ZIP MY LIPS BUSH'S SECRET CONDUCT OF U.S. POLICY

THE LAST MONTH has given President Bush perhaps the biggest triumph of his first year in office -- the invasion of Panama and the capture of Manuel Antonio Noriega -- but it has also given the American people a fresh look at one troubling aspect of Bush's operating style that may define the rest of his presidency.

In both the Panama operation and in his diplomatic overtures to China, Bush demonstrated anew his abiding penchant for secrecy. When the October coup attempt against Noriega failed, Bush sanctioned intensified secret planning for the invasion to overthrow the Panamanian dictator. When he was determined to keep the lines open to China despite outrage around the world over the Tiananmen Square massacre, Bush twice sent National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing and kept the first visit secret from the public for five months.

No one should be surprised to see Bush conduct his business in private again and again in the next few years. For reasons of background, experience and temperament, Bush regards secrecy as a crucial part of the way the world works -- and ought to work -- in everything from serious diplomacy to just having fun.

Bush is a throwback to the patrician "wise men" of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, the men who guided the United States from the period after World War II through the Vietnam War. They were diplomats and businessmen who believed they had been endowed with the education and experience to perform in the public's best interests but often without the public's knowledge.

If you listen to George Bush carefully, you will hear echoes of the wise men in his voice. "I have an obligation as president to conduct the foreign policy of this country the way I see fit," he said recently when asked to defend the secrecy of his China missions. On Friday, he told reporters once again: "Let me simply say that some things will be conducted in secrecy. And I know you don't like it."

Bush believes the powers of the presidency were eroded in the years after Vietnam and Watergate by an overly-assertive press and Congress. This is no idle constitutional argument with Bush; in his first year, he has been actively trying to reassert his dominance over the other powerful institutions of the capital -- and he has used secrecy to keep them at bay.

"He has a strong streak of the patrician, 'we know better,' governing-on-our-behalf attitude," says a former Reagan administration official who has worked closely with Bush for years. "He thinks our system -- with an excess of Congress and press involvement -- has made it impossible to do what is right. He thinks you don't allow short-term, newspaper-driven publicity to govern what you do. You let things like China flower in private, and you figure people will be happy with the result in the end.

"Take the case of the atomic bomb. Everyone was glad we could have it and use it to end the war. But if we had been forced to have a debate over it like we do today, we would never have done it. Bush thinks there are a lot of things people would like to have in the end -- but you could never get them done if you had to debate them."

For the most part, particularly if events appear to be going well, Americans seem ambivalent about how much their government tells them. When it comes to military planning and diplomacy, surveys show the president enjoys wide latitude from the public in keeping things private. And the experience of democracies over the last decade shows that control of information, particularly in wartime, can be critical to success. Britain's strict secrecy helped Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher win the Falklands War; conversely, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, though planned in the tightest secrecy, ended as an openly-observed disaster. But there are enormous perils for Bush if he stumbles. A mistake made in secret can prove to be that much more politically debilitating, as President Reagan discovered when the covert Iran arms sales were disclosed. Even if Bush avoids such pitfalls, the extensive use of secrecy can snare the most self-confident of leaders. By slamming the door in the face of outsiders, Bush risks losing the benefit of valuable experience and advice. What he gains in security, he gives up in cross-pollination.

So far, Bush and his team have adopted an insular management style that does not extend far beyond the executive suite. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Office of Management and Budget director Richard G. Darman and Attorney General Dick Thornburgh have all earned reputations for relying heavily on their most trusted inner circle of advisers. They are apt pupils from the Bush school of management. In the president's words, "Loyalty is not a character flaw." Rather, it is an important job qualification.

Apart from a close circle of peers, Bush has not surrounded himself at the White House with independent minds who could contribute to his presidency. Rather, he has opted for loyal implementers who will leave the decisions to him. Even members of the small circle of trusted insiders -- such as Scowcroft, Baker, Darman, Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and Chief of Staff John Sununu -- are not all privy to all the decisions. By his own account, Bush did not feel compelled to tell Cheney or CIA Director William Webster last July that he had invited Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to a summit.

Bush is very much a man of the present: He does not like to be boxed in by either the past or the future. He insisted there be no "second-guessing" about the Panama invasion or, earlier, about the failed coup attempt in October. One of his frequent expressions is, "That's history," even if it was something that happened yesterday. Nor does Bush look too far ahead -- he just doesn't think anyone knows for sure what is going to happen in six months or a year.

Secrecy in decision-making allows him the maximum amount of flexibility in the present. If no one is carping at you about some long-ago promise you made, if you are not under pressure to meet some imaginary future standard, you have a lot more room to maneuver. Bush once remarked to an aide that the Nexis data-retrieval system was one of the most nettlesome inventions of his career -- reminding him of all those things he'd said over the years.

The point is that Bush's need for secrecy is more than just a concern that he reap the maximum public-relations advantage from an announcement, more than just a phobia about the press or leaks. It is central to his thinking about how to get things accomplished with a minimum of opposition and debate. Bush has his own strongly-felt sense of timing -- what friends call an "inner clock" -- and he doesn't like to be pushed into something he is not certain about.

This desire for control is woven into the fabric of his everyday life. Although he often comes across in public as casual and freewheeling, in private Bush is intensely calculating about the people and information around him, even to the seating at dinner parties. He compartmentalizes everything, giving people discreet tasks but never showing the full picture. Friends often marvel at how he delights in launching what amount to little covert missions and intelligence operations for his own edification.

Just before the 1988 Republican National Convention, for example, he asked a young campaign aide to quietly look up stories in newspaper microfilms about how vice presidential nominations had become public over the last 20 years. The aide reported what Bush suspected: The choice usually leaked out ahead of time. Armed with this knowledge, Bush announced his selection of Dan Quayle so quickly as to surprise even some of those around him who thought they would have more time to talk about his choice. Bush's desire for secrecy and surprise is also driven by the very kind of presidency he is managing -- one that relies less on communications skills and more on private wheeling and dealing.

Through December, Bush had received less than a third of the television news coverage given to Reagan in his high-profile first year, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has been monitoring television news coverage. Reagan tried to reach his goals by constantly telling people what he wanted; presumably if enough of them agreed, the Congress would get the message. Even on foreign policy matters, Reagan may have desired a lot more secrecy, but he used communications to broadcast his overall direction.

Bush, however, has a deep aversion to telegraphing his goals until he knows whether they are achievable. His constant telephoning and reaching out has often been advertised as one of his strengths, guaranteeing he would not get isolated. But we are also discovering that much more of his presidency is conducted with a hidden hand. The first Scowcroft mission to China might not have become public for months or years if Bush and Scowcroft had their way.

The China missions were actually foreshadowed long ago. In 1984, it was Bush's idea to send Scowcroft, then a private citizen, to Moscow with a letter from Reagan for Soviet President Konstantin Chernenko. The idea was to open up a back channel at a time of continuing U.S.-Soviet tensions. The Kremlin refused to receive Scowcroft.

In another instance, Bush sent Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Carter, on a secret mission to Poland to pave the way for his own 1987 visit there at a time when the State Department saw little merit in such a trip.

Bush is an old hand at this game and his presidency is an extension of all that he has learned about how to play it. One painful lesson came at the United Nations when Bush was defending the U.S. policy of keeping Beijing from gaining a seat that was held by Taiwan. Unbeknownst to Bush, President Nixon, Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger had already concluded that U.S. hope of preserving a Taiwain seat was a lost cause. Bush did not forget the experience.

He also learned at the U.N. how public rhetoric and private reality often do not match. "For two years at the United Nations, I listened to what people said," he recalled, "then they would walk out the door and tell you what they mean. What they said and what they mean are sometimes two very different things." Later, as director of Central Intelligence, Bush learned even more thoroughly the value of secret missions and compartmentalizing information.

The political community marveled and scoffed at Reagan's image-makers when they tried to "manipulate" the news media. Now, perhaps, a different kind of manipulation is occurring. While Bush wants to avoid the show-biz excesses of the Reagan years, he is no less nimble in trying to connect and disconnect himself selectively from political accountability. By simply disappearing, by using secrecy to shield his actions, he can avoid being associated with the downside of many issues. He can wave off the "second-guessing" and show up only when there's good news to announce, like the surrender of Noriega.

In a certain way, Bush has gone beyond manipulating how we see things, to manipulating what we see. For example, during the latest coup attempt against Philippine President Corazon Aquino, the president was on his way to the Malta summit. Back in Washington, Bush's advisers paid close attention to the question of how to handle the matter to make the president look "decisive" just before his first meeting with Gorbachev. Perhaps toward this end, the officials sent to Malta a chronology of events that, in effect, began with Aquino's call for help and Bush's swift response from Air Force One authorizing it. The chronology was used as the basis for briefing reporters about how Bush made his decision. But it omitted some earlier exchanges between U.S. and Philippine officials in which the administration suggested which requests would be met with approval and which would not.

That wouldn't have looked as presidential.

Perhaps the crack-cocaine buy in Lafayette Park for the president's televised anti-drug speech last September -- in which the dealer was lured to the park so Bush could say the crack was purchased near the White House -- was not an isolated incident but a symptom of something larger. In many cases, particularly in diplomacy and military planning, secrecy is an essential ingredient. Certainly, the July mission to Beijing would have blown up had it been known at the time. But at what point does Bush owe the nation a fuller accounting than the one-paragraph statement the White House issued acknowledging that Scowcroft had made the July trip? Congress may demand an accounting, and public opinion may eventually weigh in. But in Bush's world, the only real accounting is the one he faces in 1992.

"If the American people don't like it," he commented recently about his secret endeavors, "I expect they'll get somebody else to take my job. But I'm going to keep doing it."

David Hoffman covers the White House for The Washington Post.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.