Never Say Lie

Before he headed up to Capitol Hill for what promised to be a rough grilling by the House Information Subcommittee on the subject of "managed news,"-Pentagon Press Secretary Arthur Sylvester was given some sage advice by a coworker. "Never, under any circumstances whatsoever, use the word lie," urged Defense Department Counsel John McNaughton. "Don't use it negatively, don't use it positively. If you have to tell the committee you want to lie down, say recline."

Sylvester could hardly follow McNaughton's advice; somehow he had to explain away his Cuba crisis statement that the Government has "the inherent right, if necessary, to lie to save itself." But in three hours of testimony, Sylvester seemed to satisfy his congressional inquisitors that his was simply "a brutal answer to a rather brutal question" at a "freewheeling" dinner held by the journalism fraternity, Sigma Delta Chi. Next, he was asked to defend himself against the now familiar suggestion that he ought to resign from the Defense Department on the ground that he has "damaged his usefulness."

Buttoned Lips. Sylvester saw no need to do so. The fact is that he has come under fire mostly for carrying out policies initiated by his boss. No one was bold enough to suggest that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ought to sack a loyal employee for that, but one McNamara order that particularly piqued Subcommittee Chairman John Moss was the still-standing rule that Pentagon officials must report all talks with newsmen. "This may well constitute a clog on full freedom of information," said Moss. Not at all, retorted Sylvester. Then Artless Art nearly put his foot in his mouth once more. "In an operation as large as the Defense Department," said he, "you have to know what is going on if you are going to manage"--oops!--"if you are going to have any understanding of news coming out of it." Anyway, Sylvester concluded, "a lot of the talk" about managed news "is hogwash."

Sylvester's opposite number at Foggy Bottom made the same point in somewhat less colloquial terms. The whole problem has "been obscured in the great fog bank of cliches raised by some of the press,'' said Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Robert Manning. The State Department, he insisted, "is as wide open as Yankee Stadium." Could be, cracked Connecticut Democrat John Monagan, but "we have had a lot of trouble with the turnstiles."

Stupid Dupes. Though he did not appear at the hearings, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger sought in his own way to disperse the fog bank by turning the press's own charges against itself. There is, Salinger told a Women's National Press Club luncheon, "only one legitimate place where news can be 'managed' --the desks of newspaper city editors and managing editors and of radio and television news directors."

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