The Region : Media Pool Sees ‘Invasion’

The Defense Department activated its media pool for the third time since April to cover a mock Marine “invasion” of San Clemente Island, and a Pentagon spokesman pronounced the exercise the “most successful” yet. A 12-member pool of wire service, newspaper, news magazine, television and radio reporters and technicians was flown by military aircraft from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington to El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, where they boarded helicopters for a hop to the vessel New Orleans. The Pentagon launched the pool, in cooperation with Washington bureau chiefs of major news organizations, after bitter criticism of the Defense Department’s failure to include the media at the outset of the U.S. invasion of Grenada in October, 1983.