Pentagon to Reevaluate News Pool Plans : Leaks of Media’s Weekend Test Trip to Honduras Raise Concern

Pentagon officials said Monday that they will reevaluate their plan to allow a news media pool to cover combat operations after almost instantaneous leaks about the pool’s activation over the weekend.

The pool--10 reporters and photographers assembled to cover the initial stages of combat--was drawn together and flown to Honduras in a test of the operation the Pentagon has said it might put into effect if U.S. troops were about to be deployed for potential combat.

But Pentagon officials expressed concern Monday that the pool arrangement may have failed its first test--that of secrecy.

Retired Gen. Winant Sidle, whose commission drew up the pool proposal after complaints about the Pentagon’s efforts to control news coverage during the 1983 Grenada invasion, called the leaks disappointing. He predicted that they would provide ammunition for critics of media coverage of combat operations.

Leak Called ‘Unfortunate’

“It doesn’t make the press look very trustworthy,” he said, adding that secrecy “is the most important part of the test. It struck me as very unfortunate that it leaked.”

Pentagon officials became concerned about the secrecy of the operation when they began getting inquiries from the media early Sunday morning, only a few hours after the pool was activated.

Other aspects of the test dealt primarily with logistics: the ability to move the reporters from Washington to Honduras, then within Honduras and the provision of quarters and communications facilities.

Will Evaluate Test

“When it’s all over with, we’ll sit down and evaluate the whole thing,” said Col. Bill McClain, a Pentagon spokesman.

One Pentagon official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said that although officials were “not in a position to do any finger-pointing” in evaluating the pool’s effectiveness, they will “need to know who knew about it (in advance) and who didn’t.”

Another Pentagon official, clearly annoyed that first word of the pool’s trip began to leak even before the group left Washington, said “a real good-faith effort was made here, after months of discussions, to provide on-the-spot coverage that all of us would like to see,” while not jeopardizing American troops or the success of a military mission.

For its initial test, the Pentagon chose “Universal Trek ‘85,” a U.S. military exercise involving about 7,000 troops in Honduras. However, in assembling the pool, military officials gave no indication whether actual combat would be involved.