The Press: Lunch with the President

The Rockefeller commission's report on the Central Intelligence Agency is something of a vindication for the New York Times, which broke the story of CIA domestic spying in an article last Dec. 22 by Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh. Yet for months the Times sat on an even juicier part of the CIA story—President Ford's concern over the agency's alleged role in foreign assassination plots—but chose not to print it. Times editors last week were standing by their decision, but the episode underlined the hazards of giving and taking off-the-record information.

Shortly after Hersh's...