President Juan Perón last week sent Congress a bill ostensibly aimed at curbing spies and saboteurs. As a drastic state security measure, it reminded some observers of the Soviet Union's 1947 "state secrets" decree.*
The bill provided up to eight years' imprisonment for anybody who "by whatever means provokes public alarm or depresses the public spirit, thereby causing damage to the nation." Another clause, Article 6, set jail terms of one month to four years for anyone who "without authority hands over, remits, communicates, publishes or divulges economic, political, financial, military or industrial...