Historians Files, United States Army Center of Military History.
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