Marines Asking for Tight Lips : Deployment: Secrecy request by senior officers at Camp Pendleton is causing resentment among some spouses and tension with the media.

As U.S. Marines await possible combat in the Middle East, an emotional shadow war over how much information is released to the public and military families has broken out on the home front.

Fearing Iraqi-sponsored terrorism and sounding under siege, Camp Pendleton has issued a blunt statement to Marine families advising them--despite their anxiety over the safety of their loved ones--not to comment publicly.

“The command is doing what it can to keep the media outside the gate, but we cannot control them out in town,” the declaration said.

It complained that “currently the newspapers are plastered with quotes of Marines and their dependents discussing troop movements, giving times, dates and destinations.”

The military’s effort to hold tight control over information, even though there’s no mystery where America’s forces are massing, has angered the wives of some servicemen and reawakened some lingering hostility between the military and the media from the Vietnam War days.

The pregnant wife of a Navy corpsman stationed at Camp Pendleton and now deployed to the Middle East said, “They don’t tell the wives anything except, ‘We have support groups’ ” to counsel wives on base.

“I don’t have a phone number, so I wait for him to call me,” said the 20-year-old woman, married nearly two years and expecting a baby in November. “He’s been overseas before, but it’s the fear of not knowing when he’s coming home, if he’s coming home.”

Many wives have said they only learn about the more specific whereabouts of their men from news accounts.

On Aug. 7, shortly after deployment of U.S. troops began, Camp Pendleton and neighboring communities were buzzing with reports that Marines were heading for Middle East duty.

The base refused to confirm or deny the deployment and told the press to attend a news conference the next day that would explain activity at the base.

At the conference, the Marine Corps’ commandant, Gen. A.M. Gray, told of no activity. In fact, he said that Camp Pendleton Marines were not on any special alert status and that it had not been decided whether any of them would be deployed to the Middle East.

“We have to just wait and see how the various diplomatic and economic options fare here and see what transpires,” he said. Yet, that same day, wives and mothers of Camp Pendleton Marines were telling the press that servicemen already had been deployed.

On Aug. 11, when comments from families, local day-care operators and businesses already had made it clear the Marines were being deployed, Camp Pendleton acknowledged what everybody knew, that its Marines were shipping out.

Since then, the base has not only abandoned its silence, but has mounted a virtual public relations offensive.

In the past two weeks, Camp Pendleton has invited the news media on base eight times to cover usually staged events such as Marines practicing riflery and the Middle East deployment’s impact on the base post office.

Such carefully orchestrated events, with controlled interviews, are designed to reassure the public that its armed forces are ready to feed the media’s appetite for timely stories on Marines.

During one Marine-supervised media tour on base to watch infantry training, Master Sgt. George Spear of the base’s public affairs office said, “We hope this will give you what you need.”

Later, he noted, “I know there’s a need for something visual”--photo opportunities for television cameramen and newspaper photographers.

Still, the military is treating the Middle East situation as war, and worries that the media attention will increase the possibility of terrorist reprisals.

A well-placed Marine, asking not to be identified, said the concern over terrorism is real at Camp Pendleton, although it is publicly downplayed to avoid an overreaction.

“There is concern that (terrorism) might be in the game plan,” the source said. “We’re concerned somebody will be a target. We learned a tough lesson with the Beirut bombing.”

In 1983, 241 Marines were killed when a terrorist truck laden with explosives smashed into their barracks in Beirut.

No actual intelligence indicates that Camp Pendleton is a target, sources said, but the base is in a “heightened state of awareness.”

What that heightened state involves is unclear, although so far it is known that military police have been instructed to be alert for intruding news reporters while the public is still at liberty to take self-guided tours.

Is the fear of terrorist violence legitimate?

“I think there is a danger of terrorism, but not greatly in the United States. It takes a great deal of planning and logistics,” said David Isenberg, a research analyst for the non-government Center for Defense Information in Washington.

Isenberg figures the possibility of terrorism is greater in Europe, where “I think Iraq has more capability to do so.”

Still, he noted that fearful memories remain, including the unsolved 1988 San Diego explosion of the van driven by the wife of Capt. Will Rogers, skipper of the guided missile Vincennes. The Vincennes mistakingly shot down an Iranian jetliner loaded with civilians over the Persian Gulf.

Another recollection comes from Gale Stienon, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who handled public affairs at Camp Pendleton during the Vietnam War.

She said families of service personnel have been vulnerable before, as when “Vietnam war demonstrators went to the homes of servicemen overseas.”

Aside from the press, though, many families and friends of American troops passionately object to being kept in the dark about many aspects of the Middle East deployment.

“I can’t tell you how many mothers, grandparents and kids I’ve had to hold in my arms and (let) cry,” because they didn’t know where the servicemen were going and when they might be back, said Dee Nelson, who runs a day-care and preschool center in Fallbrook. Many of the children there come from Marine families.

A 24-year-old Fallbrook woman who asked that her last name not be used, has been married to a Marine lance corporal for five years, has two children, and is troubled by not having enough information about his situation to make decisions.

“I haven’t got any idea how long my husband is going to be away. Right now we don’t know whether we’ll stay here in California or go home to Illinois,” she said.

The military community’s debate over information and secrecy has quickly found its way into the base newspaper, The Scout.

A letter to the editor written by Cris Fraser, who said her boyfriend is in the Air Force, took umbrage with a commentary by a Marine gunnery sergeant that operational security is imperiled by military people and dependents talking to the news media and aloud in public.

Fraser wrote: “The whole world already knows the United States has troops in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, and we have more going over there.”

Dependents, she opined, talk about the crisis to console each other and handle the stress.

“We are not talking about things that are not already plastered across the front pages of countless newspapers. We do not talk about tactical combat maneuvers, plans or embarkation points. We do not know any of that.”

Camp Pendleton declined a request by The Times to interview ranking Marine officers about policies governing information for Marine families and the public. Although basic policy is set by the Department of Defense, military sources say individual commands have some flexibility.

Still, it’s clear that the corps takes a dim view of the flurry of news stories and the family members who make unauthorized comments.

Former public affairs officer Stienon said of Marine wives, “I think they do know what they need to know.”

Randy Mitchell, a retired Marine major who handled Camp Pendleton public affairs in the early 1960s, added that the excitement of events has simply overwhelmed many younger wives.

“It’s something they’ve never experienced. They’re not prepared for it,” he said.

“Everybody’s looking for a story,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Smallwood, public affairs officer with Commander Naval Surface Force U.S. Pacific Fleet. “You’ve got so much going on in the ether, we want to keep names out of there.”

He faulted coverage of upset wives and families, saying “there are so many examples of dependents wringing their hands. It’s emotion, it’s style over substance.”

Adding to the the military’s concern is its memory of the role played by the American news media during the Vietnam War.

Isenberg, of the Center for Defense Information, said the military learned painfully from Vietnam that conflict “cannot be sustained without the support of the public.”

To the military’s horror, Vietnam “showed the ability to bring about huge amounts of information from the field. Ever since then, (military operations) have been accompanied by a huge demand for information,” he said.

Officers still resent the media coverage of Vietnam, believing it eroded public support and contributed largely to the war being lost.

Isenberg said the relationship between military and media “is one of resigned suspicion.”

Said one military source who knows Commandant Gray, the officer who said no decision had been made about sending Camp Pendleton Marines when some already had been deployed, “Gen. Gray doesn’t give a damn about the media. . . . I think a lot of it’s related to Vietnam.”