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Apart from masking stupidity, corruption or political self-seeking, Raymond said, exaggerated Government secrecy can have the effect of damaging national security rather than protecting it. He cited Aviation Week as one of the critics making this charge and warning that the U.S. aircraft industry was suffering from Pentagon censorship. Last week Aviation Week returned to the attack with the "shocking" instance of how the U.S. development of the speedier "Coke bottle" design for supersonic planes was virtually unknown for almost three years to most U.S. plane designers. When Aviation Week recently published the complete details, said the editorial, "we were swamped with inquiries from aircraft industry engineers who had obviously never heard of [it]." Added the magazine: "The Air Force is now realizing that it has been paying a prohibitively high price for its supersecurity."
The Washington newsmen themselves—and their papers—are partly to blame for the fact that so much legitimate information can be suppressed, said Raymond. Because most publishers support the Administration, he said, "able reporters today will not dig as deeply or work as hard to penetrate secrets within the federal Administration which they know will be undervalued, or cut to brief items on page 32 or 48, as they might have worked for Page One display during the Roosevelt or Truman Administrations."
But he emphasized that it was the Government, not the press, that had made Washington a city of secrets. As the House subcommittee under California Democrat John E. Moss got ready to listen to correspondents on the question, it issued a 552-page book summarizing the replies of 60 executive agencies to a list of 80 questions about information policies. Among other things, the replies showed that the classic categories of classified military information ("top secret," "secret," "confidential," "restricted") had multiplied like rabbits. Now there are rubber stamps in federal agencies with such legends as "classified defense information," "limited official use," "for staff use only," "confidential treatment," "not for publication." In all, at the latest count, secretive bureaucrats had figured out no fewer than 32 such high-sounding ways of saying no to newsmen.
Criticism was also leveled last week at newsmen for letting Government agencies suppress or color the news to suit themselves. Too many newsmen, scolded the Domestic News Committee of the Associated Press, suffer from a bad case of "handoutitis." The committee was talking about A.P. staffers, but it made clear that the disease is widespread. Said the committee: "Our reporting has deteriorated into a spoon-fed operation, complacently accepting handouts from Government, labor, business and self-serving organizations without asking questions or digging into the facts."