I hope and expect that the Supreme Court will find this law unconstitutional. Certainly, by all past interpretations of the First Amendment, such a law is clearly unconstitutional, and that's why no Congress has ever gotten to the point of passing it before, even though several administrations have asked for it.

How did this Congress come to pass the measure? My best guess is that a Republican Congress wanted to admonish the Clinton administration for allegedly being lax about security at Los Alamos, N.M., and elsewhere. But Clinton shouldn't be let off the hook here. For the president to have allowed this legislation to get so far (with the approval of his Justice Department) -- legislation he must now decide whether to sign -- represents an unconscionable breach of his responsibilities as president of a democratic republic. It also serves as a terrible black mark for Reno, who, in her support of the bill, shows that she lacks an understanding of the basic requirements of a democracy.

If the bill is approved by Clinton, I hope that other people will violate the law under the same circumstances that I did. It took the unusual circumstance of the Vietnam War to bring me to that point. Those precise circumstances won't arise very often, I hope, but what will arise are other situations where many lives are at stake, like the radiation effects of past government nuclear testing and production that we found out about through unauthorized leaks. Or the foreign lives at stake in our support of covert actions abroad, during dictatorial regimes like that of former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet or the death squads that ravaged El Salvador and Guatemala. Or the Iran-Contra affair, with its illegal funding of terrorists in Nicaragua and of arms sales to Iran.

There are already too few people willing to give up their careers as did Richard Nuccio, who was stripped of his security clearance and had to leave his position at the State Department after telling then Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., the name of a Guatemalan torturer on the CIA's payroll. For that, his career was ended by, of all people, former CIA director John Deutch, who, ironically, is now under investigation himself. But Nuccio doesn't regret what he did. Of course, he did the right thing and should not have been punished in his career for that. But if you add to that, under this law, the likelihood of actually going to jail, there will be fewer Nuccios and fewer whistle-blowers at a time when we need them as much as, if not more than, ever.

The administration claims that the law against unauthorized disclosure will not be used against the media, but that's a transparent and dangerous deception.

Why aren't newsmen called before grand juries routinely to identify the sources of the leaks they publish every day of the week? People may say it's because of our extreme regard for the First Amendment, but that's ridiculous. If Congress were so scrupulous about the First Amendment, it wouldn't have passed this law.

If Clinton approves this bill, for the first time the government will be able to say that a crime has been committed when a leak has occurred and, therefore, if you have information about who committed that crime, you must tell the grand jury and the country who the person is, on pain of jail for contempt if you refuse. Congress and the White House can say that they have no intention of doing that with newsmen, but the promise could not be more worthless. Newsmen will be called in front of grand juries and asked who gave them information. Many will refuse to say and will go to jail -- a respectable and worthy act of civil disobedience. But after a number of newsmen have languished in jail on contempt charges, the willingness by newsmen to accept a classified document or information will drop very sharply. As a result, we will know even less than we do now about our government's plans and decision-making processes. The cost? More wars like Vietnam.

Clinton should and must veto this bill. He must demonstrate his awareness that the bill is unconstitutional, that the First Amendment is worth protecting and that he understands what it means to be the president of a republic.

I bet very few of the members of Congress who voted in support of this bill understood the implications of what they were doing -- that they were essentially repealing our First Amendment in the name of so-called national security. In fact, nothing could be more dangerous to our national security than learning only what the government authorizes us to learn. (Besides, the disclosure of the most dangerous classified information -- espionage, disclosures of nuclear weapons design, cryptological processes or names of intelligence agents -- is already covered by suitably narrow criminal laws.)

Both Democratic and Republican presidents would like to be able to put whistle-blowers in jail, whether the information they disclose is classified or not. With this law, they'll get their wish. If it were retroactive, it could be called the "We'll get you this time, Ellsberg" law.

If Clinton does not veto this dangerous bill, one of his last acts in office will be to nullify the First Amendment, the very foundation of the American form of government. He will violate his oath of office to uphold the Constitution in a way incomparably more serious than anything with which he was charged in the impeachment proceedings.

If Clinton now thinks I should have gone to prison for releasing the top-secret Pentagon Papers, he can sign this bill in good conscience. If he doesn't think so, he should veto it.

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