If truth is the first casualty of war, then deception is the first weapon of a covert war.
Daily news reports are filled with rumor and speculation, attributed to unnamed sources. What are readers supposed to believe? At the same time, some reports seem all too revealing.
On Sept. 29, the Times-Union ran a front-page story that U.S. commandos had entered Afghanistan two weeks earlier.
William Sweeney was outraged: “I read the newspaper every day, as I have all of my life. It is both informative and entertaining. It has a responsibility to simply report the news. However, today I find it is more and more guilty of acts of espionage. It is a primary source of near real-time information for the ‘bad guys’ worldwide. Our military movements that are classified are spread all over the newspapers and broadcast ‘real time’ on the media networks. This is tantamount to treason. It is no different than being guilty of being a traitor on the battlefield.”
Pentagon officials will not confirm or deny any news reports, Pentagon Spokeswoman Torie Clarke said in a press conference. “That’s helpful to the bad guys and not helpful to us,” she said.
A Pentagon spokesman described the situation on the Pentagon’s Web site: “We’re now in a protracted long-term struggle. We’re going to be using special tactics, techniques and procedures. While the military has always prized the element of surprise, you don’t want the enemy to know exactly what you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it. Now it’s even more important to build on that and to not reveal exactly what we’re doing. Even historically. Because what that does is it takes away our ability to use those special tactics, techniques and procedures freely in the future. We have laid out to them exactly how we’re doing it. We want this very shadowy opposition to stay confused, to stay off center.”
While confusion to the enemy has military value, confusion to the readers is not good journalism. How do editors decide which story to use? How much information is too much? That was a question posed to John Wolcott, news editor of Knight-Tribune News Service, co-author of a book during the Reagan era, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism. The story the Times-Union used on the commandos entering Afghanistan was a Knight-Tribune story.
In an interview with the Times-Union, Wolcott said the commando story had been known for weeks before it was published, but it was held until it passed several tests.
First, the editors used common sense. No mention of names, times, equipment, location, specifics of operations, strategy or tactics, Wolcott said.
“You can tell people with assurance that there are a lot of things that have not been revealed,” Wolcott said of security issues.
Second, editors and reporters discussed the story with responsible people in government who assured them the story was OK and would not endanger lives.
How are readers supposed to know this? Stories rarely include such background information. Readers must rely on professional standards.
The Times-Union’s Ethics Code says that information from unnamed sources should be attributed to at least two other, unrelated sources in most cases. Wire Editor Marc Cook recently checked with 15 news services and newspapers regularly used by the Times-Union to verify that their rules are as stringent as the Times-Union’s. In some cases, Times-Union editors have called wire services to obtain assurances that stories were adequately sourced.
However, unnamed sources are only the first of the complexities faced in covering this new war. Journalists want access; the military seeks to control it. Both groups seek to serve the public.
Press coverage during the Grenada and Panama military actions was tightly controlled, which Wolcott described as “disastrous” for the readers of newspapers. Extensive, independent coverage of the gulf war occurred largely after the conflict.
In Somalia, a 1993 battle produced the famous photo of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets. The photo caused widespread complaints but won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. The reports alerted the public to the flaws of the mission, which resulted in 18 American deaths.
Mark Bowden of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a book titled Black Hawk Down, which described in detail that battle. He produced an extensive Internet version that mixed audio, video, print and reader participation into a multi-media form of journalism.
Bowden expressed the difficulty of covering these battles in his Internet report: “With the exception of the Persian Gulf War, modern American warfare no longer pits great national armies in sweeping conflicts. Instead, it is marked by isolated, usually brief, encounters between specially trained U.S. forces and Third World irregulars as America seeks to alter the political equation in some tumultuous location — Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia.
“The American public is rarely exposed to the realities of warfare. The Pentagon does not allow reporters to accompany soldiers directly into battle, a journalistic tradition that ended after Vietnam. What results is a sanitized picture of combat. The public knows only what the military chooses to portray, or what cameras are able to see from afar. Americans have little understanding of what awaits frightened young soldiers, or of their heroic and sometimes savage attempts to save themselves and their fellow soldiers.”
In an interview, Bowden said when reporters accompany military commanders in the field, they developed relationships that benefited both.
“I hope if we commit troops, they will see the wisdom of providing access,” Bowden said. At least have journalists in staging areas, he said. In any case, much can be reported after a battle, as he did in Black Hawk Down.
However, during a protracted conflict in which secrecy is a top priority, information may be withheld for years.
And when information is reported, it may be intended to deceive.
For instance, during the gulf war, the Times-Union and many other newspapers reported an amphibious training exercise and were criticized for revealing military secrets. It turned out to be a case of “strategic deception.” No such amphibious landing occurred, but some Iraqi forces were out of position for the real battle. Wolcott said some reporters knew the exercise was a deception, but did not report that fact.
Conrad Fink, a journalism professor at the University of Georgia, was a Marine Corps officer, then a war correspondent for 10 years. He covered Afghanistan during his career. He sends student journalists on military training exercises so they can obtain a better appreciation of the military.
Fink said no harm would be caused by reporting that U.S. commandos are in Afghanistan, a nation the size of Texas. Reporting specific locations (which was not done) would not be appropriate, he said.
“I never saw press coverage kill one U.S. soldier or jeopardize a mission,” he said. “However, I saw any number of stupid government errors that resulted from government secrecy.
“The American people are entitled to know how their armed forces have performed and history suggests that organizations perform better and correct mistakes sooner in daylight than in darkness.”
The irony is that terrorism on American soil will be widely reported, but successful covert operations may never be known.
How do journalists and their readers sort out truth from deception? How do journalists protect U.S. troops while balancing the need to report what is happening? The answers are still being sorted out.
Readers must turn to news sources they can trust, sources that have standards. Credibility has never been more valuable to news organizations and their readers.
