Samuel Loring Morison

Identification: American naval intelligence analyst

Significance: Morison is the first American convicted of spying for leaking classified information to the press; his case raised fears that the Espionage Act of 1917 might also be applied to journalists who publish information provided by leakers or “whistle-blowers”

Morison, the grandson of noted naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, was a Vietnam War veteran who had served sixteen years in the US Navy. In 1984 he was employed by the Navy as a civilian Soviet ship analyst at the Naval Intelligence Support Center in Maryland. With the approval of the Navy, he also held a part-time job as American editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships. In July Morison sent the British Jane’s Defence Weekly three classified spy-satellite photographs of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which was then under construction.

The pictures appeared in the weekly in August; they were picked up and distributed by the Associated Press, and were printed in the Washington Post, among other papers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and naval intelligence officers traced the leak to Morison and arrested him on October 1. Morison claimed that his motives were patriotic, to publicize the threat to American security posed by the Soviet military buildup and thereby help the Navy obtain bigger appropriations. The Reagan Administration, however, argued that publication of the photographs might help foreign powers learn more about the capabilities of American spy satellites, conveniently ignoring the fact that the operations manual for the satellite had been sold to the Soviet Union by a Central Intelligence Agency operative in 1978.

Brought to trial in October 1985, charged with spying under the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property under a related hundred-year-old law, Morison was convicted by a federal court jury and sentenced to two years in prison. Morison’s conviction aroused fears among news gathering organizations because of the ambiguous language of the espionage statute, which made it a crime to transmit information relating to the national defense to “any person not entitled to receive it.” Under the broad interpretation urged by the Reagan Administration and accepted by the court, motive was irrelevant. Whistle-blowers and government officials who leaked classified information could face criminal prosecution; journalists who accepted classified documents might be ordered to turn over their sources to the prosecution and might themselves be prosecuted.

Morison appealed his conviction to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Thirty-one leading newspapers, broadcasting companies, and publishing groups joined to submit a friend-of-court brief urging that the conviction be reversed, arguing that leaking of government information to the press was neither espionage nor theft. Although two of the three judges noted in their opinions that there were substantial First Amendment questions about the government position, on April 4, 1988, the court unanimously upheld Morison’s conviction.

Morison then appealed to the US Supreme Court, which on October 17, 1988, rejected the appeal without comment or dissent, leaving uncontradicted the government’s claim that leaking classified activity was equivalent to spying. Morison served eight months of his sentence before being paroled in 1989 and pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

In 2014, however, Morison was in court again facing charges of theft. He had been accused of stealing more than thirty boxes from the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, DC. The boxes contained files belonging to his grandfather, who had been a respected professor and researcher. Morison then allegedly attempted to sell several of the items in bookstores and planned to sell more on eBay. After being taken into custody, he admitted to the theft in a signed confession. Sentenced in 2015 to two years of probation, he was also required to cooperate with authorities to return all of the missing items.

Bibliography

Eberhard, Wallace B. "The Press & U.S. v. Morison: Sounding the Alarm or Crying 'Wolf?'" Newspaper Research Journal 12.1 (1991): 64–75. Print.

Engelberg, Stephen. "Spy Photos' Sale Leads to Arrest." New York Times. New York Times, 3 Oct. 1994. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Gresko, Jessica. "Man Once Convicted of Spying Pleads Guilty to Document Theft." Baltimore Sun. Tribune, 12 Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Marimow, Ann E. "Grandson Charged with Theft of Admiral's Navy Documents; Some Were for Sale on eBay." Washington Post. Washington Post, 10 June 2014. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

Powe, Scot. "Espionage, Leaks, and the First Amendment." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42.6 (1986): 8–10. Print.