Part: 1234         Session: 123         Page 565758596061626364656667686970717273747576777879808182838485868788 of 512

former. This is the heaviest problem that a publisher ever has to face, and Mr. Dryfoos had to face this at the time of the missile crisis, and he did what I think no one in the newspaper or outside of it has criticized him for doing, and I don't think he should be criticized. I think he did right; that is, withheld information that we had because this might have affected the really basic security at a time when it looked as though we might be in the middle of a missile war within twenty-four hours.

We published some news about the Cuban invaders training in Guatemala, you may remember, well before the Bay of Pigs thing. I will tell you frankly that I was very, very doubtful about the wisdom of publishing that story on precisely this same basis; it seemed to me that we were giving away what in effect was military information. As I said before, I was against the military invasion of Cuba, but nevertheless, if we're engaged in such an operation, I certainly would not want to be responsible for sabotaging it. I wouldn't mind opposing it within the councils of the administration or even opposing it publicly in print, but to release military information that could help a potential enemy is something that I personally draw the line at. But we published the story of the training of these guerrillas in Guatemala or wherever it was-Nicaragua, I guess it was. I wasn't consulted on whether we should publish it. I, simply as a newspaperman and without any direct responsibility on that at all, was quite bothered by the publication of the story because of what I felt was an infringement of a genuine security matter, a military security matter.

You see, it was a difference between discussing in theory the desirability of invading Cuba, in which case I wouldn't hesitate to say no, I think it's a bad idea, but there's a big difference between saying that and reporting, “Look, there is a military operation going on