[Editor's note: Despite their similar surnames, the subject and the author of this article are not related.]

"...to betray a source would for me be to betray myself, my career and my life. And to say that I refuse to do it isn't quite saying it right. I cannot do it." --Daniel Schorr, testifying before   the House Ethics Committee

On Wednesday, September 15, 1976, the showdown came.

For Daniel Schorr, a life-long journalist, the question was simple. Could the U.S. House of Representative force him to reveal the name of the person from whom he had obtained a classified report?

Schorr knew that it could not, that he would go to jail before he would ever divulge the identity of his source. Two months prior to his confrontation with Congress, Schorr, through a public statement, told the House Ethics Committee investigating the leak that he would "not give any testimony about the source." Nevertheless, the panel issued a subpoena requiring the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) correspondent to testify and face contempt of Congress charges if he refused either to appear or to answer question under oath.

Schorr had provoked the confrontation, not only with Congress but with his employer, CBS, in February 1976 by arranging for publication in the Village Voice, a weekly newspaper in New York, a classified report written by the House Intelligence Committee after its investigation of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities. Although much of the information contained in the document already had been made public by Schorr and other journalists, the actual publication of the report piqued many Congressmen, who viewed the incident as symptomatic of a well-known Capitol Hill malady, the inability of Congress to keep secrets.

To crack down on Congressional leaks, the House authorized its Ethics Committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the report's publication and discover who had leaked the report to Schorr.

Sensing stormy weather ahead, CBS waffled in its support of Schorr, suspending him from all reportorial duties until after the investigation. The aggressive but controversial reporter had caused CBS executives, particularly board chairman William S. Paley, some consternation in the past, and they were not inclined to risk on his behalf a confrontation with the politicians who regulated their industry. Furthermore, Schorr's reliance on the Village Voice rather than his own company as a vehicle for the release of the document irritated the network, even though he had offered CBS an opportunity to publish the report before resorting to a competitor.

Schorr admits now that he made several mistakes in his handling of the report, but using an outlet other than CBS was not one of them.

In his recently published book Clearing the Air, Schorr described how his offer of the material to CBS was brushed aside, though never specifically refused. His superiors put off making a decision, and Schorr was certain they would decide negatively. "They had not officially communicated [their decision] to me, but I knew CBS was not going to use it," Schorr said in an interview last week. Convinced the public should have an opportunity to read the report, he sought an alternative outlet.

Choosing the Village Voice as that outlet was his first "mistake," Schorr said. The Voice was "perceived by many as an anti-establishment publication," he noted. The paper tended toward sensationalism in its treatment of the report, running it under the provocative headline "The Report on the CIA That President Ford Doesn't Want You to Read."

A second error only became a "mistake," which according to Schorr's definition of the term is "anything that turns out badly and leads to misunderstanding," after a New York Times editorial criticized him for "Selling Secrets." While Schorr himself accepted no money from the Village Voice in exchange for the document, he did ask the publisher to donate to the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press any money that Schorr would have received as a result of its publication. The Times pounced on this deal, decrying it as "commercial traffic in such documents...an attempt to launder the transaction by devoting the proceeds to high constitutional purposes."

Schorr's final, and most serious, mistake was his initial attempt to hide his own identity as the person responsible for the report's release. Schorr said he intended to write an introduction and commentary to accompany the report, thinking that others in the media, particularly The New York Times, were also planning to release the document. When he realized that he possessed the only copy, he decided on anonymity to protect his source. "I should have perceived that to make an act of disclosure a covert act in itself was a very serious mistake," Schorr said.

Secrets, whether the government's or a reporter's, seldom remain secrets for very long. The morning after the report appeared in the Village Voice, the Washington Post broke a story identifying Schorr as the Voice's source. Within a week he acknowledged the Post's story and CBS suspended him from further duties until the completion of the investigation.

From that moment unti his appearance before the Ethics Committee in September, Schorr was in limbo. He became a cause celebre, a defender of free speech to some, a Benedict Arnold to others. He describes that period as "unreal." He said he could not understand what he "was doing on the other side of the microphone." After devoting an entire life to reporting, to asking the questions, now he had to answer them.