The Public’s Right to Know

The Times’ editorial “It’s Your Right to Know,” (Sept. 14) contends that the public’s right to know takes precedence over the government’s power to wage a war without unwanted news coverage. This contention is justified on the ground that “The military is the citizenry in uniform, maintained at enormous cost to the taxpayers.”

I am one of the first to want to know about the actions of my government, but I am also aware that there are some things that need not and should not be made public. For example, should the American public have been told about the intention of our military to skirt the right flank of the Iraqi forces in the recent conflict in the Gulf? Of course not, and yet that information was suspected by at least one reporter at the front. It was only after that reporter was talked to by high military officials, and convinced that such information would be detrimental to our troops, that he agreed not to report his suspicions to his paper.

I for one do not want our troops to be at the mercy of the morals and values of a news reporter, no matter how highly I may regard him. Witness the recent comment by Peter Arnett on CNN’s “Crossfire” that he would not have protected our troops if he had learned of such information while in Baghdad.

Under such trying times as those found in a war, and in a world where even the generals watch CNN to find out what the other side is doing, I would rather that the public be kept in the dark about incidents that would tend to inform and comfort the enemy.

FRANK WAGNER

Playa del Rey