Pentagon Puts Veil on Gulf Action

After the United States government excluded the press from covering its invasion of Grenada in 1983, the resulting storm of protest from virtually every major news organization in the country caused the Reagan Administration to reconsider. A commission was formed to study problems between the media and the U.S. military, and to formulate a plan whereby representatives of the news media could go along on military operations without compromising security or the safety of combat forces.

The commission, headed by retired Maj. Gen. Winant Sidle, recommended that military commanders make provisions in their combat operations planning to accommodate, at the bare minimum, a pool of reporters and photographers representing the nation’s print and electronic media. (The pool is a small group of journalists who share their pictures, observations and videotapes with other news organizations.) The report was accepted by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and adopted as official Pentagon policy.

Judging by the actions of U.S. military authorities involved in the Persian Gulf, the official Pentagon policy of open pool press coverage is being honored more in the breach than the observance.

When U.S. military forces first entered the Gulf and began escorting re-flagged tankers, reporters and photographers were allowed aboard to document the routine escort duties. But since the Persian Gulf involvement evolved into a hostile situation where the lives of American soldiers, sailors and airmen have been clearly put on the line, pool members have been cooling their heels in a hotel in Manama, Bahrain, instead of reporting and recording the action in the Gulf.

Why? Because when U.S. helicopters sank an Iranian speedboat and disabled two others in the Gulf on Oct. 8, the pool members were denied permission by the Pentagon to photograph the captured speedboats and Iranian prisoners. Instead, four days later, the Navy released four poor-quality photos of the boats which had been doctored for some unknown reason.

When the Iranian minelayer Iran Ajr was scuttled, the press pool was not allowed to cover it, even though the journalists were already at sea with the fleet covering Weinberger’s visit to the U.S. task force. The pool members protested that the capture and sinking of the Iran Ajr was important history--the first foreign warship to be captured by the U.S. Navy since a German U-boat was taken in the Atlantic in 1945. But permission was denied for “security reasons.”

When the U.S. Navy bombarded an Iranian oil platform with more than 1,000 rounds of artillery this week, the press pool was neither informed of the operation nor taken to the scene of the attack, which was less than 30 minutes away by helicopter. Instead, more than 24 hours later, three videocassettes were delivered to the press pool in Manama. The tapes appeared to have been shot with a home video camera and the technical quality was far below American television standards. The camera work was amateurish and the pictures shaky. When news officials complained to the Pentagon, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, Fred Hoffman, explained that the attack was a “short-fuse operation” and there was no time to get the press pool to the scene.

Hoffman’s explanation has a hollow ring. The military plan for the shelling of the oil platform was finalized at the Pentagon 36 hours before the actual attack. According to a well-informed source, when the question of press coverage came up, it was dismissed by the top brass “with a simple wave of the hand.”

There is no question that in the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon is not living up to its agreement with the American media. One can only surmise that the reason for this is fear that some of the coverage may show an aspect of the operation in an unfavorable light. Many military men do not understand how a free press is supposed to function and bristle whenever a story about their unit doesn’t turn out like a recruiting poster.

So far, most of the hostilities in the Persian Gulf have resulted with the U.S. forces coming out on top and the public has reacted favorably. But even in these little skirmishes, the Pentagon has found some excuse to keep the press pool from doing its job. What’s going to happen if something really big or really bad takes place? How will the American people be able to decide if the U.S. policy in the Gulf is good or bad if there is no first-hand source of information outside of the government?

The successful functioning of a free society demands such a flow of news and information. But right now that’s not happening.

The Pentagon is attempting to prevent the media from covering a story of vital national interest. To accomplish this goal, the Pentagon is violating its own policy. The ultimate result is that the American people are being kept in the dark.