'Can Our Public Mails Officer Help?':How the Military Keeps the Press in the Dark
Reed, Fred
'Can Our Public Mails Officer Help?': How the Military Keeps the Press in the Dark by Fred Reed I am the son of a naval mathematician, grew up on a naval base, and spent some time in...
...But such opportunities are hard to come by...
...For example, Aegis is everywhere rumored to be an engineering disaster—as are many other weapons...
...Even when cooperation would be to their benefit, they raise obstacles...
...The Pentagon's systematic deception of Congress is well known to the press corps, but let me give you an example: the strange case of the selectively voracious Xerox...
...As for hardware, the cure for bad press is simple: show us...
...They also have a sort of racial memory of Bill Maudlin, and they love to see the military written about as a collection of human beings instead of as one long procurement scandal...
...Once when I wrote of certain defects in the military, a friend of mine, a former fighter jock, called and said, yeah, Fred, we've got a problem—but don't let the damned civilians hear about it...
...We just passed an initiative to fix it, and we expect Defense to turn a profit next year...
...PAOs are decent enough as people, but they are flacks through and through, saying what they are told to say...
...Show us...
...This is a grave handicap, for covering military hardware requires a genuine interest in the subject, a technical background, and a comfortable familiarity with computers...
...This time, however, it wasn't so simple...
...Things have gotten so far out of hand that the ranks of doubters have expanded beyond liberal circles...
...What could be more fair...
...He told me that a Blackhawk helicopter had gone down, apparently because of pilot error, and killed a couple of men...
...I am a disabled Marine, and therefore allowed on base unescorted...
...Just as the Soviets have political officers at all levels of their army, so we have public affairs officers, and for the same reason: to protect what is important to the hierarchy...
...I went...
...While I was watching the troops rappeling from a wall, a sergeant asked casually whether I had heard about the crash...
...They mean they wish I had been stillborn and plan to hide anything they can—although commanders seldom have anything to hide because the military works pretty well at the bases...
...The PAO hovered nearby during the exchange...
...The average civilian in a military milieu is a baffled yo-yo who doesn't know road wheels from fire in the hole...
...The military-PAO complex seems terrified of enlisted men...
...If they won't demonstrate it, the proper presumption is that it doesn't work...
...Washington's leakers and innuendoists assert that Aegis is nothing more than the aerospace community's analog of Aid to Families with Dependent Children...
...Depending on the service, I can usually go to clubs either by regulation, by buying a temporary membership, as a favor from the manager, or as a guest of a member...
...I have since been on a blacklist (which the Marines will swear doesn't exist...
...There should be easy access to soldiers...
...Military coverage is regularly bad...
...Show us...
...He could write decently, and I thought his practical experience was something that journalism too often lacked...
...There were enough contradictions to indicate that someone was lying...
...Is this a chopper?' The press itself does a lot to aggravate the military's inclination to stonewall...
...Can Our Public Mails Officer Help?': How the Military Keeps the Press in the Dark by Fred Reed I am the son of a naval mathematician, grew up on a naval base, and spent some time in the Marines...
...Don't plead classification when specifications are published...
...Or to break down every 35 miles...
...A powerful clannishness exists...
...There is far less to hide than many would have you think...
...The PAO had chewed him out for mentioning the crash: what if that reporter went back to Washington and wrote about it...
...The press is seen as the enemy, the Congress as an obstacle, and the Soviet Union as only a justification...
...Apparently only members of Congress who have been certified by the Navy for reading should see its documents...
...I once tried to recruit a friend in the Air National Guard—whose thinking closely resembles that of the Pentagon—to write military commentary for the newspaper I work for, The Washington Times...
...They are far better people than they are given credit for being by the sort of cocktail Napoleon and fern-bar Clausewitz you meet in Washington—types that, I confess, I instinctively dislike...
...The idea that civilians are interlopers is ingrained in the military...
...He'd have to get back to me...
...In other words, any dissenting views can be prohibited...
...Given behavior like this, how .can a reporter resist the suspicion that the tank is badly designed and the Army mendacious...
...It is ridiculous that I should have to measure a tank's acceleration with a stopwatch instead of taking the Army's word—but measure it I do...
...Either prospect traumatizes a PAO...
...The officers want me to write colorfully about somebody else's outfit, entailing no risk to them...
...Heavy vetting The military has two principal means of keeping the truth under house arrest...
...Better yet, try to bullyrag them into going...
...The instinct is not to tell the civilians, even when outside pressure might help solve the problem...
...The censors excised this phrase, presumably because it wasn't upbeat enough...
...I suggest that it is high time the Pentagon came out from under the covers...
...I suspect that excessive knowledge is taken by editors as evidence of having been co-opted by the military...
...nobody had ever asked...
...At Fort Knox a PAO would have to "escort" me—that is, monitor conversations— and because no PAO was available, I was not allowed to go...
...The Army ungrudgingly let me test acceleration with tape measure and stopwatch, showed me what I asked to see, and in general did everything that I requested...
...I rather like the military...
...The nation cannot take the word of its armed services...
...The Phantom is a tired warhorse, badly obsolescent...
...Show it to us...
...As we used to say in the Marines, "Civilians just can't get organized" That's the worst thing a Marine can say about anybody...
...When he called back he said that he now thought two days would be adequate, and a PAO would accompany me "to answer any questions you might have"—even though the crews I was to ride with were experienced and entirely able to answer questions for themselves...
...As a cultural trait, the contempt the military feels for civilian life may be charming, but as a political position it is unacceptable...
...if you fly enough choppers long enough, you lose some...
...The thought of hiding things just comes naturally to them...
...In every objectively verifiable case, the Army proved to be right...
...They will deny this vehemently, and it certainly isn't an iron-clad rule...
...The Blackhawk is a good bird and the Army's pilots are good...
...They are equally capable of wild speculation asserted as fact, bitter grousing about nothing in particular, and outright sportive lying to a gullible newsman...
...Under such circumstances, writing candidly about policy is impossible...
...When it comes down to it, the PAO shows up and wants to listen...
...The commander said something to the effect that he was glad to have me aboard and that they weren't going to hide anything from me...
...I wasn't surprised...
...In fact, admirals aren't weird, but pathologically normal, which is perhaps their greatest fault...
...Drive a battalion in circles until the tanks break...
...The military can silence most criticism of hardware by demonstrating it—if the hardware is any good...
...I write a sort of Ernie Pyle column about military life from mud level, and for this I need enlisted men...
...Selling a piece even partly debunking the criticism of the chopper is almost impossible, even if the writer clearly knows a great deal about helicopters...
...it tries to keep reporters away from them...
...If reporters want to see DIVAD, don't tell them it's in testing and therefore off limits—which is what I was told...
...Nevertheless, I have to agree with these armchair strategists on one issue: the military is indifferent to the concerns of the civilians—or, rather, citizens—whose interests it is supposed to serve...
...Much the same happened at Fort Knox when I mentioned that I intended to spend the evening at the enlisted club...
...Who is right...
...Fort Irwin was installing some new test equipment, said FORSCOM, and they feared I wouldn't really be able to learn much about the M-1...
...we'll fix it in-house...
...At most there may- have been a little problem, but it's fixed now...
...An eerie realization descended on me: maybe the tank wasn't a lemon—despite the Army's inadvertent attempts to convince me that it was...
...The broader problem is that military people just don't believe civilians have any business on base...
...An assertion by the Pentagon that something is true is, to many, virtual proof that it is false...
...I believe that this wariness of the civilian world has served not only to cover up systemic failures, but also, oddly enough, to obscure some successes...
...I found this interesting," says Smith, "because I had been specifically directed by Defense sources that without a doubt this index was the most important and damaging piece of evidence in the test results ?' He asked the officers who brought him the pile about his curious omission...
...Give demonstrations that address the tank's alleged weaknesses...
...Officers and enlisted men have a well-developed sense of humor, which is one reason I like them...
...Dead silence ensued...
...From this it follows that the country cannot be sure what kind of defense it has...
...in a sleet storm...
...Selling an article exposing, say, a new helicopter is easy...
...In my estimation, the PAOs are responsible for a large part of the visceral dislike that newsmen tend to have for the Pentagon...
...She didn't know...
...I later infuriated the Marine Corps by suggesting that the deaths constituted criminal neglect...
...Many in the military confuse the desirable with the actual, and they quickly put loyalty to the group before considerations of truth...
...It came back looking like a press release...
...Hah, they said, the copier must have been broken and just hadn't copied that page...
...After I wrote an angry column wondering what the Army was hiding, the Pentagon invited me to Fort Knox to spend time with the tank...
...If newsmen want to see the infantry, then send them into the weeds and don't worry about what they write...
...From this it follows that the country cannot be sure what kind of defense it has...
...Next I got a call...
...To most editors, covering the military means covering the Pentagon, where the military looks no better than any other Washington bureaucracy...
...For the past ten years I have been writing about the armed forces...
...But it isn't just a fear that some enlisted man will say something embarrassing that worries PAOs...
...It added that engineering documents can mislead those unaccustomed to reading them...
...If it's our plane, then it's a good plane...
...A rash of exposes would be followed by knowledge and eventually boredom...
...He walks funny and can't set windage...
...There is an immense sensitivity involved in this," the Navy perceptively noted...
...A young lady with Time sat by me on the troop seats, wearing high heels...
...The more pernicious, and least known, is a set of restrictions, embodied in regulations, on what military people can say publicly...
...But often it is just hiding...
...Like most people in public relations, their "helpfulness" tends to irritate reporters...
...In principle, this is reasonable if his job genuinely is to assist the reporter in getting the information he needs...
...from Forces Command in Atlanta, rescinding the invitation...
...I pointed out that in fact "we" probably wouldn't, and he reluctantly agreed...
...Newt Gingrich...
...She looked up at me and said (so help me), "Is this a chopper...
...But as it turned out, the concern seemed to be that Smith would not be misled...
...According to Smith's notes, it first said that the chief of naval operations had decided not to release the information...
...Who knows...
...Fred Reed is a writer for The Washington Times...
...Typically, when I set out some years ago to do a story on admirals for The Washingtonian, a city magazine in Washington, my editor (who is no longer there) said, "I hope you find some really weird people...
...The truth of the particular charges is not the point...
...When a reporter shows up at a base, the local PAO escorts him...
...The reason is that PAOs are very aware that enlisted men, especially junior ones, care nothing for the military as an institution and may burst into truth at any moment: "Yeah, man, race relations are bad, real bad...
...We cannot even learn whether it works...
...The skepticism is deserved...
...This case of the selective Xerox and countless similar incidents are examples of the central fact of military journalism: the nation cannot take the word of its armed services...
...But not, I found, as a newsman...
...I remember the attitude from my days in the Marines, and emotionally I still feel it...
...I paid little attention...
...The military is an authoritarian organization, and a colonel cannot command if his lieutenants daily question his intellectual capacity in The Washington Post...
...Indeed, at times the military seems to regard itself as a sovereign realm, forced by a malign providence into uneasy intercourse with the United States...
...He was flying F-4s weekly out of Andrews Air Force Base...
...A tank is said to have a range less than it's designed to have...
...This problem is compounded by the fact that young reporters tend to be liberal arts graduates, few of whom have served in the military...
...A case of sorts can be made for 360-5...
...He had flown 180 combat missions in Southeast Asia and knew something of the attack pilot's art...
...at Fort Irwin, where tanks engage in war games...
...Later the sergeant found me alone...
...I never did find out the truth...
...He seemed unhappy with the question...
...A column sharply critical of the military brings invitations to talk shows...
...By contrast, officers know the score, share the ideology, and understand that their careers will be ruined if they say the wrong thing...
...In practice, PAOs try hard to help the reporter get an "objectiv e"-that is, positive—story ("Success at Pearl: Navy Depletes Jap Bomb Supply...
...They just can't quite bring themselves to let me do it...
...For example, almost without exception servicemen like my Ernie Pyle stuff about C-rations, running the bars of Tijuana, barracks life, and the joys of guarding an imaginary bridge in Texas from imaginary Russians at three a.m...
...Once when I spent a couple of days aboard the Vinson, the latest of the Nimitz-class carriers, I asked the PAO to let me spend time with some enlistees...
...Finally, after he threatened to ask the Republican leadership to help, the Navy agreed to send the data, a formidable pile of roughly 200 pages, with the warning that if Smith released the test results to the public, it would be the last time the congressman got anything from the Navy...
...There is something fundamentally wrong when the American military is frightened by three privates and a pitcher of beer...
...I once showed up at Fort Campbell to write a story about the 101st Airborne Division...
...Large numbers of intelligent people assume without question that the military exists to support the feeding frenzy of the defense contractors...
...Most of Washington would be astonished at how well the military functions most of the time—but the services hide this truth well...
...They tend to be helpless in the face of technology, and a bit resentful of it...
...It is the public's gun, being tested with public money by people paid with public money...
...In practice, 360-5 is used with a vengeance...
...The M-1 has been described by military reformers as a high-speed junkyard in perpetual disrepair...
...He asked the Navy for the raw data...
...the point is that we are rarely permitted to find out the truth...
...The tanks I get The obvious conclusion to draw is that the military is hiding something...
...For example, he had referred to the F-4 as being "no longer top-oftheline," which it isn't...
...They are told to say that the Pentagon never makes a mistake...
...Under it an officer (or enlisted man, for that matter) cannot offer an article for publication without first submitting it to military censors, who vet the piece for classified information, factual error (by no means a clear category), and policy implications...
...The military's second means of modulating the flow of information is the PAO, or Public Affairs Officer...
...On several occasions I have been put on a tank for days without escort, or simply attached to the infantry in the bushes...
...Into the weeds What are the effects of the military's Madison Avenue approach...
...Recently a PAO for the Corps began to bend slightly, suggesting that maybe, if in his opinion it was justified, I might be permitted to cover the Marines again...
...This might also be the cure for bad hardware...
...Through the grapevine came word that the Army canceled for fear the tank would break down thanks to a lack of spare parts...
...There is an antimilitary bias in the press...
...The document said that the Ticonderoga had tested wonderfully well against air attack...
...The Army version is regulation 360-5 and is worth reading...
...He had seen my stuff, liked it, and wanted me to go through a training cycle, which lasts something like two weeks...
...Show us...
...Earlier this year I got a call from the PAO...
...Some years back I went to the Pentagon library to get a book on tank design and asked the librarian whether members of the press could check out books...
...It goes far toward eliminating accountability: a bureaucracy growing in the dark seldom does what it is supposed to do...
...I was in Beirut shortly before a truck bomb killed 241 men, and noticed that security was nonexistent...
...Yet the Navy insists, without offering proof, that it is an impenetrable shield...
...If the demonstration is inconvenient or expensive, do it anyway...
...Just as the Soviets have political officers at all levels of their army, so we have PAOs, and for the same reason: to protect what is important to the hierarchy...
...Rather than raise the nation's esteem for the armed forces, as it is supposed to do, it has lowered the military's credibility to the level of that of used-car salesmen...
...A surprising number of officers greet me this way...
...a favorable column never does...
...Almost everything the military does nowadays is called into question...
...Denny Smith saw a report from the Navy about the Aegis air-defense system, as embodied in the USS Ticonderoga, CG-47, the lead ship of the class...
...He wrote a piece and passed it to the censors...
...Waste, fraud, abuse...
...Smith persisted...
...the military reform movement includes conservatives like Senator Charles Grassley and Rep...
...I can't think of many weapons that are not widely said to be badly designed, ill-conceived, ineffective, over-priced and unnecessary: the M-1, Aegis, Maverick, F-15, Apache, M-3, and big-deck carriers most immediately come to mind...
...The quality of training, degree of readiness, and competence of the officer corps are all doubted...
...Smith was impressed...
...The critics say the stuff doesn't work, the Pentagon says it does—but only the Pentagon has the hardware...
...Great, I said, when were some M-ls going through...
...It wasn't there...
...I knew of no pattern of crashes...
...In the absence of either trust or information, military policy tends to be the vector sum of competing irrelevancies: the public whim, the congressional mood, the rosy twaddle from the Pentagon, the notions of half-baked reformers and a few well-baked ones, lobbying by the arms manufacturers, and liberal-arts militaria from bright young writers seeking to make a name for themselves...
...In Honduras I remember boarding a C-130—a four-engine transport—to go into triple-canopy jungle...
...The most he would do was find a gawky and shy photographer's mate, put him in an otherwise empty room with me, and tell him to talk—meanwhile standing conspicuously within hearing distance...
...A strong streak of nostalgic romanticism resides in soldiers...
...There was no propaganda...
...When the documents arrived, Smith searched for a particular index that friends in the Pentagon had recommended as a clear summary of the results...
...No, I said, what crash...
...The reason is that it is a full-time job and few papers will devote a reporter to it full-time...
...There's dope all over this ship...
...For more than a week, the Navy stalled, conferred, and pondered...
...But the regulation also deprives the nation of the expertise of those it pays to know about the military matters, and shields the Pentagon from revelation of its errors...
...This sort of snobbery does not make it any easier for civilians to penetrate the military world...
Vol. 16 • October 1984 • No. 9
