The US Army and the Media 

in Wartime:

Historical Perspectives

The Proceedings of the Combat Studies Institute

2009 Military History Symposium

Kendall D. Gott

General Editor

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

The US Army and the Media 

in Wartime: 

Historical Perspectives

The Proceedings of the Combat Studies Institute

2009 Military History Symposium

Kendall D. Gott

General Editor

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Combat Studies Institute Military History Symposium (7th : 2009 : Fort Leavenworth, Kan.)

 The US Army and the media in wartime : historical perspectives : the proceedings of the Combat 

Studies Institute 2009 Military History Symposium / Kendall D. Gott, general editor.

 p. cm.

 1. United States. Army--Public relations--History--20th century. 2. United States. Army--Public 

relations--History--21st century. 3. United States. Army--Press coverage--History--20th century. 

4. United States. Army--Press coverage--History--21st century. 5. Armed Forces and mass 

media--United States. 6. United States--History, Military--20th century. 7. United States--History, 

Military--21st century. I. Gott, Kendall D. II. Title. 

 UH703.C65 2009

 070.4’330973--dc22

 2010009551

First printing, July 2010.

CSI Press publications cover a variety of military history topics. The views 

expressed in this CSI Press publication are those of the author(s) and not 

necessarily those of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense. 

A full list of CSI Press publications, many of them available for downloading, 

can be found at http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/csi/RandP/CSITeam.asp.

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this document as an official publication of 

the CSI. It is prohibited to use CSI’s official seal on any republication of this material without the 

expressed written permission of the Director of CSI.
iii

Foreword

These Proceedings are the seventh volume to be published in a series generated by the 

annual Military History Symposium hosted by the Combat Studies Institute. Each year, 

these conferences bring together both military and civilian historians, as well as formal and 

informal students of military history, literally from around the world, for the purposes of 

presenting ideas and points of view on current military issues from a historical perspective. 

The 2009 symposium was sponsored by the US Army Combined Arms Center (CAC) and 

was held 25–27 August 2009 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

This symposium explored the relationship between the US Army and the media within 

a historical context. The panelists also examined current issues, dilemmas, problems, 

trends, and practices associated with the US Army and its coverage by the American 

and international media. This year we were fortunate to have five distinguished featured 

speakers who have built exceptional careers in journalism spanning decades. Our panelists 

were also experts in their fields and enriched the discussion with their insights.

This seventh volume of proceedings contains the papers or the presentation transcripts 

of the participating speakers and panelists. It includes transcriptions of the question and 

answer periods following the presentations as well. These materials can also be found online at the CSI Web site at http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/CSI/.

These annual symposiums continue to be an important event for those within the Army 

who believe that insights from the past are relevant to current military challenges. The 

attendees have uniformly found them to be of great benefit. We hope that the readers of 

this and past volumes will find the experience equally useful. CSI—The Past is Prologue.

William G. Robertson

Director, Combat Studies Institute

v

Contents

Page

Foreword............................................................................................................................ iii

Day 1—Keynote Speaker

Mr. Bill Kurtis ...............................................................................................................1

Questions and Answers ................................................................................................9

Day 1, Panel 1—Forging a Relationship: The Army and the Media

A Horrible Fascination: The Military and the Media by Mr. Frederick J. 

Chiaventone .........................................................................................................17

Ethics and Embedded Journalists: Beyond Boundaries of Industry Induced 

Guidelines of Objectivity and Balance by Mr. Ron Martz ..................................27

Questions and Answers ..............................................................................................39

Day 1, Panel 2—The Philippines and the First World War

“Its Officers Did Not Forget”: The Philippine War, the Press, and the 

Pre-World War I US Army by Thomas A. Bruscino Jr., Ph.D. ............................49

To Best Serve Democracy: Censorship and the Great War by Mr. Jared Tracey .......63

Questions and Answers ..............................................................................................83

Day 1, Panel 3—The Vietnam War

Generals Westmoreland and Abrams Meet the Press: What Went Right and 

What Went Wrong with Media Relations in Vietnam by William M. 

Hammond, Ph.D. .................................................................................................89

The Viet Cong Assault on the US Embassy at Tet and the Military Media 

Controversy It Launched by Mr. Donald North .................................................109

Questions and Answers ............................................................................................125

Day 2—Featured Speaker

Mr. John Burns .........................................................................................................129

Questions and Answers ............................................................................................141

Day 2, Panel 4—The Cold War

Professionalism’s Impact on Public Affairs Education at the Army War 

College, 1950–1989 by Mr. Paul Gardner .........................................................147

Questions and Answers ............................................................................................169
vi

Day 2, Panel 5—Experiences Beyond the US Army

Soviet News Media Performance During the Afghan War: STRATCOM 

Utopia or Dystopia? by Robert Baumann, Ph.D. ...............................................175

Public Communications and the International Committee of the Red Cross 

(ICRC) by Mr. Bernard Barrett ..........................................................................187

Day 3—Featured Speaker

Today’s Combat Correspondent: The “New Media” and Reporting from 

Iraq and Afghanistan by Mr. Andrew Lubin ......................................................201

Questions and Answers ............................................................................................217

Day 3, Panel 6—Current Operations

Historical Roots and Explanations for “Embedding” Journalists by Phillip 

Fraund, Ph.D. .....................................................................................................227

Beyond Doctrine: A Historical Perspective on the Information Operations 

Debate in Media-Military Relations by Stephen Badsey, Ph.D. ........................245

Questions and Answers ............................................................................................259

Day 3—Featured Speaker

Mr. Ralph Peters........................................................................................................263

Questions and Answers ............................................................................................275

Glossary ..........................................................................................................................281

Appendix A, Conference Program ..................................................................................285

Appendix B, About the Presenters ..................................................................................291

Page
1

Day 1—Keystone Address

Mr. Bill Kurtis

Kurtis Productions

(Transcript of Presentation)

I thought you’d say, “Hoorah!” Woop, woop. That’s right. A diverse group. Thank you. 

I’m pleased to be here. If I weren’t here, in Chicago I would be in an IRS appeal hearing. 

So I put it off until tomorrow and said I’ve got to go down and talk to our men in uniform. 

Which reminded me of the young agent who wanted to get ahead with the IRS and he went 

to his director and said, “Let me do the rabbi. Let me do the rabbi.” Now, the rabbi had a 

reputation of doing something wrong, but they just couldn’t put their finger on it. So he 

said, “Okay, dress up in your suit and go down and you can interview the rabbi and see 

what you can find.” So he knocks on the door, rabbi answers, he goes in and he said, “Well, 

I have a few questions. You’ve been taking a lot of deductions for a number of things that I 

find questionable. First would be the candles. Now, you use a lot of candles and you write 

off that deduction.” The rabbi said, “We’re very frugal. You know, candles melt, the wax 

goes on the table, we scrape up the wax, we put it in a box, and after we have enough we 

send it back to the candle maker and he sends us a new set of candles. They last largely for 

a year.” “Well, what about the matzah, the crackers?” He said, “Well, the same principle 

applies. We don’t eat all the crackers and we have a lot of crumbs that go down on the table. 

We scrape them up, put them in a box, save them, send them back to the baker, and once 

a year he sends us a box of new matzah.” He said, “Well, you do a lot of Bris ceremonies 

and circumcisions. What about the foreskins that you collect?” He said, “Well, the same 

principle applies. You know, we save those, we put them in a box, we send them out once 

a year back to the IRS and once a year they send a little prick like you.”

So I know why you asked me today. I’ll be with you until 10 o’clock. I’m going to set 

aside enough time so that you can ask questions, so you can be thinking of it. That’s my last 

real joke today, I think, unless I go through my best commercials with Floyd Mayweather 

and Andy Roddick for AT&T.

I was born in the Marine Corps actually. I was 13 before I realized there was a world 

outside the utility fence that surrounded Cherry Point and El Toro Marine Base and points 

in between. My dad was an aviator in World War II. I knew the Marine Handbook before I 

knew the Boy Scouts Handbook. I could field strip an M1 by the time I was nine. Of course, 

when you live on base, all the kids get all the weaponry without the firing pin and so we 

really had a good time. We went through our cavalry stage, our first cav, and then really on 

horseback, and then we went into infantry and trench warfare in World War I. It’s good to 

be back on a military base. I went into the Marine Corps Reserve, wanted to be a lawyer, 

got out, went to law school at Washburn, passed the bar in 1966. Then I was studying for 

the bar and a friend of mine, working at the local TV station, asked me if I wanted to fill in 

while he left early on vacation. So I went out and did the 6 o’clock news, and about 6:30, 

we got a bulletin from Manhattan that a cold front was coming through and “you’d better 
2

Keynote Address

stay” because we took it very seriously. Much more serious than the big metropolitan 

television stations. So it was about 6:45, then 7:00—it was a CBS station. “Lost in Space” 

was the television show, and they said, “Well, why don’t you go on and give the all clear 

because it’s coming through, but we don’t think we have any problems.” So, as I’m on the 

air, I’m 26, I get a two-way cut in off camera, I mean off—yeah, off the camera, actually 

from the other room, the newsroom, and I could hear Ed Rutherford, our film cameraman say, “We have a tornado on the ground; it’s approaching Burnett’s Mound.” Burnett’s 

Mound was the Indian burial mound that the old legend said any tornado that comes from 

the southwest or the northeast, it would hit the Mound and dissipate. It had a logical basis 

to it. Only this was so big, it was about a half mile wide. It hit Burnett’s Mound all right, 

and came crashing down on top of Huntington Apartment Complex. The next transmission we heard, “Well, the Huntington Apartment Complex was gone.” There were 200. 

Now, if I draw a line in my head—I’m on camera—from the first sighting to Huntington 

Apartment Complex, it pointed for the capitol building and all points in between—Topeka 

State Hospital, Washburn University campus where my wife and baby were in married 

housing. They, in the meantime, had been getting the word and ran up to the Science 

building. Everybody parked, of course, in the parking lot. I didn’t see a thing because I’m 

looking into a television camera. Gave the word, “For God’s sake, take cover.” Everybody 

headed for the basement. You may know the story. The 1966 tornado in Topeka wiped out 

the university—8 out of 10 sandstone buildings, wonderful old buildings, crumbled. Hit 

the Science building; a sucking sound came up the elevator shaft. It took the cars in the 

parking lot and wadded them in little balls and put them in the tree and in the light space 

leading down to the basement of the Science building. My law school class that I should 

have been studying with, it sent them into the basement. They said, “We could see this 

black front that was coming toward us across the golf course and we thought it was birds 

up in the air, then we realized it was debris from houses that had been churning up.” I was 

all set to go practice law, but I say an act of God saved the law profession from my participation. Within 3 months I was in Chicago working for CBS and a 30-year career. I would 

not change it at all because it’s the best seat in the house for history as it unfolds before 

you—an interactive kind of participation because usually you are there.

I want to go back to a specific part of history in this symposium of the military and the 

media. We’ll save that for the question and answer session. But to give you a slice of history that I think might be relevant today, and that’s the Vietnam era and the specific part of 

it that starts in 1975.

The North Vietnamese were coming down Highway 1. Bruce Dunning, a CBS news 

correspondent was on a 707 I believe taking off from Da Nang Air Force Base when the . . . 

and shot out the back. It must have been a 727 where the stairs go down. As Vietnamese 

forces, South Vietnamese forces, were running along trying to get on the stairs and out of 

the way of the North Vietnamese as they progressed, I was doing a standup in the central 

square, the marketplace in Saigon. From out of nowhere, someone came up and whispered 

in my ear, “They’ll be here in 2 weeks.” It was 2 weeks to the day that the North Vietnamese 

entered the city. My dad, I took my dad with us. We were the only ones. I was shooting my 

own film. He was my muscle on the side. I knew he would get a kick out of it, and it was 

something he talked about for the rest of his life. Still back in the action. I had to find a peg, 
3

Kurtis

an angle, connected to home because I was working for CBS, but primarily at Chicago. 

There was a flight engineer from Hammond, Indiana, who was flying volunteer flights with 

freighters, 707s, that were lifting rice from Tan Son Nhut in Saigon to Nam Peng. Nam 

Peng was being surrounded by the Khmer Rouge and it was kind of a Berlin air lift. The 

distance was only Chicago to Peoria, less than an hour’s flight. I went out and had a beer 

with the flight crew the night before and talked my way onto an empty seat right behind 

the pilot. They liked to have the company. I was there. It took 2 hours to load the rice sacks 

onto the 707, a great plane, and we took off. There was no air traffic control at that time. 

The US forces had really pulled out except for security around the Embassy. I looked down 

at the countryside just pocked with shell craters. We came in over Nam Peng, one circle 

around—they didn’t want to do more than that—and noticed a ship in the Mekong River 

had turned over on its side and the Communists were up on the side trying to get some of 

the supplies. Landed. They had lost a plane to the left—it was burning. Taxied up to the 

offloaders who were waiting for us, and what had taken 2 hours to load took 9 minutes to 

unload. Salty Walz was the flight engineer’s name, and he said, “Don’t get out of the plane 

because we won’t wait for you.” So the door closes and we are taking off, and they said, 

“Have you ever seen a rocket before because there’s one right there with a little plume of 

dirt.” I swear to God he took it off like a Piper Cub, just threw the throttle forward and 

we were off. Climbed to probably 20,000 feet for the flight back to Saigon, and as we’re 

coming into Saigon, I said there was no traffic controller, there were still sorties that were 

coming out, a propeller flown by Vietnamese pilots, trying to support as best they could 

the delaying action. I, in the meantime, had unbuckled and gone into the back to shoot the 

empty hold. I got the rice there, but I wanted the aftereffect. As I’m there, my plane had 

to dive very quickly to avoid a midair collision. I hit that centrifugal curve and floated up 

into the air and literally grabbed the loading net that was there. I pulled myself down and I 

thought, “Well, that’s it. I’ve had a good life. I’ve been 30 years old and got some excitement.” I sheepishly crawled back to my seat, and the pilot looked back and said, “I told you 

not to unbuckle your seatbelt.” There were a hundred of those little stories.

Saigon was panicked. There was the look of terror on the faces of everyone there 

because Kissinger said there will be a bloodbath when the Communists come in. There was 

an errant South Vietnamese pilot who bombed the Presidential Palace, which caused more 

panic. And so everybody, as you know from the news reel photos of trying to get on the 

helicopter on top of the Embassy, was trying to get out. I got out on an Air France flight and 

was not there for the liftoff from the top and of course the movement over to the carriers.

What happened when the Communists came into Saigon? What happened was a graduate study. They had been to Revolutionary University in Moscow preparing exactly for this 

moment. I went back in 1980. I was the first US reporter back in Vietnam, and you will see 

in a little bit going out on the Mekong Delta with a professor from Saigon University, then 

in 1980 Ho Chi Minh University, who detailed all the steps. Cadres entered the town; tanks 

went immediately to the Presidential Palace. The first cadres took the radio station, the 

electric utility, sewer, and water. The town didn’t miss a beat. It just kept going. It was 15 

seconds of dead air between the time the South Vietnamese announcer on the radio station 

stepped away and the North Vietnamese announcer stepped in. The announcement was, 

“There will be no bloodbath. Stay in your homes. We will tell you what to do.” It was quiet. 
4

Keynote Address

Slowly, the North Vietnamese filtered in. There were soldiers, but there wasn’t a heavy 

presence. Within a week, they said, “We’re going to divide the blocks into information 

centers because this is now your country. We are uniting the country rather than taking over 

a country, and we want to know what kind of government you want. Our representatives 

will be coming door-to-door. You will have a meeting in every block and we will tell you 

this.” Then the cell leaders, who had been either working for or were Viet Cong, gathered 

those on the block together and handed out papers. They said, “Tell us your experience so 

we know where to place you in the new government. We want you to be honest, tell us your 

feelings.” At that point, everything was rather friendly and the mood was pretty good, so 

people actually told the truth and wrote down on their dossiers their history. Those were 

collected, sent to a block, a region, a central command point if you will, and the country 

was then shut down. Six hundred thousand people were sent to reeducation camps. Those 

reeducation camps were to familiarize them with how the Communists do business and that 

kind of government. So suddenly they had poured out their feelings, their history, and they 

knew everybody who had worked for the US Government, knew the girlfriends, knew the 

wives, knew the children. A lot of the girlfriends, all the girlfriends of US servicemen were 

sent to the reeducation camps, considered prostitutes. There they learned black lacquer, 

which is a wonderful national craft. They learned silk, how to sew. Some high-ranking 

people, let’s say either in the military or in the echelons of the community, were given a 

bag of rice and sent out to the forest to soil that wasn’t particularly suited for rice paddies 

or growing and said, “Okay, you have 6 months, grow your food.” This is a peasant revolution. You’re no longer in charge. You live if you can grow your own food. If you can’t, 

then you won’t live.

We don’t really know how many citizens were killed. There isn’t a lot of stories, aren’t 

a lot of stories that are coming out of the Vietnam takeover. Most of our attention was in 

Cambodia where a similar takeover took place and, of course, the imposition of a new kind 

of communism, the Pol Pot idea, which went over and studied for awhile. The years after, 

prior to the tribunal that I believe is still going on to try and find justice in the country. The 

Vietnamese actually went into Cambodia to stop the slaughter—the holocaust at our best 

guess two million killed.

I was doing a nature documentary in Cambodia and we went into an area near Cambodia 

and the Vietnamese border where the Khmer Rouge had sort of taken the area and lived/

camped. They said a conservation group, sort of like National Geographic, is coming 

through. We were the first ones in, film crew. They didn’t really know exactly to give us 

a forest ranger, so they assigned a squad and we had Chinese rockets and a machinegun, 

30-caliber machinegun, and AK-47’s leading us into the forest, getting on elephants to ride 

in. I realized, my God, these are the guys who carried out the holocaust. About 3 or 4 days 

in, I get word that they wanted to talk to me. I wasn’t going to ask any hard questions in the 

middle of the jungle when they were the only ones who knew the way out. They said, “You 

know, we’ve gone to our priest and we’re feeling bad, remorse, guilt.” I say, “For killing all 

the people?” They said, “Yes, we were ordered to do it.” I said, “Well, how did you do it?” 

They said, “We were very young. Some of us were 10 years old, child soldiers. Some of us 

were 15, teenagers. First, they took us aside and they trained us to kill insects. Step on an 

insect. Then we graduated up to birds, and then small rodents, and within our religion we’d 
5

Kurtis

sacrifice animals, so we’d kill a bull, kill a cow. We would take a machete and we would cut 

the head off so that we became used to blood and swinging a machete. Then it became very 

easy to jump to human beings. When the word comes down within a democracy—not a 

democracy—but within an apparatus, a bureaucracy, so that the top leaders are far removed 

from the guys who actually carry out the orders on the ground, we were afraid we would 

be killed if we didn’t. So anybody who wore glasses, the intelligentsia,” and you’ve heard 

these stories, “anyone who hinted that they could read a book or could read at all or had 

education or worked for the government or had a good job, we would separate them out 

and we would hit them right in the back of the head with either a baseball bat or a hoe or a 

shovel and that’s how we killed them all. Two million people. We didn’t shoot them. They 

lined them up and we just piled them in the rice paddies.” That was Cambodia, roughly the 

same time, ’75 to ’78.

Back to Vietnam. Once they had control of the city, they could build it the way they 

wanted. There were South Vietnamese, especially military, that were there 20 years later, 

25 years later. But for the most part, they didn’t have to have their holocaust, their slaughter. They came out of a civil war. In ’75, ’76, ’77, the US servicemen, we were glad to get 

out of Vietnam. We had had enough. Protesters up to our chins and just hating everything. 

The relationship between the military and the media really started going bad in ’65–66. 

Marines landed in July, the first, the real buildup of boots on the ground started. Everybody 

believed we were coming out of an era where we believed everything the government said. 

Then the reporter, never let a reporter in because he’ll actually report what he sees, he got 

into the country and began seeing this big contradiction between what was happening at 

MACV, where the word was in press conferences in Saigon, and what was actually happening in the field. So Tet comes along in ’68 and Walter Cronkite happened to be there. 

Nobody knew that it was going to hit. So Cronkite, famous and made more famous as we 

looked at his obit over the last few weeks, said, “This is going to be a long struggle and 

we’re not going to win it.” And LBJ said, “Well, if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.” 

But what he was really saying is that it’s much worse than we were being told. The minute 

you lose the trust of the media, you’re dead, because they’ll never trust you again. It’s like 

a coverup, a lie. So you don’t want to do it, and there’s another way that you can communicate with the media and everybody is truthful. All they want is a straight story. I’ve never 

met a reporter—there are reporters out there and maybe I have met one or two—but most 

reporters want to do a good job and they’re there and they’ll see it and they’ll report it. 

They won’t shape it for you or against you, but you have to have that relationship.

I think with the Gulf War and post-Vietnam, I’ve seen a lot of changes. But, nevertheless, let’s get back to ’66–67. When the veterans got home, they couldn’t wear their 

uniforms going back into the neighborhoods because they would be spit on. They were 

called baby killers. They were blamed for the war. There was this lash out, illogical and 

unreasonable, as if they asked to be over there so they could go and kill Vietnamese and be 

baby killers. It was a terrible time for the military and for veterans especially. There were 

no homecoming parades, not even a thank you. And they were feeling bad. I was in the 

newsroom at Channel 2 in 1978. It was around November, late November, and a fellow 

who taught at Columbia College nearby in Chicago came in and said, “Maude DeVictor 

wanted me to give this to you.” It was a manila envelope, and if you’re a reporter, I mean, 
6

Keynote Address

you cannot—I was in the middle of—there were a couple of stories breaking and I was 

trying to type them up, but I got this manila envelope and was wondering what that is. 

Curiosity will kill the cat. So you open it up and there were 12 names and a very short tip 

that said, “I’m a regional veteran’s representative at the local office of the Veteran’s Affairs 

down around Congress in Chicago. These are names of 12 men who served in Vietnam 

with symptoms that can’t be explained by doctors. They were all exposed to a defoliant 

in Vietnam. I saw a story that you did 6 months ago on a defoliant called Agent Orange 

and I thought there might be a connection and you might be interested.” I swear to God, in 

one second my mind flashed ahead and said, “Biological and chemical warfare, backlash 

on our own troops. This may be a story that will never go away.” So I went out to do my 

ground work and I went first to Sergeant Owens who was an Air Force sergeant and he 

lived, at least his address was on the south side of Chicago. I knocked on the door to just 

try and confirm his symptoms. His wife came to the door, and she said, “Well, my husband 

died 1 month ago.” I said, “Well, can I come in and talk?” I said, “Did he ever talk about 

Agent Orange? Have you ever heard that phrase?” “Oh yes. Well, he was with a spray unit/

squadron and they were up around the DMZ, Plaku, Special Forces, and he said some days 

it was as thick as the Los Angeles smog.” Little things like that will catch your attention.

So I went ahead and interviewed the second. It was Milton Ross who lived in Mattoon, 

a little further south of Chicago. He was having trouble with his marriage sexually, sexual 

dysfunction, psychological problems, PTSD, although at that time, we really didn’t even 

have the PTSD name. We were still working on World War II shell shock to describe this 

psychological disorder coming out of combat and service. And as we were lighting up the 

living room to do an interview, his young son came in (he was about 5 years old) to sit 

with daddy and the family. He put his hand up on daddy’s leg, and we looked down and his 

fingertips were hanging, congenitally deformed. We zoomed in, of course, and got a big 

close up and I said, “Well, tell me about that.” He said, “Well, I think that it was caused by 

my exposure to the defoliant in Vietnam. We had it all over the place. We would clear areas 

around firebases to take out the cover. We didn’t want the enemy coming in so close.” In 

fact, the more I learned about Agent Orange, the more I realized that I had sprayed with my 

dad on the pastures the same combination of chemicals 24D and 245T. I did not know at 

the time that 245T contained a little ingredient, a manmade substance that’s the most toxic 

we make called dioxin. And there were four, there were stacks of research papers from tests 

on farmers that showed no effect. It’s absolutely safe.

Well, I’ve got a problem here. Now, we have a story. Now, this is the part of the media 

that is not a quick headline. It’s an investigative report. I was going up against the chemical companies who were already out there saying there’s absolutely no problem here. But, 

as my research showed, the National Association of Science had gone to Vietnam to study 

the problem because they were getting reports of deformities among the Vietnamese. And 

in 1970 and then ’72, Richard Nixon banned the use of it as a defoliant in Vietnam. So 

something was up. But it’s very difficult to show that a chemical that passes through a male 

can cause deformities. Usually, you just lower the sperm count and abort a birth. So we had 

to find a scientist who believed that yes you can pass deformities through the male. So we 

had to prove that and we had to prove that in fact Agent Orange was applied as it had not 
7

Kurtis

been intended. Why? It’s war. If it doesn’t cause any human problem to us or to those on 

the ground, then we don’t have to mix it to 50/50. We can mix it really heavy. Now, it’s a 

hormone that causes leaves to grow fast, to essentially take a life cycle and squeeze it into 2 

weeks. There were some guys who said, “We saw the leaves falling off the trees in 2 hours.” 

So we knew that we had a concoction here that was war grade and was really potent. The 

reason for using it is probably very good and very sound. Admiral Zumwalt said he would 

do it again even though his son died of what he felt was exposure to Agent Orange.

We prepared an hour show that laid out our case, local television station, 10:30 at night. 

It ran once, and AP picked it up. Cronkite show picked it up, it was a pretty good story. 

Still, it really didn’t have legs until the Vietnam Veteran picked it up. Took the 3⁄4-inch 

videotapes and began sending them around, and they said, “You know, we’re not crazy. 

We shouldn’t be blamed for the war. There really is something wrong with those of us who 

have been exposed.” So it was a catalyst among the veterans groups. They carried the ball. 

It led to the wall, the Vietnam Wall, because they said, “We need a memorial,” and the veterans built the wall themselves with Maya Lin as the designer. So they had to take control 

of history and their own destiny.

So I got a call from a representative, Abner Mikva, who is still around, and he said I 

want you to come back to Congress and show it there because the VA is resistant. We got 

back to Congress and it was the Armed Forces Subcommittee. I thought we’d just go in 

and maybe show it to the committee members, House members, and walked into the room 

and it was full. Sort of like this. They’re standing around because they had heard of this 

growing snowball of a story and those who were involved like the VA wanted to come in 

and give it a knockout punch. “It’s just a local station; it really doesn’t have legs. If it were 

big, why, the networks would be running with it.” So we started the screening and about 10 

minutes in—I’ll never forget it; I choke up every time—the camera zooms in to the son of 

Milton Ross and I heard, “Oh my God,” and there was a quiet that spread across the room 

much like this for the rest of the show. And when it hit, the VA representative was on his 

feet saying, “Here are 10 things that we will do immediately to reach out to the veterans 

even though we can find no connection. At this point, we must give them treatment.”

Well, it lasted for 10 years. The VA did the best they could I think. It’s very difficult 

as it is difficult for cancer to trace back to that pollutant that may have been a trigger for 

uncontrolled cell growth. Eventually, within 5 years the chemical companies all settled 

for what seems to be a pittance today, $180 million, sent to the veterans. It really didn’t 

do much good. But 100,000 men and women were tested, an epidemiological study that 

resulted in a finding of elevated soft tissue sarcomas like lymphoma among those who had 

been exposed to this defoliant in Vietnam. Still going on. It’s become a household word. 

It’s become part of our culture and when you get right down to it, if any of you know the 

history of it, a lot of illnesses are lumped into it. But very often, these very powerful tools 

that we use to make war, we really don’t know the unintended consequences of them, especially biological and chemical warfare. So that’s history. I don’t know that it’s any guide, 

but at least you know a piece of history from Vietnam that involved the media. We were 

right. We had to be right. We’re as good as our last story essentially, and I’m proud of that 

contribution in my career and will stand as sort of the, I think, the right way to do a story.
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Keynote Address

As far as the rest of the military is concerned, I know I’m proud of you. I’m proud 

of our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Let me just give you a little insight on what an old 

veteran feels. It started with the first casualty and the first death from an IED in Baghdad. 

I felt this kind of ghost inside of me, even though I have a very comfy life. I like my job, 

and I like going to work. I like going back to my garden. But for some reason, I wanted to 

be there. I wanted to go and support—couldn’t walk more than a block I’m sure—but that’s 

the kind of feeling that wells up in millions of guys who have touched the military. So if 

you ever think that you’re out there alone, you’re not. Just ask.

I’m going to open up to questions and try to find something intelligent to say.
9

Day 1—Keynote Address

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Mr. Bill Kurtis

Kurtis Productions

Moderated by Major Dex Davis, Section 12 Bravo

Major Davis

As the moderator, I get the privilege of asking the first question. Sir, with today’s everchanging media and technology advancements, what would you recommend to universities 

handling curriculum and instructions to avoid producing students with knowledge and 

skills that may not be the most current?

Mr. Kurtis

Oh boy. You know, the media is changing just like so many businesses in these economic times. My old station, CBS in Chicago, is losing money. Unheard of in television. 

It was a license to steal. Westinghouse wanted 50 percent, 50 cents on every dollar they 

brought in as profit. We were down around 20 or 30 percent back in the good old days. The 

Tribune is in bankruptcy; the Sun Times in Chicago is in bankruptcy. Don’t know about the

Kansas City Star. New York Times maybe not quite in bankruptcy, but they’re close to it. 

Their revenues have fallen because they’re advertising driven. And when advertising falls, 

when nobody is buying, no banks are lending money, then you have a crash and the media 

has really taken it. So, a 400-person newsroom in the Chicago Tribune is down to 180. So 

it’s kind of hard to say to a J-School, the Journalism School graduate, okay, go get a job as a 

reporter because there are none out there. So how do you train? You’ve got to be computer 

proficient. Bloggers have in many ways taken over the communications business. Where 

will we get the Agent Oranges? The people who can devote the time and the resources to 

it? Bloggers don’t get any money for the most part, but they also don’t have any editorial 

checks. So we run the risk of relying too much on blogger information and then not enough 

in testing over and over everyday a news organization that is as good as its last story, where 

you can judge the truth. So you have a good job. Don’t lose your day job. We’re headed 

toward the one man—first of all, the communication is interactive. People want to test it. 

People want to hear from other people who have used, and write a review on a restaurant. 

It’s a new day. And so you need to be able to shoot, edit on your laptop, then it’s all there, 

report. What I think is difficult is the 5 years covering the police blotter, checking out stories, finding out who’s lying and who is not, gauging your choice of words against the more 

experienced people, and working with an editor to guide you. That’s not around a lot. So 

good luck. Long way to kind of sum up the state, the bad state of the media. There are still 
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Keynote Address

a few big organizations left, but there are fewer and fewer people who are covering, let’s 

say, Iraq and Afghanistan. It costs money. It’s tough.

Audience Member

Sir, Major Chuck Ziegenfuss, Small Group 21B. You say that bloggers don’t have 

editorial control, don’t have the resources available. I remember during the last election 

runoff, something going on at CBS news about some documents about President Bush’s 

early years in the military, and bloggers were the ones that exposed that to be complete and 

utter BS and CBS fell flat on their face for it. The last media panel we had said that the 

media was there as an organization to make money and the blogosphere is not. How does 

an organization that is there to make money also claim to be self-policing? How does that 

work? If you’re there to make money or are you there to tell the truth?

Mr. Kurtis

Both. You have to make money to be able to marshal the crews to go out and actually visit the sites where the news is, but you also have to be dedicated to the truth. Dan 

Rather—boy, he had a fall from grace, he certainly did, and couldn’t stand up to the story. 

We’re all subject to examination like that. The producer said that she did not know that we 

are now subject to a jihad from the bloggers, a blogger jihad. But you know, if they find a 

niche and if you can’t back up your story, you deserve to go down. So we’re dedicated to 

the truth, but look at the newspapers? It’s always been this dual role and advertising makes 

it possible for the reporters to go out and bring it in.

Now, you bring up another issue and that is whether or not the big media, the networks, 

the larger newspapers have an agenda and are politicized. In my 30 years with CBS, unlike 

Bernie Goldberg, the conservative voice now, I never saw anybody who was slanting the 

news contrary to facts in a situation. You know, it’s difficult—I would see opinions perhaps, 

and feature stories perhaps. But it’s hard enough. One thing it’s difficult to realize—in the 

coverage of the Vietnam war, today we take for granted satellite feeds out of your hotel 

room. There was no satellite during the Vietnam war. There was no satellite transmission 

beaming up from Saigon ever. The closest it ever got was Bangkok and that wasn’t until 

the ’70s, in the latter part of the war. So you had to fly your film—and it’s film which must 

be developed, then edited, not instantly like we can do it on a laptop—you had to fly it to 

first Tokyo, then they got one to Hong Kong, so there are cases of guys who would carry 

$7,000 around in their pocket, go up to the pilot and they would charter a 707 to get film 

into Hong Kong so they could beam it back. In the early stages of the war, they had to get 

it all the way to San Francisco, so they set up a bureau to cut the pieces in San Francisco 

to put it on the coax cable to get to New York—that kind of effort is so difficult just to get 

a few facts out. You don’t have time to slant it. But let’s put that aside. And incidentally, 

slant is built in. Slant is built into the time condensation. I covered the Angela Davis trial 

in California and was asked to sum up a 4-week prosecution’s case in a minute and a half. 

I said more talent goes into choosing words to represent whole stories and thoughts than in 

really communicating information like that.

Now, we have four 24-hour cable channels. Something happens and we expect to see it 

within an instant. And it’s all opinion. It’s all opinion. So we divide that between MSNBC, 
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Kurtis

which is a more liberal view to counteract Fox, a more conservative view, and CNN that 

tries to go down the middle. So that too has changed.

Audience Member

Sir, Major John Busa from Section 12 Bravo. I was listening to an NPR report yesterday that stated that only about 2 percent of the media coverage or total media coverage 

since 1 January has been on the war in Afghanistan. The report said, as you stated earlier, 

that one of the reasons is that the media agencies don’t have the resources to fully cover 

the war. How would you, what tips would you give us as the military to field that gap and 

make sure that our stories get the national attention that they deserve?

Mr. Kurtis

Go local. You know, the Illinois National Guard was there for a year and there were a 

few local television reporters who went over, paid their own way incidentally. I paid my 

own way when I went to Saigon in ’75. So they will go and do—it’s a great story for a local 

home town. But you know, I hate to say it, but it’s kind of old news. This war has been 

around a long time and people are just tired of seeing the same old thing, which is usually 

the aftermath of a car bomb. That takes up the bulk of coverage of the Iraq War. There was 

never a lot of time for building schools, which is a shame, and for those kinds of programs. 

But straight tip—contact local reporters and you think of the story over there. Here we are, 

instead of going to the Cubs game, our men are walking patrol everyday facing snipers 

on the streets of Baghdad. That’s a great story. Afghanistan may be a little more difficult 

because it’s harder to get in. But again, WGN Superstation embraced this reporter and took 

him right with them. So that is great.

You know, Mayor Daly’s son, Patrick, went to Afghanistan. He was with a PSYOPs 

group. I don’t think he wanted coverage, but again, there are some individuals with stories to tell. We were looking at the Battle of Fallujah and wanted combat footage. It was 

difficult to have it released and unclassified to come to us. So you could make it easier. 

You almost have to be the reporter and call me. I’ll tell you, because someone like me or 

a reporter likes nothing more than to hear, “I have something you should see. We haven’t 

shown it to anyone else.”

Audience Member

Sir, I’d like to come from the standpoint of the present and how they deal with the 

families on the backside. My husband was recently deployed—a battalion commander, 14 

months in Iraq. During that time, we had a child killed. The news picked up that we weren’t 

doing anything for the family. I called the press and told them what you said, just said, “I’ll 

give you the real story if you’ll report it.” We were trying to protect the privacy of the family who had just lost a child and had another child abused in a dual military family. They 

wouldn’t report it and they didn’t—there was no print afterwards on what was done for 

that family. So if we’re trying to create a relationship, a symbiotic relationship, then how 

do I work with the press, or how do all these people work with the press when they’re in 

situations where you may get information that is biased from a neighbor who doesn’t know 

what in the world’s going on? When we want to help you report the truth, how do you want 

us to get that through to you?
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Keynote Address

Mr. Kurtis

It’s all in communication. You know, communication with the family, communication 

with the neighbor, communication with the press, developing a relationship with a reporter 

who will believe you and you believe them—it’s all in relationships. I’m just backstage. 

Had a 3 second conversation and I think a next phase—see, I see an awful lot. I’ve been 

out of the front line news coverage doing my commercials and running my grass fed beef 

ranch for a number of years. And I’m like an old fire horse. You know, you smell the story 

and I can see them all over the place. But in my little 3 second conversation, to me that’s 

the next phase, is we know there’s PTSD from guys coming back. What about PTSD in the 

families? We know the guys will want to be and serve in Iraq, one to advance their career, 

two because they are serving their country, three because it’s made a lot easier than a guy 

who’s on the other side of the world and finds it difficult even to call home, now you’re in 

daily touch, that whole process is so new. Now, I don’t know whether that’s being censored 

or not. That’s really something to kind of open up. But . . .

Well, yeah, back to the family story. To me, that’s a very good start, especially for a 

local newspaper. But you got to get into the facts and kind of work them out. I’d be happy 

to talk to you about it. PTSD among the families, that’s great. Just like we are learning 

more and more about concussions and head injuries that have an effect on football players, 

boxers. You know, what does that blow to the head really do? It’s much more serious than 

we think. There’s Natasha Richardson. You know, just fell on the back of her head and died. 

So now, because of that story, all of us, very first thing we think of is, is there a problem 

if somebody is hit in the head. So that—we all learn from that. But that’s a good peg. You 

see, you need something new like that. We’ve seen, we’ve been saturated—I mean, just to 

be very crass—with our presence in Vietnam and all the problems. The next story is, okay, 

when are we getting out? Now, back to Afghanistan, access to those marines or Special 

Forces groups that are really on the front line, and the next big story, finding Osama Bin 

Laden. Call me when you do.

Audience Member

Sir, my name is Major [inaudible] from Pakistan and part of Staff Group 19 Delta. You 

talked about the contribution the media made to the national war effort during the Vietnam 

war. I wanted to bring in an international perspective and ask you that in times of war, both 

the national military and the national media are expected to preserve, promote, and protect 

the national interest and that is quite natural. But with such kind of convergence in terms 

of expectations, how is the objectivity in reporting affected in an absolute sense, not in a 

national sense?

Mr. Kurtis

We don’t see ourselves as the mouthpiece for the government. It has its own mouthpiece called “Voice of America” and that’s fine. But to maintain objectivity, while we will 

take the official statement, we’ll want to check it out just like anything else. So I can imagine the chaos that seems to be coming to a foreign country and they must sit there and say, 

“What’s happened? Do they know what the hell is going on there? One person says this, 
13

Kurtis

another person says that.” In many ways, it’s kind of a great smokescreen for anybody listening on the other end. Instant communication around the world. You have to kind of sort 

through and find the good sources. That’s what the intelligent reader or viewer does. It finds 

a New York Times or Washington Post or a Fox News—people that they believe—and then 

they go to fill in with bloggers. It requires more intelligence of the viewer, of the listener, to 

go through this information barrage, and you find little snippets that come out.

Audience Member

Benjamin King. I’m a historian for the Army. In 1969, I was a fire direction officer 

in the A Shua Valley, a little place called Hamburger Hill. Yeah. We fired approximately 

300 tons of ammunition in support of the infantry going up the hill and when the Time

and Newsweek reporters came in, they published the story that the troops went up unsupported. So I really have to take exception with some of the stories about accuracy. Not only 

did they report that, but they also got a bunch of barracks room lawyers who supposedly 

said they had a reward for whoever was going to frag their battalion commander, which 

was not true. They’re the ones that coined the term “Hamburger Hill,” because everybody 

at the time called it Dong Ap Bia which is Ap Bia Mountain in Vietnamese, that’s what 

they called it. I had some other instances with the media after that, and I have to question 

whether everybody was really concerned with accuracy or whether they were concerned 

with sensationalism.

Mr. Kurtis

If it bleeds, it leads. But what was the motive for somebody to say they went up the hill 

unsupported? I can’t quite—yeah, I can’t quite figure that one out. What was the source 

of the news? Was it the PAO who led them there, or did they have the PAO story and they 

ignored it and went the other way?

Audience Member

[Inaudible].

Mr. Kurtis

I know the Navy got credit at the Battle of Midway and the Army claims that they were 

the ones who landed the first bomb on the aircraft carrier, on the four Japanese aircraft 

carriers. That was later corrected in history, but not on the headlines. I’m sorry. There’s 

no way for me to answer that. I just don’t know. But I can’t imagine—I just—I choose to 

believe that the reporter just either made a mistake or was sloppy or was being shot at. I 

can’t imagine a motive of—unless he really likes grunts and hated the artillery. Which you 

may find to be the case. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure spending a few 

minutes with you this morning. Have a great symposium. Hoorah! 

Mr. Gott

Sir, thank you so much for coming. It has absolutely been an honor. Your experiences 

and your insight are as relevant today as they ever were and much is to be gained and 

learned from this. Sir, on behalf of the Combined Arms Center and the Combat Studies 
14

Keynote Address

Institute, I’d like to give you a small token of our appreciation for coming—a book on the 

history, historians that we are, a book on the history of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Three 

Centuries of Service. Again, sir, thank you so much for coming.

Mr. Kurtis

I just realized, you know, I didn’t play the clips. I brought some video actually. Can 

you imagine? You know, I’ve got 15 minutes left. Actually, unless you have to . . . I will 

play them. Why don’t you roll—how to screw up a symposium, right? Here is the initial 

stage of the Vietnam, of the Agent Orange story, so you can see exactly how we did spread 

the defoliant. Let’s roll our first clip. And thank you very much. He’s probably gone home.

Video

. . . its estimate that the huge trees will grow back in 100 . . .

Mr. Kurtis

No, it’s the other one. It’s the other one first. Oh, you’re going through them, good for 

you. Good, good, good.

* * *

Video

It became one of the most powerful defoliants ever created. It was sprayed from helicopters and C123 cargo planes flying 150 feet off the deck, emptying one thousand gallon 

tanks and a white mist over the targets. Ten million gallons of Agent Orange dumped again 

and again from 1962 to 1969 withering the leaves like a deadly rain.

Two hundred sixty thousand acres of mangrove trees destroyed, estimated to take 100 

years to grow back. Two million cubic meters of timber South Vietnam could have sold—

destroyed. Another eleven million cubic meters of jungle timber destroyed. Two hundred 

sixty thousand acres of crops destroyed.

The government avoided calling it chemical warfare, but as the antiwar protests 

increased, so did pressure against Agent Orange. In 1969, reports filtered out of Vietnam 

that defoliation was linked to birth defects among babies born to women in the spray area. 

Grotesque pictures were spread, though they were dismissed as propaganda. But laboratory tests in the United States did show that 245T caused birth defects in rats and mice, 

and so the US Government restricted its use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. That was 1970. 

The millions of gallons on supply was stored, eventually to be burned at sea in 1977. It 

was considered too deadly to be used again as a herbicide. Too deadly because of a high 

amount of a lethal contaminate inside—dioxin—or TCDD. Dioxin is produced when 245T 

is manufactured, a contaminate that can’t be avoided. It is one of the most toxic substances 

made by man. Some 360 pounds were in the ten million gallons of Agent Orange sprayed 

over Vietnam. Concentrations of dioxin were found to range from 3 parts per million up 

to 50 parts per million, higher than ever previously mixed before in a defoliant. About 500 

times higher than dioxin found in herbicides used in the United States today.

In Vietnam we collected samples from villages . . .

* * *
15

Kurtis

Mr. Kurtis

Let’s go back to the first cut and I’ll just ad lib here while you’re queueing it up. One 

of the reasons that everybody didn’t come down with some problem is because we would 

go home and shower, I mean, when I was in high school using it on the pasture and when 

the guys came off the planes, they would be soaked in it, but they would take a shower and 

then wash it away. The grunts on the ground couldn’t do that and so they lived with it day 

after day and it would soak in.

This is 5 years later. I had been invited by Tan Tok Tung, a North Vietnamese doctor who had started studying the effect of the defoliant on North Vietnamese babies and 

people. Nobody seemed to be picking it up, so when it became a big story, he invited me to 

come back and that’s how I became the first reporter back into Vietnam. This is the Saigon 

River and we got on an old fishing boat and headed out into the Mekong Delta and I’m 

going to show it primarily so you can see the effectiveness. You may want to use it again, 

the defoliant. Let’s roll it.

* * *

Video

It was 1972 when a team from the National Academy of Sciences made this trip up the 

Saigon River looking for the effects of the aerial spraying of Agent Orange. Two Vietnamese 

scientists made that trip with them and returned there 8 years later with us. Both work as 

environmentalists here in the Delta area south of Saigon where the most graphic results of 

the defoliation can still be seen.

About 120,000 acres in this basin just below Saigon, one of the reasons it’s so important is that the tankers would come up here to Saigon, tankers with oil and ammunition and 

the Viet Cong would be along here and fire on the ships as they came up the river to get to 

the city.

The mud is deep here and while we would gladly wade to shore, our Vietnamese escorts 

persuaded a nearby fisherman to ferry us the final 10 yards to shore.

The Saigon River dumps into this basin. For centuries mangrove trees as high as 60 

feet grew in this Delta area. Well, they were a problem for the French because it provided 

cover for Viet Cong to infiltrate not only Saigon but entire South Vietnam. So when the 

United States came in, they made this an A-number one military target and defoliated 

the area. Time and time again they sprayed it with Agent Orange, 245T and 24D and the 

result is mud. The only thing that is left is a thick mud. There is no plant. There aren’t even 

the roots that were left behind. Mangrove trees that may take 100 years to reforest. The 

Vietnamese have come in with small trees and hand planted them in this mud. They may 

do well. They seem to be doing well now. But it is very expensive and very, very hard work. 

They have another problem. The remaining stumps and what trees there are, one and two 

here and there, are targets of poachers who come in and cut them for firewood because 

they’re easy to get to and easy to take into the Saigon market and sell. This is what Agent 

Orange has done for the mangrove forest of South Vietnam.
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Keynote Address

When the mangroves died, . . . 

* * *

Mr. Kurtis

The people came in and actually cut for firewood the remains of the mangrove trees. 

* * *

. . . so did the biological chain of support for wildlife—birds, fish, and shrimp that grew 

in the thousands of inlets weaving through the trees. 

* * *

Mr. Kurtis

You can take the sound out, but let the video continue and I’ll just fill in. Now, as the 

decisionmakers on whether or not to use a defoliant to take away the enemy cover, it’s 

tough. How many lives are saved by taking out the cover? That has not been calculated or 

reported on I would think, and that’s a real balance.

I’m going to do . . . here is a testing. I tried to . . . you know, Kendall mentioned that I’m 

a grass fed rancher, I tried to make a little joke with the Vietnamese who didn’t get it when 

I said, “Well, you know, you have great grass here for cattle. You know, you take away the 

trees and you have instant pastures.” Very subtle humor.

* * *

[Mr. Kurtis closed his presentation with excerpts from his documentary “Richard Speck” 

released in 1996.]
17

Panel 1—Forging a Relationship: The Army and the Media

A Horrible Fascination: The Media and the Military

(Submitted Paper)

by

Mr. Frederick J. Chiaventone

I am delighted to be able to address you here today in the great facilities that have 

evolved here at the Command and General Staff College. This is a far cry from Bell Hall 

and no one in his right mind would miss that facility . . . and the coffee’s better.

As you are well aware, the American military system has been developed so as to 

place a minimal burden on the people, to provide for a strong defense, and to reconcile 

concerns of individual rights with national security requirements. Every man and woman 

of the Armed Forces swears an oath not to the administration in power, or any individual 

or political party but to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against 

all enemies foreign and domestic.” Charged with the defense and security of the nation, the 

military plays a vital role in the democratic process.

Also serving the democratic process, but in a less conscious fashion, is the Fourth 

Estate. Those members of the press corps who broadcast over the radio and television 

and publish in newspapers, magazines, and now on the seemingly omnipresent blog, 

which apparently is an abbreviation of the term “Web log,” also perform a vital service 

to the republic providing that information required to make informed decisions by a selfgoverning population. Supposedly fair and unbiased in their attentions, this “above it all” 

approach, you might note has been significantly less evident of late. I will submit that this 

is a worrisome development. A partisan press corps is, unfortunately, a less critical instrument, more vulnerable to co-option, and thereby less effective for the democratic process.

Do not, however, delude yourself with visions of an entirely neutral Fourth Estate—it 

has never existed. What we have been fortunate in having thus far has been a wide range 

of dissenting opinions with a predisposition to be critical of big government. I should hope 

that this condition will reassert itself in the near future. Thoughtful criticism, however 

harsh, is to be preferred over cheerleading. But more on that later.

One would think that war reporting is as old as war itself, but that is most certainly 

not the case. Yes, we have accounts of earlier conflicts be they Xenophon’s “The March 

Up Country” or Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” and of later conflicts by Philipe de Commines and 

Jean Froissart and they are quite illuminating in their own way. But these are unusually narrow in their focus, and one can easily recognize that the writers had a specific, sometimes 

self-aggrandizing purpose in writing them . . . and their works appear long after the events 

described. War reporting is in truth a much more recent development. In relative terms one 
18

Panel 1

might almost say that it is in its infancy. Real-time reporting, thanks to near-instantaneous 

satellite communications, might even be described as newborn.

The first evidence we have of war reporting as we have come to know it is from the 

Swedish Intelligencer, a broadsheet that appeared in London in 1632. For example, in one 

issue it gave full accounts of the exploits of Gustavus Adolphus and was illustrated with 

his portrait, a bird’s eye view of the siege of Magdeburg, a plan showing how the King of 

Sweden and his army crossed the Lech River into Bavaria, and a diagram of the Battle of 

Lützen, where Gustavus was killed. But again, the appearance of the correspondence is 

well after the fact . . . in this case but a few weeks, but still nowhere near approaching the 

speed and immediacy of reportage of today.

The historical and practical impact of war correspondents on conflict really emerges 

for the first time with the reports by Thomas Chenery and William Howard Russell on 

British operations in the Crimea in the 1850s. And here we can see how war reporting 

can work if not for the good of the commanders involved (and here I refer to their public 

image), at least for the welfare of the soldier.

The British Army at the time was officered almost entirely by a woefully unprepared 

aristocracy. Commissions were acquired by purchase, and there was no formal schooling or 

education in warfare required. The results, of course, were horrendous blunders in logistics, 

planning, organization, and intelligence. The result was that much of the suffering endured 

by the army was the direct result of the ignorance and ineptitude of its own leadership. 

Reporting for The Times of London, Russell and Chenery, while quite adept at portraying 

brilliant British feats of arms, were not at all bashful about citing the errors of judgment and 

general mismanagement of men and materiel, which made the British soldiers’ lot a very 

nasty business indeed. Their reports of illness and death by disease and almost nonexistent 

medical care for the troops caused an uproar among readers in England and led to the establishment of the Red Cross. So not only did the media trumpet the battlefield successes of 

British arms, so too did they expose its shortcomings. While much of the senior leadership 

was displeased by this approach, Generals Cardigan and Raglan for example—the authors 

of the Light Brigade debacle abhorred Russell and his reports—but the lot of the individual 

soldier was greatly improved and for this we have to thank the efforts of the Russells and 

Chenerys of the world.

One thing that reporting of the Crimean War did was to firmly establish in the minds 

of the media moguls the public’s appetite for reports from the battlefield. Reflecting on his 

own experiences in World War II, historian J. Glenn Gray observed the horrible fascination of mankind with warfare and concluded that it has to do with a concept he found first 

described in the Bible as “the lust of the eye.” Gray believed this was because the human 

eye could not be satisfied with the familiar and so “lusts after” the spectacular and the 

novel, criteria which are nowhere so in evidence as in the caldron of war.

This peculiar aspect of the human condition was brought home to Americans during 

our own Civil War. While the Crimea saw the first battlefield correspondents, our own Civil 

War was really the birthplace for modern war reporting. On commencement of hostilities, 

the Northern papers alone were represented by over 500 correspondents in the field. The 
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Chiaventone

army leadership, as you can well imagine, was less than enthusiastic about their presence. 

To illustrate this point I’ll quote William Tecumseh Sherman who remarked: “Now to every 

army and almost every general a newspaper reporter goes along, filling up our transports, 

swelling our trains, reporting our progress, guessing at places, picking up dropped expressions, inciting jealousy and discontent and doing infinite mischief.”

Sherman, as you can imagine, was not a fan of the press. He at least was fairly blunt 

about his distaste for the profession. His fellow officer, General Irwin McDowell, was a 

little more subtle. Just prior to the first Battle of Bull Run he stated: “I have made arrangements for the correspondents of our papers to take the field, and I have suggested that they 

wear a white uniform to indicate the purity of their character.”

Now, here’s an interesting point that demonstrates a potential disconnect between the 

military and the media. Shortly after the operation in Grenada, and peeved by militarymedia relations during URGENT FURY, TIME Magazine used McDowell’s quote to show 

how the military used to revere and respect the press. The editors of Time simply did not 

understand the battlefield of the mid-19th century where a white uniform attracted attention 

and did little more than provide a superb target for marksmen. So, as you can readily see, 

even as far back as our Civil War, the media and the military were grating on each others’ 

nerves.

A couple of interesting concepts emerge about this time—the first concerns the emergence of what we might call the “celebrity” correspondent. Some of these folks began to 

document their own exploits in the collection of news—so we may be able to thank our 

Civil War predecessors for Geraldo Rivera—there’s a horrifying thought. Second, there 

began a race to get the news home as quickly as possible. Aiding this development was the 

widespread use of Samuel Morse’s telegraph. With the almost instantaneous transmission 

of information from the battlefield, the newspapers in Washington, DC, carried reports of 

progress in battles that were still underway. Robert E. Lee, for one, came to depend on the 

reporting of one Northern correspondent because, as Lee said, “He knew what he reported 

and reported what he knew.”

U.S. Grant was appalled by the presence of reporters and refused to allow them near 

his headquarters or staff fearing they would inadvertently reveal his plans. When General 

Sherman, who we have seen was no fan of the media, was informed that a correspondent 

was missing and presumed dead he remarked wryly, “I expect we’ll have news from Hell 

before breakfast.”

This was an interesting comment for Sherman to make for hard times were coming 

and the military and the media found themselves as partners in a most unusual alliance. It 

was also at this time that photography was beginning to make a significant impact on the 

public and battlefield photography, as imperfect and as slow as it necessarily was considering the available technology, had an especially curious impact on the public. In 1862, 

Mathew Brady posted a sign in the window of his studio in New York City announcing his 

latest exhibit, “The Dead of Antietam.” The New York Times said that Brady had brought 

“home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war” and then went on to say, “If he 

has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along our streets, he has done 
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something very like it.” While it would still be a while in coming, war and the grim realities 

of soldiering were starting to be brought home to the public in a much more graphic and 

immediate way. By the late 20th century, this trend would begin to raise some troubling 

challenges for both the military and the media. But we’ll get to that shortly.

With the end of the Civil War, the army was demobilized at an alarming rate. The 

great armed force that had suppressed rebellion and saved the Union was broken up within 

months of the war’s end and went from over 2 million men to a ceiling of 25,000 souls 

stationed at over 256 posts throughout the occupied south and including every post in the 

unsettled West. Talk about a reduction in force! Along with this reduction in force came 

budgetary restrictions, which were draconian in the extreme. While hard to imagine now, 

the year 1877, for example, saw no appropriations whatsoever for the Armed Forces, a situation that required many officers to secure private loans simply to allow themselves and 

their units to survive. This incidentally was the year after the disaster on the Little Bighorn 

and throughout the bitter campaigns against the Sioux and Nez Perces.

But let’s get back to the military and the media. The newspapers had found that there 

was intense public interest in anything out of the ordinary and this led them naturally 

to military operations. Any time a foray or expedition against hostile Indian tribes was 

mounted, you could depend on there being a correspondent present. There’s an old expression in newsrooms and later in television studios that goes “If it bleeds, it leads!” And 

we can see the truth in that to this day—Serbia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Angola, the Congo, 

Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Mumbai—when shots are fired in anger, when 

blood begins to flow, the news media are there to witness and record the affair.

After the American Civil War, our newspapers began to look Westward as the great 

source of conflict and thus reader interest. From the Modoc War to the Great Sioux War of 

1876–77 if there was a major campaign anticipated, correspondents flocked to follow the 

guidon. Even with forces as drastically reduced as they had been in the wake of the Civil 

War, a commander of one of these campaigns would sometimes have to deal with four or 

five correspondents clustered around his headquarters tent, following along in column, 

and scribbling down every move for the benefit of avid newspaper readers in New York, 

Boston, San Francisco, or Chicago.

While General Sherman remained annoyed by the profession, other professional soldiers remained cordial and even welcoming to correspondents. Men such as John Finerty, 

who accompanied General George Crook at the Rosebud and barely escaped from a Sioux 

war party while on a reconnaissance, and Mark Kellogg, who died near George Armstrong 

Custer at the Little Bighorn, were in great demand by the military and their reportage was 

known by publishers to increase newspaper circulation. Campaigning on the frontier made 

for rattling good copy and no editor worth his salt would let slip an opportunity to follow 

the trumpet.

For the military, this was a real “no brainer.” With Washington politicians and the 

nation reluctant to recognize an individual soldier, publicity through newspaper copy was 

the only way to gain notoriety and possibly promotion in a stagnant and penurious Army. 

Correspondents, despite General Sherman’s attitude, were actually welcomed by officers 
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on the frontier. When editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast joined the conversation campaigning for better pay and treatment of the soldier and sailor, he was lionized by troops. The 

media-military relationship during the late 19th century was as close to a love fest as you 

can imagine.

As newspapers gained more and more clout, their publishers came to wield more and 

more influence over political affairs. When one considers how much influence is wielded by 

broadcast media today, it’s easy to forget that by the late 19th century newspaper publishers were doing essentially the same thing. Consider, for instance, renowned artist Frederic 

Remington dispatched in 1898 to Cuba by newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst 

in anticipation of a coming war with Spain. With little but hot words being exchanged 

between the United States and Spain, Remington was bored to tears and cabled back asking 

to be allowed to go home. Hearst, however, insisted that there would soon be work enough 

for Remington and sent a brief telegram, which is now famous for its hubris and presumption. Hearst’s telegram read: “REMINGTON, REMAIN IN CUBA STOP YOU FURNISH 

PICTURES I WILL FURNISH WAR STOP. HEARST.”

And furnish the war he did with his sensational treatment of the destruction of the 

battleship USS Maine and its aftermath. This so-called “splendid little war” with Spain also 

marked a new high point for the war correspondent where individual feats of derring-do 

sometimes eclipsed any formal military operations—such as when Stephen Crane—better 

known for his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, forged ahead of American troops and 

single-handedly accepted the surrender of the Spanish garrison of an enemy-held town. It 

was a major coup for Crane’s employer Joseph Pulitzer, and a poke in the eye for Hearst.

Imagine if you will the fact that the job of war correspondent is at this time about 

50 years old. Already a sort of cult of personality has begun to spring up around certain 

journalists—men such as Henry Morton Stanley (later of Stanley and Livingston fame) 

and Richard Harding Davis have managed through their reporting of war to make themselves as well known as the generals of the wars they reported—and not just here in the 

United States. During the Boer War, another young correspondent reporting for the Times 

of London helps to defend and facilitate the escape of an armored train, is captured by the 

Boers, escapes from a prisoner of war camp, and makes his way back to British lines. The 

public acclaim for his exploits really launches his career—you’ll probably here recognize 

a young Winston Churchill.

As quickly as the concept of the war correspondent came into prominence in the 

late 19th and early 20th century, it was about to undergo a major shift. Remember that 

the coverage of conflict, begun in the Crimea and then the United States by correspondents, involved opposition by relatively unsophisticated or even unlettered populations—

American Indian warriors, African tribes, Arabian bandits, Indonesian pirates, Mexican 

bandits, Chinese peasants—most of whom were unable or disinclined to read the Western 

papers. World War I, however, posed a different dilemma. Western nations faced each other 

on the European landmass in some of the most brutal and destructive fighting in history. 

With the Western front killing men in unprecedented numbers, the contending governments were hard pressed to maintain public morale and the public’s willingness to put up 
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with a carnage that was decimating the manpower of France, England, Germany, Austria, 

Italy, and their less populous neighbors. Technology had caught up with and surpassed the 

human power to employ it with discretion. The news from the Western Front was horrifying, vicious, and unrelenting. Or would have been had the European powers permitted it. 

The press, especially a free and unrestricted press, threatened the ability of the warring 

governments to pursue their ends both tactically and strategically. As far as governments 

were concerned, it had to be managed—censored.

With relations between the media and the military having been fairly chummy for the 

previous quarter century, this was an entirely new development. Oddly enough, Imperial 

Germany at this time was remarkably open to news-gathering organizations. Having been 

badly damaged by its stance on unrestricted submarine warfare and savaged by the Western 

press with unsubstantiated rumors and graphic cartoons of “Hunnish excess” among the 

civil population of Belgium, the Kaiser eagerly courted the newspapers seeking to tell his 

side of the story and thus lessen the resolve of the Allies. But the Kaiser’s faith in utilizing 

the press to laud his nation’s success was overly optimistic.

For their part, the Allied powers were less enthusiastic about unrestricted press access 

to the front. As you well know, and if you haven’t had a chance I will urge you to wander 

through the stunning National World War I Museum here in Kansas City, the war was 

exacting staggering costs in men and materiel among the participants. It doesn’t take all 

that much to sway public opinion in terms of warfighting ability, and news from the Western 

Front was uniformly appalling. For example, in 1916 the British lost 19,240 men killed in 

action on the Somme—on the first day! But it got worse. During that one battle, which 

lasted from July to November 1916, the French and British lost 146,431 killed and missing 

(which is shorthand for blown to smithereens) while the Germans lost 164,055 killed and 

missing—one battle. One. Think about the casualties we have thus far incurred in Iraq and 

Afghanistan and balance these figures against the totals for World War I—9,721,937—for 

all sides just soldiers killed in action—not counting the wounded, the disfigured, the missing. And add to that over 6 million civilian casualties. It’s perhaps understandable that the 

governments of all the nations involved saw the very real risks of allowing uncontrolled 

media coverage of the war. When nearly every household had been affected by the war—

husbands, brothers, sons, killed, missing or horribly maimed—whether support for the war 

effort could be maintained psychologically or politically were very real questions. As a 

result, exceptionally restrictive measures were taken to ensure that little of import wound 

up in the newspapers on the home front.

The establishment of offices for censorship and war propaganda during World War I is 

the first appearance of a general governmental effort—at least since the days of Elizabeth 

I—of government imposed restrictions on what could be written about in the general 

media. There had, of course, been haphazard attempts to muzzle or direct the course of 

media coverage of conflict, but this was the dawn of a new age of a concerted, organized 

effort to control what the public saw of the wars fought on their behalf.

The United States, of course, was a relative latecomer to the war, but the administration of Woodrow Wilson quickly recognized the necessity to “shape” news to a form that 
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would support the war effort and thus formed the Office of Press Information to do just 

that. A great many reporters tried to circumvent government restrictions on war coverage, 

but these efforts were really subsumed by more partisan coverage wherein correspondents 

and publishers saw their “duty” as the publication of material that would aid their side in 

winning the war. Thus, any inclinations to convey to the public the horror of the Western 

Front were quickly overcome by tales of the Marines’ heroism in Belleau Wood (where 

correspondent Floyd Gibbons lost an eye) or the romantic exploits of T.E. Lawrence in 

the desert as recounted by Lowell Thomas. Interestingly enough, once the war was over, 

as the enormity of the human cost to civilization began to become apparent, a great many 

journalists began to have second thoughts about their own complicity in having helped to 

prolong it.

The interesting thing is that with the coming of the World War II these doubts were 

conveniently shelved as journalists began to see the struggle with Nazi Germany and 

Imperial Japan as necessary to the very survival of Western civilization. So, once again, 

journalists—now become war correspondents again—turned their efforts to support of 

the war effort rather than unbiased coverage thereof. However odious, ill-advised, poorly 

planned or executed Allied operations might have been—the bungling of Kasserine Pass 

or the debacle on the Rapido River, the disastrous raids on Dieppe or Arnhem—the need 

to keep mum, to minimize Allied flaws and setbacks, in the interests of defeating the Axis 

Powers took precedence. This is not to say that there weren’t some brilliant pieces of 

writing, radio broadcasts, or filmography to come out of the war—the efforts of many of 

these reporters were nothing less than remarkable. But the focus of most reporting, the 

underlying raison d’être was winning the war. To this end, a great many first-rate journalists 

flocked to the banner. The contributions of these folks, who risked it all, were spectacular. 

They included writers like Ernie Pyle, who died in a burst of Japanese machinegun fire, and 

Ernest Hemingway, writing classic tales from the front lines. There were photographers, 

like Robert Capa who took the iconic photos of soldiers scrambling ashore in the first wave 

on Omaha Beach and jumped with the Airborne across the Rhine River, and filmmakers 

like John Ford, who played poker with cartoonist Bill Mauldin and Capa under German 

shellfire in the basement of an old villa outside Anzio. These were, above all, American 

citizens. This sublimating of the journalistic instinct to the achievement of national goals 

would continue for a couple of decades following VE Day and VJ Day in World War II, 

but slivers of doubt would begin to appear in the 1960s and the military-media relationship 

would be altered yet again.

It’s probably not possible to simplify the relationship of the military and the media 

during the Vietnam war—too many of us here today still have vivid memories of that 

conflict and of the nature of war reporting that grew from that period. Entire volumes 

have been written about the military-media relationship in Vietnam, and it will do us no 

good to try to examine each of these at this time. Instead, I strongly suspect that the rupture between the two institutions began during what the press began to label as the “Five 

O’Clock Follies”—this was the unofficial term for the regularly scheduled military briefings of the news media in Saigon regarding operations in theater. The only real source for 

reporters based in Saigon, the “Follies” presented an official picture of the daily war effort 
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and was almost invariably upbeat citing glowing reports of actions in the field, staggering 

statistics—the most readily recognizable being the “body count,” and generally painting 

the best possible picture of the war.

The problem, of course, was that these briefings were invariably optimistic, frequently 

incomplete, or just plain misleading. Complicating this was the fact that those correspondents who managed to steer clear of Saigon, who made it into the field and actually witnessed the war, quickly undermined any credibility that the Joint Staff might have hoped 

for. Once various journalists caught the authorities in a half-truth or a flat out lie, any 

mutual trust or confidence between the military and the media went right out the door. 

Now remember that most of our senior leadership had learned their trades during World 

War II and the Korean Conflict and were thus disinclined to change their modus operandi 

as regarded the press. Complicating this perceived credibility gap was a growing tendency 

among younger reporters, having never served in the military and looking to advance their 

own status, especially among the audience at home that had been given pause by the growing antiwar movement. As less and less flattering reports began to appear in newspapers 

and on television, a great many members of the Fourth Estate failed to distinguish between 

the war, however ill-run it might have been, with the warriors charged with executing the 

orders of the chain of command, all the way up to the President. As a result, the majority 

of military personnel began to feel betrayed by the media and registered their feelings with 

disgust. This produced a very dangerous situation in which two of the primary contributors to a democratic society quickly found themselves at loggerheads—it was a situation in 

which no one was well served.

These feelings of bitterness and distrust probably came to a head when we launched 

an expedition against the thuggish rule of the island of Grenada. In Operation URGENT 

FURY, the Department of Defense (DOD) tried to plan for almost every contingency. If 

you experienced this operation, you’ll likely shake your head over this. Yes, the operation was a great success but, on the ground, what a goat rope. All sorts of little things fell 

through the crack—from intelligence gathering to joint radio communications. And the 

press, well, they were simply viewed as a pain in the butt who could be well controlled and 

allowed to see what DOD wanted them to see. And they didn’t like it one bit. By the 1980s, 

the Armed Forces largely viewed the media as “the enemy.” For example, in a study done 

by students at the War College in 1983, it was determined that the attitude of senior officers 

toward the media was extremely negative and that the majority of serving officers did not 

“trust the media to tell the truth.” Thus, the legacy of Vietnam was a gap of confidence that 

appeared almost insurmountable.

So, what has happened since then? To put it simply, the pendulum seems to have begun 

to swing back the other way. Some folks in the Pentagon realized that there was a problem. 

The media can be a powerful and influential aspect of any human endeavor, and if that 

endeavor involves conflict, death, destruction, the commitment of manpower, resources 

and public finance, you can bet that the media will be involved for good or ill. Perhaps the 

planners at the Pentagon had finally recognized the truth in what Napoleon said when he 

stated, “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets!”
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Only now, however, instead of just newspapers we have radio, television, cell phones, 

and computers—sophisticated means to gather and disseminate information, and a 24-hour 

news cycle. You can’t just close your eyes and expect the media to go away—it won’t 

happen. Further, news gathering is not necessarily limited to what we might refer to as 

professionals—anyone with a portable video camera, indeed, anyone with a mobile phone 

is a potential reporter. What I would say to anyone who’d listen would be, “If you don’t 

want to see it on the evening news, don’t do it!”

So we seem to have embarked on a new era of media-military relations. The military, 

fighting down acquired prejudices and habits, has reached out to the media and begun to 

recognize them as part of the solution rather than the problem. And this is to the good. 

Yes, there will be incidents such as Abu Ghraib—but things of this nature we need to hear 

about and clean up the mess. Yes, some backbenchers will latch on to an incident of this 

nature and say, “See, we told you so. They’re all thugs!” and never let go of it. (I’ve seen 

one publication on the Internet run Abu Ghraib stories almost continually for over 2 years.) 

But the Armed Forces will solve the problem and continue to march. The American public 

will recognize that mistakes are made, accept an apology and a corrective course of action, 

and move ahead. We will all be better for the experience. If we recognize the imperatives 

of technology and the inevitability of information saturation, accept them as natural parameters and work with them, the future of military and media relations should be less rocky, 

less disruptive. Thus, the omnipresence of media representatives should be a recognized 

factor in any military operation.

To sum up I’d like to take just a moment to note the exceptional contributions of a 

number of representatives of the media—we may not always have liked their reports, but 

they always said something that was verifiable, well-researched, and most of all needed to 

be heard. Just to note a few, I want you to think on the contributions of people like Linda 

Thompson, Sean Naylor, Rick Atkinson, Ralph Peters, and John Burns—some of these 

folks are probably here today. Without their efforts, only a very few would know what 

sacrifices are made by the military on behalf of the American people and our values. We 

are all better for their efforts.

I’d like to conclude with a personal story and a special acknowledgment. A few months 

ago I sat in the snack bar here drinking coffee and chatting with an old friend—Lieutenant 

Colonel Tim Karcher. Tim was still recovering from the effects of a sniper’s bullet, which 

took a large chunk out of his left shoulder in Fallujah. He was on his way down to Texas 

to assume command of an outfit and delighted with the prospect. On 28 June of this year, 

after turning over control of his area to Iraqi forces, Tim’s outfit was ambushed outside of 

Sadr City and a powerful improvised explosive device (IED) sheared off his legs. Badly 

wounded, his troops rushed him to medical assistance by ground as a huge sandstorm had 

grounded all aircraft. Tim’s a fighter and it’s obvious why his men are devoted to him for, 

despite massive blood loss and terrible injuries, as he regained consciousness the first thing 

he asked about was the welfare of his Soldiers. Now, not 10 days before this Tim had been 

interviewed for ABC News by veteran correspondent Martha Raddatz. Martha has spent 

a lot of time with the 2-5 Cavalry and became very fond of the Soldiers and thinks the 
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world of Tim. It was Martha who called Tim’s wife back in Texas and gave her updates on 

Tim’s condition and informed worried friends of his injuries and outlook. Martha is one 

of those rare people who is not only a journalist but a human being of the first order. Ernie 

Pyle would be proud to know her. I want to personally thank Martha for her kindness and 

compassion. She’s a trooper. She also happens to be a neighbor and friend of our colleague 

Ralph Peters. We’ve come a long way from William Howard Russell, Thomas Chenery, 

and the Light Brigade—it’s called evolution.
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Panel 1—Forging a Relationship: The Army and the Media

Ethics and Embedded Journalists: Beyond the Boundaries of Industry 

Induced Guidelines on Objectivity and Balance

(Submitted Paper)

by

Mr. Ron Martz

President, Military Reporters & Editors

In 1987, television journalist Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CBS declared in an 

interview that if he were traveling with a group of enemy soldiers from a country at war 

with the United States and saw American Soldiers about to be ambushed, he would do 

nothing to prevent it. He said he “would regard it simply as another story. . . .”1

 Pressed on 

the issue of whether he had a higher moral duty to save American lives, Wallace bluntly 

replied, “You don’t have a higher duty. . . . You’re a reporter.”2

That image of the reporter as a nonactor on any stage he or she visits, and in essence 

a noncitizen with no higher moral responsibility than to their profession, has remained 

embedded in the minds of many military leaders and high-ranking members of the media. 

It exacerbated already tenuous military-media relations in the aftermath of the Vietnam war 

and led to the military’s fruitless and much-criticized attempt to keep the media at arm’s 

length during operations in Grenada and Panama. Later, it resulted in the awkward and illconceived media pool system utilized in Operation DESERT STORM.

This paper will demonstrate that the popular image of the American journalist as a 

distanced, unconnected, and unfeeling observer is largely false. From Ernie Pyle during 

World War II to Joe Galloway in Vietnam to Dr. Sanjay Gupta during Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM, and my own personal experiences during several conflicts, responsible journalists have proven that they not only can produce balanced accounts when they travel with 

and report on front-line forces, but they also have repeatedly demonstrated they do not 

forsake their humanity or their citizenship on the battlefield. At the same time, they seldom 

compromise their responsibility to news consumers or violate the key canons of journalistic fairness and balance. Despite the criticism these reporters have received from their 

media colleagues, who often make their judgments from the safety of a desk far from the 

front, embedded reporters have demonstrated they are a significant benefit to the American 

public, the military, and their profession.

Embedding: Purposes and Practices

The long and often troubled history of the military-media relationship has been dissected in extraordinary detail over the years, so this paper will touch only on one key aspect 
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of that history as it pertains to the issue of balance and fairness of reporting by embeds. I 

specifically avoided using the word “objectivity” as that is a troublesome bit of verbiage 

as it relates to news reporting and I will deal with so-called “objective reporting” later in 

the paper.

During the lengthy air campaign that preceded the ground war in Operation DESERT 

STORM, hundreds of members of the media gathered in Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi 

Arabia, to get the latest briefings and work out with military officials some system whereby 

reporters could get out with the troops and tell the story from at, or close to, the front. The 

result was something called the “pool system,” in which the military left it to the media 

to organize pools to cover various units. That was a brilliant ploy, because the folks in the 

Pentagon and at the Joint Information Bureau (JIB) in Dhahran knew that most journalists 

are a disaster when it comes to organizing anything. Most of us have difficulty organizing our own lives, much less an intricate system by which we would transmit information 

about the conduct of the war to an eager and expectant public.

The pool system by all accounts was a disaster. Those who parceled out reporters 

to the pools usually did not take into account the interest various publications had with 

certain units. If you were from the Fayetteville, North Carolina, paper, there was no guarantee you would be able to cover the 82d Airborne Division. And, if you were from the 

Clarksville, Tennessee, newspaper, there was no guarantee you would be able to cover 

the 101st Airborne Division. It was the same with any number of journalists from news 

organizations near bases that had units participating in the war. There was little, if any, 

consideration given to the fact that these hometown news organizations would provide 

better and more in-depth coverage that would be of great interest to the news consumers in 

their coverage area.

Although the pool system seemed designed to fail, those of us who saw the failure 

coming and made arrangements to “embed” with a unit of particular interest to our 

readership or viewership were seen as traitors to the system. My particular interest as a 

reporter with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was with the 24th Infantry Division out 

of Fort Stewart, Georgia. Although I was not in the pool for the 24th, then Major General 

Barry McCaffrey, the division commander, knew that the paper’s readership included the 

families and friends of his Soldiers back home in Georgia. As a result, he invited me to 

cover the division independent of the pool system. When I got to the staging area for the 

invasion, I found that Joe Galloway, then of U.S. News & World Report, had also bypassed 

the pools based on the recommendation of a contact he had made in Vietnam, General 

Norman Schwarzkopf.

Galloway and I were of the opinion that we had used our contacts and initiative to 

bypass a dysfunctional system, a journalistic tactic normally applauded in industry circles. 

Only later did we learn that we were seen by some of our colleagues and media watchdogs as “pet reporters” who bartered “favorable coverage for access to the front” or were 

“willing to report favorably on a general or unit in return for access to the front.”3

 The notso-subtle implication was that by improvising and overcoming we had somehow stepped 

across an ethical boundary and had compromised our journalistic integrity. More than 10 

years after the war, John Fialka, who took Joe and me to task in his book Hotel Warriors for 
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Martz

what we did because we disrupted the pool system he helped set up, was still complaining 

about it at various media conferences.4

Here was the so-called “secret deal” I had with McCaffrey. Galloway’s was much the 

same. McCaffrey had two ground rules: “Don’t tell them where we are and don’t tell them 

where we’re going.” All else was fair game, although we were trailed by “minders” wherever we went and had to submit our copy through the JIB in Dhahran. My stories on the 

first few days of combat, written on a portable typewriter and hand-carried from the front 

to Dhahran, made it into print 2 days after the cease-fire was called. There was no “secret 

deal.” There was no quid pro quo. There was no effort to influence where we went and 

who we talked to. I was then, and continue to be, insulted by the claim that by bypassing 

the pools we had somehow compromised our journalistic ethics and produced only “good 

news” stories that were neither fair nor balanced. Yet that myth endures to this day.

The dissatisfaction with the pool system and the advent of new technology in laptop computers and satellite telephones that enabled journalists to report in real time from 

anywhere in the world helped convince major news organizations and the Pentagon that a 

better system was needed.5

 Thus was born the embed system. While not perfect, it was the 

best opportunity journalists have had since Vietnam to get a close-up view of warfare and 

to report on how America’s sons and daughters in uniform were performing and how their 

tax dollars were being spent.

The Myth of Objectivity

One of the major criticisms of the embedding system in the aftermath of Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM-1 (OIF-1) was that embedded journalists were not able to provide 

unbiased or so-called objective news reports. Before going any further it is necessary to 

include my own brief analysis of the term “objective reporting.” There is no such thing. 

It is a myth devised and promulgated by journalism professors, of which I am one, who 

teach concepts and ideals rather than real-life situations, and by media bosses who long ago 

traded in their reporters’ stripes for the comforts of a cozy office.

The term “objectivity” implies that there is some neutral language that will be interpreted the same way by everyone reading or listening to a particular story. But language 

is not neutral. Every word is loaded with meaning in some form or fashion. What is seen 

as objective by one person can be seen as bias by another. Journalist Robert D. Kaplan, 

writing in the November 2004 issue of the Atlantic magazine, argued, “[T]hough journalists assume the mantle of professional objectivity, a writer brings his entire life experience 

to bear on every story and situation. A journalist may seek different points of view, but he 

shapes and portrays those viewpoints from only one angle of vision: his own.”6

Kaplan further argued that the media, especially the East Coast, Washington-centric 

journalists often have little in common with the average Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and 

Marines who now make up the all-volunteer military. Most members of the media have not 

served in the military and few have family members or friends who have worn the uniform 

of their country. “The blue-collar element that once kept print journalism honest has been 

gone for some time. Journalists of an earlier era may have been less professional, but they 

were better connected with the rest of the country.”7
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The media write and report in words and pictures that reflect their own personal biases, 

while the military and the public receive those reports and images and filter them through 

their individual biases. Thus, the idea of language-neutral objectivity is a myth. John Burns 

of the New York Times put it another way: “In this profession we are not paid to be neutral. 

We are paid to be fair, and they are completely different things.”8

The ultimate goal of any journalist, especially those reporting from the battlefield while 

embedded with military units, should be fairness. The Fairness Doctrine, as I have applied 

it in many situations and have taught it in the classroom, is that a journalist should look at 

his or her work through the lens of fairness. That is, is the story fair to those individuals or 

groups about whom I am writing? Is it fair to my readership or the viewers I am trying to 

reach? And, is it fair to me as a journalist? When the Fairness Doctrine is applied in good 

faith, with the knowledge that any reporting is always filtered through the individual biases 

of those who read, view, or listen to those reports, the journalist can feel confident he or she 

has fulfilled his or her professional, ethical, and moral obligations.

Those who complained most about the embedding system used the objectivity crutch 

as a means denigrating the entire system and those of us who were a part of it. “The lack 

of scope, tight living quarters, and dependence on US troops exacted an additional cost in 

decreased objectivity” was the argument heard over and over.9

 Some critics offered a blanket indictment and said that “the reporting was a failure because the embedded reporters 

were unable to inform due to the restrictions placed on the embeds.”10 One military critic 

of the embed system writing about reportorial bias used Fox News’s Oliver North, a former 

Marine lieutenant colonel who has become an entertainer, not a journalist, as his single 

example of a reporter who had strayed off the ethics reservation.11 Some critics even went 

so far as to say that embeds were suffering from the “Stockholm syndrome,” as if we were 

captives of the military.12 If you use this analogy, you can say that anyone who covers any 

political campaign is a victim of the Stockholm syndrome.

Those same critics argued that the reports from independent journalists, known as 

unilaterals, “were presumptively free of the bias that may have influenced embeds. Their 

stories allowed for a more complete and accurate picture of the war to emerge than would 

have been available from embeds alone.”13 That statement in itself reflects a bias against 

embeds by flatly stating that only unilaterals could do the unbiased reporting and that 

everything filed by embeds was somehow tainted by the mere fact that we were traveling 

with and reporting on the troops.

The prediction that embedded journalists would report only the good news and would 

become cheerleaders for the war effort was proven wrong early and often. Just a few days 

into the war, William Branigin of the Washington Post, reported on Soldiers at a vehicle checkpoint in Iraq shooting and killing several civilians.14 In another incident, as the 

Marines with whom Mike Cerre of ABC News was embedded got close to Baghdad, he 

had to report about them shooting and killing civilians in a truck and minibus whose drivers failed to stop at a checkpoint. While Cerre was doing his report, the company executive 

officer and two platoon sergeants listened in. When he was finished, they told him: “You 

were fair.” That may be the highest compliment that a combat correspondent can receive 

from troops he or she is covering.15 Chantal Escoto of the Clarksville, Tennessee, Leaf 
31

Martz

Chronicle, embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, reported on an incident in which a 

sergeant tossed a grenade into a tent in Kuwait, killing several of his superiors.16 Had she 

not been there to report it, that story likely would have ended up suppressed for weeks by 

the Pentagon bureaucracy.

As one military officer wrote of the critics of the embed program: “These negative comments on the objectivity of embedded media are ironic. These same commentators would 

likely have argued for greater access to military operations had there been no embedded 

media program.”17 But the concern about journalists getting too close to their subjects was 

best summed up by Army Colonel Guy Shields, one of the public affairs officers in Kuwait. 

He called the hand-wringing “a pile of crap. That’s like saying that if you’re a Soldier 

trained to kill, you can’t be a peacekeeper. Trained disciplined Soldiers can do anything 

professionally. Journalists can bond with somebody and still do their jobs professionally.”18

The Line of Ethical Demarcation

In October 1965, a young United Press International reporter by the name of Joe 

Galloway helicoptered into the besieged Army Special Forces camp at Plei Me, South 

Vietnam. As Galloway relates the story, when he got off the helicopter he was greeted by 

a tired and irritated Major Charlie Beckwith. Galloway said Beckwith looked him up and 

down and asked, “Who the hell are you?” “A reporter, sir,” Galloway replied. Beckwith 

was silent for a moment, then sputtered, “I need MEDEVACs. I need food. I need ammunition. I would like a big bottle of Jim Beam and a box of cigars and the Army in its infinite 

wisdom sends me a reporter.” Then Beckwith got quiet again before he said to Galloway, 

“Well, son; I don’t have any openings for a reporter. But I do have one for a corner machine 

gunner and you are it.” Galloway said he tried to tell Beckwith that technically speaking 

he was a noncombatant but Beckwith just sort of laughed and said, “There ain’t no such a 

thing in these hills, boy.” Galloway then received a 10-minute orientation on the care and 

feeding of the air-cooled .30-caliber machinegun and for the next 2 days and nights held 

down a corner of a trench line.19 As Galloway said in a recent interview: “Was I technically 

speaking in violation of the Geneva Conventions? Yes. But then circumstances dictate 

what you do and how you do it.”20

Although the concept of reporters on the battlefield dates back to Thucydides and the 

Peloponnesian War in the 5th century B.C., it has only been in the last 100 years that some 

rules for the conduct and treatment of journalists were formalized. Under the provisions 

of the first, second, and third Geneva Conventions, originally signed in 1949, war correspondents were to be given the same treatment as combatants if they were wounded or 

captured.21 After Vietnam, journalists were reclassified as civilians under Protocol I, Article 

79 on the Conventions. No longer were they permitted to carry weapons or wear uniforms. 

They were required to differentiate themselves from military forces by wearing civilian 

clothes and were to be extended the same protections as civilians if wounded or captured.22

Media ethicists and media moguls have tried to convince us that there is a nonviolable 

ethical line that is clear and distinct and should never be crossed when it comes to combat 

reporting. To do so, even in the heat of combat, according to them, means that journalists 

who do so are incapable of providing balanced and fair reporting. Since the embed program 
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was formalized in late 2002 and early 2003, the issue of an individual reporter’s ethics and 

just where the industry applied boundary is located has at times overshadowed the stories 

sent back from the front. But it is my contention that ethics are situational and that the ethical boundary can be moved in one direction or another depending on the circumstances. 

Split-second decisions made in the field by reporters to push the ethical line or step outside 

guidelines sometimes can mean the difference between the life and death of that reporter, 

his or her colleagues, the combat troops around them, or civilians.

During OIF-1, some journalists, when faced with tricky ethical situations, tended to 

react instinctively rather than wring their hands over what the longer-term implications of 

their decision might be. One such case involved Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical 

correspondent. While embedded with a Marine unit, Gupta became a participant instead 

of an observer by assisting wounded Iraqi civilians and most notably removing a bullet 

lodged in the brain of a young Marine, saving his life.23

Gupta said the decision to operate on the Marine, even though it meant crossing that 

elusive ethical barrier and thus altering the outcome of events, was not difficult to make. 

If you are in a position to save someone’s life, he said, “You put down your pen and paper, 

you put down your camera, and you do it.” He likened the situation to coming to a burning 

building or a wrecked car with people in need of help. Most people, journalist or not, he 

said, would first seek to save lives and think later about doing their jobs. “It’s just really 

common sense,” he said. “Yes, there was criticism. Yes, there was a question of journalistic 

integrity. Yes, there was a question that I crossed the line. My opinion was that crossing the 

line would have been not doing something.”24

Mike Cerre of ABC News, a Vietnam veteran, pointed out enemy positions to the 

Marines with whom he was embedded. “The problem for reporters,” he said, “is not to 

cross the line in a story. It’s even more difficult when you’re in the middle of a story and 

that story happens to be a 5-hour firefight.”25 Scott Bernard Nelson of the Boston Globe

did much the same thing. He did what he thought was right at the time and did his handwringing after the fact. “Should I have just strictly been an observer? Did I cross some 

journalistic line? But at the time all I knew was that the guy out there was shooting at 

us.”26 As Galloway said, circumstances dictate how far you decide to push the ethical 

boundary.

Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald had a similar situation to Nelson’s, but a far 

different reaction. Crittenden was with an Army unit during the second Thunder Run into 

downtown Baghdad on 7 April 2003. As they drove into the city taking fire from enemy 

snipers, Crittenden began pointing out firing positions to Soldiers around him. He knew he 

would be criticized for what he had done and wrote in his online journal: “Now that I have 

assisted in the deaths of three human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I’m sure there 

are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. I’ll keep the argument 

short. Screw them, they weren’t there.”27

One reporter admitted carrying a grenade thrust into his hands by a young Marine 

during a particularly intense battle.28 Other journalists to whom I have talked have admitted carrying weapons and ammunition, if just to pass them from one Soldier or Marine to 
33

Martz

another. Galloway said it was not unusual in Vietnam to find battalion commanders who 

refused to allow journalists to accompany their patrols unless they were armed.29 My own 

experiences in OIF-1 include assisting in the treatment of civilian and military casualties, 

about which I wrote and subsequently took some heat at conferences I attended—mostly 

from journalism ethics professors. Those professors claimed that assisting wounded civilians was fine, but assisting wounded military had somehow made me a participant and not 

an observer. In their eyes I had crossed the ethical boundary and had altered the reality of 

what would have happened had I not been there. It did not matter whether what I did was 

for the good of an individual. I had interfered with the cosmic forces of nature and therefore 

had compromised my journalistic integrity.

There were two other occasions in which I became a participant rather than an observer. 

I did not write about them because I did not want to inject myself into more stories than 

I already had. I knew that any mention of me picking up a weapon, even to hand if off to 

a Soldier, would have created a peripheral controversy that would have diverted attention 

from the larger story I was trying to tell. My ethical transgressions and my violations of 

the Geneva Conventions are twofold. I tell them here merely for the sake of demonstrating 

how ethical concerns on the battlefield sometimes can be situational and that circumstances 

can often determine how an individual will react.

The first occurred during a fight for an intersection near Najaf early in the invasion. 

The unit I was with came upon a busload of civilians that had been taken over by a local 

militia member who tried to disable a Bradley Fighting Vehicle by ramming the bus into 

it. Many of the civilians were injured and the company first sergeant decided to take them 

back to an aid station for treatment in his M113. I was in the vehicle at the time and the first 

sergeant told me to get out and allow the wounded to get in even though the intersection 

was under intense fire. As I was exiting, I noticed one of the Soldiers who had been called 

on to police up enemy prisoners had left his M16 with grenade launcher in the back of the 

vehicle. I did not think twice and grabbed the weapon rather than leave it within reach of 

the Iraqi civilians. When I tried to return it to the Soldier during the firefight, he advised me 

to keep it. “You may need it more than me,” he said. So I hung onto it until there was a lull 

in the fighting and I could return it to him.

A few days later, on the initial Thunder Run into downtown Baghdad I was again riding 

in the back of the first sergeant’s M113. After one of the company’s tanks was disabled by 

enemy fire, we acquired a great deal of additional gear from that tank and two crew members from other vehicles. We were unable to close the hatch on the vehicle so the two extra 

Soldiers and one of the company medics stood up in the back firing at dug-in Iraqis who 

lined both sides of the road. As we got deeper into the city and the fire got more intense, 

one of the Soldiers thrust his pistol into my hands and said, “Watch our back. If anybody 

tries to get close to us, shoot them.”

Would I have used that weapon to defend myself and the Soldiers with whom I was 

riding? Absolutely. But the opportunity never came. Did I feel that I had somehow stepped 

over an ethical boundary? Absolutely. Did I feel that I had somehow compromised my journalistic integrity? Absolutely not. I would do it again if put in the same situation. Several 
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years later I was supervising a group of seven reporters and photographers from the Atlanta 

Journal-Constitution who were rotating in and out of Iraq covering a Georgia National 

Guard combat brigade. I told each of them before they left for the war zone: “You’re no 

good to me dead. Don’t get dead. Do what you have to do to protect yourself, stay alive, 

and get the story back.” I made it clear I did not want them conflicted by ethical issues to 

the point where they might put themselves and others in danger. Their instructions were to 

do what was necessary to get themselves and the story back in one piece.

Only later did I learn that Galloway had written a much more eloquent memo to reporters about to embed in Iraq, advising them of the dos and don’ts of life in a combat zone. 

He told them to “not shy away from an opportunity to act first as a concerned human being 

and then later as a reporter. Help the wounded, if called to do so. Carry water or ammo or 

the dead if it seems needed. None of that violates either the Geneva Conventions or your 

objectivity as a journalist.”30

The issues raised here are still ongoing and the subject of much debate within the 

industry and the individuals responsible for guiding news coverage. During Operation 

ENDURING FREEDOM, National Public Radio Senior Foreign Editor Loren Jenkins said 

in an interview that his correspondents were under orders to seek out and report all military 

activities, including covert operations. “I don’t represent the government,” he said. Yet 

when Clark Hoyt, the Washington bureau chief for what then was the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, discovered plans for a special operations mission in Afghanistan, he called the 

Pentagon seeking comment. When told revealing the information at that point could jeopardize the operation and put American lives at risk, Hoyt decided to withhold publication.31

More recently, the editor of a national news magazine said that he had embedded with 

an Army unit to work on a story about a major battle in which the unit had been involved. 

One of the Soldiers gave him a CD with a number of photos on it, some related to the battle 

and some of other incidents dating back several years. Some of those photos showed what 

could be construed as war crimes, according to the military lawyers the editor consulted. 

In the end, the magazine decided not to run the photos because they were peripheral to the 

main story and the Soldier who gave them the photos had died in combat. “In the wake of 

Abu Ghraib there was sensitivity and special considerations given to the propaganda value 

of these pictures for all sides,” the editor said. “We were very conscious of the impact these 

pictures would have.” The decision, he said, came down to: “If it doesn’t really have to do 

with the story, why put it in there? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It seemed 

like the fair thing to do at the time, if not absolutely the right moral thing to do.”

The Role of Self-Censorship in the Balance and Fairness of News Reporting

Another complaint of the critics of embedding was that the bonding that took place 

between journalists and troops resulted in self-censorship that distorted stories and did not 

provide accurate and balanced accounts of combat operations. Objectivity, they argued, 

was compromised by journalists who stepped over the ethical boundary simply by embedding with the troops. There is little question that public opinion is shaped as much by 

what is not reported as what is reported. The selective presentation of events, the use of 
35

Martz

adjectives and adverbs to describe them, and the quotations of those involved, can influence how the reading and viewing public perceive those events.32 Thus, the perception of 

objectivity often rests with the presenter, not the consumer. Put another way, “What does 

not get reported does not exist, or, stated more cautiously, its chances of becoming part of 

ongoing perceived reality are minimal.”33

But self-censorship is an everyday occurrence in the news industry. Not every photo 

is run in the newspaper. Not every bit of film is run on TV. Not every note is dumped into 

a story. Self-censorship occurs at every level of the news production cycle. Often there are 

intense debates among reporters, photographers, and editors about what should and should 

not be included in a story or what photos or film should or should not be shown to the public. Possibly the most self-censorship in the news industry occurs among those responsible 

for dealing with graphic images of dead and wounded. How much of the true face of war 

should be shown to a public that likes its wars nice and neat and sanitary?

John Roberts of CBS said that TV networks have to sanitize their coverage for American 

audiences because of their “sensibilities.”34 Martin Savidge of CNN said images of human 

suffering are tightly regulated on American television. “There is a tendency on the part 

of domestic networks not to show that, because they know that the American public is 

revolted by it, and they don’t want to make the American public uncomfortable.”35

The implication of the critics is that self-censorship is wrong and embedding increased 

self-censorship to the point that only good news stories that would serve as rallying points 

for supporters of the war were presented. But as has already been demonstrated by the 

examples of William Branigin, Mike Cerre, Chantal Escoto, and the editor of the national 

news magazine, self-censorship does not mean overlooking bad news. By being on the 

scene and not held at arm’s length when bad news occurs, professional journalists can better put those events into context and provide more accurate and more balanced accounts 

than they would if they had to rely on peripheral sources days or weeks after the event.

As the commander of the tank company with which I was embedded told me before 

we crossed the border, “If we do something wrong, I expect you to report it. If we do something good, I expect you to report it. I don’t have time to read what you report. All I ask 

is that you be fair.” Did I self-censor? Yes. Had I crossed some ethical boundary by doing 

so? Not at all. I ended up reporting not only on the unit’s successes, but also on several 

incidents in which Soldiers fired on vehicles and killed civilians when the drivers of those 

vehicles refused to stop at checkpoints. Some of the vehicles had weapons in them. Some 

did not. Because I was on the scene when some of the events occurred, the stories were 

balanced, nuanced, and written in the appropriate context without any compromise in my 

journalistic integrity.

Conclusions

The argument that professional journalists somehow compromise their integrity and 

their ethical standards simply by embedding with combat troops and reporting on them for 

extended periods of time is absurd on its face. No professional journalist is going to avoid 

reporting bad news simply because a Soldier tosses him a few MREs. No professional 
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Panel 1

journalist is going to look the other way when commanders make questionable decisions 

simply because that commander has taken him into his confidence or given him a ride in 

the back of a cramped, smelly, incredibly uncomfortable Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The embedded journalists who have covered and continue to cover combat operations 

in Iraq and Afghanistan for the most part have repeatedly demonstrated their devotion to 

their profession, to their readers and viewers, and to the troops they cover. When confronted with troublesome ethical situations, they more often than not do the right thing for 

all involved.

Ethically and morally speaking, is it worse for a professional journalist to embed with 

a combat unit in order to tell the American public the stories of their sons and daughters in 

uniform than it is for CNN to make a deal with the regime of Saddam Hussein to withhold 

stories on torture so it could continue to report from Baghdad?36

Is it worse for an embedded journalist to push the ethical boundaries to help civilians 

and troops under fire than it is for “Dateline NBC” to take on a quasi-police role for its “To 

Catch a Predator” series?

And is it worse for an embedded reporter to accept food, water, transportation, and 

security than it is for the New York–Washington talking heads who purport to be journalists 

to charge thousands of dollars in speaking fees to special interest groups that have a vested 

interested in influencing public opinion?

Difficult ethical situations will continue to arise in Iraq and Afghanistan, both for journalists and for the military. But the idea that journalists lose their sense of fairness and 

balance simply by embedding does not fly. The embedding system has its flaws, but as one 

military officer wrote, “Embedding the media brings the Soldier closer to the American 

people and puts a face on battle.”37
37

Martz

Notes

1. James Fallows, “Why Americans Hate the Media,” The Atlantic, February 1996, 2–3, 

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199602/americans-media (accessed 29 April 2009).

2. Fallows, “Why Americans Hate the Media.”

3. Kevin A. Smith, “The Media at the Tip of the Spear,” Michigan Law Review 102, no. 6, 204, 

1339; see also, Douglas A. Porch, “No Bad Stories: The American Media-Military Relationship,” 

Naval War College Review LV, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 96.

4. John Fialka, Hotel Warriors: Covering the Gulf War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 1991), 34–35.

5. Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, an Oral History

(Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003), 206.

6. Robert D. Kaplan, “The Media and the Military,” the Atlantic 294, no. 4 (November 2004): 

38.

7. Kaplan, “The Media and the Military.”

8. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 161.

9. Smith, “The Media at the Tip of the Spear,” 1357.

10. Glenn T. Starnes, “Leveraging the Media: The Embedded Media Program in Operation 

Iraqi Freedom,” Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, Volume S04-

06, July 2004.

11. James B. Dooley, “The Use of Embedded Media During Wartime: Influencer of Public 

Opinion,” Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, May 2008, 

29.

12. Brendan R. McLane, “Reporting from the Sandstorm: An Appraisal of Embedding,” 

Parameters (Spring 2004): 83; see also, Dooley, “The Use of Embedded Media During Wartime,” 

28.

13. Smith, “The Media at the Tip of the Spear,” 1350.

14. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 232–234.

15. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 95–96.

16. Chantal Escoto, “Mission to Iraq,” Leaf-Chronicle (Clarksville, TN), 22 June 2003, A-1.

17. Michael J. Oehl, “Embedded Media: Failed Test or the Future of Military Media Relations?” 

Perspectives on Embedded Media, Selected Papers from the US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, 

2004, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/embedded_media_papers.pdf (accessed 

29 April 2009).

18. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 75.

19. Joseph Galloway, interview by author, 2 June 2009; see also, Joseph L. Galloway. “Delta: 

A Combat Reporter Remembers the Siege at Plei Me,” http://www.projectdelta.net/plei_mei.htm 

(accessed 10 August 2009).

20. Galloway, interview.

21. “Geneva Conventions: A Reference Guide; International Rules About Journalists,” http://

www.spj.org/gc-intro.asp#journalists (accessed 4 August 2009).

22. “Geneva Conventions: A Reference Guide; Protocol I,” http://genevaconventions.org 

(accessed 4 August 2009). 

23. Gayle White, Rosaline Bentley, and Moni Basu, “The Gupta Files,” the Atlanta JournalConstitution, 11 January 2009, A-11.

24. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 37.

25. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 96.
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Panel 1

26. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 200.

27. Jules Crittenden, “Embedded Journal: ‘I Went Over to the Dark Side,’” Boston Herald,

13 April 2003, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=29774 (accessed 29 April 

2009).

28. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 52.

29. Galloway, interview.

30. Joseph L. Galloway, “Some Notes on Being a War Correspondent,” April 2003, http://

www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0304/galloway.html (accessed 3 August 2009).

31. J. Michael Waller, “War and the Role of the Mass Media,” Nation, The Press, Insight on 

the News, 26 November 2001, http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=193&pap

er=1125 (accessed 29 April 2009). 

32. Barbara Allen et al., “The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and the Spiral of 

Silence,” Polity 27, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 265; see also, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral 

of Silence: Public Opinion—Our Social Skin (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 

167–169.

33. Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence, 150.

34. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 173.

35. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 276.

36. Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 59.

37. Tammy L. Miracle, “The Army and Embedded Media,” Military Review, Center for 

Strategic & International Studies, Washington, DC, September–October, 2003.
39

Panel 1—Forging a Relationship: The Army and the Media

Question and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Mr. Frederick J. Chiaventone

Mr. Ron Martz

Moderated by Donald P. Wright, Ph.D.

Audience Member

First of all, Fred and Ron, thanks for the great presentations. In the interest of full 

media disclosure, I’ll be [inaudible] and I’m speaking on Thursday morning on the military 

media as an event journalist. Sir, you blamed the media for Abu Ghraib and I don’t quite 

understand that, sir. We’re not the ones who—is this something I . . . 

Mr. Chiaventone

Yeah, go ahead and I’m just a little stuffed up, so.

Audience Member

Is this better?

Mr. Chiaventone

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Audience Member

You blamed the media for Abu Ghraib, but we’re not the ones who tortured or abused 

captured prisoners. We’re not the ones who sent the videos down to their families. It strikes 

me that you view the media as just trolling for anything that is not positively promilitary.

Mr. Chiaventone

Oh, no, quite the contrary. In fact, I think the media publicizing something like Abu 

Ghraib is very much to our advantage. What happens if word of that gets out, then we find 

that there’s a problem within the ranks in our own organization and we correct the problem. But we wouldn’t have known of that without the media’s participation. You can, you 

know, drive it to death, do it to death, but the fact that it’s brought out in public, that’s a 

good thing. That’s a very good thing. Because what it exposes to us, the fact that there are 

some problems within the system that we need to correct, just like with [William] Howard 

Russell and Chenery at Scutari, the British needed to know that their medical system was 

bad. By the same token, we needed to know that the training of some of our troops was 

subpar or the discipline within some of our organizations was subpar and we needed to 
40

Panel 1

correct that. Because that negates a lot of the progress that we’ve made in other areas. So 

yeah, I’m all for that. I think that’s a good thing.

Audience Member

Okay, thank you. I’d like to make a little addition to your comment about Mark Kellogg 

and Custer. General Cook had issued orders that there were to be no reporters on that expedition, and Custer let him in. Kellogg, what he wrote, was great for Custer, but it had very 

little relationship with any reality whatsoever.

Mr. Chiaventone

Oh absolutely, yeah.

Audience Member

This is the way it often was out there and Custer was famous for this. And to bring 

it into the present or nearly present, when David Akron did his thing in Vietnam and was 

brought up, could have been brought up on charges for all kinds of things, the [inaudible] 

personnel for the US Army pointed to General Abrams and said, “We haven’t had his likes 

since George Armstrong Custer.”

Mr. Chiaventone

Yeah, that’s very true. As I said, a lot of these guys, they were actually going out and 

soliciting reporters, and you’re right, Custer took Kellogg in direct contravention to his 

orders out of Chicago. They said, “Don’t take any reporters whatever you do,” but of course 

he brought Kellogg. Same thing with Crook, although I don’t think he got the direct orders 

not to take reporters. But they were attracted to that, so not surprising. Does it continue to 

this day? In one form or another, but you’re always going to have that possibility out there. 

And then the thing that’s really complicated is that a lot of the material we’re going to get 

these days may not come from someone who is trained as a reporter. For example, as I said, 

we saw some footage from Basra, came from a cell phone, of an ambush of a Russian unit. 

There are a lot of folks out there who are gathering news who are unable to process it. You 

know, so once again, we’re learning as we go along and it’s a tough road, it really is.

Audience Member

My name is Stephen Badsey and I’m presenting on Thursday as well. Thank you. As 

indicated, the big change comes in the middle of the 19th century with the introduction of 

principally the Billy Russell festival. Well, he did in fact write [inaudible]. And prior to that 

and continuing to the present, there has been very little change. There has been a military 

mechanism for getting the military story to the public. It goes back to Caesar writing his 

own biased account of wars and it proceeds up to the present day. And forget all notions 

about objectivity; this is if you like the military truth. This is what the military wants the 

public to hear and it’s their truth. The point about the change which comes with Russell is 

the introduction of a second truth, which was meant/intended with the forces of democracy coming in to extend the knowledge of the public. Now, if you take that fast forward 

to the present day or more recent, [inaudible] both by reporters, also by theoreticians. For 

someone to turn around and tell a member of the public that they have no right to comment 
41

Questions and Answers

because they weren’t there defeats the whole object of the reporter as a second island. And 

criticism made of the [inaudible] system in various names and incarnations is that if the 

media is simply going to report the military truth and not go out of their way to take issue 

with us, to be adversarial, to be contrary without being inaccurate, then what are they doing 

there in the first place?

Mr. Chiaventone

That’s a very good point.

Audience Member

That’s an argument which has been increasing at the moment and has been for about 

the last 30 years.

Mr. Chiaventone

Yeah, I think that’s a very good comment. I think it’s very appropriate. And I don’t 

know that we’ve come up with an answer to that yet.

Audience Member

I rather hope we might do so in the next couple of days.

Mr. Chiaventone

They’re not paying us enough to do that apparently or they should. Go ahead, Ron.

Mr. Martz

I think it depends on the individual reporter to a great degree about what they report and 

how they report it. I mean, I think the examples that I cited—William Branigan, Chantal 

Escoto, Mike Cerre, myself—I mean, I reported on some instances when the troops I was 

with fired on civilians, killed civilians. And the bottom line is, I think, because we were 

there, we were able to see it, we did not have to take the military version of it. We had the 

nuances and the context of what those events were. I think that the story that you get that’s 

a bit more distorted is when it’s filtered through a number of channels of public affairs 

officers and they put their own particular spin on it at that point. I think it’s actually a good 

thing that we’ve got all these various technologies up and coming, because it does keep us 

honest and I speak as former military. But the thing that I always say is that if you don’t 

want to see it on TV, don’t do it. Just don’t do it. I mean, and you use that as your mantra 

if you will.

Audience Member

Mr. Martz, based on what you said, here’s what you were saying: situational ethics are 

okay for your journalists. If that’s the contention, I wonder what you teach your journalist 

students or what’s the ethical baseline for right or wrong for their other activities?

Mr. Martz

Really haven’t delved into that kind of thing. But I think that the battlefield is a unique 

situation where I think it’s one of those things where you can’t, in my opinion at least, 

just draw that hard and fast ethical line and say you should do this and shouldn’t do that. 
42

Panel 1

I mean, there are certain considerations that we as journalists have that are certain ethical 

considerations that our various organizations put on us, their professional organizations 

and that sort of thing. But I just, I think that there is the possibility that you can push that 

ethical line out. Now, in terms of their own personal—like, you know, that’s something 

that I haven’t discussed, but it’s something that I will definitely give some consideration to.

Audience Member

Sir, Lieutenant Commander Allen from CGSC. I know that we’ve already mentioned 

Abu Ghraib, understanding what happened there. This is an ideological struggle and every 

message that comes out that says we did something bad is amplified. In fact, even today 

the Abu Ghraib message is still being broadcast to recruit new fighters. So in our current 

conflicts, we see information spirited away by the enemy. How can we manage the media 

on the military side to spread our message without excess censorship or devaluing our 

Constitution while keeping the nation’s and our military’s objectives predominant?

Mr. Chiaventone

That’s a really good question. We have a tendency to play everything very close to 

the vest and we’re just not as open and forthcoming in a lot of things that we should be. 

We place a lot of restrictions on the conveying of information or we slow it down. We 

should, in fact, slow it down when it comes down to reporting casualties and that sort of 

stuff, make sure family members are notified, and everything like that first. But we should 

come straight out and say, “Look, we have caught the problem and we are going to deal 

with the problem,” you know, and get ahead of the power curve that way. Very tough to do, 

quite honestly, but we have to get out in front and say, “Look, this is what we are trying to 

achieve.” And we should not be afraid of calling a spade a spade. Say, “Hey, folks, these 

are bad guys. These are bad guys. We are going to deal with them and here’s why we’re 

going to deal with them because this is the sort of thing that they do.” We haven’t really 

done that when you come right down to it. We haven’t done enough of that. We haven’t 

said, “Look, these are the things that they’ve done.” We have to make sure that reporters 

are there to see what the other side has done. You know, try to make sure that they have 

access to it.

Mr. Martz

You used a term there that kind of grates on those of us in the media. “Managing the 

media.” That’s an impossible task. You can’t do that. “Work with the media.” Don’t try 

to manage them; otherwise, they will fight back. You know, if you work with them, if it’s 

more of a cooperative relationship than it is of you trying to manage them, I think it will 

work out a lot better that way.

Mr. Chiaventone

Yeah, I think it’s a matter of just being more forthcoming and inviting folks in and urging folks to come on and become part of it, part of the effort.

Audience Member

To build on that question, let me just quickly pose one other query to Ron. What do 

you think of the efforts by DOD to create their own news media outlets like Defense News
43

Questions and Answers

where they actually have uniformed and non-uniformed journalists asking questions, doing 

stories? It sounds a lot like we are competing or DOD wants to compete to help manage 

the message.

Mr. Martz

Yeah, I don’t have a problem with that at all. I mean, I think that’s just part of what 

the Government does. It’s a way of them getting out their message, and I don’t see it as 

competition. I see it as—and as long as it’s clearly identified as this is coming from the 

Government, I think people, at least hopefully, are smart enough to realize this is coming 

from the Government. It’s not coming from some sort of independent source. Now, you 

bring up something here. There is an effort now, which Stars and Stripes just wrote about 

the other day in Iraq, of DOD trying to compile profiles of reporters who want to embed over 

there and they’re being classified as negative, neutral, or fair. That’s something that I find a 

bit disturbing, and I understand that contract with the Rendon Group out of Washington is 

worth something like $1.8 million, and as I mentioned to some folks, “We could do that a 

lot cheaper. I could just have our folks send you a few clip files. We can do it for a lot less 

than $1.8 million.” But to me, that’s more an effort of managing the news when you try to 

determine who comes, well, who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy. Who’s a good embed 

and who’s a bad embed. That’s something I ran into in DESERT STORM. Any of you read 

the book Hotel Warriors? Joe Galloway and I were castigated mightily by John Fialka of 

the Wall Street Journal who wrote that book because John was under the opinion that we 

had made some sort of secret deal with Barry McCaffrey who was the commander of the 

24th ID to get out there, outside the pool system. Well, Joe and I, I mean, we used our contacts. I used my contacts with the 24th ID and Joe used his. He knew Schwarzkopf from 

Vietnam. Most other times we’d be applauded for what we did. But some people looked at 

that as McCaffrey trying to manage the news by only getting out reporters who were fair to 

him. But now there seems to be a process in the works that has formalized that of trying to 

get reporters to Afghanistan who are only going to report the good news.

Audience Member

Colonel Farquhar, Combat Studies Institute. This is to you, Mr. Martz. Personally, I 

miss your reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The shoe leather reporting you 

did in the [inaudible]. My question is on ethics and in the past, say, 30 years, since 1980 

we’ll say, if we look at journalistic scandals, the only one that really pops to my mind that’s 

not military was the Janet Cooke affair, “Jimmy’s World” of the Washington Post in the 

early 1980s where, again, the Washington Post was given a Pulitzer Prize for something 

that was entirely fictional. But since then, if we take a look at things like “The War Within,” 

“CBS Reports 1980,” which was a series of self-proclaimed Vietnam veterans who took 

part, claimed to take part in massacres that they had not been, not even served in Vietnam. 

The tale on CNN that destroyed the reputation of a famous and honored journalist, Peter 

Arnett, He did a piece which was a story that American soldiers had massacred Korean 

civilians in the beginning of the Korean war, Pulitzer Prize. Totally debunked. That the 

main witness was in a mental hospital. Newsweek recently published that guards had 

flushed a Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo. Well, what is it about this template that 

makes people of your former profession lie so much about mine?
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Panel 1

Mr. Martz

I can’t answer to those specific stories. I mean, I have no idea where they came from. 

The only thing I can surmise is that they picked up information or a tip from somewhere 

and it was of such magnitude that someone decided that we’re going to go with this no 

matter what circumstances or what the truth is. Now, why they do that, you know, I don’t 

know. I mean, I’ve been involved in stories in the past where that kind of thing happened 

also. There was a case a few years ago that I knew a lot of the participants where Time 

Magazine did a piece in which they ended up putting the blame for the Lockerbie explosion, the Pan Am 103 explosion, on a guy who was actually a janitor in Austell, Georgia. 

But, Time Magazine did some other things around that time. It was like they got this idea in 

their heads and this is just generally speaking—and again, I can’t speak to all the specifics 

of it—but sometimes editors and/or reporters get this idea in their heads that this story is 

too good to pass up and we’re going to go with it no matter what it is. A lot of times it’s not 

necessarily the reporter that pushes it along, but an editor somewhere who’s some distance 

removed from it. You could also bring up the Dan Rather thing with President Bush. But 

there are people in the industry, as we’ve seen—the Janet Cooke thing, the Jayson Blair 

thing—that will do . . . 

Mr. Chiaventone

The guy Glass . . . .

Mr. Martz

Oh yeah, Glass, people that will do anything to become celebrities, to become known 

in the business. You know, we’ve got our bad apples too, just like you guys may have one 

or two bad apples yourselves every once in awhile. I mean, it’s like we’re not perfect as an 

institution. We do what we can to try to bring those things to light and to show that what 

somebody said about this is not correct, but we’re not always successful in that.

Audience Member

Mike Fletcher of the visiting press at the University of Oklahoma. Just a comment. 

I just returned from a year embed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Any time you talk about situational ethics, it is true—I mean, you have to keep in mind that any time you bring a camera 

into the equation, you change—people do things differently. You’re perhaps shot at more, 

your unit will be because you have a camera. The civilians as well too. So you have to 

adjust depending on what’s going on at that point. You have to take into account that you 

bear a certain amount of responsibility for changing the equation and have to deal with 

that in a real-time situation. The other thing is on embedding. You hear the criticism that 

we’re co-opted by embedding. But my argument always is that we should close down our 

press bureaus at the White House, at the Supreme Court, at the Justice Department, and as 

an embedded reporter in the field, you cannot, just can’t physically cover every angle. If 

that is the case, the White House reporter then should go to the Hill and get their reaction 

and then should go to a small town and get reaction of other people [inaudible]. But what 

we have, and we have very little of it left, I mean, you have to have a deal to cover those 
45

Questions and Answers

wars as they’re, the military, as they’re being pushed. You know, [inaudible] constitution 

[inaudible]. The networks closed down their overseas bureaus. So we’re seeing less and 

less of that. Then if someone wants to cover the other side, which is very difficult to do if 

you want to cover the Taliban. Good luck. But another reporter has to do that. There has to 

be bodies out there to do that.

Then a second question I have for you, Fred, is this Office of Press Information in 

World War I. How did they try to manage in World War I? I’m very curious. Did they have 

the embeds and that sort of thing?

Mr. Chiaventone

They had the—I don’t know if you would call them embeds. But they had a lot of, they 

would accredit various correspondents to go over there, to follow it. But they would censor 

it. They would actually have a military officer who would be assigned to go through it and 

red letter everything that was going out and they had to go through a military telegraph to 

get back to the States with their stories. It was a tough business. Now some of them tried to 

circumvent it. They tried to send it by other channels and that sort of thing, but they quickly 

lost their credentials as a result. If they lost their credentials, they didn’t have access to the 

front because, as messy as the front was in France, it was tough getting to it. It was really 

tough getting up there and getting back, getting your material back. So it didn’t work very 

well except for the fact that a lot of folks believe very much in the war effort and they say, 

“Well, we’ve got to keep the effort going.” Afterwards, there was a lot of personal rejection 

of that. They thought they had maybe participated in making this cataclysm possible. So 

in fact, there were several suicides among former reporters who thought, “What did I do to 

make that possible? To keep that going?” So it was a tough business. 

Mr. Martz

If I could just address something. Mike, that comment about the limited view of the 

war by the individual embed. And I address that in my paper. I just didn’t go into it here. 

But I mean, the idea that an embed can cover the whole war is absolute nonsense. Those of 

us who were embeds, I think, or any embed who thought they could do that—just totally 

impossible. As an embed, you report what you can see and what you can hear and you try 

to present that snapshot picture of what’s on the battlefield in front of you so it’s representative of a larger piece of what’s going on in the war. When I went over there for the Atlanta 

Journal-Constitution, we probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 reporters 

scattered around the battlefield at different places. We had one guy in Baghdad, as a matter 

of fact, who had stayed behind. We had unilaterals who were roaming the battlefield. We 

had reporters and various other units around. And, as an embed, I’m not responsible for 

telling people the entire story of the war. I think it’s up to the editors and the news consumer to be good news consumers and take more than just what I’m writing as the story 

of the war.

Audience Member

Don Wolfe. On an earlier question about DOD getting out their own message, I’m 

completely in favor of that. But my pet peeve is getting competition in a combat theater 
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Panel 1

from a senior officer. A couple of examples. In Camp Philadelphia in Kuwait, a week 

before the invasion of Iraq, there was a grenade thrown into a tent. It was believed to 

have been a terrorist incident. We crawled around all night trying to find out the truth, and 

by morning we pretty well identified the situation as a fragging carried out by one of the 

soldiers against their officers. We were asked to embargo that story a couple more hours 

until more investigation could take place and we agreed. I can remember tuning in to Voice 

of America or BBC or something, 7 a.m., bingo, coming from Qatar, US Army spokesman 

telling our story. Breaking it. Another case was in Kosovo at Camp Eagle. I had been with 

the Marines all day. There had been a small skirmish and several Serbs were shot and a 

couple killed, a few wounded. Went back to Camp Eagle, rushed into the PIO tent to get 

the phone to call ABC News, and was told, “Don, our commanding general has a briefing 

by phone with journalists at the Pentagon in an hour and he said no journalists will be using 

the phone or filing any stories until I get on. I’m going to give the today’s report.” And he 

got on and gave it, but he got it wrong. But I told him the next day, “General, I won’t fight 

the war if you won’t report my stories.”

Dr. Wright

Maybe we’ll get a point of view on the command side on this type of issue. I’m not sure 

if our panelists want to quickly respond to that? 

Mr. Chiaventone

No, I think he’s got some valid points. You know, it’s a messy business and it’s going 

to take a while to sort it all out quite honestly. 

Mr. Martz

I think one of the things that we’re fighting now is, I mean, during Operation DESERT 

STORM, they were still running into folks who had the Vietnam hangover, some of the top 

commanders. Tommy Franks was one of those guys who carried that through, even through 

OIF-1. McCaffrey is one of the guys who was a little more enlightened in terms of media 

relations. But what you have now is pretty much a generation of folks who did not grow up 

with that Vietnam hangover regarding the media, and I know there are folks who are going 

to speak on that issue later today. So I think that this current generation of officers, all the 

way from four stars down to second lieutenants, have an opportunity to be more engaged, 

more engaged with the media, and to do a better job of letting the American public know 

what it is that they do and what it is that our sons and daughters in uniform do.

Mr. Chiaventone

You know, it’s kind of interesting. It’s less of a mysterious business right now. I know I 

have a tough time doing this stuff. My 13-year old son knows more about technology than 

I ever will. But, you know, we’ve grown up in an era where technology is much more readily available and a lot of the folks, from second lieutenants to now even four star generals, 

are more comfortable with it, more used to it, more willing to adapt and utilize it to our 

advantage. It’s going to take a little while to work all the bugs out. We’re going to have 

problems with it. We’re going to have glitches. Generals are going to try to talk to DC, you 

know, to the reporters in DC, and they’re going to get it wrong. We’re going to try to wean 
47

Questions and Answers

ourselves away from that sort of thing, but it’s going to take some time to get all the bugs 

worked out of the system.

Mr. Wright

Thank you very much for your excellent questions and to our panelists for two provocative papers. Would you join me in a round of applause for them. Ken Gott would like 

me to remind you that the virtual staff ride (VSR) is occurring in about 15 minutes upstairs 

and that lunch will go on for the next hour and 15 minutes. The symposium will reconvene 

here at 1300. Thank you.

49

Panel 2—The Philippines and the First World War

“Its Officers Did Not Forget”:

The Philippine War, the Press, and the Pre-World War I US Army

(Submitted Paper)

by

Thomas A. Bruscino Jr., Ph.D.

School of Advanced Military Studies

US Army Command and General Staff College

The current understanding of the Philippine War, especially within military circles, 

is that for all of its difficulties, it was ultimately a success for the Americans.1

 No doubt 

the broader consensus stems in part from a presentist-minded comparison to perceived 

shortcomings in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whatever the case, the 

Philippines-as-a-success-story is a recent development.2

 At the time of the actual war, over 

100 years ago, as the American efforts in the Philippines dragged on for more than 3 years 

of consistent fighting and decades of intermittent clashes beyond that, the war triggered a 

storm of criticism in the media of the day. The resulting controversies were very much in 

the minds of the generation of Army officers who fought in the Philippines, and for years 

afterward had a significant affect on the way they looked at the Army and their missions 

in the world.

Controversies

The public controversies over the Philippines began before the war itself even started. 

The process that led to the sustained American occupation of the entire archipelago is 

beyond the scope of this discussion, but suffice it to say that it initiated a heated debate 

between camps of so-called imperialists and anti-imperialists over the proper role of the 

United States in the wider world.3

 For the most part, the military remained removed from 

this particular debate, but the critics of the acquisition of the Philippines made a strong, 

sustained, and very public case, and the American efforts in the Philippines began under a 

cloud of controversy.4

 Moreover, as the actual fighting broke out between the Americans 

and Filipino nationalists in February 1899, the controversies over the Philippines began to 

multiply.

At the outbreak of hostilities between the Americans and Filipinos, Major General 

Elwell S. Otis commanded the American forces on the islands. The war that followed 

broke into two phases. The first began in the spring of 1899 and involved a conventional 

ground campaign by the Americans to break out of Manila and drive north to destroy 

Emilio Aguinaldo’s regular forces and hastily organized government. The outnumbered 
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Panel 2

Americans managed to push north over the next few months, but could not deliver a decisive 

blow before the onset of the rainy season. The prolonging of the war triggered the second 

large public controversy over the Philippines, this one involving the Army specifically. 

Some journalists began to question Otis’s leadership. For his deliberate style of command, 

he picked up the sobriquet “Nervous Nelly,” and in an article under the headline “Otis 

is a Fussy Old Man,” a reporter for the Boston Daily Globe wrote, “Unless Gen. Otis is 

removed and a competent general put in command, the whole campaign will be a failure.”5

The overall success of the follow-up campaign in the fall of 1899 relieved some of the 

controversy over Otis’s leadership, and the general turned over command to Major General 

Arthur MacArthur in May 1900. However, the war was long from over, and the public 

controversies over the counterinsurgency that followed would only grow more heated, 

especially for the Army. The details of the second phase of the Philippine War, the guerrilla 

war, have been covered admirably elsewhere, but in short Otis and then MacArthur, and 

then, after July 1901, Major General Adna Chaffee, faced the daunting task of organizing 

for ongoing small fights throughout the islands in a wide variety of geographic and social 

conditions. As in most insurgent wars, the guerrilla style of fighting involved more and 

more of the civilian population as willing or unwilling conspirators. In their desperation, 

many of the guerrillas used brutal techniques—including torture and mutilation—against 

Americans, their Filipino allies, and Filipino civilians. As the war dragged on with no end 

in sight, some of the increasingly frustrated Americans responded in kind. Opponents of 

the war in the press and at home seized on reports of American atrocities, and initiated the 

strongest and most heated controversy involving the Army in the war.6

Newspapers and other periodicals went into detail about all manner of misconduct 

committed by Army officers and soldiers, especially wanton destruction of villages 

and private property, the killing of civilians, the torture of prisoners, and the summary 

executions of captured insurgents. Regardless of the veracity of the charges—some were 

true, but many were later proven either false or exaggerations—the fact that they appeared 

in the press and were repeated by anti-imperialists at home set a trend.7

The charges were legion, and they grew as the fight dragged on and turned into a guerrilla 

war, but a few examples should provide the flavor. Letters home from American soldiers 

found their way into papers all over the country, making claims of orders from generals 

to “burn the town and kill every native in sight,” and reporting a standard practice in the 

fighting that if natives “fire a shot from a house we burn the house down and every house 

near it, and shoot the natives.”8

 If there was one particular accusation of mistreatment of 

prisoners that media reports particularly latched on to, it was the use of the so-called “water 

cure” as an interrogation technique. One report after another described in detail the process 

of sticking a bamboo tube or some other kind of funnel in a prisoner’s mouth, forcing water 

down into the tube until his stomach was full and distended, and then pressing, hitting, 

stomping, or even jumping on the stomach to force the water out.9

 The 22 May 1902 cover 

of Life magazine featured a cartoon with American soldiers administering the water cure, 

as caricatures of a variety of other nationalities, mainly European, looked on. “Those pious 

Yankees can’t throw stones at us anymore,” read the caption.10
51

Bruscino

The capture of Aguinaldo in a daring raid by then Brigadier General Frederick Funston 

in March 1901 absorbed much of the attention of the press and militarily helped lead 

to the surrender of many other guerrilla leaders, but by then public criticisms had too 

much momentum to be stopped for long. Funston himself even came under attack for the 

supposedly unsportsmanlike and maybe even illegal ruse he used to take Aguinaldo (he 

had posed as a prisoner to get into the Filipino leader’s camp).11 In 1902, no less a figure 

than Mark Twain penned the satirical “A Defence of General Funston,” in which he wrote: 

He and his party were well disguised, in dishonored uniforms, American 

and Insurgent; they greatly outnumbered Aguinaldo’s guard; by his 

forgeries and falsehoods he had lulled suspicion to sleep; his coming 

was expected, his way was prepared; his course was through a solitude, 

unfriendly interruption was unlikely; his party were well armed; they 

would catch their prey with welcoming smiles in their faces, and with 

hospitable hands extended for the friendly shake—nothing would be 

necessary but to shoot these people down. That is what they did. It was 

hospitality repaid in a brand-new, up-to-date, Modern Civilization fashion, 

and would be admired by many.12

Such was the environment of the spring of 1902, when the public criticism of the 

Army’s actions in the Philippines reached a fever pitch. In September 1901, Filipino 

insurgents, numbering in the hundreds and armed with bolo knives, attacked and all but 

wiped out a company from the 9th Infantry Regiment at Balangiga on the island of Samar. 

In response, the Americans sent one brigade under General Jacob Smith to Samar and 

another under General J. Franklin Bell to Batangas province in southern Luzon. Outraged 

by the slaughter of the American troops at Balangiga, Smith led a campaign of destruction 

clear through the island. He may or may not have ordered his men to turn Samar into a 

“howling wilderness,” but what is important here is that it was so widely reported that 

the general became known as Jacob “Howling Wilderness” Smith. Because of his actions 

and the popular outrage over reports of American atrocities, Smith was court-martialed, 

convicted, and forced to retire. Bell, who is often lauded now for the effectiveness of his 

efforts in Batangas, at the time came under intense criticism, especially for his technique of 

gathering the friendly population into concentration camps.13

At the same time, the US Senate, which had created a standing Committee on the 

Philippines as far back as 1900, decided to redirect the Committee’s efforts into an 

investigation of “the conduct of the war in the Philippine Islands, the administration of 

the government there and the condition and character of the inhabitants.”14 To add fuel to 

the fire, the last full-time Commanding General of the Army, Lieutenant General Nelson 

A. Miles joined the fray on the side of the critics of the Army’s efforts. In the late summer 

of 1902, Miles, who already had made public comments about Army misconduct in the 

Philippines, went on an inspection tour of the archipelago. His reports, submitted in 

February 1903 and publically released in May, repeated many of the same charges of the 

previous years, including naming specific American officers and soldiers who participated 

in the destruction of property, the use of the water cure, and the mistreatment and execution 
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Panel 2

of civilians and prisoners. The report, formally released in the Army and Navy Journal, 

received widespread coverage in newspapers at the time.15

Even the declared end of the war in 1902 did not change the trend of press coverage of 

the ongoing actions in the Philippines, especially in the fights against the Moros and other 

groups on the islands.16 The tendency toward criticism continued. There was no escaping 

it—the entire Philippine adventure had become a public relations disaster for the Army.

Recognition

There is a current tendency to assume too much about the effects of the rapidity of 

information sharing in the digital age. While it is true that modern technology allows for 

the collection, processing, and dissemination of information in a variety of formats and 

at unprecedented rates, that does not mean that people in the past did not have effective 

information sharing systems of their own. Newspapers and periodicals were everywhere 

during this era, and they covered every topic of national interest from the full range of 

ideological perspectives. The information came slower and it was mostly in written form, but 

for interested parties, the information was almost always there.17 But even more important, 

then and now, is the way people in and out of decisionmaking positions understand and use 

that information. Whether the American people and American policymakers find out about 

a controversy through a press report or a Web log, what really matters is how they act (or 

do not act) based on their understanding of the controversy.

With that in mind, it is worth noting that people associated with the military in the 

early 20th century became acutely aware of the power of the available media, especially 

newspapers, to shape public opinion and potentially force actions that would affect the way 

the military did its work. And if they did not know before the Philippine War, they certainly 

did after, because when it came to the coverage of the controversies in the Philippines the 

military heard it all, some of it directly, and everyone from the top down took notice.18

Major General Otis said on several occasions that he believed the critiques of the war had 

helped start the fight and had most certainly prolonged it.19 General Henry W. Lawton 

wrote to a friend from the Philippines, “I know from my own observation, confirmed by 

the stories of captured Filipino prisoners, that the continuance of fighting is chiefly due to 

reports that are sent out from America and circulated among these ignorant natives.”20

Perhaps the most consistently controversial American officer, and the one most likely 

to note and respond to attacks, was Frederick Funston. It seemed like at every turn, Funston 

was defending his actions from charges in the press. When reports came out that he had 

ordered prisoners killed in the early fighting, Funston denied the charges and retorted 

publically that “some of the rankest cowards in the army were officers from the Twentieth 

Kansas Regiment . . . and it is this same class of skulkers that is now making contemptible 

and underhand attacks upon Colonel Metcalf and myself.”21 “Liars and blackguards of 

the first water,” was what he called the editors and journalists who accused him of such 

crimes.22 At the end of his time in the Philippines, when he gave a speech at the Lotos Club 

in New York in March 1902, he said, “All of those men who have fallen since the month 

of January, 1900, have died, not because the Filipinos really had much heart in fighting 
53

Bruscino

against us, but because they were sustained by a lot of misguided people here in the United 

States.” He continued:

I do not want to say anything brutal, but, as I say, the Army feels bitterly 

about this business. I have no quarrel with the man who thinks that we 

should not at first have taken the Philippine Islands; I have no quarrel with 

the man who thinks a whole lot of things but who does not say too much 

about it now; but as to those men who have been writing and talking about 

this thing and keeping this warfare alive and in the field to-day, I say that I 

would rather see any one of these men hanged, hanged for treason, hanged 

for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, than see the humblest soldier in 

the United States Army lying dead on the field of battle.23

A decade later he was still at it, as significant portions of his memoirs answered old charges 

that still rankled.24

For obvious reasons, the officers could not miss the Senate hearings on Philippine 

affairs; a good number of them either sent in documents or had to testify directly. Admiral 

Dewey, Generals Otis, MacArthur, Robert P. Hughes, William Crozier, and Colonel Arthur 

Wagner all stood before the committee and answered detailed questions about all of the 

controversies attendant to the war in the Philippines.25 On multiple occasions, the questioning 

grew heated, as imperialists and anti-imperialists on the committee debated with each other 

and the witnesses, and had their testimony or reports republished in the press.26

Likewise, the Miles report elicited responses from around the Army. When the Army 

and Navy Journal first published the report, the magazine also reprinted responses to Miles’ 

specific claims from the Judge-Advocate General, the Commissary General, the Chief of 

Engineers, and the Surgeon General. In addition, Major General Adna Chaffee, the military 

commander in the Philippines after MacArthur, also replied, as did J. Franklin Bell, who 

said the War Department had already investigated all of Miles’ charges.27

It was not just officers who felt the sting of the critiques. Historians William Sexton, 

John Gates, and Edward M. Coffman all made the case that the controversies affected 

the men in the field.28 Jack Ganzhorn, who served with Funston and witnessed the field 

execution of two Filipino insurgents, wrote, “In many instances from Maine to California, 

General Funston was declared a cold-blooded, callous killer.” Ganzhorn’s memoir, first 

published in 1940, still sought to correct the record: 

In contradiction, let me point out that the General Order above referred 

to [General Order No. 100] makes it mandatory that any enemy caught 

in the act of torturing prisoners of war be summarily executed. These 

two Filipino officers were caught in the act, their persons and clothing 

spattered with the life blood of helpless prisoners. Aside from the fact that 

the execution was well merited and entirely legal, its general effect no 

doubt saved many Americans a like fate.29

Even more telling was the unwillingness to open old wounds. Almost 30 years later, 

with World War I in the interim, the editor of the Military Engineer still rejected an article 
54

Panel 2

about the Battle of Mount Bagsak because one senior officer said it was an incident “which 

should not be unduly publicized. This discussion of these actions may revive public 

attention to military operations that might well remain forgotten.”30

Effect

As Edward M. Coffman has pointed out, the wars in the Philippines “were a crucible 

for the officer corps,” especially those officers who would rise to prominence prior to 

and during World War I.31 The question at hand is what affect the media controversies 

over the Philippines had on the Army directly prior to World War I. The straightforward 

answer relates to relations with the media, and the Army response in that sense had two 

sides. The first is obvious: The Army became much more vigorous about the need for 

censorship. John J. Pershing, who had to enlist the help of politicians and independent 

investigators to clear his name for a variety of issues in the Philippines, strongly supported 

review and censorship of press reports coming out of the Punitive Expedition in Mexico 

and the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.32

The second response by individuals in the Army from the lessons of dealing with 

the media in the imperial years is that they grew much more astute at using the media 

to affect larger debates. The best example of this was on the preparedness question, the 

classic dilemma for an American military that came from a society that feared and did not 

want to pay for large standing armies. For all the internal angst about the Army’s lack of 

preparedness, the Army had trouble getting the message out, even after the difficulties in 

mobilizing for the Spanish American War.33

The generation of officers who served in the Philippines and saw the power of the 

media to gain unwelcome attention realized that controversy could also work in their favor. 

It is no exaggeration to say that advocates for preparedness in the pre-World War I period 

launched one of the most effective public relations campaigns in American history. John 

McAuley Palmer said outright, “My modest success in writing magazine articles on reform 

subjects in McClure’s and elsewhere led me to believe I might make myself most useful 

by acting as a literary agent for the scheme of reorganization. . . .”34 Chief of Staff Leonard 

Wood wrote and published a steady stream of articles and speeches arguing for some form 

of greatly expanded military training, and eventually even managed to get a series of citizen 

military training camps opened in 1915, starting in Plattsburgh, New York.35 Palmer was 

even more explicit about the role of newspapers in describing how Chief of Staff General 

Hugh Scott, who served in Cuba and the Philippines, pushed for the World War I draft with 

Secretary of War Newton Baker:

General Scott sensed the danger of trying to convert his man by frontal 

assault. Open debate might well lead to acrimony. . . . Instead, General 

Scott resorted to a campaign of gradual attrition. Having sent his annual 

report with its plea for universal training as a trial balloon, he sat back 

and waited. Each day, as editorials favoring the report were sent in from 

newspapers all over the country, he would refer them to Mr. Baker without 

comment. He knew the secretary would eventually make up his own mind, 

as indeed he did—after more than 800 editorials favoring compulsory duty 
55

Bruscino

had crossed his desk. And once persuaded of his own volition that the 

principle was sound, Mr. Baker himself took the initiative in winning over 

President Wilson.

Newspapers, then, played an important part in shaping the policy of 

the War Department. Without their support even the diplomatic skill of 

General Scott might well have proved inadequate.36

In a broader sense, the media coverage of the Philippine War also affected and 

continues to affect the way the Army thinks about counterinsurgency. It just is not true that 

the soldiers who fought in the Philippines simply forgot about small wars. On the contrary, 

they believed that beyond concerns with strategic deployment for the conflicts, they had 

done a pretty solid job of tactically fighting against insurgents, and that whatever skills 

they needed in the future had been captured in corporate experiences and knowledge.37

Indeed, the generation had some pretty solid foundational ideas for counterinsurgency, 

especially about balancing coercion and attraction. As Robert Bullard wrote in 1910, such 

wars meant “a judicious mixture of force and persuasion, of severity and moderation.”38

Their skill at achieving just such a mixture played out in Cuba in 1906, the ongoing fights 

in the Philippines, the occupation of Veracruz in 1914, and even in the border troubles with 

Mexico in 1915–17.

In each case, Army officers put serious thought into both how to achieve the mission 

and how that mission might be perceived. In Cuba, the local conditions meant that the 

Army could get by almost entirely with attraction.39 As already mentioned, the Moros and 

some of the other belligerents in the Philippines required a harder hand.40 There were plenty 

of Americans calling for harsher measures against Mexico, but generally the military took 

a more measured line, in both Veracruz and on the southern border. As Frank McCoy 

wrote to an acquaintance, “If it were not for us altruistic soldier missionaries, you jingoes 

would have forced us into an unjust war against the poor, downtrodden peons of Mexico.”41

The point was that there was no magic equation of balancing attraction and coercion—

it depended on the circumstances and the ability of the commanders on the ground to 

recognize when it was time to do what. 

This is the real paradox of American counterinsurgency. In a 1988 article, Edward 

Filiberti neatly captured the problem in a discussion of J. Franklin Bell’s dilemma: 

Could Bell have accomplished his mission without resorting to the 

aggressive techniques employed? Was the reaction of the press and public 

outcry over the conduct of his campaign indicative of our own culture 

biases and standards of conduct? . . . This raises some higher issues: Will 

the constraints inherent with US social and culture morality preclude 

effective low-intensity operations in specific operational environments? 

Who will be able to determine that we cannot achieve the ends given our 

constraints on the means? Will our country ask our military leaders to try 

anyway?42

There is no need to assume that Filiberti was projecting backwards; Army officers at the 

time said much the same thing.
56

Panel 2

For example, in 1904, Major Augustus Blocksom wrote in an article that explained and 

defended the use of the water cure as part of the lessons from the Philippines:

When war comes, officers, high and low, will exert their power to keep its 

evils at the minimum. But public sentiment will be morally responsible 

for its beginning, and would without cavil let the army and navy fight it to 

the end, remembering that the larger the well-trained, properly equipped 

fighting force sent early to the scene of action, the shorter will be the war 

and less liability to methods like those described in this paper. And when 

things go wrong, the average blame for cruelty, privation and delay should 

be placed where it belongs—on war itself.43

As historian Allan Millett wrote of the post-Philippines Army: “Its officers did not forget 

that they would have to answer for what were portrayed to American readers as atrocities.”44

The frustration created by the paradox of winning through a balance of attraction and force 

that might not be acceptable to a fickle public is all too evident in such accounts.

It has become axiomatic to accuse the US military of wanting to forget the lessons of 

counterinsurgency and return to a focus on what military professionals see as their proper 

task: fighting and winning the big wars. In the case of the Philippine War, the classic 

bit of evidence for this view is that the Army never published John Taylor’s extensive 

four-volume history of the war. But perhaps a little more empathy is in order. Whatever 

lessons learned there were and are to be gleaned from the Philippines, they are not 

generalized. The conditions in all of the small fights were unique enough that they do not 

lead to anything like a short or even long list of dos and don’ts. Rather, what the history 

of counterinsurgency in the Philippines provides is a catalog of unique experiences, the 

study of which provides a catalog of proxy experiences on which a professional could draw 

in more rapidly understanding and dealing with his unique counterinsurgency dilemma.45

That study would require acknowledging in print or at the schoolhouse—in other words, 

in public—the necessity, sometimes, of the use of harsh measures to achieve the desired 

objectives. And so even the study itself of counterinsurgency subjects the Army once again 

to the public scrutiny and the almost inevitable controversy that follows. Many of the 

Army’s studies of the Philippine War went by the wayside for precisely that reason.46

So what is it to be? Study small wars as they should be studied and suffer the slings 

and arrows from a liberal democratic society, or choose to agree that the lessons have been 

inculcated enough through experience and turn the profession’s attention to conventional 

wars? In the case of the pre-World War I generation, the choice was made easier by 

the growing conventional threats around the world, and the view that the survival of 

the republic depended on not losing those wars, which was not the case with the small 

wars, and, no matter how painful, generally turned out all right for the United States. The 

Army did not eliminate the coercion side from its understanding of small wars, but they 

knew that coercion led to controversy. So they decided to turn their attention to big wars, 

something they could do with a Marine Corps taking on the small wars task, a generally 

less expeditionary mindset among the political leadership of the United States, and large 

conventional threats on the horizon (including the Japanese threat on the Philippines 

itself).47 That logic held on at least until the end of the Cold War.
57

Bruscino

Despite some protestations, the dilemma now is the same as it ever was. One can 

only imagine what veterans of the Philippine War and all of its controversies would say in 

response to a recent article claiming,

Harsh counterinsurgency techniques of . . . history—including forced 

population movements, coercion of locals into security forces, stringent 

curfews, and even lethal pressure on civilians to take the government 

side—are outdated. The combination of an insurgent’s skillful international 

propaganda and all-pervading media coverage ends the use of such tactics 

that worked in the obscure jungles of the Philippines . . . and elsewhere.48

It is hoped this paper has shown that such a view is flawed when it comes to the 

military and media relations, but the statement, which is generally in line with the Army’s 

current professed counterinsurgency thinking, also reveals another assumption that all 

counterinsurgencies can and must be won without the use of such harsh techniques.49 The 

surge in Iraq has succeeded in part because of a perception that the US military successfully 

went over toward attraction (security) and away from coercion. Whatever the merits of 

such an interpretation, and it is in dispute, what happens when the circumstances clearly 

change? After the Philippines, conditions in the world meant that the Army could pretty 

much ignore the question. But that might not be the case now, as the United States and its 

allies find themselves in the midst of another fight where the local conditions might require 

a different balance, one that requires more coercion, and maybe even extremely harsh 

techniques. Regardless of the current fights, it seems folly to assume that no small war 

will ever emerge where winning requires the type of force that makes a liberal democracy 

uncomfortable.50 In such a case, it will have done no good to ignore the paradox. The 

question for the Army is how to manage the perception in the media, not pretend that the 

task does not exist.
58

Panel 2

Notes

1. See, for example, Edward J. Filiberti, “The Roots of US Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” 

Military Review 68 (January 1988): 50–61; Timothy K. Deady, “Lessons from a Successful 

Counterinsurgency: The Philippines, 1899–1902,” Parameters 35 (Spring 2005): 53–68; Robert 

D. Ramsey, Savage Wars of Peace: Case Studies of Pacification in the Philippines, 1900–1902, 

Long War Series Occasional Paper 24 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 

2007); Robert D. Ramsey, A Masterpiece of Counterguerrilla Warfare: BG J. Franklin Bell in 

the Philippines, 1901–1902, Long War Series Occasional Paper 25 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: 

Combat Studies Institute Press, 2007); John M. Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States 

Army in the Philippines, 1899–1902 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); Brian McAllister 

Linn, The Philippine War, 1899–1902 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000); and 

Brian McAllister Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899–1902

(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989). See also, David J. Silbey, A War of 

Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 

2007). An early less-well-developed account along the same lines is William Thaddeus Sexton’s 

1939, Soldiers in the Sun: An Adventure in Imperialism (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 

1971).

2. See, for example, Robert L. Beisner, “1898 and 1968: The Anti-Imperialists and the Doves,” 

Political Science Quarterly 85 (June 1970): 187–216; Daniel B. Schirmer, Republic or Empire: 

American Resistance to the Philippine War (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1972); Stuart Creighton 

Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); David Haward Bain, Sitting in Darkness: Americans in 

the Philippines (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1984); Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm 

Shalom, eds., The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, 

and Resistance (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1987), esp. 1–51; Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: 

America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York, NY: Random House, 1989); and H.W. Brands, 

Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (Oxford University Press, 1992). An earlier 

account in the same vein is Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brother (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961). 

More recent generally critical accounts of American activities in the Philippines and elsewhere that 

do not have such direct ties to Vietnam (but sometimes relate to the Iraq War) include Angel Velasco 

Shaw and Luis H. Francia, eds., Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath 

of the Imperial Dream, 1899–1999 (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2002); Julian Go 

and Anne L. Foster, eds., The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Sharon Delmendo, The Star-Entangled Banner: One 

Hundred Years of America in the Philippines (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004); 

Paul A. Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines

(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), esp. 87–158; and Julian Go, American 

Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico 

during U.S. Colonialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

3. There is extensive literature on these issues, covering the full spectrum of interpretations. 

See, for example, Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956); Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The 

Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1961); Walter LaFeber, 

The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell 

University Press, 1963); H. Wayne Morgan, America’s Road to Empire: The War with Spain and 

Overseas Expansion (New York, NY: Knopf, 1965); Oscar M. Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the 

Philippines, 1897–1909 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1970); Lewis L. Gould, 
59

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The Spanish-American War and President McKinley (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 

1982); Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the 

World since 1776 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 101–121; Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting 

for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and PhilippineAmerican Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press); Warren Zimmerman, First Great Triumph: 

How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and 

Giroux, 2002); Thomas D. Schoonover, Uncle Sam’s War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization

(Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2003); Eric T. Love, Race Over Empire: Racism 

and U.S. Imperialism, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 

159–195; and Silbey, War of Frontier and Empire, 50–60.

4. The best account is still Richard E. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and 

the Philippine-American War, 1899–1902 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 

1979).

5. “Nervous Nelly” from Brands, Bound to Empire, 50; “Fussy Old Man” quoted in Robert T. 

Davis, The US Army and the Media in the 20th Century, Long War Series Occasional Paper 31 (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2009), 13–14.

6. A catalog of claims of misconduct from the time can be found in Secretary Root’s Record

(Boston, MA: George H. Ellis Printers, 1902). An excellent discussion of the dimensions of atrocities 

in the war is Linn, Philippine War, esp. 219–224.

7. Linn, Philippine War, 124–125; “Charge Against Metcalf,” Los Angeles Times,

24 November 1899, 3; Thomas W. Crouch, A Leader of Volunteers: Frederick Funston and the 

20th Kansas in the Philippines, 1898–1899 (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1984), 214–233; and 

Welch, Response to Imperialism, 133.

8. Quoted in Miller, Benevolent Assimilation, 88–89. See also Luzviminda Francisco, 

“Philippine-American War,” in Philippine Reader, eds. Schirmer and Shalom, 13–14; and Kramer, 

Blood of Government, 141–142.

9. See the reprints of newspaper accounts in Secretary Root’s Record, 60–66. Historical 

studies include Miller, Benevolent Assimilation, 250–252; Wolff, Little Brown Brother, 306; and 

Kramer, Blood of Government, 140–142.

10. Life 39 (22 May 1902), cover.

11. Sullivan, Our Times, Vol. I, 542; and Miller, Benevolent Assimilation, 168–170.

12. Mark Twain, “A Defence of General Funston,” North American Review 174 (May 1902). 

See also, Jim Zwick, “Mark Twain’s Anti-Imperialist Writings in the ‘American Century,’” in 

Vestiges of War, ed. Shaw and Francia, 38–68.

13. The best overall account of the campaigns and controversy is Linn, The Philippine War, 

277–321. See also, Glenn Anthony May, Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), and Ramsey, A Masterpiece of Counterguerrilla Warfare. A 

somewhat earlier and less reported version of a similar style campaign occurred in Marinduque from 

April 1900 to April 1901, and is aptly covered in Andrew J. Birtle, “The U.S. Army’s Pacification 

of Marinduque, Philippine Islands, April 1900–April 1901,” Journal of Military History 61 (April 

1997): 255–282.

14. Henry F. Graff, ed., American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection (Boston, 

MA: Little Brown, 1969), xvi; US Senate, Affairs in the Philippine Islands, Hearings before the 

Committee on the Philippines of the United States Senate, S. Doc. 331, 57th Cong., 1st sess., 1902; 

and Welch, Response to Imperialism, 136–138.

15. “General Miles Report on the Philippines,” Army and Navy Journal 40 (2 May 1903): 862; 

or the reprint, The Philippines: Reports by Lieutenant-General Nelson A. Miles, U.S.A. (Boston, 

MA: Anti Imperialist League, 1909), 8. An example of detailed newspaper coverage was “Gen. 
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Miles Report on Philippines Army,” New York Times, 28 April 1903, 3. Miles repeated some of the 

charges in brief in his 1911 memoirs, and under photographs of insurgent leaders Aguinaldo and 

Apolinario Mabini, labeled them as “patriots.” Miles, Serving the Republic (New York, NY: Harper 

and Brothers, 1911), 306–308. For details, see Edward Ranson, “Nelson A. Miles as Commanding 

General, 1895–1903,” Military Affairs 29 (Winter 1965–66): 196–198; Robert Wooster, Nelson 

Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 

232–246; and Peter R. DeMontravel, A Hero to His Fighting Men: Nelson A. Miles, 1839–1925

(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1998), 326–352.

16. A good summary of the post-1902 action in the Philippines is Brian McAllister Linn, 

Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina 

Press, 1997), 23–49.

17. A particularly astute account is Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 174–181. 

See also, the discussions of popular newspapers and periodicals, and their editorial stances in Welch, 

Response to Imperialism, passim.

18. For the responses of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, see Alfonso, Theodore 

Roosevelt and the Philippines, 185–205.

19. Welch, Response to Imperialism, 169, fn. 34.

20. Quoted in Fred C. Chamberlain, The Blow from Behind (Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard, 

1903), 108.

21. “Funston Issues Challenge,” Los Angeles Times, 22 November 1899, 5.

22. “Funston Issues Challenge,” 5.

23. Elderkin, Lord, and Price, eds., Speeches at the Lotos Club, 61, 65.

24. Frederick Funston, Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences, introduction 

by Thomas Bruscino (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2009), 149–444.

25. A sampling of their testimony can be found in Graff, American Imperialism, passim. 

See also, Kenneth Ray Young, The General’s General: The Life and Times of Arthur MacArthur

(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 298–304.

26. “Sharp Responses Made in Philippine Inquiry,” New York Times, 7 March 1902, 3. The 

transcript of this section of the testimony can be found in US Senate, Affairs in the Philippine 

Islands, Hearings before the Committee on the Philippines of the United States Senate, S. Doc. 331, 

57th Cong., 1st sess., 1902, 621–625.

27. “General Miles Report,” Army and Navy Journal 40 (2 May 1903): 862–863.

28. Sexton, Soldiers in the Sun, 255; Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags, 172–173; Edward M. 

Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army, 1898–1941 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of 

Harvard University Press, 2004), 43.

29. John Ganzhorn, I’ve Killed Men: An Epic of Early Arizona (New York, NY: Devin-Adair 

Company, 1959), 152. For an example of press report on the hanging, see “Rebels Hanged,” Los 

Angeles Times, 10 April 1900, 14. If the discussion of General Orders 100 seems farfetched, one 

officer wrote in 1903, “The average American officer in the Philippines carefully studied General 

Orders 100. . . .” C.J. Crane, “Paragraphs 93, 97, and 88, of General Orders 100,” Journal of the 

Military Service Institution of the United States 32 (March–April 1903): 256. See also, Augustus P. 

Blocksom, “A Retrospect and Prospect for War,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the 

United States 35 (September 1904): 215–226.

30. Quoted in Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior, 203. The officer in question was most likely Major 

General Walter Campbell Baker, the Chief of the Chemical Service, who began his military career 

as an enlisted man in the Pennsylvania National Guard during the Spanish American War.

31. Coffman, The Regulars, 53.
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32. Davis, The US Army and the Media, 15–23; Vandiver, Black Jack, Vol. I, 570–571; and 

Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior, 228–229, 245–246.

33. See Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army, enlarged ed. (Bloomington, IN: 

Indiana University Press, 1984), 265–354; Weigley, Towards an American Army: Military Thought 

from Washington to Marshall (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1962). Early 20th century 

examples of preparedness literature, beyond Emory Upton but still confined to a military journal, 

were Charles D. Rhodes, “The Experiences of Our Army Since the Outbreak of War With Spain,” 

Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, 36 (March–April 1905), 187–223, 

and Celwyn E. Hampton, “The Experiences of Our Army Since the Outbreak of War With Spain,” 

Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 36 (May–June 1905): 399–420.

34. I.B. Holley Jr., General John M. Palmer, Citizen Soldiers, and the Army of a Democracy

(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 211, 248–259.

35. See Weigley, Towards an American Army, 199–234; John Garry Clifford, The Citizen 

Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920 (Lexington, KY: University of 

Kentucky Press, 1972); John Whiteclay Chambers, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern 

America (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1987). Wood also wrote the introduction to Frederic L. 

Huidekoper, The Military Unpreparedness of the United States (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1916).

36. Holley, General John M. Palmer, 260–261.

37. Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 

1860–1941 (Washington DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2004), 174–182; Roy K. Flint, 

“The United States Army on the Pacific Frontier, 1899–1939,” in The American Military and the Far 

East: Proceedings of the Ninth Military History Symposium, United States Air Force Academy, ed. 

Joe C. Dixon (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1980), 144–148. This view partially 

explains the focus on deployment for the General Staff and the Army school system. See Otto L. 

Nelson, National Security and the General Staff (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), 

73–186; Harry P. Ball, Of Responsible Command: A History of the U.S. Army War College, rev. ed. 

(Carlisle Barracks, PA: Alumni Association of the US Army War College, 1994), 79–121; Timothy 

K. Nenninger, The Leavenworth Schools and the Old Army (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 

82–111; and the first person perspective in Ewing E. Booth, My Observations and Experiences in the 

United States Army (Los Angeles, CA: Ewing E. Booth, 1944), 34–70.

38. Robert L. Bullard, “Military Pacification,” Journal of the Military Service Institute of the 

United States 46 (January–February 1910): 4.

39. Allan Reed Millett, The Politics of Intervention: The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906–

1909 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1968); and Bacevich, Diplomat in Khaki, 44–47, 

53–54.

40. Other examples of officers in the Philippines grappling with the push and pull between 

violence and development were William H. Carter and Henry T. Allen. See Machoian, William 

Harding Carter, 199–210; Heath Twichell Jr., Allen: The Biography of an Army Officer, 1859–1930

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974), 101–146.

41. Quoted in Bacevich, Diplomat in Khaki, 61. See also, Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor: 

Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1962); Frederick 

S. Calhoun, Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent, OH: 

Kent State University Press, 1986), 34–35; Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency, 147–207; Thomas 

A. Bruscino Jr., “A Troubled Past: The Army and Security on the Southern Border, 1915–1917,” 

Military Review 88 (July–August 2008): 31–44.

42. Filiberti, “Roots of US Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” 61.

43. Blocksom, “Retrospect and Prospect of War,” 225.
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44. Millett, Politics of Intervention, 11.

45. A very good start is Brian McAllister Linn, “The US Army and Nation Building and 

Pacification in the Philippines,” in Armed Diplomacy: Two Centuries of American Campaigning

(Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2003), 77–89.

46. Thoughtful accounts of these dynamics for the Philippine War include Birtle, U.S. Army 

Counterinsurgency, 181–182; Brian McAllister Linn, “The Impact of the Imperial Wars (1898–

1907) on the U.S. Army,” Heritage Lectures, no. 908 (14 November 2005); John M. Gates, “The 

Official Historian and the Well-Placed Critic: James A. LeRoy’s Assessment of John R.M. Taylor’s 

“The Philippine Insurrection Against the United States,” Public Historian 7 (Summer 1985): 57–

67; John T. Farrell, “An Abandoned Approach to Philippine History: John R.M. Taylor and the 

Philippine Insurrection Records,” Catholic Historical Review 39 (January 1954): 385–407.

47. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency, 181–182.

48. Huba Wass de Czega, “Keeping Friends and Gaining Allies: The Indivisible Challenge of 

Military Public Relations,” Military Review (May–June 2009): 59.

49. US Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC: Department of the 

Army, 2006).

50. American history has shown that if the stakes are high enough, the American people will 

accept, support, and even demand much harsher measures than current doctrine allows. See Thomas 

A. Bruscino Jr., “Our American Mind for War,” Claremont Institute Academic Writings (26 May 

2008).
63

Panel 2—The Philippines and the First World War

To Best Serve Democracy: Censorship and the Great War

(Submitted Paper)

by

Mr. Jared Tracey

Censorship is one of the penalties of war, a part of its armor . . . and one of 

its most loathsome features.1

—Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Palmer, Chief Press Censor, AEF

Censorship laws . . . even though they protest that the protection of military secrets is their one original object, have a way of slipping over into the 

field of opinion, for arbitrary power grows by what it feeds on.2

—George Creel, Chairman of the CPI

A political graveyard is being prepared in the public mind for a long list of 

men holding office in Washington.3

—Allen W. Ricker, publisher of Pearson’s Magazine

Since the American Civil War (perhaps prior with the advent of the electrical telegraph) civilian policymakers and military leaders have balanced on tightropes squaring a 

“free press” with military security.4

 This balancing act has on occasion resulted in press 

censorship of varying degrees. In the crisis years of 1917 and 1918, President Woodrow 

Wilson’s administration justified domestic censorship as a function of democracy and, by 

virtue of applying military censorship policies to press entities within the United States, 

redefined the bounds of the First Amendment. This seemed ironic given the universal pronouncements of war aims, namely that “The War to End all Wars” would make the world 

“safe for democracy,” and many circles capitalized on this apparent contradiction. Clearly 

the demon of consequentialism possessed the administration, i.e., the ultimate defeat of 

“Kaiserism” justified unprecedented press censorship. This study will describe the volatility of censorship during the Great War, and how it strained government-press relations to 

a new level.

To understand why censorship affronted the domestic press, one must understand 

contemporary journalism culture. Prior to the 1880s, printed media held conspicuously 

partisan allegiances. Reporters supported parties and individual candidates while outwardly 

opposing others in highly personal attacks, and individuals seeking elected office solicited 

direct support from media sources without thinking twice. Journalists also attacked military 

officials, such as when the Cincinnati Commercial dubbed General William Sherman 
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“insane” in 1861 for his military judgments.5 The sting of modern media commentary pales 

in comparison to the terrible printed attacks leveled by 18th and 19th century journalists.

Following Reconstruction, however, many changes occurred within the journalism 

profession. First, journalists widely accepted that scientific and empirical methods, combined with human rationality, could produce “truth.” “Truth,” a stark contrast to the blatant bias and partisanship characteristic of the earlier media, gradually became the Holy 

Grail for journalists. Journalists could find “truth” and expose it to the masses so that they 

might reach their full democratic potential.6

 In 1917, the American Newspaper Publishers 

Association unanimously agreed, “The American people are entitled to a full and frank 

statement of all that occurs, whether it be good or bad.” Press representatives held that 

there was absolutely “no justification for a restriction that abridges the liberty of the press, 

for the people must have confidence that they are getting the truth.”7

 Newspaper reporters 

did not fully buy into the innate rationality of the American audience, just that unlimited 

access to information was the hallmark of a “free press.” Second, the search for and revelations of “truths” fostered professional self-identity for journalists. Beginning in the 1890s 

and rapidly accelerating after the new century, journalists argued that their trade should be 

reserved only for those well enough versed in empirical methods and responsible enough 

to discern facts for the American people. Finally, many journalists came to believe that 

judiciously applying facts could bring about social change. Reform journalists, or muckrakers, armed now with undeniable “truths,” carried the mantle passed from 19th-century 

reformers. Muckrakers flourished in the Progressive Era, exposing such social and political maladies as labor and consumer exploitation and Government corruption. Journalists 

of all persuasions believed passionately in the First Amendment. Democracy in the United 

States, exemplified by an unbridled press, could not exist unless the public received unmolested facts. When the United States declared war in 1917, very different views on censorship (and democracy) arose.

Before the United States joined the fray in Europe, Americans generally agreed on 

the necessity of a free press. In 1915, former President [Theodore] Roosevelt chastised 

British statesman Edward Grey for England’s refusal to allow foreign correspondents to 

obtain information for international consumption. Roosevelt wondered if “it is worth your 

while considering whether much of your censorship work and much of your refusal to 

allow correspondents at the front has been damaging to your cause from the standpoint of 

the effect on public opinion without any corresponding military gains.” While acknowledging the excesses of the American press during the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt 

cautioned Grey that prohibiting correspondents (the other extreme) would hinder public 

support for the British war effort.8

 Americans likewise resented German propaganda and 

censorship. From day one, the German military capitalized on nationalistic fervor known 

as Burgfrieden, or in rhetorical usage, the “Spirit of 1914.” It “systematically” manipulated 

the mass-media through “bludgeoning censorship supported in some cases by crude coercion.”9

 American observers widely dismissed these practices as antidemocratic.

The US War Department had its own plans. In 1914, it granted the military wartime 

authority to “establish censorship of the press and of telegraphic and postal correspondence.” The military, once it occupied territory, “may prohibit entirely the publication of 
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newspapers, prescribe regulations for their publication and circulation and especially in 

unoccupied portions of the territory and in neutral countries.” Finally, the highest commander in these areas may lawfully seize postal facilities and establish a system of censorship as deemed fit.10 The Army War College developed a censorship program not only for 

military use, but one on which Congress would later base the provisions of the Espionage 

Bill after the United States entered the war.11 The United States Infantry Guide (1917) 

provided for “censorship over private communications” and “censorship over press publications and communications.” Furthermore, “All private communications . . . of officers, 

soldiers, foreign attachés, newspaper correspondents, and all other individuals, dispatched 

from the theater of operations are liable to censorship and to such delay in transmission 

as may be deemed necessary by the military authorities.” Military censors were “authorized to suppress any statement which might be of value to the enemy or prejudicial to the 

welfare of the forces in the field.”12 These rules did not reveal any principled aversion to 

censorship on the part of the War Department.

In the early weeks of US mobilization, Wilson ordered the Secretaries of Navy and 

War, Josephus Daniels and Newton Baker, to censor submarine cables and telephone and 

telegraph lines around the Mexican border, setting the stage for a military censorship writ 

large. Secretary Baker directed Brigadier General Frank McIntyre, Chief of the Bureau 

of Insular Affairs, to handle the telephone and telegraph lines during this early stage.13 In 

June 1917, angered by a premature announcement of General Pershing’s arrival in France, 

Baker decreed that all troop news would be censored, and that McIntyre would be the final 

arbiter on what news could be released to correspondents.14 General McIntyre eventually 

rose to the position of Chief Censor of the War Department, and in September 1917 he 

provided the civilian press with simple rules to protect sensitive military information from 

the enemy.15 Major responsibility for military censorship eventually fell under the Second 

Section of the General Staff, fourth subsection therein (G-2-D).16 According to General 

John Pershing, the Press and Censorship Division was created “to prevent indiscretions 

in the letters of officers and soldiers, as well as in articles for the press. . . .”17 The broad 

goals of this censorship program were: (1) “to prevent the enemy from obtaining important 

information of our forces”; (2) “to give to the people of the United States the maximum 

information consistent with the limitations imposed by the first object”; and (3) “to cause to 

be presented to the American people the facts as they were known at the time.”18 As would 

soon be seen, G-2-D and subordinate censors suppressed en masse materials flowing from 

deployed soldiers and soldiers in domestic training camps, as well as what information was 

granted to the press corps.

Three major aspects of the military’s censorship program were censoring outbound 

mail from the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) soldiers; restricting correspondent 

access and information to be released to the press; and censoring photographs taken at 

training camps and forward areas. First, the military censored letters and packages sent 

by American soldiers (letters sent from the States to deployed soldiers passed through 

British and/or French censors, and thus were not doubly handled by American censors). 

The AEF established postal censorship guidelines in General Orders No. 3 on 28 June1917, 

No. 13 on 13 July 1917, and No. 146 on 1 September 1918 (among other directives and 
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regulations).19 According to historian Wilfrid Broderick, “Members of the A.E.F., from 

port of embarkation to return, were under the constant surveillance of some censoring 

organization.”20 Censorship of letters written by troops stationed within the United States 

occurred at censoring stations in Washington, DC, and Hoboken, New Jersey. Domestic 

censors concerned themselves most with letters written by “embarking” soldiers since they 

were most apt to reveal the movement and intended destination of personnel and units. 

Field censorship occurred on a grand scale. Company level officers and above assumed 

responsibility for censoring their soldiers’ mail. Censors confiscated, discarded, or 

dismembered letters written in foreign languages, those containing sensitive information, 

or those of questionable moral content. Many letters left forward areas with words cut out 

or were “[obliterated] with ink.”21 Censors placed particular importance on safeguarding 

unit locations and movements. One example of a censored letter was written by Corporal 

George Clifford Bredberg, Ambulance Company #355, 314th Sanitary Train, 89th Division. 

The letter, addressed “Somewhere in France,” contained information of negligible military 

relevance and was stamped, “Censored by B.A. Salzberg, 1st Lt.”22 Another letter from 

“Somewhere in France” written by Corporal Keith Nathan Lacey, M Company, 16th 

Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, hinted at the occurrence of censorship: “Will try 

to write you again. It seems you do not get any of my letters.”23 Military postal censorship 

was so prevalent that Sergeant Charles Stevenson of Alpha Company, 314th Engineers, 

89th Division, humorously remarked in one letter, “As you might guess, our officers are 

rather busy [devoting] much time to censorship.”24 The tight lock on unit locations in 

particular caused a tremendous headache for the Postal Service and postal contingents 

within the AEF, all of which tried earnestly to deliver letters from home to their deployed 

recipients, often to no avail.25

In August 1917, the AEF established the post of Base Censor first at St. Nazaire and 

later at Hotel Mediterranée in Paris. Initially it began with one officer and four enlisted personnel, but blossomed to its zenith in November 1918 with a personnel strength of 33 officers, 183 enlisted soldiers, and 27 civilians. The Base Censor’s office executed three main 

functions: (1) original mail censorship, particularly of letters written in foreign languages 

or submitted in “blue envelopes”; (2) recensoring or verification of censorship done by 

lower-echelon censors; (3) “gathering of information concerning troop morale,” opinions 

of “troops toward public questions, [and] detection of irregularities and abuses,” the latter 

of which it forwarded to the Intelligence Section for analysis. The Base Censor was comprised of eight subdepartments to handle specific aspects of postal censorship. By April 

1919, Base Censors had received 30,846,630 letters and packages. It examined 6,335,645 

of these, and disciplinary action was taken in 1,042 cases.26 These figures say nothing of 

those letters “lost” in the mail or hacked apart at lower levels.

Second, the AEF set up a rigid system of press censorship. On 6 April 1917, Colonel 

Edward House, Wilson’s friend and confidant, recommended Frederick Palmer to oversee this mission, simply because he “would know how to conduct a censorship with fairness to both the press and Government.” House selected him because he was “favorably 

known” to newspaper and magazine journalists throughout the country.27 One could credit 

Lieutenant Colonel Palmer for the AEF’s overall press censorship program. Palmer set up 
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press office headquarters in Paris and Neufchateau, and had numerous civilian and military press officers under his charge. AEF press headquarters served as information control 

points. The AEF forged lapses between particular military events and relayed details to the 

American press, allowing for the selective release of facts.28 It did permit accredited correspondents to accompany forward units. Field correspondents seeking accreditation had to 

appear before an authorized official from the War Department, swear to “convey the truth 

to the people of the United States,” withhold facts that might aid the enemy if published, 

post a $10,000 bond, and pay the War Department $1,000 to $3,000 for expenses. Press 

correspondents believing AEF censorship became too stringent bypassed American censors by either returning to the States to write the story or sending their stories through the 

French postal system. Violators could expect the AEF to revoke their press accreditation if 

discovered.29

In February 1918, the New York Times published a damaging indictment of the AEF’s 

handling of censorship. The article, simply titled “U.S. Officers Hostile to Censorship,” 

revealed “an apparent unanimity of opinion hostile to censorship” among military officers. 

One officer “of high rank” said: 

Yes, all of us favored rigid censoring last spring, but I don’t think any of 

us have adhered to that view. Our belief in the beginning was that a strict 

censorship was necessary to keep military information from the enemy. 

The general impression among officers today is that censorship has not 

kept secrets from the enemy, but has served to conceal defects from the 

American public. Nor is that all. It has resulted in concealing the army’s 

good work as well as the imperfections and failures. Such being the case, 

censorship is a bad thing. If the public doesn’t hear what is bad and what is 

good, mismanagement can go on indefinitely. There is no doubt that army 

officers, or all of them I know, are now against censorship.30

In March 1918, the Times reported that Major General Peyton March, newly appointed 

Chief of Staff, had returned to Washington from France to assume his duties. March praised 

the conduct and disposition of troops in the AEF, but called military censorship “lamentable.” He believed in Americans’ entitlement to information about their soldiers, and he 

promised to permit a “freer dissemination of news” from France. March concurred with 

the “officer of high rank” and argued that most American officers “could not understand 

the present censorship methods.”31 Much like the AEF’s prioritization of censorship in the 

first place, it is significant that March relegated (the relaxation of) censorship to such a high 

order of business.

Military press censorship during and following the engagements at Belleau Wood 

and Chateau-Thierry also helped initiate a longstanding rivalry between the Army and the 

Marines. Wilbur Forrest, AEF correspondent and author of Behind the Front Page (1924), 

later described how his story of the 7th Machine Gun Battalion’s (MGB) engagement at 

Chateau-Thierry “was killed by the censor.” According to Forrest, “An American major 

assisted in the execution.” The Marines fought at Belleau Wood, close to but distinct from 

Chateau-Thierry. During and after the slaughter of his story, Forrest, Paul Scott Mowrer 
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from the Chicago Daily News, and other correspondents covering Chateau-Thierry pressed 

military censors to let them identify the valiant 7thMGB and other Army units. The writers 

and Army censors struck a compromise. Because the word “Marine” did not identify a specific unit, the censors permitted correspondents to use it to describe the Americans involved 

in the fight. Newspaper headlines mistakenly read, “Germans Stopped at Chateau-Thierry 

with Help from God and Few Marines.” Historian Thomas Smith argued, “It was an oversight the U.S. Army would never forget.” Forrest, however, believed the “oversight” was 

entirely of the Army’s own making.32

Finally, the military dedicated many personnel and manpower hours to photograph 

censorship. In The Military Censorship of Pictures (1926), Lieutenant Colonel Kendall 

Banning, Signal Reserve Corps officer and former Director of the Division of Pictures 

within the Committee on Public Information (CPI), described the War Department’s pictorial censorship program during the war.33 In April 1917, Washington resolved “to allow no 

photographs to be made at all in areas controlled by the War Department.” Then the War 

Department had “to determine [which] kind of photograph [should] be suppressed” and “to 

find out how to suppress that photograph without the aid of a censorship law.”34 It settled 

on five main criteria. Photos could not (1) contain information of value to the enemy35; 

(2) misrepresent or ridicule the American soldier or adversely affect his morale36; (3) be 

able to be used by the enemy for propaganda purposes; (4) antagonize neutral nations or 

injure or misrepresent Allied nations; and (5) adversely affect the morale of the American 

public.37 Despite these standards, actual photograph censorship was entirely subjective and 

inconsistent.38 The Signal Corps became the primary proponent to handle photography and 

motion pictures. Enlisted and officer photographers of the Signal Corps took some 93,000 

photographs and captured some 900,000 feet of motion picture footage. The Army War 

College General Staff sifted through these photographs and reels, transferring those acceptable for public release to the CPI.39 The War Department also issued permits to “responsible private photographers” under the following conditions: they must abide to the strict 

date and location restrictions as stated in the permit; they must submit one copy of their 

photographs to the CPI for “screening,” which would be returned to them with an official 

verdict; they had to submit one copy for the CPI’s records; and they had to submit one to 

the Pictorial Section of the General Staff. The AEF prohibited soldiers from taking cameras 

overseas. Those gaining access to cameras abroad could expect to have pictures closely 

scrutinized by local and Base Censors.40

The AEF delineated between press and mail censorship. Field correspondents, while 

not always content with AEF restrictions, generally appreciated the rationale for them. And 

most soldiers were resigned to the fact that some officer or Base Censor might hack their 

letters apart. Domestically, however, no distinct line existed. Denial of the mails equaled 

censorship of the press and the suppression of the First Amendment. Censored individuals 

framed their arguments with broad language about a free press in democratic society. 

Many also argued that the Wilson administration sought domination over the private sector 

since many paying subscribers failed to receive their publications while the publishers 

themselves lost revenue in the writing, production, and distribution processes. This is how 

censorship unfolded in the United States in 1917–18.
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The groundwork for domestic censorship was in place before April 1917. The Council 

of National Defense (CND), created by the Army Appropriations Act of 29 August 1916, 

made preparations to get the United States ready in case of war. It created an Advisory 

Commission consisting of seven persons, “each of whom shall have some special knowledge 

of some industry, public utility or the development of some natural resource, or be otherwise 

specifically qualified.”41 Two weeks before Congress declared war, the Commission resolved 

that Walter Gifford from the American Telephone and Telegraph Company present a plan 

for federal censorship of the press at its next meeting. On 2 April 1917, the Commission 

also reported that it had received “urgent requests” from many reporters “that in the event 

of war it will be vitally necessary that there shall be set in motion a unified, workable, wise 

and, in so far as possible, democratic Federal censorship of the press.”42 It forwarded this 

recommendation to the CND. Navy Secretary Daniels agreed that domestic censorship—

not publicity—was the order of the day and that muckraker George Creel should spearhead 

the effort. However, Daniels envisioned a US censorship of a more modest and democratic 

character than that of Imperial Germany.43 Despite the many so-called “urgent requests” for 

censorship, in spring 1917 many newspaper reporters feared a looming federal censorship 

and an executive usurpation of power. Walter Lippmann, social commentator and editor of 

the New Republic, viewed censorship as a wartime certainty but warned President Wilson 

that “the usual military censorship would be of great danger and we were hoping that you 

could see your way to putting it in civilian control, under men of real insight and democratic 

sympathy.”44 Despite the president’s liberal pronouncements concerning American entry 

into the war, Wilson and his subordinates looked to a military-brand domestic censorship 

program from the outset. According to historian David Kennedy, in the administration’s 

quick jump to press censorship “many found proof of the conspiratorial and unpopular 

character of American belligerency. . . .”45

In April 1917, Secretaries Robert Lansing, Newton Baker, and Josephus Daniels 

prodded Wilson to establish “some authoritative agency to assure the publication of all the 

vital facts of national defense” with Creel at its head. This Committee on Public Information, 

created by executive order on 13 April 1917, had the dual functions of publicity and 

censorship. Creel admired the military format of censorship, and in the spirit of “absolute 

co-operation,” he suggested a censorship board within the bureau of publicity consisting 

of representatives from the Navy and Army. Of course, because of its “democratic” nature, 

a civilian chairman must lead the bureau.46 Despite the more democratic face of domestic 

censorship, journalist Louis Sebold knew it had been “actuated by arbitrary considerations 

of a military character. . . .”47 A handful came to Creel’s defense. William Chenery, Creel’s 

friend and longtime journalism colleague, remarked that no one “believed more sincerely 

in the necessity of an uncensored press to a free self-governing people than [him].” The 

Independent’s Donald Wilhelm called Creel “Our Uncensorious Censor” and affirmed 

“[he] is an educator, this censor.”48 However, personal correspondence and public records 

indicated that censorship did not repulse Creel. Because the word “censorship” offended 

Americans, Creel believed “it should be avoided.” He also wrote, “The suppressive features 

of [our] work must be so overlaid by the publicity policy that they will go unregarded and 

unresented . . . every energy [must be] exerted to arouse ardor and enthusiasm.”49 Sure, the 
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CPI would provide the public with information; what and how much information it would 

provide remained to be seen.50

In late-May 1917, the CPI released its preliminary statement to the press. Creel used 

principled language that the press would appreciate. Using words reminiscent of 19thcentury European liberalism, Creel stated, “The best defense is an enlightened and loyal 

citizenship.” He stressed the common interests between the Government and the press: 

“The representatives of [the press are] at one with the Committee in regarding [their] 

great responsibilities in creating loyalty through enlightenment as being only heightened 

by existing conditions . . . and the creation and stimulation of a healthy, ardent national 

citizenship is the kind of fight that the press alone can do.”51 Avoiding the word censorship, 

Creel hoped that the press would “realize the obligations of patriotism” through “voluntary 

censorship” and fomenting public support for the war. To aid editors nationwide, the CPI 

established three categories of news: (1) matters unprintable because of the sensitivity 

of military operations; (2) matters “of a doubtful nature” because military relevance was 

unknown and should be submitted to the CPI for approval, and (3) matters that clearly 

would not affect military operations, which were “governed only by the peacetime laws 

of libel, defamation of character and so forth.” Creel informed press representatives that it 

was “within [the CPI’s province to protect the people,” but that it would not place “a drastic 

censorship on internal affairs. . . .”52 At a New York State Press Banquet the next month, 

Creel advocated “local boards of control” to monitor “self-censorship” since the CPI could 

not monitor all publications simultaneously. He believed these local boards necessary “to 

unite the newspapers of each community for the purpose of easy and responsible contact 

with the government.” He concluded, “Group action is necessary to defending censorship.”53 Undoubtedly he received a frigid response since somehow a democratic free press 

had morphed into collective enforcement of censorship. Creel later remarked that he had 

opposed a “formal law” for censorship, but in effect he had contributed to a climate in 

which each newspaper, acting as “its own censor,” feared the costs of stepping out of the 

bounds of “patriotism and common sense.”54

President Wilson firmly backed Creel. Wilson would not forego censorship on principle alone. He told Congressman Edwin Webb, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that 

the nation needed censorship “for the protection of the nation.” Although most newspapers 

would “observe a patriotic reticence about everything whose publication could be of injury, 

[in] every country there are persons in a position to do mischief in this field who cannot 

be relied upon and whose interests and desires will lead to actions on their part highly 

dangerous to the nation in the midst of war.” To Frank Irving Cobb, editor of New York 

World, Wilson wrote, “There are some papers and some news agencies which we simply 

cannot trust and I felt it absolutely essential for the safety of the country that I should have 

some power in the premises.” Wilson argued that press members wanted to “[take] advantage of the situation and are doing the most dangerous and hurtful things,” which required 

even more stringent executive measures. Wilson believed that “[censorship] powers of 

this sort should be granted” by authority of Congress.55 Congress was not wholly swayed 

by Wilson’s rationale. One congressman remarked that the proposed censorship was “too 

altogether Prussian in its tendency. . . .” Senator Oscar Underwood agreed: “I am opposed 
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to press censorship because I believe in throwing light upon Governmental conduct of the 

war.” Senators James Reed and Hoke Smith, among other members in both houses, also 

opposed censorship.56

These congressional objections notwithstanding, major legislative acts such as the 

Espionage Act (June 1917), the Trading with the Enemy Act (October 1917), and the 

Sedition Act (May 1918) emboldened the executive branch to censor. The Trading with 

the Enemy Act required foreign language publishers to translate all articles relating to the 

Government or its prosecution of the war, and the Sedition Act set forth punishments for 

disloyalty, treason, or willfully impeding military operations. Most importantly for this 

study, however, the Espionage Act declared that any publisher or journalist who “[interfered] with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or 

[promoted] the success of its enemies” would be punished with a $10,000 fine and/or 20 

years of imprisonment. Additionally his publication “shall not be conveyed in the mails 

or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.”57 Secretary Lansing had earlier 

proposed “that a plan of censorship of postal correspondence should be formulated at the 

earliest moment [in] the first instance by the Post Office Department which is familiar with 

our postal laws and regulations” and later with cooperation with the Departments of State 

and Justice.58 His position on postal censorship echoed that of the War Department and the 

Council of National Defense and its Advisory Commission.59 Even Creel, the supposed 

master of publicity, favored mail censorship to ensure “that all criticism will be ended.”60

Initially, Postmaster General Albert Burleson held mixed opinions on the topic. On the one 

hand he proposed “excluding papers from the mail papers [sic] that criticized” Wilson or 

the war effort.61 On the other hand he argued, “I do not regard such censorship in the country as necessary.” The latter objection centered on practicality, not on legal or ideological 

concerns. He initially thought that postal censorship would only duplicate similar work of 

other agencies and countries.62

Nonetheless, the Wilson administration enforced postal censorship and Postmaster 

Burleson became the lightning rod for all press criticism. Wilfrid Broderick argued, “A 

large portion of civilian postal censorship occurred in direct proportion to a rising fear 

of ‘Bolshevism’” and other disloyal or subversive ideologies.63 By July 1917, Burleson 

and his subordinates had denied the mails to such leftist publications as The Masses, The

International Socialist Review, and The American Socialist. Wilson’s wartime Government 

made short work of socialist sympathizers like Victor Berger, Eugene Debs, Max Eastman, 

and John Reed, usually through censorship, sometimes by advocating imprisonment.64 In 

addition to restricting the circulation of leftist publications, the Postmaster General and the 

Justice Department kept a watchful eye on German-American and other foreign language 

publications. Generally, foreign language publishers, “conscious of their vulnerability,” 

eagerly cooperated with censorship to “protect them[selves] from charges of disloyalty.”65

One popular case of foreign language censorship involved George Sylvester Viereck, a 

German-American poet and writer. Postal authorities and the Justice Department kept his 

publication, Viereck’s, under close surveillance. Viereck reminded his detractors that he 

supported Wilson and the war effort, which kept them at a distance until February 1918 

when he reprinted a fictional dialogue from Metropolitan that portrayed President Wilson 
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“as a hypocrite for denying self-determination for American colonies and certain Latin 

American states.” Before the Post Office denied him the mails, Viereck withdrew the issue 

from circulation and continued to voice his pro-Americanism.66 After the war, Viereck 

wrote notoriously of his love for Germany, the German Lost Cause in the Great War, the 

hateful Allied propaganda, and in high praise of Hitler and the National Socialists, which 

in retrospect appeared to justify Government suspicions.

The Masses editor, Max Eastman, directly questioned the President “whether it is with 

your authority that an appointee of yours [Burleson] endeavors to destroy the life of one of 

the three growing Socialist magazines in the country, as a war measure in a war for democracy. . . .”67 “Is it not of the utmost importance in a democracy,” Eastman protested, “that 

the opposition to the government have a free voice?”68 Attorney General Thomas Watt 

Gregory, originally a supporter of the Espionage Bill, and Burleson, questioned the legality 

of running a publishing enterprise into the ground through censorship.69 Burleson had long 

been making the point, however, that his treatment of controversial publications had been 

“fair and impartial” and that “no bureaucratic discretion has been exercised,” but that he 

would not tolerate any publication “containing or advocating or urging treason, insurrection to forcible resistance to any law of the United States. . . .”70

Press opposition to censorship sprang up almost immediately after the declaration of 

war and accelerated after Burleson’s assaults. Progressives like Lillian Wald, Herbert Croly, 

Jane Addams, Amos Pinchot, and Paul Kellogg expressed their worry that the Government 

might “sacrifice certain safeguards fundamental to the life of her democracy.” They held that 

“the truth should not be withheld or concealed from the American people whose interests 

after all are the most vital consideration.”71 Walter Lippmann argued against the “brutally 

unreasonable” actions of the Post Office, and warned Colonel [Edward] House that many 

liberals stood ready to politically oppose the president.72 Herbert Croly of The New Republic 

similarly warned the president.73 Allen Ricker of Pearson’s Magazine lamented that the Post 

Office “has about blasted the last atom of patriotism out of us. . . .”74 Upton Sinclair argued 

that “suppression convinces nobody,” and that the readers of The Masses, The American 

Socialist, and The Call “have not been converted by the Postmaster General. . . .”75 John 

Spargo maintained that the Post Office was “entirely out of touch” with opposing sentiments, especially those of the leftists and labor movements, and that censorship only 

incensed those pockets of ideological resistance.76 Progressive Amos Pinchot intervened 

on behalf of his friends Max Eastman, Arthur Young, and John Reed of The Masses who 

had been charged with violating the Espionage Act. “Rather than compromise with their 

consciences and sell out the cause of democracy in which they have fought so loyally,” 

Pinchot wrote, “it seems the more incredible that the Government of the United States has 

taken this mistaken stand.”77 The People’s Council of America also wished “to register its 

strongest protest against the assaults on a free press that have been committed by officials of 

the Post Office Department in defiant violation of the principles on which our republic was 

founded.” It appealed to Wilson “to make the United States safe for democracy by breaking 

the hold of un-American bureaucrats on the threat of America’s press.”78

Opposition to censorship also emanated from certain pacifist and “radical” elements 

within the United States. Roger Baldwin, a member of the American Union Against 
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Militarism, conscientious objector, and director of the National Civil Liberties Bureau 

(later the American Civil Liberties Union), warned Colonel House of the effects of censorship on these elements. Generally, they “back[ed] the President’s war aims,” but “the 

policy of suppression of the radical press and the general terrorization of public opinion by 

overzealous officials makes it exceedingly difficult for these forces to speak.” He argued 

that the President must provide specific guidelines for what represented “acceptable” opinion, and that the US Post Office must establish regulations rather than pass subjective judgment on what constitutes disloyal or seditious speech. He attributed these constitutional 

transgressions to “the vague language of the Espionage Act.”79

The crux of the debate centered on the First Amendment. Arthur Brisbane argued that 

press freedom did not safeguard editors, but the public’s right “to know what is happening, what public servants are doing, what editors and others think on public questions.” 

To Brisbane, diversity of opinion (to include criticism of public officials) was inherent in 

the democratic process. The President assured Brisbane, “I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people 

of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials.”80 But Joseph Patrick Tumulty, Wilson’s private secretary, agreed the Government 

contrived censorship policies to shield itself from public scrutiny.81 Newspapers nationwide closed ranks against Government censorship because it reeked of political opportunism. The Los Angeles Times pointed out the hypocrisy: “There is grave danger . . . that the 

Administration is establishing a Caesarism, a Kaiserism, at home in the very era in which 

it is seeking to dispossess a Caeserism abroad.”82 At its annual meeting at the WaldorfAstoria, the American Newspaper Publishers Convention voted unanimously against censorship legislation. Although they opposed the censorship provisions of the Espionage Bill, 

they pronounced themselves “in full accord with the military measures proposed by the 

President and the General Staff” and advocated “voluntary censorship.”83 As mentioned 

earlier, many congressional members like Edwin Webb proposed eliminating the censorship provisions outlined in the early versions of the Espionage Bill.84 Webb’s objections 

were notably milder than Senator Hiram Johnson’s, who blasted censorship as “more drastic, more vicious, more worthy of condemnation” than anything seen thus far.85

White House staffer David Lawrence worried that the Government and the press would 

never reach accord over censorship. Lawrence believed that Creel’s “devotion” to publicity 

had failed to convert the majority of journalists, and recommended that Wilson convene 

with press members under a flag of truce. If he did that, “instead of an irritated press, ready 

to pounce on every slight thing and hammer men who are trying only to do their best with 

a machinery and a people unused to war, we will have a press that will be charitable in 

its criticisms and will inspire the people with a confidence in their Government.”86 But 

the mutuality of interest for which Wilson, Creel, and Burleson persevered meant press 

endorsement of the company line. The military instituted a rigid system of censorship; the 

White House hoped that the domestic press would voluntarily do the same, but it stood 

ready to intercede whenever necessary.

The domestic press quickly understood the CPI’s modus operandi and viewed 

Government censorship as what it was: censorship of unfavorable information. Since 
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mid-1917, many individuals favored the establishment of an actual censorship board, 

which would remove the conspiratorial tenor of censorship thus far.87 Breckinridge Long, 

a State Department official, longtime supporter of Woodrow Wilson, and staunch critic of 

George Creel, proposed such a board. According to Long, “If there was a censorship to 

treat news items properly before releasing them it would insure the proper treatment of 

news or, at least, centralize responsibility for failure to do so.” The chairman of his proposed censorship board must have “experience as [a] newspaperman, capacity for treating 

news in the proper manner, [and] psychological instinct,” as well as a respected reputation 

among fellow journalists.88 For these reasons, Creel was not the man for the job. Creel 

recoiled at Long’s suggestion and retorted, “Mr. Long has never been near [the CPI] at any 

time, knows nothing of its work, and evidently did not think it worthwhile to make a single 

inquiry.” Creel wanted to pull the rug from under Long before he could claim credit for any 

domestic publicity or censorship program.89 In reality, Creel had actively sought a monopoly on deciding what information from abroad could be released to the public. This created 

great tension between himself and Secretary Lansing (and their respective departments). 

“Fearing the injudicious publication of news” Lansing “flatly refused” Creel’s numerous 

requests to handle all foreign news.90 Wilson hoped to thwart this bureaucratic discord and 

officially established a Censorship Board on 12 October 1917 to “administer a system of 

postal censorship for the United States.” On the Board sat Robert Maddox and Eugene 

Russell White from the US Post Office, Brigadier General McIntyre and Captain Frederick 

Hyde from the War Department, Captain David Todd from the Navy Department, Paul 

Fuller from the War Trade Board, and George Creel. The Board focused on mail and information sent from foreign countries. For this operation it set up 10 censor stations and 9 

substations throughout the United States.91 The Censorship Board worked closely with the 

Office of the Postmaster General for maximum operational efficiency. Through his chairmanship of the CPI and membership on the Censorship Board, Creel emerged as the face 

of both domestic publicity and censorship.

Like smoke through a tunnel, domestic censorship brought people and groups into 

the open to reveal their true thoughts and motives concerning a free press during wartime. 

To his dying day, Creel refused to accept responsibility for any foul play during the war. 

For decades he went to great lengths to defend the Government’s actions: “The need was 

not so much to keep the press from doing the hurtful things as to get it to do the helpful 

things.”92 Concededly, because of its heavy reliance on local voluntarism, the CPI lacked 

any real power to censor. However, according to historian Stephen Vaughn, while the CPI 

did release an exorbitant amount of news and information to the press, “the very process of 

selecting it involved a subtle censorship.” Further, many citizens and political opponents 

failed to draw a clear line of demarcation between Creel “the publicist” and Creel “the censor.”93 Though he was the head of the nation’s premier information agency, he also sat on 

the Censorship Board and tried wresting control of censorship from all other agencies, specifically the State Department and the US Post Office.94 On this point it should be noted that 

while censorship was certainly a politically and ideologically charged issue, it also spoke 

to a high degree of bureaucratic ineptitude and executive overreach. Creel was a member 

of the CPI and the Censorship Board; the Secretaries of War and Navy also sat on the CND 
75

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and the CPI; Secretary Lansing ran the State Department but was also a founding member 

of the CPI and had his hands in many other agencies, particularly when it involved censorship of foreign news or American efforts at public diplomacy abroad.95 In effect, the hasty 

attempts at wartime organization, to say nothing of individual personalities and motives, 

resulted in bureaucratic overlaps and operational inefficiencies. “Winning the war” seemed 

to be the least common denominator on which most could agree, and the executive restriction of press aims and vocal dissention seemed, at the time, the best way to meet that end 

and to best serve democracy.
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Notes

1. Frederick Palmer, Newton D. Baker: America at War (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead, and 

Company, 1931), 2:51.

2. George Creel, How We Advertised America (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1920), 

17. 

3. Allen Ricker to Woodrow Wilson, 3 August 1917, written after finding out that the Post 

Office tampered with his personal mail, in Arthur Link et. al., eds, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 43:382.

4. . . . and have made great strides along the way. According the US Army Combined Arms 

Center, current policy dictates, “We will be open and honest [with the media]. We will not cover up 

mistakes or embarrassing situations by burying them under a cloak of secrecy, and we will not lie to 

the media. Independent reporting means we will allow journalists to get their own stories. We will 

avoid using media pools, where only a few journalists are given access and must share their reports 

with other news agencies. There is no security review or censorship of news media products.” 

Combined Arms Center, “Media on the Battlefield: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures,” CALL 

Newsletter 07-04 (October 2006): 67–68.

5. Cincinnati Commercial, 11 December 1861; J.E. Longhofer, An Analysis of the 

Psychological Necessity of Censorship in Combat Zones (MMAS thesis, Command and General 

Staff College, 1970), 68–73.

6. The changes in media culture have been described in detail in numerous historical works. 

For starters, the reader would do well to reference Richard Kaplan, Politics and the American Press: 

The Rise of Objectivity, 1865–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Stephen 

Ward, The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond (Montreal and 

Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004); Si Sheppard, The Partisan Press: A History of 

Media Bias in the United States (Jefferson and London: McFarland and Company, 2008).

7. New York Times, 26 April 1917.

8. Some historians have chosen to view “yellow journalism” as a sign of things to come, but 

really it was more of an unwelcome throwback to an earlier era of political sensationalism. Yellow 

journalism injured professional journalism in the years that followed, simply because it demonstrated 

the volatility of an agenda-driven press; Longhofer, Psychological Necessity of Censorship, 74–75; 

Theodore Roosevelt to Sir Edward Grey, 22 January 1915, http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Letter_

from_Theodore_Roosevelt_to_Sir_Edward_Grey (accessed 31 May 2009); the British military’s 

restrictive release of information led to what historian Stephen Badsey called “The Missing Western 

Front.” Tight censorship, Badsey argued, has prevented historians from fully understanding the 

operational effectiveness of the British Army. See Badsey, “The Missing Western Front: British 

Politics, Strategy, and Propaganda in 1918,” in War and the Media: Reportage and Propaganda, 

1900—2003, ed. March Connelly and David Welch (London: I.B. Tauris and Company, 2005), 47–

64.

9. German military propaganda was specifically handled by Section IIIb of the OHL (Oberste 

Heeresleitung), as detailed in David Welch, “Mobilizing the Masses: The Organizing of German 

Propaganda during World War One,” in War and the Media, ed. Connelly and Welch, 19–46.

10. Rules of Land Warfare, 1914 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), 111.

11. Josephus Daniels to Woodrow Wilson, 11 April 1917, Josephus Daniels Papers, Library of 

Congress; Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:39.

12. Article VII, Section 420, United States Infantry Guide (1917), http://www.theworldwar.

org/s/110/images/editor_documents/content/RESEARCH%20CENTERThe%20new%20

Research%20Center%20opened%20on%20December%202,/AmericanLettersandDiaryEnt.doc 
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Tracey

(accessed 4 June 2009); General Pershing reported that within the AEF there were “36 regularly 

accredited correspondents, while visiting correspondents reached a total of 411,” though the actual 

numbers were slightly higher. Final Report of John J. Pershing, 17.

13. New York Times, 2 May 1917.

14. A week later, Baker relaxed this order somewhat. New York Times, 29 June 1917, 6 July 

1917; Paul Aswell, Wartime Press Censorship by the U.S. Armed Forces: A Historical Perspective 

(MMAS thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1990), 54.

15. First, “Selection of men, appointment of officers, organization, movement to training 

camps and cantonments, daily life and training therein—all may be reported on and may be freely 

pictured. The only reservation is that actual train schedules and routes should not be published 

until the movement is completed. Experimental work should not be published . . . the daily life 

[in training camps or cantonments] may be discreetly described. Honest and timely comment and 

criticism can, from a military point of view, do little harm.” Second, “No departure, or preparation 

for departure, from training camps or cantonments should be published.” Essentially correspondents 

were not permitted to report any troop movement at all. This rule “applies to large and small bodies 

of troops and to individual officers and soldiers. To this rule,” McIntyre pointedly remarked, “there 

is no exception.” Finally, “When troops have reached the field of operations, there is but one rule to 

govern publications—that is, nothing should be published or pictured, except with prior governmental 

approval. This approval, in so far as it relates to contemporary reports of operations and actions, is 

given by a representative of the commanding general in the field. The editorial comment at home 

should not disclose facts not so represented from the front. But, based on such facts, comment and 

criticism are limited only by rules of good faith and intelligence.” New York Times, 22 September 

1917; in June 1918, McIntyre returned to his previous post as Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, 

and was replaced as Chief Censor by Colonel Marlborough Churchill, at which time it was also 

announced that the overarching responsibility for censorship fell under Military Intelligence Section 

of the General Staff, New York Times, 22 June 1918.

16. United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919, 13 (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1948), 1, 4–5, 25, and for general policies set forth by the G-2-D, see the same, 

82–140.

17. Final Report of General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary 

Forces (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,1920), 12, 16–17, 88.

18. Final Report of General John J. Pershing, 17.

19. See Final Report of the G-2-D, G.H.Q., A.E.F., of May 1, 1919, National Archive Record, 

cited in Wilfrid Broderick, “Postal Censorship During World War I,” in The Postal History of the 

AEF, 1917–1923, ed. Theo. Van Dam (State College: American Philatelic Society, 1980), 115–116; 

censorship was one of the first items of business for the AEF. Immediately following General Orders 

No. 1 (Command and General Staff of the AEF) and No. 2 (necessity, requirement, and means 

of maintaining troop accountability for all echelons of command), General Order No. 3 (28 June 

1917) outlined the general principles and justifications for field censorship: “The sole object of 

field censorship and all other steps taken to prevent the leakage of military information is to secure 

success of our own and allied operations with the least possible loss.” As mentioned above, more 

specific protocols for censorship followed soon thereafter. United States Army in the World War, 

1917–1919 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948), 3–8.

20. Broderick, “Postal Censorship,” 113.

21. Myron Fox, “Censorship!”, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/warletters/sfeature/sf_

censorship.html (accessed 31 May 2009).

22. Diary and Letters from George Clifford Bredberg From World War I, available at the 

Research Center at the National World War I Museum, Kansas City, MO.
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23. Sergeant Keith Nathan Lacey, available at the Research Center at the National World War 

I Museum, Kansas City, MO.

24. Letter from Charles Stevenson, 18 September 1918, http://www.theworldwar.org/s/110/

images/editor_documents/content/RESEARCH%20CENTERThe%20new%20Research%20

Center%20opened%20on%20December%202,/AmericanLettersandDiaryEnt.doc (accessed 4 June 

2009).

25. General Pershing originally placed the burden of mail on the civilian postal service, but that 

system was too slow and inefficient. In May 1918, the AEF assumed control of the postal service 

in forward areas and placed a “military postal organization” at each major port, each of which 

would then forward mail to the appropriate unit’s postal center. Although the situation improved 

somewhat, “The mail service never became entirely satisfactory.” See “Postal Service during the 

War,” http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rstaley/wwessay.htm (accessed 31 May 2009).

26. Broderick, “Postal Censorship,” 118–119.

27. Edward House to Woodrow Wilson, 6 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41:555.

28. United States Army in the World War 13, 9, 103–107. 

29. Aswell, Wartime Press Censorship, 55–59; the particulars of press censorship and 

correspondent accreditation can be found in General Orders No. 36 (12 September 1917), No. 96 

(15 June 1918), in United States Army in the World War, 73–74, 348–349.

30. New York Times, 10 February 1918.

31. New York Times, 2 March 1918. 

32. Excerpts from Wilbur Forrest’s Behind the Front Page (1924), http://www.worldwar1.

com/dbc/ct_contr.htm (accessed 31 May 2009); W. Thomas Smith, Alpha Bravo Delta Guide to 

Decisive 20th-Century Battles (Indianapolis, IN: Alpha Books, 2003), 19.

33. Kendall Banning, The Military Censorship of Pictures: Photographs that Came Under the 

Ban During the World War—And Why (1926), typewritten monograph of very limited circulation, 

available in the Special Collections Section at the Combined Arms Research Library, Fort 

Leavenworth, KS.

34. Almost immediately after Wilson appointed Creel as Chairman of the Committee on Public 

Information, a conference regarding censorship was held in the War Department. This meeting 

was attended by Major Douglas MacArthur, chief censor for the Army; Lieutenant Commander 

Porterfield, censor for the Navy; Philip Patchin, representative from the State Department; and 

Kendall Banning, representing the CPI. It was at this meeting that these members decided that the 

CPI would serve only in an advisory capacity regarding censorship of photography, but that actual 

censorship was exercised by officials of the State, War, and Navy Departments. Banning, Military 

Censorship, 7.

35. First and foremost, ones that revealed troop movements, but also photos that depicted 

fortifications, factories, ports, research and experimental structures, aerial viewpoints, unit 

identifiers, and details of weapons systems.

36. Those which showed unprepared or out-of-uniform soldiers, or soldiers with “unseemly 

attitudes” or in an “improper environment”; pictures of “faked battle scenes, [giving a] false 

impression of military tactics and methods”; pictures of physical or psychological testing of recruits; 

and those showing soldiers drinking alcoholic beverages or “in the attitude of drinking.” Banning, 

Military Censorship, 12–14.

37. Especially what Banning referred to as the “horrors of war,” i.e., dead and mutilated 

(American) bodies. Banning, Military Censorship, 19.

38. Aswell, Wartime Press Censorship, 54, 59–60.

39. Creel extensively discussed the relationship between the Signal Corps and the CPI in How 

We Advertised America, 117–132.
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40. Writing from Camp Allentown, Pennsylvania, on orders to deploy soon, Private Milford 

Manley informed his girlfriend that he was sending his camera to her. “Janet,” he wrote, “Couldn’t 

get the Kodak thru & was given 15 min. to get rid of it. . . .Take good care of the Kodak & when I 

get back 10 yrs. from now we’ll take some pictures.” Letter dated 30 October 1918, in The World 

War I Letters of Private Milford N. Manley, ed. Robert Manley and Elaine Manley McKee (Gardner, 

NE: Dageforde Publishing, 1995), 65.

41. These members included Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor; 

Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; Howard Coffin, vice president of 

Hudson Motor Company; and Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. 

42. Minutes of the Council of National Defense, 1916–1921 and Minutes of the Advisory 

Commission of the Council of National Defense, 1916–1918, National Archives and Records 

Administration Microfilm Publications, accessed at the Combined Arms Research Library, Fort 

Leavenworth, KS.

43. Diary of Josephus Daniels, 9 April 1917 and 17 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

42:23 and 42:90–91, respectively.

44. Walter Lippmann to Woodrow Wilson, 6 February 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

41:135.

45. David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1980), 22.

46. Memorandum by George Creel, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:40–41.

47. Louis Sebold to Woodrow Wilson, 3 July 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 43:95–96; 

Robert Herrick also captured this sentiment brilliantly in an opinion piece in Dial, 14 February 

1918: “The most lamentable immediate effect of War upon human psychology is the tendency to 

cover up, conceal, distort the truth, for one or another of innumerable specious reasons. To the 

stupidity of military censorship . . . we add the misguided zeal of propagandists and self-appointed 

guardians of national morale, who serve out the Truth to the public in homeopathic doses, tardily, 

and agreeably disguised.”

48. Chenery, So It Seemed, 118; Independent, 5 January 1918. Donald Wilhelm went through 

great pains in this article/interview to show evidence of Creel’s historic devotion to publicity, the 

point simply to whitewash current efforts to squash dissent in the nation’s newspapers during the 

war.

49. Memorandum by George Creel, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:39.

50. Robert Lansing, Newton Baker, and Josephus Daniels to Woodrow Wilson, 13 April 1917, 

Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:55; Outlook, 25 April 1917.

51. Committee on Public Information’s Preliminary Statement to the Press, read to members of 

the press on 23 May 1917 and printed in the New York Times on 28 May 1917, Papers of Woodrow 

Wilson, 42:305.

52. Committee on Public Information’s Preliminary Statement to the Press, read to members of 

the press on 23 May 1917 and printed in the New York Times on 28 May 1917, Papers of Woodrow 

Wilson, 42: 306–308, 311.

53. New York Times, 29 June 1917.

54. Creel, How We Advertised America, 18.

55. Woodrow Wilson to Edwin Webb, 22 May 1917; Woodrow Wilson to Frank Irving Cobb, 

23 May 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42: 376–377; Woodrow Wilson to Louis Wiley, 23 July 

1917.

56. New York Times, 27 May 1917; Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis 

Brandeis were likewise opposed to politically derived censorship. On 16 May 1917 they released the 

following statement: “To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear 
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that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe 

that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil 

to be presented is a serious one.” 

57. Ronald Schaffer, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1991), 13, 218–221.

58. Robert Lansing to Woodrow Wilson, 30 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:163.

59. Advisory Commission and Council of National Defense Minutes.

60. George Creel to Woodrow Wilson, 24 August 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:49.

61. Diary of Josephus Daniels, 6 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41:556. 

62. Albert Burleson to Woodrow Wilson, 3 May 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:195–196.

63. Broderick, “Postal Censorship,” 113.

64. Of Victor Berger, a founding member of the Socialist Party of America, Wilson once wrote 

that he had a “revolutionary temper” and “he is not to be trusted as in any sense a friend of the 

Government. . . .” Woodrow Wilson to William Kent, 17 July 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

43:193; Shaffer, America in the Great War, 15–30.

65. Kennedy, Over Here, 25–26.

66. Niel Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck: German-American Propagandist (Chicago, IL: 

University of Illinois Press, 1972), 63; Viereck’s, 27 February 1918; New York Times, 12 March 

1918; and George Sylvester Viereck, Spreading Germs of Hate (New York, NY: Liverlight, 1930), 

167.

67. Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, 8 September 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:171–

172.

68. Max Eastman to Woodrow Wilson, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 43:165.

69. Thomas Watt Gregory to Woodrow Wilson, 14 May 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

48:12–14.

70. Albert Burleson to Woodrow Wilson, 16 July 1917 and 16 October 1917, Papers of 

Woodrow Wilson, 43:187–188 and 44:389–390, respectively.

71. Lillian Wald et al., to Woodrow Wilson, 16 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

42:118–119.

72. Walter Lippmann to Edward House, 17 October 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:393–

394.

73. Herbert Croly to Woodrow Wilson, 19 October 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:408–

410. 

74. Allen Ricker to Woodrow Wilson, 9 August 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 43:413. 

75. Upton Sinclair to Woodrow Wilson, 22 October 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:470–

472.

76. John Spargo to Woodrow Wilson, 1 November 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:491–

492.

77. Amos Pinchot to Woodrow Wilson, 24 May 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 48:146–

147; the previous summer Wilson had already informed Pinchot that while he might review the case 

of The Masses, he would not rush to judgment or make any public condemnation of the Postmaster 

General’s actions, 13 July 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 43:164; Pinchot had detested Burleson 

since at least the previous July when he argued that not only did the Postmaster General not “see 

the injustice of the course the Department was following in regard to these newspapers, but that he 

seemed to look at the problem with a degree of aloof externalism. . . .”, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

43:276–278.

78. W.I. Irvine and Paul Hanna of the Philadelphia branch of the People’s Council of America 

to Woodrow Wilson, 4 August 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 43:383.
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Tracey

79. Roger Baldwin to Edward House, 24 January 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 46:383–

383.

80. Woodrow Wilson to Arthur Brisbane, 25 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:129. 

Many individuals leveled attacks against the administration, charging it with using censorship for 

purely political purposes. On learning that a foreign edition of his periodical, The Outlook, had been 

denied the mails by the post office because of an allegedly revealing editorial, Lawrence Fisher 

wrote the President, “If the editorial reveals any military secrets to our enemies we cheerfully accept 

the ban which has been laid upon us, for we wish to aid in every possible way in the winning of 

the war by a decisive victory. If the prohibition of censorship is merely based on the criticism of 

Government officials, it seems to us both unjust and un-American, for we cannot rid ourselves of 

the conviction that constructive criticism is one of the means of winning the war.” Lawrence Fraser 

Abbott to Woodrow Wilson, 12 September 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 51:15–16.

81. Arthur Brisbane to Woodrow Wilson, 20 April 1917, and Joseph Patrick Tumulty to 

Woodrow Wilson, 20 April 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:106–108.

82. Quoted in New York Times, 22 April 1917.

83. New York Times, 26 April 1917.

84. In fact, several influential House members had aligned against the censorship section of 

the Espionage Bill. For an overview of the congressional dispute on the matter, see New York Times, 

4 May 1917.

85. New York Times, 26 May 1917.

86. David Lawrence to Woodrow Wilson, 24 May 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42:386–

387.

87. In a personal note, Louis Wiley proposed this directly to Wilson, 31 July 1917, Papers of 

Woodrow Wilson, 43:333.

88. Memorandum by Breckinridge Long, 20 November 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

45:89–90.

89. George Creel to Woodrow Wilson, 28 November 1917, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 

45:152–153.

90. War Memoirs of Robert Lansing, 323, available at the Research Center at the National 

World War I Museum, Kansas City, MO.

91. Broderick, “Postal Censorship,” 121–123.

92. Creel, How We Advertised America, 18.

93. Among these was Frank Irving Cobb, who informed Colonel House that “Creel is hopelessly 

discredited. . . . The newspaper correspondents distrust him. They have no respect for him. They 

are suspicious of everything that he gives out, and, therefore, are working at cross purposes with 

the Government.” In August 1917, he had suggested that “it would be much better to separate the 

censorship and the publicity, which can be easily done.” He did not envision Creel as the head of any 

censorship committee, though. See Letter from Cobb to House, 2 August 1917, Papers of Woodrow 

Wilson, 43:366.

94. For the CPI’s reliance on local voluntary efforts, see Robert Wells, “Mobilizing Public 

Support for War: An Analysis of American Propaganda during World War I,” delivered to the annual 

meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, Louisiana (March 2002); Stephen 

Vaughn, “First Amendment Liberties and the Committee on Public Information,” The American 

Journal of Legal History 23 (April 1979): 95–119.

95. This is covered extensively in Gregg Wolper, The Origins of Public Diplomacy: Woodrow 

Wilson, George Creel, and the Committee on Public Information (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 

1991).

83

Panel 2—The Philippines and the First World War

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Thomas A. Bruscino Jr., Ph.D.

Mr. Jared Tracey

Moderated by Major John Mountcastle

Major Mountcastle

Okay. We have about 19 minutes, 18 minutes left for some questions and answers 

from our panel and I’ll take a moderator’s privilege here and start off the questioning with 

one I came up with on my own. I guess this is primarily a question for Tom; however, 

Jared, this might bleed into your presentation as well. In my readings at least, and maybe 

we all have at some point, there comes into play the question of at what point did the 

American press separate itself from the partisanship that we saw very much attached to 

the American press early on during the American Revolution even, then all the way up 

through the 19th century until the American Civil War where you have specific newspapers 

align specifically with different political parties, like Greeley’s Tribune aligned with the 

Republican Party, the New York Herald with the Democrat Party. A lot has been said about 

when truth became the guiding principle of the American press. Some people have attached 

that around the 1880s, somewhere toward the end of the 19th century. However, when Tom 

was talking, I started to ask myself, is that too early to start calling the American press an 

unpartisan press? When we get into the area of the Philippines it certainly seemed like a 

lot of the editorial press that was being put out was driven heavily by the anti-imperialist 

ideology or the movement. I offer that to you, Tom. Do you think it would be fair to call 

the American press during the period of the Philippines a nonpartisan press or do you feel 

that the various political parties, or maybe not even parties but movements, as it were the 

anti-imperialist movement, had a large hold on what was being put out not only in written 

word but as editorial cartoons as well?

Dr. Bruscino

Well, I chose to focus on the controversies, so the negative press. This actually gets to a 

very important issue about the Philippines, which is they issued, the Army, the military, the 

Army almost never sees or seems to put less of its attention on it, which is that there was a 

lot of press supporting them very aggressively—supporting the efforts in the Philippines. 

So, part of the controversy is that it’s going back and forth throughout this. I wouldn’t say 

that this is that area of transition from the party newspapers to a more objective thing. But 

the editorial policies at the various newspapers tend to align along issues. You’ll have your 

anti-imperialist papers and your imperialist papers, as far as editorial policy, and I think 

you see that pop up in the news coverage too. The one example I use in the larger version’s 
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paper, that the New York Times, which is generally in support of most of these efforts, 

even they in the coverage of, I think, it’s one of the Persian examples, that they do this: 

“President lodged this campaign, 600 women and children killed.” The editorializing with 

the headlines kind of thing. You sort of see this, even in their case, the reporting has a bit of 

an issue. I think there are still some partisan papers and then there’s a lot of these outlets. 

The thing we have to keep in mind too is that a lot of these outlets are periodicals, which 

when you don’t have the Internet, you don’t have TV, you don’t have radio, the periodicals 

fill the gaps that weren’t in the newspapers and the periodicals were much more inclined 

to be aligned along partisan lines or something like that. So that’s where a lot of these 

stories and a lot of this stuff is played out. There’s also self-publishing, which happened to 

a degree in this era, to include the famous anti-imperialist named Edward Atkinson who 

lived in Boston, who has just gone crazy publishing all kinds of interesting things. And 

then you see some guys self-publishing their replies to this or getting small publishing 

houses to reply to it. So yeah, probably should be a little bit tempered that this era makes 

this real hard and fast break to objectivity.

Mr. Tracey

I would also say there’s other factors going on here at the same time as well. I would 

agree with Tom. I don’t think that this is an era where you have partisan periodicals and 

then nonpartisan. Other things that are going on at the time is the increased amount of press 

agencies that are putting out one line and some of the more local/rural publications are kind 

of using what are called grapevines—taking what they know and kind of adapting it to 

local situations. Also is the increase attendance in secondary education beginning in 1908. 

The University of Missouri is going to be your first school of journalism. So that kind of 

leads to factors in the professional self-identity that accompanies the organization. More of 

these publications are borrowing from each other at this time. Urbanization. So I think all 

of these factors are not necessarily leading to a nonpartisan press, but one on which there 

seems to be more of an emphasis on a certain journalistic code at this time.

Audience Member

Colonel Farquhar, Combat Studies Institute. Coming off of the end of that last answer 

from Mr. Tracey, I’ll start off with Dr. Bruscino. Tom, you talked about the corporate mindset of Army officers. Anywhere in your search did you come across any place that made 

it into the manuals or curriculum of professional military education in the post-Philippine 

war period?

Dr. Bruscino

No, not in the manuals. This is the point of Andrew Birtle’s book, which I think everybody should revisit if they get a chance: US Army and Counterinsurgency and Contingency 

Operations Doctrine. I think that’s the full title, and there’s two volumes for it. He talks 

about this too. They don’t actually capture much in doctrine. There is a little bit of material 

in the teaching of some of these Philippine vets here. There’s a very little bit on some of 

the tactics. But keep in mind, from their perspective bringing up these particular issues is 

just going to reignite the controversy. Whereas, so the controversy, the stuff they can focus 

on is the thing they want to correct and where they see they made their biggest mistakes 
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Questions and Answers

in the Spanish-American War, which is in the preparedness. They weren’t ready for the 

fight, which is why you end up with all these guys on the Gulf Coast catching and dying 

of malaria before they even get to Cuba. Although, even in this case, the military fudges 

the record a little bit to push the preparedness question. This is the other side of it, because 

they do pretty well getting to the Philippines actually. The mobilization to go into the 

Philippines actually goes pretty well, and there’s actually a CSI study out there on it. But 

no, mostly what they tend to focus on is preparations. Where they see they struggled was 

in the strategic deployment, not in the actual tactical activities of what they were doing.

They had some issues, but they worked through it and they figured most of these guys 

knew how to do it and they go through to Cuba in 1906. And the Army’s actually calling to 

stay there longer, because they want to do more of civil affairs security institution building, 

and the politicians are like, “No, you did your objective. Way to go. You know, you guys 

can now go home.” “Well, we’re not done building houses and roads and things.” And they 

do really well in a whole series of these events. I mean, civil affairs operations can become 

this sort of model of an occupation with Veracruz. They clean up the city, get the sewers 

running, do all the things that we talk about. It’s all there. There’s no reason for them to 

say, “Well, look, we need to write this down,” because they’re doing it already and writing 

it down is just going to have to account for the fact that sometimes we’re going to have to 

go out there and do some of the nastier stuff. The General Orders 100 stuff that accounts 

for spies and things like that. And if we do that, it’s just going to start it again. “Oh, you 

guys are a bunch of torturers. You’re pushing for atrocities. We’ll take a pass on that. We’ll 

focus on Japan.” That’s what they do. Not so much in doctrine, but in this sort of corporate 

knowledge and a little bit in some of the writings. But the focus in doctrine and on strategic 

deployment and the general staff, the same way. Not on how to get, they do look at how to 

go to Mexico. They do look at how to support the Philippines. But they do not look at what 

to do once you get there.

Audience Member

I’ve got a question for Dr. Bruscino. In your research, did you ever run across any 

retractions by the media for any of the more lurid stories that weren’t correct in newspapers 

or periodicals?

Dr. Bruscino

Not that I’ve seen; I mean, I haven’t scoured the newspapers in that way. The best book 

on the coverage is Richard Welch, Response to Imperialism. This is a very good study of 

these issues, and he doesn’t talk about retractions. I can’t think of any.

Mr. Tracey

Well, during World War I, I think there were two retractions printed. One the media put 

out or there were certain press agencies that put out that the Committee . . . they relied on 

the Committee on Public Information for some of the information about what was going on 

abroad and news about troop movements, etc. There was at one point where they exaggerated the amount of American naval vessels and American airplanes that we had over there 

in the field. And that actually turned around and hurt their own credibility more than it did 

the press. But actually the press, after an investigation, did go back and print a retraction 
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as far as them, even though through no fault of their own, they were relying on information printed in the Committee on Public Information’s official bulletin. They did print the 

retraction on some of those issues.

Audience Member

My question is for Mr. Tracey. You alluded in your paper to the general dissatisfaction 

throughout the Armed Forces with the program of censorship for the media. We know that 

during World War II many of the senior leaders in the military were junior officers during 

World War I. So my question for you would be, what changed during that war period that 

resulted in further support for censorship by the military?

Mr. Tracey

That’s a huge one. That’s actually the topic of my doctoral dissertation. World War I 

censorship became something regrettable, something to be rejected. In World War II, you 

have, of course, more expansive media that you have to deal with. You have the radio. You 

have more live action photography and motion pictures and things like that. So I’ve read 

one report that says that basically what they want to do is avoid the Draconian measures of 

World War I censorship and propaganda. Now this was in principle. In practice, they fell 

into some of the same traps as they did during World War I. First, was the insistence on 

truth in order to convey the American position. This is accomplished by, say, Frank Capra’s 

Why We Fight series, more footage from Signal Corps and things like that. Also, what they 

did was they established two distinct organizations. From the outset, they established both 

an Office of War Information and a Office of Censorship. That was pronounced from the 

very beginning, whereas during World War I, there was that ambiguity as far as who was 

doing what, who was responsible for what was going on. One of the biggest complaints 

about World War I era censorship was that nobody knew who was doing it. Obviously, the 

Post Master could not handle all of this by himself, so there was that question of who’s the 

hidden hand behind all this censorship. And going beyond that, even going beyond World 

War II, the propaganda and censorship efforts during World War I had a profound impact 

on how we would deal with those issues after World War II and the beginning of the Cold 

War, such as with the US Information and Education Act where it was seen that public 

relations and censorship were seen as basically weapons, things to be not used against the 

American people, but deployed on peoples overseas. So there was a lot of talking about 

what went wrong during World War I and then there was also a lot of relapse during World 

War II.

Major Mountcastle

Okay, that takes us up to our time limit. Oh, one more question? One more question. 

Won’t need it, okay. Oh, one at the top.

Audience Member

In your study of history and all the wars that we’ve been in, when you look at censorship versus transparency, what do you believe is the best operationally to actually accomplish winning a war?
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Questions and Answers

Dr. Bruscino

Well, this is actually an issue with the entire conference. I think we’re all perhaps struggling with the separation about who your audience is. I have a question for you. Are you 

interested in affecting public opinion, using the media to affect public opinion at home, or 

are you interested in using it as information operations with the enemy targeted or international opinion? You know, what are we looking at the media doing here? If it’s the case, 

there’s certainly a case to be made that you need censorship operationally so that you’re not 

revealing information that the enemy could use against you in the field. As far as these big 

ideas of what you’re going about, and you’re interested in public opinion at home, the hope 

would be that transparency would be the way to go primarily because, presumably, the 

United States is doing these things for reasons that most of the public supports. And if the 

public doesn’t support it, it needs to know why you’re doing it anyway so they can make 

a judgment as you go. So I think transparency is the way as far as that goes, but where do 

you draw the line? When does that information start to become operational and affect you 

militarily? I mean, you’re going to need censorship the closer you get to the action. But on 

the big issues, transparency I think is the way to go. If you’re making mistakes, sometimes 

these things have to be accounted for. This is part of what I was talking about with managing the issue rather than pretending it’s not there. Rather than telling people we’re never 

going to use harsh techniques again in counterinsurgency, you make the case for it, because 

you know, the cost of that might just be winning the war. And if it’s important enough to 

the American people that we win the war, then it’s going to happen. It’s a follow-on to the 

issue. But I think transparency is how you handle that, too. Those are the issues I think 

between whether we’re talking about enemy, whether we’re talking about public opinion—

it all blends together a little bit with the media and the military.

Mr. Tracey

I would agree totally with that. Just, it was more the issue in wars past and less so today, 

less applicable today, because of the vast amount of media out there. I read some statistics 

that says the United States constitutes 6 percent of the world population and consumes 60 

to 70 percent of its information. And this is largely due to the information overload that’s 

out there due to technology today. But in wars past, I think the main issue was relay of 

information. The time lapse between the actual military event and when it could be relayed 

to the public. What was most important was that you could relay information or military 

events that had already happened versus what was going to happen and that just seems to 

be the unwritten rule. So there’s no magic formula right now, and like Tom was saying, I 

think transparency is great, but we still deal with these conflicts.

Major Mountcastle

And it’s a good that carries us on into our next panel, which will convene at 1445. 

Before we get out of here, I just want to say once again, we appreciate all of our presenters here at the panel. We have the book, Three Centuries of Service: The History of 

Fort Leavenworth, here for our presenters. Please join me in a round of applause for Dr. 

Bruscino and Mr. Tracey.

89

Panel 3—The Vietnam War

Generals Westmoreland and Abrams Meet the Press:

What Went Right and What Went Wrong with Media Relations in Vietnam

(Submitted Paper)

by

William M. Hammond, Ph.D.

Chief, General Histories Branch

US Army Center of Military History

In 1965, when the American large unit war began in Vietnam, the military and the news 

media started off on reasonably good terms. Although disagreements existed, each group 

understood that a cooperative relationship would be of benefit to both. They began the war 

on that premise, with the press exhibiting a strong sense of solidarity with the soldier in the 

field, if not always his commanders, and the military instituting rules for the handling of 

information that showed great sensitivity to the news media’s needs. By the conflict’s end, 

however, very little of that relationship remained. Both sides followed the rules because 

they had to, but neither placed much trust in the other.1

 If the two were not enemies, they 

sometimes seemed to be.

What went wrong? There are many approaches available to answer that question. The 

military blame the media and the media the military, and both, when pushed, along with 

many scholars, point their fingers at the White House and the multitude of contradictions 

and incongruities it produced that gnawed at the war from its very start. There are important elements of truth in all of those analyses, but they don’t tell the whole story. This brief 

article seeks to broaden the discussion for the soldier and journalist of today by comparing 

and contrasting the public affairs styles and approaches of the two officers who were most 

responsible for media relations during the American years of the war, Generals William C. 

Westmoreland and Creighton W. Abrams. How does one compare to the other? What did 

each do right, and what wrong? Are there contrasts?

Of the two, Westmoreland often comes off the poorer in comparisons. Reporter Dale 

Van Atta’s recent biography of former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird provides a case 

in point. The author quotes former Secretary of the Army Robert Froehlke to the effect that 

the general was, in his mind, “not a bad person” but “overly consumed with appearance 

and not too deep.” Van Atta adds that Froehlke’s predecessor as secretary, Stanley Resor, 

agreed and considered the general “quite a stuffy fellow.” He adds that Secretary Laird 

was wary of the general, whom he believed was competent, had a knack for selecting good 

people, and was loyal to his civilian superiors, but was much too confident where the war 

was concerned, because he could not see that the window of opportunity leading to victory 

in Vietnam had passed. By contrast, according to Van Atta, Abrams “loathed ostentation,” 

was committed to telling the truth, and insisted that “bad news does not improve with age.”2
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Characterizations of this sort notwithstanding, the two generals had much in common 

where relations with the news media in Vietnam were concerned. Thanks to astute advisers 

whom they supported, both did well initially in their handling of the press, and both used 

the advantages this gave them to good effect. In the end, moreover, both also failed where 

the news media were concerned.

Westmoreland came first and set the tone for press relations during the war. When he 

stepped in to become deputy commander of the US Military Assistance Command Vietnam 

(MACV), in January 1964, press coverage was a major concern for everyone of importance dealing with the war. The administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon 

Baines Johnson had sought to preserve as much of a free hand in their foreign relations 

as they could by giving the conflict a low profile. This ran counter to the instincts of the 

Saigon correspondents, who knew a great deal of what was happening in Vietnam, because 

of their connections with the US officers advising the South Vietnamese Armed Forces. 

Many of those reporters disagreed with the US Government’s handling of the war, particularly its support for the regime of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. Viewing the 

world from the perspective of the Cold War and supremely confident in the abilities of the 

American soldier, they wanted the United States to push Diem and his inept armed forces 

aside and to do the job itself—right. They also disagreed emphatically with official efforts 

to restrict release to the press of information that would verify the expanding role US 

forces had begun to play in the war. In the face of an official ban on references to napalm 

in official news releases, for example, they saw no reason to keep the weapon secret. A 

photograph of an exploding napalm canister, as a result, had even graced the cover of Life 

Magazine in early 1962. The reporters could count, moreover, the American fighter jets 

parked near commercial runways at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Airport, knew that American 

airmen were flying airstrikes supposedly piloted only by South Vietnamese aircrews, and 

understood that US Army helicopters were not only ferrying South Vietnamese troops and 

supplies into the combat zone, but also taking offensive action against the enemy.3

Warned time and again by public affairs officers in the field that continued dissembling 

would demolish military credibility, the Defense and State Departments finally took action 

in June 1964 by convening a high-level conference in Honolulu composed of senior public affairs officers and chaired by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense 

Robert S. McNamara. At that point, the US Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot 

Lodge, was exercising one-man rule over the conduct of public affairs by American military and civilian spokesmen. The US mission’s press relations had become so unfocused, 

as a result, that its chief of public affairs, Barry Zorthian, was dealing only with psychological operations against the enemy and had nothing to do with the news media at all. 

The situation was so out of hand that highly qualified military information officers had 

come to consider service in the war zone a black mark on their careers. Several had even 

resigned rather than accept duty there. Recognizing that new guidance was necessary to 

eliminate directives on the books that military information officers interpreted as requiring 

them to lie, the conference recommended that President Johnson give Zorthian the rank of 

minister-counselor and make him a single manager in charge of both psychological warfare operations and public relations activities in South Vietnam.4 Johnson did so on 6 June 
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Hammond

1964. Subject only to the ambassador, Zorthian received czar powers in making whatever 

changes he needed to turn press coverage around and to promote positive aspects of the war 

to the world. Shortly thereafter, recognizing that adequate press coverage required not only 

timely release of the news but also full disclosure, State and Defense made MACV the sole 

release point in South Vietnam for news of military operations. It also instructed members 

of the US mission there to refrain from any attempt to mislead the press.5

Assuming his duties, Zorthian worked closely with General Westmoreland, who 

would replace General Paul D. Harkins as US commander in South Vietnam on 1 August 

1964. Hoping to underscore that a break with the past had occurred, the two started off 

by changing the name of the MACV Office of Public Affairs to the MACV Office of 

Information (MACOI).

As the reorganization continued, believing that more positive news reporting would 

occur if the command sped reporters to the sites of breaking news, Westmoreland took it 

upon himself to assign a passenger-carrying CV-2 Caribou to the information office. He 

also sought to include correspondents on his trips to the field, made personal appearances 

at press briefings, and began a series of personal visits to locations and projects where his 

presence would highlight favorable stories. Aware that the US Army was playing a key role 

in the war that was developing and that it would continue to do so, the general also pushed 

to ensure that all future chiefs of the new MACV Office of Information would be US Army 

officers with the rank of brigadier general. There was some initial resistance from the Air 

Force, but he got his way.

Zorthian inaugurated a series of weekly off-the-record background briefings with 

knowledgable experts who could add depth to the Saigon correspondents’ understanding 

of the war. Together with Westmoreland, he suggested that Washington agencies should 

also begin a program to bring editors and other opinion leaders in the United States to 

South Vietnam where they could obtain a full picture of what the United States was doing. 

Coordinating with Zorthian, the MACV Office of Information’s Special Projects Division 

established a press center and began to organize special trips by correspondents into the 

field. It also started to keep a file on operations in progress to tip the reporters to stories 

they might otherwise overlook; sought ways to increase the number of interviews with 

the Ambassador and other high-ranking US and South Vietnamese officials; and began 

to make specially prepared news stories, radio tapes, and film clips available to the press.

One of the most farsighted moves Westmoreland made was to cooperate with Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Arthur Sylvester to ensure that future chiefs of the 

MACV Office of Information had the fullest possible preparation for the job. Under the 

system that came into being, the Chief of Information, US Army Europe, Colonel Benjamin 

W. Legare, would fill a transitional role, becoming Chief of MACV Office of Information 

for 1 year. His successor would be the current chief of a recently established Southeast Asia 

Division within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Colonel 

Rodger Bankson. That officer’s job mandated that he should know everything he could 

about the war so that Defense could formulate intelligent policy guidance for handling the 

press in the field. When Bankson left for Vietnam in 1966, a former Deputy Chief of US 
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Army Office of Information who was serving as Military Assistant to the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel Winant Sidle, would take his place at Defense. A year later, 

Sidle would succeed Bankson at MACV. From then on, each chief of the MACV Office 

of Information would first serve as special assistant for Southeast Asia in the Defense 

Department. In effect, the system allowed each future chief to become fully aware of the 

policies he would administer and the problems he would face in Vietnam by working on 

them for a year at the Pentagon.

Conceived as an effort to mollify the press to obtain good coverage, the program that 

came into being—rotating the chief of the Defense Department’s Southeast Asia Division 

into the job as chief of MACV Office of Information—had considerable merit on the organizational level. Good press relations sometimes require flexibility and quick decisionmaking. With an experienced, high-ranking officer always in charge at the MACV Office 

of Information, there would be no learning curve. While established policies would take 

precedence in most cases, he would know how far he could bend the rules when a challenge 

occurred, and also have the influence to get his way when the situation so demanded. The 

presence of Zorthian as “information czar” likewise had benefits. A member of the Marine 

Corps Reserve who had made his career at the Voice of America, Zorthian had resisted the 

purges of the McCarthy era. This gave him great credibility with the Saigon correspondents, who saw him as one of their own and respected him.6

Even so, the program that Westmoreland and Zorthian pulled together in 1964 never 

achieved the broad, positive news coverage it sought. At its core, the effort presupposed that 

the South Vietnamese Government would demonstrate the viability of American options in 

Vietnam by organizing itself to win the war. When that failed to happen, the finest public 

affairs program in the world could not have set things straight.7

Instead, the bad news continued. When stories began to appear in February 1965 

that inadvertently revealed the timing of US air attacks against North Vietnam, President 

Johnson and high-level members of his administration recalled the field press censorship 

of World War II and the Korean war and pushed to establish such a system in Vietnam. 

Public affairs officers considered the issue at a second meeting in Honolulu in March 1965, 

but they concluded emphatically that any approach of the sort would be counterproductive. Not only would censorship require the legal underpinnings of a declaration of war, 

they argued, the US command in South Vietnam would have to take complete control of 

the country’s mail, communications, and transportation facilities to make it work. On top 

of that, it would have to enlist a team of censors fluent in virtually all the languages of the 

world to review the output of the Saigon correspondents. When everything was finally in 

place, moreover, there could be no guarantee that the press would cooperate. Reporters had 

only to fly to Hong Kong or Singapore to file their stories freely. Meanwhile, there was 

the South Vietnamese Government to consider. Sovereign in its own land, it would play an 

important role in any censorship system the United States adopted. No one doubted that 

its officials would exert their prerogatives in such a ham-handed manner that they might 

well sour the American public and Congress on the war for good. As the author of the conference’s final report observed, American success in Vietnam depended on the support of 
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the American public, and that would soon waver if “any significant number of our people 

believe . . . they are being misled.”8

The conference recommended that a system of voluntary cooperation, under which 

correspondents agreed to withhold certain categories of information until the US command 

released them, would be adequate to protect military security. The press was open to the 

idea and, in fact, was already participating in a system of the sort devised by Zorthian to 

control information about airstrikes in North Vietnam. The group added one final recommendation. In the past, it noted, public affairs officers at MACV had been required to 

release a communiqué designed to justify airstrikes against the North by listing US grievances against that country. That practice and all others like it should cease, because the 

coupling of strictly military information with obvious propaganda compromised the credibility of official statements.

The Johnson administration approved all of the conference’s recommendations but 

one. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earle G. Wheeler refused to divorce 

announcements of airstrikes against North Vietnam from their political justifications on 

grounds that this would weaken the American position before the world. The decision 

seemed minor at the time, but as Colonel Rodger R. Bankson later asserted in an interview, 

it marked a critical divide in the history of the war by ratifying the subordination of military 

spokesmen to the political demands of their civilian superiors. This opened the way for 

President Johnson and his successor, President Richard M. Nixon, to attempt to exploit the 

military’s credibility with the American people by drawing military spokesmen, officers 

supposedly above politics, into the business of selling the war.9

The decisions stemming from the Honolulu conference notwithstanding, the Johnson 

administration considered censorship at least twice between 1964 and 1966. Each time, 

Zorthian and Bankson, who in due course succeeded Legare at MACV, with Westmoreland’s 

backing, defeated the option. As Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs James L. 

Greenfield put it at one high-level meeting in Washington, those who favored censorship 

saw it as a way to prevent negative news reporting, but it would not work that way. No 

system of censorship would prevent the appearance of stories such as CBS correspondent 

Morley Safer’s depiction in August 1965 of the burning by a Zippo lighter of the village of 

Cam Ne by US Marines. “Censorship dealt with questions of military security,” Greenfield 

said, “not public relations.”10 All arguments notwithstanding, during 1966 the White House 

again ordered the Defense Department to draft a system of censorship for the war. The 

chief of the Southeast Asia Division at Defense Public Affairs, Colonel Sidle, killed the 

idea for all time by writing a program that was so ponderous it would never work.11

As predicted by the Honolulu conference, the use of voluntary guidelines for the press 

succeeded. The rules the system laid down were straightforward. They banned all mention 

in news reports of future plans, operations, or airstrikes; rules of engagement; the amounts 

of fuel or ordnance moving to front-line units; intelligence activities or methods; aircraft 

taking off, en route to, or returning from targets; and so on. Information officers made it clear 

that all who observed the rules would experience no difficulty covering the war. Anyone 

who broke them would lose that right either temporarily or permanently, depending on the 
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offense. Over the entire course of the war, only 8 of more than 6,000 reporters authorized 

to cover the war lost their accreditations because of security violations.12

In the end, despite protestations from some officials to the contrary, the system also 

provided the sort of positive news that the President wanted. Between 1965 and 1968, 

reporters often criticized Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition, the violence of American 

tactics, clandestine US operations in Laos and Cambodia, the corruption of the South 

Vietnamese Government and the ineptitude of its Armed Forces. Even so, Westmoreland’s 

Chief of Public Affairs in 1967 and 1968, Brigadier General Winant Sidle, insisted that the 

bulk of news reporting was either neutral in tone or favored the American cause. A survey 

of television reporting before the Tet Offensive of 1968 by researcher Daniel Hallin found 

the same thing: spokesmen for the war predominated over critics on news programs during 

the period by 26.3 to 4.5 percent, a ratio just short of 6 to 1.13

Policymakers under duress, however, often fail to notice broad trends and tend to see 

the bad rather than the good, and in the case of the Vietnam war, there was plenty of that 

to see. News stories by the respected managing editor of the New York Times, Harrison 

Salisbury, for example, appeared at the end of 1966 alleging that American air attacks in 

North Vietnam had hardly been as “surgically accurate” as official spokesmen contended. 

The reporter described scene after scene of desolation in areas that he contended were of 

little if any military value. The Defense Department disputed the claims, underscoring the 

Communist origin of some of the statistics the reporter had used. In the end, the Times

backed off, going so far as to publish a rebuttal by its military correspondent, Hanson 

Baldwin, who had deep connections within the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In this case, as in others, the press was willing to give the military the benefit of a 

doubt. Zorthian and Westmoreland were well aware that antiwar sentiment was rising in 

the United States and sought to avoid becoming involved in the political turmoil surrounding the conflict. Westmoreland, in particular, sidestepped two requests from the President 

during 1966 for him to travel to the United States to give speeches designed to foster support for the war. The President, however, was not to be denied. When he sent word early 

in 1967 that he wanted the general to address the Associated Press Managing Editors luncheon in New York City during April, Westmoreland’s loyalty to his superior overcame his 

reservations. He consoled himself in his memoirs:

I appreciated the President’s desire to keep the American people informed, 

particularly in view of manifold misinformation disseminated by antiwar activists. By providing a sober, authoritative explanation of the 

American role in Vietnam, I reasoned, I might contribute to thwarting 

North Vietnamese efforts to weaken American resolve. In any event, my 

Commander in Chief had ordered the job done.14

Whether the talk that followed improved public understanding of the war is open to 

question. What is clear is that it caused a furor in Congress and the press because of a 

statement the general made, which seemed to some to indicate that he considered antiwar 

dissent treason. The general had his defenders in the press, but as Sidle observed years after 

the war, the speech constituted a net loss for the military. Prior to the trip, the general’s 
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credibility was so high that a rash of favorable news stories almost inevitably appeared 

after he gave a background briefing for the press. Some reports even repeated the general’s 

remarks almost word for word. Afterwards, the reporting became more critical. For reporters, the general was no longer a soldier doing his job. He had become a spokesman for the 

Johnson administration with a line to spin.15

Over the months that followed, Sidle took what steps he could to improve official credibility by replacing official briefers who seemed to have grudges against the press; ensuring 

that well-qualified information officers were always available to reporters with questions; 

and replacing the generals who periodically briefed reporters with lower ranking officers 

who, in the eyes of the press, had little to sell. A small group of reporters was hopelessly 

biased against the war, he told Westmoreland in a lengthy memorandum on 11 September 

1967, but the majority of those who questioned official claims were “convinced that we 

have not been telling the whole truth, . . . that we tend to be over optimistic, and therefore 

our talk of progress at the present must be taken with a large grain of salt.” On the side, 

Sidle also advised Westmoreland to take a lower profile with the press than he had in the 

past. Since reporters tended to place heavy weight on the comments of a four star general, 

he said, the general should allow lower-ranking people to do the talking and reserve his 

own public statements for important moments that called for them.16

Westmoreland said he would follow Sidle’s advice, but little changed. Instead, during September and October, he allowed the command to be drawn into a wide-ranging 

optimism campaign directed by the Johnson administration to refute claims in the press 

that the war had fallen into stalemate. Sidle and Zorthian did what they could to temper 

official claims of progress, but they had no control over the White House or agencies in 

Washington.

As part of that effort, the President asked Westmoreland to return to Washington in 

November. Officially, he made the trip to participate in discussions on what course the war 

should take over the next year. All concerned understood, however, that his real purpose 

was public relations. Speaking at the National Press Club, the general remarked that the 

enemy was so worn down he could no longer mount a large unit operation near any of 

South Vietnam’s major cities. Although the general could cite impressive evidence in making that claim, when the enemy launched the Tet Offensive 2 months later, attacking every 

city in South Vietnam over a 2-day period, his credibility with the press ceased. From then 

on, balancing the general’s record of over-optimism against the word of the troops, who 

were less informed but fighting the battle, most reporters sided with the troops.

In the wake of the attack, Clark Clifford, McNamara’s successor as Secretary of 

Defense, recognized that the Government’s over-optimism had backfired. When news 

reports appeared detailing a briefing at MACV in which a “senior military spokesman” had 

avowed that the enemy still had huge forces left and might well attack again at Hue, he used 

the occasion to make a change. In the future, he instructed Wheeler to tell Westmoreland, 

official spokesmen were never to denigrate the enemy, forecast allied or enemy plans, 

predict victory, or assert that difficult fighting was in the offing. Instead, moderation was 

to prevail. In that way, there would be no shock if reverses occurred, and in the case of success, the United States and South Vietnam could modestly claim the credit.17
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Westmoreland acknowledged that he was the spokesman involved and promised to follow through on Clifford’s instructions, consistent with honesty and the need to maintain the 

confidence of his command. He left South Vietnam shortly thereafter, however, to become 

Chief of Staff of the Army. The task fell to his successor at MACV, General Abrams. The 

new commander had the benefit of a system for handling the press that worked well and the 

advice of seasoned advisers, Sidle and Zorthian. He also had the good sense to recognize 

what he had. As Sidle remarked years after the war, Abrams would probably have fired him 

not because of the bad press that had accompanied the Tet Offensive, but for his warnings 

to Westmoreland to avoid over-optimism and to take a lower profile. Instead, the general 

had read his memorandum to Westmoreland, understood that he and the MACV Office of 

Information were not at fault for what had happened, and extended Sidle’s tour of duty as 

his public affairs adviser for the better part of another year.18

Shortly after Abrams took command at MACV, Barry Zorthian’s tour of duty in South 

Vietnam ended. The event marked the conclusion of an era. Over the preceding 2 years, 

the role of the MACV Office of Information had grown apace with that of the American 

military in South Vietnam. As it did, the civilian counselor’s methods had come into question. Trained to give nothing away to the enemy, many officers grew concerned that the 

counselor was giving too much sensitive information to the press. General Sidle, for example, had begun to attend Zorthian’s off-the-record briefings for the Saigon correspondents. 

As he put it, the presence of a general in uniform tended to preserve “the family jewels” 

by putting a damper on what had sometimes become wide-ranging discussions. Zorthian 

protested that none of the reporters who had participated in his sessions had ever betrayed 

his confidence. He added that most journalists had to file stories every day. The failure to 

provide them with an authoritative view of events would force them to rely on lower-level 

sources, and the errors that resulted would almost inevitably harm public understanding of 

the war.

Zorthian’s superior at the time, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, was undeterred by 

arguments of the sort. When it came time to appoint a successor, he split the counselor’s 

job in two. Responsibility for psychological warfare went to an expert in media relations, 

Edward J. Nickel, while control of press relations fell to an expert in politico-military 

affairs, George S. Newman. “A sophisticated substantive officer of senior rank not a public 

relations or press affairs specialist,” as Bunker put it, he could be expected to represent 

the official point of view and to side with the press far less than Zorthian. True to the 

Ambassador’s expectation, Newman declined immediately to host his predecessor’s background briefings and put an end to the practice. From then on, he played at most a minor 

role in handling relations with the news media. Bunker’s point of view predominated.19

The change seemed inconsequential at the time. Sidle maintained excellent relations 

with the press and remained in command at the MACV Office of Information. He would 

continue some of Zorthian’s practices. In particular, he saw to it that General Abrams filled 

some of the vacuum left by the cancellation of the counselor’s briefings by holding regular 

off-the-record intelligence briefings of his own for selected newsmen and bureau chiefs.

Abrams, for his part, started off well with the press. As Jack Langguth of the New York 

Times noted, while Westmoreland seemed “forever hopeful,” his successor appeared to be 
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the sort of officer who had long before decided “he wasn’t going to kid himself about anything.” As a result, even after working as Westmoreland’s deputy for more than a year to 

upgrade the performance of the South Vietnamese Army, Abrams still refused to advertise 

that force’s achievements. All he would say, the reporter remarked with approval, was that 

there had been “modest improvement” among the South Vietnamese or that things were 

“slightly better.”20

Abrams complied with Clifford’s directive to let the war do the talking. “We will not 

deal in propaganda exercises in any way,” he told his commanders, “but will play all of our 

activities in a low key.” To that end, all concerned were to refrain from revealing future 

plans and operations because information of the sort was not only of benefit to the enemy, it 

could also backfire if plans went awry. He had little objection to contacts with the press, but 

achievements rather than hopes were to be the subject of those encounters and commanders 

were to make “considerably more extensive use” of the phrase no comment. When things 

went wrong, a “surge effort” was to begin to find out what happened. If that inquiry confirmed that something bad had occurred, there would be no effort to paper over the truth. 

Good news was to be treated in the same way. Since first reports of anything could be badly 

exaggerated, public affairs officers were to determine the facts first and only then make an 

announcement. Over all, Abrams said, bad news was far less damaging than the allegation 

that the command had lied, and good news would have a far more favorable effect if reporters discovered it for themselves.21

The approach allowed Abrams to insulate himself, to a degree, from the political demands of his superiors, and he used it a number of times to avoid the mistake 

Westmoreland had made in allowing the President to draw him into the process of selling the war. Aware that the enemy was reinforcing his forces in the northernmost portion of South Vietnam, for example, Abrams decided in June 1968 to close the American 

base at Khe Sanh. Ambassador Bunker immediately pointed out that the move had heavy 

implications. The enemy was bound to depict it as an American defeat, and the contention 

would carry particular weight because of negative press coverage the siege of the base 

had received during the Tet Offensive. Abrams was well aware of the problem. Even so, 

he demurred when he received instructions from the Defense Department to highlight the 

earlier battle for the base as a debacle for the enemy and to depict its closure as an effort 

to reinforce success. All assertions of the sort were “not quite true,” he said, and they 

contradicted Clifford’s instructions to refrain both from denigrating the enemy and from 

predicting future heavy fighting.

That said, Abrams, nonetheless, attempted to minimize adverse comment in Congress 

and the press by imposing a ban on all news of the operation until he saw fit to release it. The 

restriction, however, brought about the very effects he had sought to avoid. When reporter 

John Carroll of the Baltimore Sun broke the embargo and MACV suspended his privileges 

as a correspondent indefinitely, Carroll’s colleagues in the press disputed official claims 

that the reporter had committed a genuine security violation. The enemy, they observed 

pointedly, could stand on the hills above the base and watch Army engineers removing 

the matting that composed the facility’s runways. When Maryland’s two senators, Daniel 

B. Brewster and Joseph D. Tydings, entered the fray at the Sun’s request, questioning the 
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embargo and labeling Carroll’s suspension vindictive and unjustified, MACV reduced the 

suspension first to 6 months and then to 2 months. In this case, the wisdom of the embargo 

and the justice of the lengthy suspension can be argued, but the principle Abrams employed 

in disciplining the reporter was above dispute. In a war zone, lives may depend on the timing of news releases, and no journalist should have the right to make that determination 

on his own. That Abrams was also using his handling of Carroll to send a warning to the 

Saigon correspondents goes without saying.

Abrams had, perhaps, overplayed his hand with Carroll, but it was only the beginning 

of a much larger problem, for without knowing it, due to Clifford’s instructions, the general 

was already caught between the news media, on the one hand, and his political superiors, 

on the other. What was happening came to light during the first conference he held with 

his generals after taking command at MACV. Two false news stories authored by South 

Vietnamese reporters had just appeared in the South Vietnamese press. One alleged that a 

North Vietnamese MIG-17 fighter had just shot down an American helicopter near South 

Vietnam’s capital city, Saigon. The other quoted “reliable military spokesmen” to the effect 

that there were 51 enemy battalions poised to assault the city. General Abrams told the generals that stories of the sort played easily into the enemy’s propaganda in South Vietnam 

and that American personnel had to understand the contributions saying the wrong thing 

could make it to the enemy’s psychological warfare efforts. The commander of the US 

forces that defended Saigon, Lieutenant General Frederick C. Weyand, picked up on the 

comment. Referring mainly to the South Vietnamese press but including, as well, the entire 

corps of correspondents covering the war, he remarked that official spokesmen would run 

into problems no matter what they did. If they said nothing, some newsmen would be 

tempted to fabricate stories with no basis in fact. These would do little to improve the 

image of the US commitment. If they spoke freely and honestly, however, about how their 

forces and those of the South Vietnamese had defeated the enemy during the Tet Offensive 

and now had him on the run, an optimistic picture would emerge that could be destroyed 

with the firing of just a single enemy mortar round on Saigon.22

The head of the US pacification program, Ambassador Robert Komer, could not resist 

Weyand’s cue. US officials suffered from the bureaucrat’s fear of saying the wrong thing, 

he observed in a typically blunt remark. Officers would take a calculated risk of losing 

troops, but they would not take a chance on losing the war of words. Emphasizing the need 

to reflect the current situation by taking a more forward, optimistic posture in official statements than policy allowed, he added that the insertion of a few caveats warning of setbacks 

would provide all the cover necessary if something went wrong.

With that, the US commander of South Vietnam’s II Corps Zone, Lieutenant General 

William B. Rosson, cut to the real point of the exchange. Abrams’ guidance, which instructed 

commanders to play their activities in a low key and warned against discussing the war 

in an optimistic vein, tended to place a commander in a straitjacket, and it would have 

to be purged before Komer’s advice could take effect. Abrams agreed, but he ended the 

discussion by indicating that the guidance had worked well when he had closed Khe Sanh 

and that, in any case, the policy had come from Washington and could not be abolished 

locally.
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If Clifford’s instructions inhibited MACV’s ability to communicate progress, they 

could have much the same effect if the war took a turn for the worse. Bad news requires 

close, honest relations with the press rather than distance and often the release of more 

information rather than less. In the wrong hands, a policy of allowing a war to speak for 

itself could have just the opposite effect.

As far as Vietnam was concerned, the situation began to come unhinged after Lyndon 

Johnson’s successor, President Richard M. Nixon, took office. On his own, Nixon would 

probably have favored a vigorous attack on North Vietnam when he took office, but his 

predecessor had already made the basic decision to negotiate and to turn the war over to 

the South Vietnamese. In the process, Johnson had contributed to a sense of disillusionment that was already rising in the United States. By removing himself as the spokesman 

for those who favored military means in South Vietnam, he had created an atmosphere in 

which formerly disciplined members of his own party in Congress could oppose the war 

with political impunity. If the leader of the party was seeking a way out, might not the 

rank and file? Complicating matters further, antiwar protests were on the rise in the United 

States. During 1967 and 1968, all of them had been peaceful, but during 1969 and 1970, 25 

percent of the protests included, at one point or another, an element of violence. Analyzing 

the situation as it evolved and concerned that casualties were a major component in public 

disaffection, Nixon instructed Abrams to take no more losses than necessary and to begin 

planning for withdrawals.23

The changing nature of the war inevitably affected how the press reported. In November 

1968, following President Johnson’s bombing halt of North Vietnam, the producers of 

the ABC and NBC evening news programs instructed their reporters in the field to shift 

their attention away from combat and toward issues relevant to the negotiations: the South 

Vietnamese Government’s long-term political viability, the progress it was or was not making in stemming the endemic corruption that gripped the country’s bureaucracy, and other 

issues of the sort. Over the next 2 months, NBC’s producers ran combat footage on the 

evening news only three times. During the preceding year, with the level of the fighting 

about the same, they had run it up to four times a week. From then on, reporting of combat 

increased when a military crisis occurred, but it never returned to earlier levels.24

It goes without saying that with news of combat no longer in demand, reporters would 

have to look elsewhere to find stories, and the material was there for anyone willing to 

get out into the field. The stories that resulted increasingly focused on problems. With the 

drawdown proceeding and commanders under orders to keep casualties down, many units 

in the rear fell into make-work routines that had little meaning for their members. As for 

those who remained in the field, no one wanted to be the last to die in a meaningless war. 

Combat refusals began to occur. According to the US commander in 1970 of the region 

around Saigon, II Field Force, Lieutenant General Arthur S. Collins, an “excessive number 

of accidental shootings” also began to occur—too many to be accidental. Collins added, 

“The promiscuous throwing of grenades . . . lent new meaning to the expression ‘fragging’” and left every officer “with an ill-at-ease feeling.”25

By 1971, drug abuse was rampant. Army investigators found that some 69 percent of 

the troops leaving South Vietnam had at least experimented with marijuana and that 45 
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percent admitted under promises of immunity from prosecution that they had used illicit 

narcotics at least once. Twenty-nine percent said they had used them more than 10 times 

and more than weekly, and 20 percent considered themselves addicted. Thirty-eight percent had tried opium, and 34 percent heroin.26

The news media chronicled it all, sometimes adding touches of commentary that 

showed little sympathy for the majority of soldiers who did their jobs and maintained 

their self-respect. Responding, the Nixon administration became increasingly defensive 

and fixed on the press as its enemy. Military commanders, many of whom took the criticism personally, often did the same. Although a few, particularly General Weyand, who 

became Abrams’ deputy at MACV in 1970, quietly continued their dealings with the press, 

many drew in upon themselves, providing what the rules required of them where the press 

was concerned but nothing more. The regular intelligence briefings Abrams and his officers 

had conducted for the press died out as a result. Abrams was too busy, and the generals he 

delegated to do the job increasingly unwilling to deal with reporters, passed the task on 

to public affairs officers, who had something to sell in the eyes of the press. In the same 

way, officers occupying responsible positions often avoided reporters and declined to give 

interviews. Others actively discriminated against those they disliked.

Institutional fatigue, particularly in the case of the MACV Office of Information, made 

matters worse. By mid-1970, the military services were finding it difficult to identify experienced public affairs officers for service in Vietnam. Captains sometimes filled the jobs of 

majors and lieutenant colonels. On top of that, the system of training under which future 

chiefs of MACV Office of Information had served for a year at the Southeast Asia Desk in 

the Office of Defense Public Affairs disappeared in 1969 in a mindless Defense Department 

reorganization. Sidle’s successor, Colonel L. Gordon Hill, and Hill’s successor, Colonel 

Joseph F.H. Cutrona, passed through the system, but Cutrona’s replacement, an officer who 

had broad public affairs experience in Europe but who had not served in Vietnam since 

1963, Colonel Robert Leonard, spent only a few weeks at the Pentagon, mostly reading 

cables and policy directives.27 Serving by then as the Army’s chief of information, General 

Sidle helped where he could, as did Hill, who continued with the public affairs program in 

Washington, but neither could do much on a day-to-day basis. Increasingly hampered by 

their lack of institutional memory, MACV’s information officers took refuge in what Sidle 

termed “the book,” the system of formal rules that governed press relations.28 They found 

the rule to let the war speak for itself made-to-order.

An example of what could happen as a result occurred in late 1970 when a US Air Force 

jet fighter crashed near the South Vietnamese border in Laos, and American troops moved 

in to hold the enemy off until the pilot could be rescued. Reporters were present when the 

incident occurred and had passed word to their colleagues in Saigon. Aware that this was 

a technical violation of the Cooper-Church Amendment, which had barred US forces from 

entering Laos and Cambodia in response to the US intervention in Cambodia earlier in the 

year, their colleagues asked about the incident at that evening’s briefing in Saigon. Policy 

dictated that official spokesmen refrain from admitting any sort of infraction and lead the 

press to believe that South Vietnamese forces might have been the ones involved. The officer conducting the briefing, however, understood that the press knew everything and that 
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he would lose his credibility if he dissembled. An Air Force officer himself, he responded 

quietly that if he had been in his comrade’s position, he would have wanted his fellow 

Americans to back him up. The reply satisfied the press, but it upset Leonard, who took 

the briefer to task. There matters stood for several days, until a note arrived from Secretary 

Laird commending the officer for his candor and good sense.29

Reporters complained bitterly as MACV closed in on itself. One veteran correspondent 

who had reported the war since 1962, Joe Fried of the New York Daily News, alleged pointedly that repression of the news was the worst he had seen in 71⁄2 years of reporting the war. 

Press officers had not only stopped arranging intelligence briefings, he said, they had even 

failed to pass along requests for interviews with high-ranking officers. They sometimes 

declined to confirm information already on the record in Washington, and Colonel Leonard 

had even refused to respond to questions about one of the command’s public affairs policies on grounds that “the policy has not changed, so there is no point in discussing it.”30

Matters might have gotten worse if Abrams had followed the instructions he received 

in October 1970 from Admiral John S. McCain Jr., Commander in Chief Pacific. Facing 

stringent budget cuts, the admiral suggested that MACV accompany the American withdrawal from South Vietnam with drastic cuts in services for the press. Instead, the general 

temporized, citing a 16 percent cut the MACV public affairs had earlier incurred. It was 

well that he did. With the Nixon administration nearing a decision on a possible South 

Vietnamese cross-border operation into Laos, he would need all the public affairs assistance he could get.

The operation materialized in December, when McCain informed Abrams that 

President Nixon was contemplating a South Vietnamese incursion into Laos early in 1971 

to deter a later North Vietnamese invasion. This would buy time for the South Vietnamese 

to cement control over their own affairs and secure an uneventful final withdrawal for 

American forces. It would also be the last opportunity the South Vietnamese would have 

for a major operation against the enemy’s sanctuaries while US forces were strong enough 

to provide backing.

Abrams drew up a two-pronged campaign that involved an initial attack into Cambodia 

followed by a push from South Vietnam’s northernmost area, known as Military Region 

I, into Laos along Highway 9 toward the town of Tchepone. He knew that the enemy had 

constructed fortifications along the route of the attack into Laos and possessed heavy antiaircraft resources in the area, but he was still cautiously optimistic because American airpower would provide the key to victory, and it was indomitable. To create a sturdy supply 

base for the operation, he planned to reopen the base at Khe Sanh.

Concerned about security and deeply mistrustful of the press, the general decided to 

put a strong hand on news coverage of the operation. Although he would provide intermittent briefings for selected journalists, he planned to embargo all word of what was happening until he decided to release it. After that, to limit the number of journalists in operational 

areas, he instructed his information officers to discourage travel by single reporters into 

the field and to form press pools when they could. Those groups would have official 

escorts. Lest any doubt arise that the attack was anything less than a full South Vietnamese 
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operation, reporters would have to attend South Vietnamese briefings to receive their news 

of what was happening across the border.31

None too satisfied himself with what he termed the tendency of the press toward 

muckraking in Vietnam, Admiral McCain accepted the plan. Concerned, nevertheless, 

that Abrams’ restrictions might spark the sort of controversy that would alienate Congress 

and affect military budgets that were already under stress, he insisted that MACV inform 

reporters of its plans for press coverage. He also wanted the command to devise a foolproof 

system for lifting whatever restraints it imposed.

Both McCain and Abrams hoped to keep the incursion secret until 30 January 1971, 

but the logistical effort that accompanied the operation proved so immense that neither the 

press nor the enemy could miss it. To compensate, on grounds that reporters needed time to 

develop perspective, Abrams imposed his embargo a day early. The announcement barred 

not only all news coming from the site of the operation but also any report that a ban was 

in place. The restriction seemed odd, but without it the press corps could have filed stories 

about a news blackout on the Laotian frontier, eliminating whatever element of surprise 

remained.

Reporters complied with the embargo, but they were furious. At a briefing the next 

morning that failed even to mention a possible incursion into Laos, they objected vehemently that there was no need for secrecy. The movement of huge bodies of troops toward 

the Laotian frontier was obvious both to them and to the enemy. They wanted to know if 

they could at least speculate about possibilities. The answer was no.

By then, however, the situation was already almost out of control. Although there was 

no breach of the embargo, journalists in Washington were pressing officials at the White 

House and the Defense Department for comment. Concerned that sensational news reports 

would soon appear that would spark opposition in Congress and limit the President’s 

options, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, asked Abrams 

to at least lift the embargo on news of troop movements into Military Region I. The flow of 

factual news from the source, he said, could “help dampen rumors which could adversely 

affect future decisions.” The general refused. “I am convinced,” he said, “that as of now 

the enemy suspects many things, but . . . is uncertain as to where, when and in what force 

allied forces will strike.”32

The situation deteriorated further the next day, when an article appeared in the London

Observer that mentioned the news blackout and speculated brazenly on the possibility that 

the embargo was linked to plans for an invasion of Laos. No one ever identified the author 

of the story. The paper’s correspondent in Saigon, Leonard noted, “had always been a man 

of integrity.”33

Reasoning that the news was out and that the enemy had it, the New York Times wire 

service carried the Observer’s story as a lead article. By 1 February, not only the Times but 

also the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun were running stories on the possibility of 

a strike into Laos. Senators began to speak out on the subject, if only to allay constituent 

concerns. Recognizing a chance to score points against the United States, the premier of the 

Soviet Union, Alexei Kosygin, went on record himself to denounce America’s “outrageous” 
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invasion of Laos. His remark received wide play in the press. The next day, unidentified US 

official sources, seeking either to kill the operation or to ally public concerns, spoke with 

reporters. They confirmed that a major operation was beginning, that Laos was indeed the 

target, and that some 25,000 South Vietnamese troops were involved.

Despite the outcry, General Abrams stood by his embargo. When the Chicago Daily 

News and other newspapers, however, criticized President Nixon for treating the American 

people like children, White House news analyst Mort Allen could only conclude in a memo 

to the White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, that “from a PR standpoint, the Indochina 

situation is very damning. The stories in the papers are . . . the most serious credibility gap 

articles yet in this administration.”34

On 3 February, convinced that much of the speculation in the press was based on 

leaked information from sources within the State and Defense Departments and that he 

would lose any hope of controlling the bureaucracy if he allowed its members to dictate his 

decisions by playing to the press, President Nixon decided to go ahead with the operation. 

Shortly thereafter, Admiral Moorer notified Abrams that so much pressure had developed 

that there was little choice but to end the embargo. “I can assure you . . . that your views 

have been strongly put forward at the highest level,” Moorer said, “and that this decision . . 

. was made only after a most careful review. . . . We do not wish the embargo as such to be 

the single factor which prevents us from proceeding with the remainder of the operation.”35

Abrams complied.

On the surface, as Moorer’s message indicated, the embargo seemed to have failed. 

Even so, appearances are sometimes deceiving. Although it will always remain a matter for 

conjecture, the welter of contradictory information, speculation, and commentary surrounding the operation in the news media of the world may have served to obscure American 

intentions from the enemy. As one National Security Council news analyst observed: 

Confusion reigns in wire service reports as far as objective of operation is 

concerned. One says Thieu has left decision to enter Laos up to president, 

another that no decision has been made, a third that Acting Ambassador 

[Samuel D.] Berger has informed Thieu of decision during a meeting on 

this date. Other news reports were circulating to the effect that South 

Vietnamese units had already crossed the border and that paratroopers had 

landed far on the Plateau des Bolovens, well to the south of the true target 

area.36

Abrams’ stand in this case is nonetheless almost incomprehensible, for the general 

well knew that the North Vietnamese had months before decided that an attack into Laos 

was probable and had taken the steps necessary to deter one up Highway 9. Beginning in 

October 1970, moreover, they had moved their critical supplies away from Tchepone and 

had begun construction of a road that bypassed the town in order to ensure that, whatever 

happened, traffic on their main supply route to the south, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, would 

remain steady. In that light, the embargo served only to inflame a situation Moorer and 

McCain already deemed fated for controversy by turning it into a confrontation over what 

role the news media should play in war.37
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As the episode involving John Carroll shows, General Abrams was already suspicious 

of the media and ill-disposed toward compromise. The imbroglio surrounding the Laotian 

incursion was merely more of the same, but magnified by 3 years of growing anger at what 

the military considered the “muckraking” of the press, staff members who lacked the sort 

of experience and insight a more flexible approach to the press would have required, and an 

inward turn within the military that placed soldierly values ahead of budget considerations 

and political concerns about “PR” in the minds of many officers.

Colonel Leonard thus wrote some 19 years after the event:

The press refused to believe there was a military reason for the embargo, 

while MACV couldn’t believe that a few days delay in publication would 

represent a terrible infringement on the public’s right to know. It was a 

classic confrontation as to which was more important, military security or 

the public’s right. . . . As an old infantryman, my sympathies will always 

lie with the soldier . . . who always has to fight the war, not the reporter 

who writes about it. If the embargo saved one life it was worth it.38

These are noble thoughts, but in a war where public and congressional support were 

lagging, as Admiral Moorer had explained, the effort to allay the electorate’s fears was 

essential to the preservation of the President’s options. Abrams had every right to invoke 

an embargo, but when it broke down and even the premier of the Soviet Union mounted 

the podium in opposition, a new course was necessary. McCain and Moorer had already 

given him two. At the beginning, McCain had advised him to devise a foolproof system for 

lifting his restrictions, should the need arise. Later, when the situation began to come apart, 

Moorer had suggested that he drop the embargo on the buildup portion of the operation. 

Abrams instead chose to stand on his prerogatives as commander. It took a decision at the 

highest level to move him.

So, how do Generals Westmoreland and Abrams compare in their handling of the press? 

What they did right and wrong is fairly clear. Very simply, when they took command, they 

had good public affairs advisers and did well. The press liked them and responded accordingly. Even so, both suffered from flawed policies that originated in Washington. General 

Wheeler’s refusal to divorce announcements of airstrikes against North Vietnam from their 

political justifications opened Westmoreland and his public affairs officers to the political 

demands of their civilian superiors. In earlier conflicts, the nation’s political establishment 

had taken responsibility for raising public support for wars. In Vietnam, following the 

precedent Wheeler had set, Westmoreland allowed himself to become deeply involved in 

the process—much to the final detriment of his credibility.

Abrams faced a similar liability: Clifford’s ruling that MACV should avoid optimism 

and allow the war to speak for itself. In the right hands and during a highly successful 

conflict, the approach might have worked very well. At a time when a war is in decline 

and when difficulties are rising in every direction, however, it could be used as a form of 

camouflage. In the case of Vietnam—as Zorthian, Bankson, and the others who had created 

MACV’s public affairs program understood—officers who dealt with the press needed to 

exercise the greatest flexibility when problems occurred. By 1971, Abrams and his people 
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were no longer up to it. Squeezed between the demands of the press and those of the 

nation’s political establishment, the general stood his ground. When he did, as Mort Allen 

observed from the perspective of the White House, the consequences were “damning.”

What lessons do the experiences of Westmoreland and Abrams teach? There are several:

1. Stay away from the justification of wars. Politicians argue them. Soldiers fight 

them.

2. If you can, let a war speak for itself, but understand that this works best if 

things are going well. If things go badly, good relations with the press will be essential to 

get your story told. They don’t happen on the spur of the moment. They are the product of 

little actions done carefully—a word here, a deed there—long before the problems occur.

3. The truth is not only your best defense, it makes the best propaganda. Even if it 

involves something bad, it will clear the air, allowing everyone to look for solutions. Lies, 

on the other hand, will bite you again and again. There are no uglier words in the American 

lexicon than cover-up.

4. Members of the press have long memories. You should know, if you don’t 

already, that John Carroll had a distinguished career following his time in Vietnam. He 

became the editor of the Baltimore Sun and, later, the managing editor of the Los Angeles 

Times. He served on the Pulitzer Prize Board. In 2002, he also served as chairman of that 

board. In 2003, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

In 2004, he received the Burton Benjamin Award for lifetime achievement in defense of 

press freedom from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Also in 2004, he received the 

American Society of Newspaper Editors Leadership Award. I spoke with John last year. 

The thought of what happened to him at Khe Sanh still angers him.
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Notes

1. William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1978–1973, United 

States Army in Vietnam, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1996), 617.

2. Dale Van Atta, With Honor, Melvin Laird (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 

2008), 414.

3. Memo, Colonel B. Lee Baker, USAF, for Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense 

(Public Affairs), 12 March 1964, Subj: Restrictions on Release of Information in Vietnam, US 

Department of Defense, Directorate of Defense Information (DDI) files.

4. Memo, Carl Rowan for Dean Rusk, 4 June 1964, Subj: Improvement of Informational–

Psychological Program in Vietnam, Historians files, US Army Center of Military History (CMH), 

Washington, DC.

5. Unless otherwise indicated, this section is based on William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: 

The Military and the Media, 1962–1968, United States Army in Vietnam, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: 

US Army Center of Military History, 1988), 68–85. Cited hereafter as The Military and the Media.

6. Nicholas J. Cull, “Joint Military-Civilian Civil Affairs Operations in Vietnam,” in The 

US Army and the Interagency Process: Historical Perspectives, the Proceedings of the Combat 

Studies Institute 2008 Military History Symposium, ed. Kendall D. Gott and Michael G. Brooks 

(Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008), 285–293.

7. Hammond, The Military and the Media, 1:85.

8. This summary is from William M. Hammond, “Who Were the Saigon Correspondents, 

and Does It Matter?” Working Papers, 1999, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of 

Government, The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. http://www.

hks.harvard.edu/presspol/research_publications/papers/working_papers/2000_8.PDF, 7. See also, 

William M. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, Media and Military at War (Lawrence, KS: University 

Press of Kansas, 1998), 41–44. The quotation is from ASD PA, Report of the Honolulu Information 

Conference, 18–20 March 1965, tab D, Directorate of Defense Information Vietnam files. The report 

names no author, but it was probably Colonel Bankson.

9. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, 44.

10. Memo of Conversation, Public Affairs Policy Committee Meeting at the White House, 

10 August 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume III, Vietnam, June–

December 1965, item 117.

11. Major General Winant Sidle, interview by author, 6 May 1973, Historians files, CMH. See 

also, Hammond, The Military and the Media, 1:195.

12. MACV Office of Information, “Excerpts from ‘Rules Governing Release of Military 

Information,’” 31 October 1966 and 29 March 1967, in Committee on Governmental Affairs, United 

States Senate, Pentagon Rules on Media Access to the Persian Gulf War, S. Hearing 102–178 (1991), 

840–863. This summary is from William M. Hammond, “Who Were the Saigon Correspondents, 

and Does It Matter?”

13. The figures are from Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (New 

York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), 199–201.

14. William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 

Inc., 1976), 272.

15. Major General Winant Sidle, interview by author, 5 June 1973, Historians files, CMH.

16. Ibid. For a fuller treatment of Sidle’s efforts, see, Hammond, The Military and the Media, 

1:320–329. The quote is from Memo, Brigadier General Winant Sidle for Westmoreland, 11 

September 1967, Subj: Improvement of the MACV Information Program, P-1 Policy files, Joint U.S. 

Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO) Papers, Record Group 84, National Archives II, College Park, MD.
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Hammond

17. Hammond, The Military and the Media, 1:367–368.

18. Sidle, interview, 5 June 1973.

19. Ibid. Bunker’s characterization of Newman is in Ltr, Ellsworth Bunker to Secretary of State, 

n.d. [June 1970], Ellsworth Bunker Papers, Office of Foreign Affairs Information Management/

Bureau of Intelligence and Research, US Department of State. See also, Hammond, The Military 

and the Media, 2:13–14.

20. Jack Langguth, “General Abrams Listens to a Different Drum,” New York Times Magazine, 

5 May 1968, 28.

21. Msg, Abrams MAC 7429 to all Commanders, 6 June 1968, Abrams Papers, CMH.

22. This section is based on Memo for the Record, HQ MACV, MACCOC11, 4 July 1968, 

Subj: MACV Commanders Conference, 4 July 1968, Historians files, CMH.

23. The statistics on antiwar protests are from Robert B. Smith, “Disaffection, Delegitimation, 

and Consequences: Aggregate Trends for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam,” in Public Opinion 

and the Military Establishment, ed. Charles C. Moskos Jr. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1971). 

William M. Hammond, “The American Withdrawal from Vietnam: Some Military and Political 

Considerations,” in Cold War Statesman and Patriot: Richard M. Nixon, eds. Leon Friedman and 

William F. Levantrosser. Contributions in Political Science, Vol. 312 (Westport, CT: Greenwood 

Press, 1993), 51.

24. George A. Bailey, The Vietnam War According to Chet, David, Walter, Harry, Peter, Bob, 

Howard, and Frank: A Content Analysis of Journalistic Performance by the Network Television 

Evening News Anchormen (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1973), 261.

25. Senior Officer Debriefing Report, Lieutenant General Arthur S. Collins, RCS-CSFOR-74, 

7 January 1971, Laird Papers, National Archives II, College Park, MD.

26. Lee N. Robbins, Ph.D., Executive Office of the President, Special Action Office for Drug 

Abuse Prevention, The Vietnam Drug User Returns (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 

1973), vii–ix.

27. Major General Winant Sidle, US Army (Retired), interview by author, 26 October 1988, 

Historians files, CMH.

28. Ibid.

29. Major Charles Johnson, USMC, a former MACV briefer, interview by author, 2 August 

1973, Historians files, CMH.

30. UPI, 22 January 1971.

31. Unless otherwise indicated, this section is based on Hammond, The Military and the Media, 

2:407–422.

32. Msgs, Moorer JCS SPECAT 2614 to Abrams, 30 January 1971, Subj: Planning for Laos; 

Abrams to McCain, Moorer, 30 January 1971, Subj: Planning for Laos, Abrams Papers, CMH.

33. Ltr, Leonard to the author, 17 October 1990, Historians’ files, CMH.

34. Memo, Mort Allen for H.R. Haldeman, 3 February 1971, Subj: Notations for February 2–3 

News Summaries, White House Special Files, Buchanan, Chron files, box 1, February 1971, Nixon 

Papers, National Archives, College Park, MD.

35. H.R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries, Inside the Nixon White House (New York, NY: 

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), entry for 3 February 1971, 242. Msg, Moorer SPECAT 3224 to McCain, 

Abrams, 4 February 1971, Subj: Press Guidance for TOAN THANG 01-71 and LAM SON 719, 

Abrams Papers, CMH.

36. Memo, Dave Clark for Dave McManis, 4 February 1971, Subj: Morning Cable Summary 

for 4 February 1971, Subject files, box 386, Situation Room Cable Summaries, 1/1/71—3/31/71, 

NSC files, Vol. V, Nixon Papers, National Archives II, College Park, MD. See also, Ltr, Leonard to 

the author, 17 October 1990.
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37. Major General Nguyen Duy Hinh, Lam Son 719, Indochina Monographs (Washington, 

DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1979), 82.

38. Ltr, Colonel Robert Leonard to the author, 17 October 1990, Historians files, CMH.
109

Panel 3—The Vietnam War

The Viet Cong Assault on the US Embassy at Tet and

The Military Media Controversy It Launched

(Submitted Paper)

by

Mr. Donald North

In a war of surprises there was no greater surprise for my journalist colleagues or the 

US military in Vietnam than the Tet Offensive on 31 January 1968 and in particular the 

assault on the US Embassy in Saigon.

Because US politicians and commanders had oversold progress in the war as a way to 

quiet domestic dissent, the savage Tet fighting shocked millions of Americans and widened 

Washington’s credibility gap on Vietnam. Within weeks, President Lyndon Johnson would 

bow out of his race for reelection. Tet was the beginning of the end of the Vietnam war.

But Tet had another long-term consequence. In the years that followed, US military 

officers would insist bitterly that critical and unfair reporting about Tet caused the American 

defeat, that the US news media had betrayed the nation, that reporters had gone from being 

the Fourth Estate to acting like an enemy fifth column. The legacy of poor military-media 

relations has been passed down like a family heirloom. In turn, the correspondents who 

covered Vietnam, now in influential roles in their news agencies, are more distrustful of US 

military officials than their older or younger counterparts.

General William Westmoreland’s insistence that the media somehow betrayed the 

troops in the field rang true with many senior US military officers, those who would have 

a great influence on future generations of officers. In his book The War Managers, General 

Douglas Kinnard polled the 173 Army generals who commanded in Vietnam. Eighty-nine 

percent of them expressed negative feelings toward the printed press and even more—91 

percent—were negative about TV news coverage. Despite those findings, Kinnard concluded that the importance of the press in swaying public opinion was largely a myth. That 

myth was important for the Government to perpetuate, so officials could insist that it was 

not the real situation in Vietnam against which the American people reacted, but rather the 

press’s portrayal of that situation.

Getting History Right

Margaret MacMillan is a distinguished professor of history at Oxford and the University 

of Toronto, whose book Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History has had a great 

impact this summer. The author explores the many ways in which history—its value and 

dangers—affects us all. She claims the manipulation of history is increasingly pervasive 
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in today’s world: “Sometimes we abuse history,” she writes, “creating one-sided or false 

histories to justify treating others badly. . . . There are also many lessons and much advice 

offered by history. . . . The past can be used for almost anything you want to do in the present. We abuse it when we create lies about the past or write histories that show only one 

perspective.”

Why are we still concerned about the truth of Tet over 40 years ago? Winston Churchill 

understood the lessons of history when he wrote, “The longer you look back, the farther 

you can look forward.”

First Amendment

As a lifelong journalist I believe strongly in the First Amendment, but realize it was 

not because the Founding Fathers admired the press. It was because they understood the 

problem of unbridled power. They shielded the press, not because they thought journalists 

were saints, but because they knew it would take unbridled sinners to curb the grandest 

sinners of them all—the politicians and generals.

Did the Press Get Tet Right?

My hero A.J Liebling, the Bard of Baltimore, had it right when he said, “The press is 

the weak slat under the bed of democracy.” Did we make mistakes or miscalculations in 

covering Tet? Of course. Unfortunately we have as many . . . in our ranks as does the Army 

or other institutions you might examine. And throughout the war, television never lived up 

to its potential as a tool to educate, inform, or inspire its viewers.

Andrew Kopkind, in The Nation, expressed it best: “The intrusive camera could be 

a metaphor for the eye of America—fixed in Vietnam for a dozen years or more, seeing 

everything and comprehending nothing.” There’s an old adage that I think also applies to 

Tet: When the Government is incoherent, the press is twice as incoherent. Were we fair and 

diligent in our coverage of Tet? Yes, to the best of our abilities and the resources given to 

us to cover the Vietnam war.

As a reporter in Vietnam for ABC and later NBC News, I was there to experience Tet 

1968 at most of the major battlefields, from Khe Sanh on 30 January to Hue on 25 February, 

as US Marines secured the southeast gate of the Citadel to end the siege of Hue. But it was 

at the US Embassy at dawn on 31 January that one of the most important engagements of 

the war took place and that most fascinated the world.

The Embassy assault would be only a part of the F-100 Special Action Sapper Group’s 

assignment to spearhead the attack on Saigon, backed up by another 11 battalions, totaling 

about 5,000 troops. There had been little time for rehearsal. What they lacked in planning 

would be made up for in the intensity, scope, and audacity of the attacks.

The battalion’s mission was to gain control of six objectives: the US Embassy, 

the Presidential Palace, the national broadcasting studios, South Vietnamese Naval 

Headquarters, Vietnamese Joint General Staff Headquarters at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, and 

the Philippine Embassy.
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North

The Embassy Sappers

At midnight, heading into the fateful day of 31 January 1968, 15 Viet Cong gathered at 

a greasy car repair garage at 59 Phan Thanh Gian Street in Saigon. Wearing black pajamas 

and red arm bands, they were part of the elite 250-strong J-9 Special Action Unit, formerly 

known as the C-10 Sapper Battalion. They were mostly born near Saigon and were familiar with the streets of the teeming city. Only eight of them were trained sappers, experts in 

laying and disarming mines and explosive devices. The other seven were clerks and cooks 

who signed up for the dangerous mission mainly to escape the rigors of life in the jungle. 

They would be helped by four other Vietnamese, civilian employees at the US Embassy, 

including one of Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker’s chauffeurs. Nguyen Van Giang, known 

as Captain Ba Den, the commanding officer of the J-9 unit, was designated to help lead the 

mission.

On the morning before the attack, Ba Den had met with the ambassador’s chauffeur, 

Nguyen Van De, who drove Ba Den in an American station wagon past the Embassy, 

revealing that it would be the secret target of the Tet attack. Learning the identity of the 

target, Captain Ba Den was overwhelmed by the realization that he would probably not 

survive the next day. Pondering his likely death—and since it was the eve of Tet—Ba Den 

had a few Ba Muoi Bau beers at the Saigon Market and bought a string of firecrackers as he 

had done for every Tet celebration since he was a child. Ba Den then wandered down Tran 

Qui Cap Street, looking for the house where he had lived with his wife and children 6 years 

earlier. Later that night, he joined the other attackers at the garage on Phan Thanh Gian 

Street. Senior Captain Bay Tuyen briefed them on their mission and handed out weapons. 

The sappers were told to kill anyone who resisted, but to take as prisoner anyone who surrendered. Ominously, they were not given an escape route.

The US Embassy

Of all the targets, the overriding importance of the US Embassy could not be overstated. The $2.6 million compound had been completed just 3 months earlier, and its sixstory chancery building loomed over Saigon like an impregnable fortress. It was a constant 

reminder of the American presence, prestige and power. Never mind that Nha Trang, My 

Tho, Ban Me Thout, or Bien Hoa would also be attacked that morning. Most Americans 

couldn’t pronounce their names, let alone comprehend their importance. But the US 

Embassy in Saigon? For many Americans, this would be the first battle of the Vietnam war 

they understood.

At 2:45 a.m. the sappers wheeled up to the front gate of the US Embassy and opened 

fire with AK-47 machineguns and a B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Just minutes later, at about 3:00 a.m., chief US Embassy spokesman Barry Zorthian phoned news 

bureaus from his home a few blocks away to alert them. Zorthian had few details, but he 

told us what he knew: The Embassy was being attacked and was under heavy fire.

ABC News Bureau Chief Dick Rosenbaum called me after Zorthian had phoned him. 

The ABC bureau, located at the Caravelle Hotel, was only 4 blocks from the Embassy. As 
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it turned out, cameraman Peter Leydon and I were in Saigon because of what we thought 

had been a stroke of bad luck at Khe Sanh the day before. For months any journalist with 

decent sources was expecting something big at Tet. The ABC bureau and other news agencies were on full alert, R&Rs were canceled, and I had celebrated Christmas with my family in nearby Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 1 December so I could be in Vietnam, ready for 

the big enemy push when it came.

Lieutenant General Weyand Briefs the Press

Plenty of captured enemy documents circulating in the months before Tet indicated 

something big was afoot. One of the most respected and credible military sources at the 

time was Lieutenant General Frederick C. Weyand, commander of American forces in III 

Corps, the area around Saigon. In the weeks prior to Tet, General Weyand told many journalists what he was telling General William C. Westmoreland: “The VC [Viet Cong] are 

maneuvering in large units with reinforcements of North Vietnamese and new weapons. 

Enemy documents and prisoners indicate that a major Communist offensive is coming 

soon, probably against Saigon.” There were strict rules against reporting US troop movements, but Weyand told us, off the record, that he was shifting 30 American battalions into 

better defensive positions around Saigon.

Intelligence Not Understood

In the weeks before Tet, the various civilian and military intelligence agencies, both 

American and South Vietnamese, knew most of the facts about the enemy, but didn’t understand their significance. Because of hostility and rivalry between the agencies, they rarely 

shared or compared intelligence and were never able to assemble it into a cohesive mosaic. 

They knew through an avalanche of captured documents the enemy’s intentions for 1968, 

but they did not know their capabilities.

New Year’s Eve Predictions

In the New Year’s Eve roundup of ABC News TV correspondents around the world, 

I predicted heavy fighting in Vietnam in the new year. “Documents captured at Dak To 

recently indicate the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong are now entering what they call the 

‘sprint phase of the revolution,’” I said. “Intensification of the fighting seems the intent 

here of both sides as 1968 begins. Don North, ABC News, Vietnam.”

It was to be the Year of the Monkey: 1968—a year in which we all experienced more 

history than we could digest. The week before Tet had been strangely quiet. With nothing 

else to do, I took a camera crew over to the Phu Tho racetrack in Cholon to produce a news 

feature on the “crookedest horse race in the world.” Widespread drugging of the horses 

produced some weird results, and often a lame horse could enter the winner’s circle if it 

could still stand up by the end of the race. A week later, the Phu Tho racetrack was used as 

a staging center and resupply base for the VC during the Tet Offensive.

Even on that quiet Sunday afternoon it was likely the VC had been infiltrating Saigon 

and the racetrack—chances are that the heavy better in line with me at the parimutuel window that afternoon was an NVA [North Vietnamese Army] colonel. Arriving back at the 
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ABC bureau I was dispatched immediately to the airport for a flight to Khe Sanh, which 

was where General Westmoreland was expecting the main thrust of an enemy strike during 

Tet.

Khe Sahn

In Khe Sanh on 30 January, ABC News cameraman Peter Leydon and I came under a 

heavy barrage of NVA artillery fire. When we dived into a trench, the lens of our 16-mm 

film camera broke off, forcing us to cut short our stay in Khe Sanh. We returned to Saigon 

on the C-130 “milk run” that evening. Because of the broken camera, we thought we would 

be missing the enemy Tet Offensive. But flying the length of Vietnam that night, it seemed 

like the whole country was under attack. As we took off from the Da Nang air base, we saw 

incoming rockets. Flying over Nha Trang shortly after midnight, we could see fires blazing. 

We heard about the attacks through radio contact with ground control.

Saigon Under Seige

But at 3:30 a.m. on 31 January we were back in Saigon, wheeling out of the Caravelle 

Hotel in the ABC News jeep with a new camera. Just off Tu Do Street, 3 blocks from the 

Embassy, somebody—VC, ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam], police, or US MPs, 

we weren’t sure who—opened up on us with an automatic weapon. A couple of rounds 

pinged off the hood of the jeep. I killed the lights and reversed out of range. We returned to 

the ABC bureau to wait for first light.

As dawn was breaking around 6 a.m., we walked the 3 blocks to the Embassy. As we 

approached the compound, we could hear heavy firing, and green and red tracers cut into 

the pink sky. Near the Embassy, I joined a group of US MPs moving toward the Embassy’s 

front gate. I started my tape recorder for ABC radio as the MPs loudly cursed the ARVN 

troops who were supposed to provide Embassy security.

The MPs claimed the ARVN had “D-Dee’d” (slang for running away under fire) after 

the first shots. Green-colored VC tracer bullets were coming from the Embassy compound 

and the upper floor of buildings across the street. Red tracers stitched back across the 

street. We were in the cross-fire. Crawling up to the gate with me was Peter Arnett of 

the Associated Press (AP), who was glad to have the company of another journalist who 

wasn’t competing with the AP. Peter had been covering the war for more than 5 years and 

had picked up a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. Arnett was a prolific, competitive, and fair 

journalist, often filing more than a dozen stories for the AP every week. I believe his 8 years 

of daily reporting from Vietnam are without par in the annals of war correspondence.

Lying flat in the gutter that morning with the MPs, Arnett and I were not sure where the 

VC attackers were holed up or where the fire was coming from. But we knew it was the big 

story. Arnett and other AP staffers had been the first to alert the world of the attack on the 

US Embassy. At 3:15 the first bulletin had gone out a full 40 minutes ahead of competitor 

United Press International (UPI). “First Lead Attack: Saigon (AP) The Viet Cong shelled 

Saigon Wednesday in a bold follow up of their attacks on eight major cities around the 

country.”
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Several MPs rushed by, one of them carrying a wounded VC sapper piggyback style. 

He wore black pajamas, a red arm band and, strangely, an enormous red ruby ring. He was 

Nguyen Van Sau from a village near ChiChi. I interviewed the MPs and recorded their 

radio conversation with colleagues inside the Embassy gates. The MPs believed the VC 

were in the chancery building itself, an impression that later proved false. Peter Arnett 

crawled off to find a phone and report the MPs’ conversation to his office. At 7:25, based 

on Arnett’s calls from the scene, the AP transmitted the first report that the VC were inside 

the Embassy. “Bulletin: Vietnam (Tops 161) Saigon (AP) The Viet Cong attacked Saigon 

Wednesday and seized part of the US Embassy. US Military Police on the scene said it was 

believed about 20 Viet Cong suicide commandos were in the Embassy and held part of the 

first floor of the Embassy building.” The question of whether the VC were in the chancery 

building or only in the compound took on symbolic importance. I have replayed the tape 

of that day in 1968, and there is no doubt the MPs believed the VC were in the chancery.

A helicopter landed on the Embassy roof, and troops started working down the floors. 

MP Dave Lamborn got orders on the field radio from an officer inside the compound: 

“This is Waco, roger. Can you get in the gate now? Take a force in there and clean out the 

Embassy, like now. There will be choppers on the roof and troops working down. Be careful we don’t hit our own people. Over.”

As we prepared to join the MPs rushing the gate, I had other concerns. “OK, how much 

film have we got left?” I shouted to cameraman Peter Leydon.

“I’ve got one mag [400 feet],” he replied. “How many do you have?”

“We’re on the biggest story of the war with one can of film,” I groaned. “So it’s one 

take of everything, including my standupper.” There was no time to argue about whose 

responsibility it was to have brought more film.

I stepped over the United States seal, which had been blasted off the Embassy wall near 

a side entrance. We rushed through the main gate into the garden, where a bloody battle 

had been raging. It was, as UPI’s Kate Webb later described, “like a butcher shop in Eden.”

As helicopters continued to land troops on the roof, we hunkered down on the grass 

with a group of MPs. They were firing into a small villa on the Embassy grounds where they 

said the VC were making a last stand. Tear gas canisters were blasted through the windows, 

but the gas drifted back through the garden. Colonel George Jacobson, the US mission 

coordinator, lived in the villa, and he suddenly appeared at a window on the second floor.

An MP threw him a gas mask and a .45 pistol. Three VC were believed to be on the first 

floor and would likely be driven upstairs by the tear gas. It was high drama, but our ABC 

News camera rolled film on it sparingly.

I continued to describe everything I saw into a tape recorder, often choking on the tear 

gas. I could read the Embassy ID card in the wallet of Nguyen Van De, whose bloody body 

was sprawled beside me on the lawn. Nguyen was later identified as an Embassy driver 

who often chauffeured the American ambassador and who had been a driver for 16 years. 

The MPs told me Nguyen Van De had shot at them during the early fighting and was probably the inside man for the attackers.
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North

Amid the tension, I was distracted by a big frog hopping and splashing through pools 

of thick blood on the lawn. It was one of those images that never gets properly filed away 

and keeps coming back at odd times. A long burst of automatic-weapons fire snapped me 

back to reality. The last VC still in action rushed up the stairs firing blindly at Colonel 

Jacobson, but he missed. The colonel later told me: “We both saw each other at the same 

time. He missed me, and I fired one shot at him point-blank with the .45.” Jacobson later 

admitted that his Saigon girlfriend had been with him at the time and witnessed the entire 

drama from beneath the sheets of their bed.

The death toll from the battle was five American soldiers killed. Of the 15 sappers, 12 

killed, 3 wounded. Two Embassy employees were found dead and armed and believed to 

be VC agents. Two other unarmed Vietnamese Embassy employees were killed. The three 

surviving sappers were later questioned and turned over to the ARVN and were not heard 

of again during the war.

The Closing Standupper

On the last 30 feet of film I recorded my closing remarks in the Embassy garden: 

Since the lunar New Year, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese have 

proved they are capable of bold and impressive military moves that 

Americans here never dreamed could be achieved. Whether they can sustain this onslaught for long remains to be seen. But whatever turn the war 

now takes, the capture of the US Embassy here for almost 6 hours is a 

psychological victory that will rally and inspire the Viet Cong. Don North, 

ABC News, Saigon.

A rush to judgment before all pieces of the puzzle were in place? Perhaps. But there 

was no time to appoint a committee to study the story. I was on an hourly deadline, and 

ABC expected the story as well as some perspective even in those early hours of the 

offensive—a first rough draft of history.

My on-the-scene analysis never made it on ABC News. Nervous suits at ABC headquarters had become censors when they thought correspondents in the field were not in tune 

with the White House spin on the war. Worried about editorializing by a correspondent on 

a sensitive story, a producer at ABC headquarters in New York killed the on-camera closer.

The film from all three networks took off from Saigon on a special military flight about 

noon. When it arrived in Tokyo for processing, it caused a mad, competitive scramble to 

get a cut film story on satellite for the 7 p.m. (EST) news programs in the States. Because 

we had only 400 feet to process and cut, ABC News made the satellite in time, and the story 

led the ABC-TV evening news. NBC and CBS missed the deadline and had to run catch-up 

specials on the Embassy attack later in the evening.

Westmoreland’s Spin

At 9:15 a.m. in Saigon, the Embassy was officially declared secure. At 9:20, General 

Westmoreland strode through the gate, flanked by grimy and bloody MPs and Marines who 

had been fighting since 3 a.m. Standing in the rubble, in starched fatigues and shiny jungle 
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boots, Westmoreland declared: “No enemy got in the Embassy building. It’s a relatively 

small incident. Group of sappers blew a hole in the wall and crawled in, and they were 

all killed. Nineteen bodies have been found on the premises—enemy bodies. Don’t be 

deceived by this incident.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Westy” was still saying everything was just fine. His words were 

broadcast without comment from me following several minutes of the carnage we had 

filmed in the Embassy compound. Viewers asked later if he was talking about the same 

incident they had seen on their living room screens. He said the Tet attacks throughout the 

country were “very deceitfully” calculated to create maximum consternation in Vietnam 

and that they were “diversionary” to the main enemy effort still to come at Khe Sanh.

Mendacity of the Press

Following General Westmoreland’s statement, a curtain of silence and secrecy 

descended over the US Embassy story. Interviews with any of the surviving MPs or US 

Marine guards were denied. Vietnam reporters were accused of “mendacity” in not emphasizing the heroism and military proficiency of the guards in overcoming a larger force of 

attackers at a poorly protected Embassy with only small arms. Questions on Viet Cong 

penetration of the Embassy staff were deferred until an investigation could be carried out. 

The State Department investigation to my knowledge has not, to this day, been declassified. Following interrogations of the three captured attackers, the garage at 59 Phan 

Thanh Gian Street, where the attackers had assembled, was raided and a dozen Viet Cong 

suspects arrested. The press was not told of the raid as the existence of three wounded 

sappers in custody had not been acknowledged. Although many of the journalists at the 

Embassy during the attack witnessed the three sappers being led away by US MPs, General 

Westmoreland’s assertion that “all 19 of the sappers were killed and their bodies found in 

the Embassy compound” would not be corrected. Today in reviewing Internet reports of the 

Tet Embassy attack, about 90 percent of them persist in reporting there were 19 attacking 

sappers who were all killed. Over 100 pages of the US Army interrogation reports from the 

three captured sappers, held in Con Dao prison in the Mekong Delta, were not declassified 

until July 2002.

Security considerations are important in wartime, but following the US Embassy attack 

at Tet the information withheld was denied the American public, not the Viet Cong who 

were well aware of the facts.

Don, Who Are You Going to Believe?

Late that night after our last stories had been filed and over a few beers at the bar, we 

joked about Westy’s denial of surviving Viet Cong attackers. “Don, who are you going 

to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Most journalists in Vietnam at that time respected 

Westmoreland—he often generously gave long interviews, which would invariably explain 

the success of his command. But an incident about 6 months prior to Tet left questions in 

my mind concerning the commanding general’s understanding of the role of the media in 

wartime.
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Westy’s Memo

A memo signed by Westmoreland was delivered to the ABC News Bureau and to 

most other agencies in mid-1967 suggesting that news reports of ineffective Vietnamese 

troops were not helping the war effort. “If you give a dog a bad name, he will live up to 

it,” Westmoreland suggested, recommending that more positive reporting be done on our 

Vietnamese allies. Most of us had been with crack South Vietnamese Airborne or Marine 

units and had described them accordingly. We thought the ARVN 1st and 21st Divisions 

were effective, but we considered the 2d, 5th, and 18th Divisions slacker units, plagued 

with high desertion rates and questionable commanders who rarely moved aggressively out 

of their base camps. Westmoreland’s ill-advised memo was largely ignored by Saigon journalists. In fact, the MACV chief of information, Major General Winant Sidle, and Embassy 

spokesman Barry Zorthian had strongly urged Westmoreland not to issue the memo. A 

television report on an ARVN unit doing nothing doesn’t make great news.

Even after Westmoreland’s pronouncement that the chancery had not been breached, 

Peter Arnett and the AP seemed heavily committed to their earlier lead and continued to 

quote the MPs and others at the Embassy who believed the sappers had penetrated the first 

floor. As Arnett would explain later, “We had little faith in what General Westmoreland 

stated, and often in the field we had reason to be extremely careful in accepting the general’s assessments of the course of a particular battle.” Much of the later criticism of the 

press for its handling of the Embassy story fell on Arnett for supposedly exaggerating the 

VC action with his report from the MPs. But a report is only as good as its sources, and the 

MPs’ fears and warnings were trusted more than Westy’s briefing.

We often found “grunts” in the field more reliable and accurate about the course of the 

war than senior commanders and certainly many of the self-serving pronouncements from 

the “Five O’clock Follies.” Most of us were careful about our sources, certainly to back up 

attempts at analysis. Unidentified sources were frowned on by our editors in New York and 

even if “senior US Diplomats” were cited as the source, we had better at least let the news 

desk know who it actually was. Often some of the most important and critical stories of the 

Tet Offensive came from US military sources . . . as I will relate in a moment.

Westy at the Follies

Later, at the MACV press briefing, the so-called “Five O’clock Follies,” Westmoreland 

appeared in person to emphasize the huge enemy body counts as US and ARVN forces 

repelled the Tet Offensive. But MACV had been caught manipulating enemy casualty figures before, and many reporters were skeptical. To add to Westy’s growing credibility gap, 

it was also reported at his press briefing that the city of Hue, in the northern part of South 

Vietnam, had been cleared of enemy troops. That false report had to be retracted, as the 

enemy held parts of Hue for the next 24 days.

Bunker’s Spin

Not to be outdone by Westy’s vigorous spin control of the Tet story, Ambassador 

Ellsworth Bunker called a “background” briefing for select reporters at the Embassy 3 
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days after the attack. “Our reports from around the country indicate the South Vietnamese 

people are outraged by the deceitful Viet Cong violation of the sacred Tet Holiday,” Bunker 

said, identified only as a “senior American diplomat.” He added, “No important objectives 

have been held by the enemy and there was no significant popular support.”

The Ambassador ignored the fact that Hue was still under enemy control and, in 

Saigon, residents had not sounded the alarm while over 5,000 VC and NVA troops infiltrated the city. In later interviews with Saigon residents with my Vietnamese camera crew, 

I found none who thought the VC had been particularly deceitful in breaking the Tet truce 

to gain the element of surprise. Many were, however, alarmed at how vigorously US and 

ARVN firepower had been directed against VC targets in heavily populated urban centers 

of Saigon, My Tho, Can Tho, and Ben Tre—attacks that killed and wounded thousands of 

Vietnamese civilians and created a million refugees.

Spiked by My Own Network

My TV and radio report on those interviews was titled “U.S. Mission, More Out Of 

Touch With Vietnamese than Ever.” But it never made it on the ABC-TV evening news. 

It was logged arriving in New York, but was never edited and scheduled for broadcast 

and was later reported lost. It was, however, broadcast as an “Information Report” on the 

ABC Radio News Network, which tended to be more open to critical stories from the staff 

in Vietnam. Again, I had been censured by someone at my own network for presumably 

appearing out of step with the prevailing winds from the White House.

Tet Interviews I Wish I Had Done

Tet demolished the carefully planned US pronouncements of progress in the war. Even 

though Tet was a time of travel for Vietnamese returning home for the holidays, it was 

obvious 5,000 Viet Cong insurgents could not have infiltrated Saigon without the consent 

of a large number of its inhabitants. In areas of the Delta where US officials told us 67 percent of hamlets were secure in government hands, we pointed out that the attackers did not 

parachute into the cities, but had advanced through the 67 percent so-called secure hamlets 

to reach their objectives.

Often history does not reveal itself for years after the event. This was true of Tet. In 

his excellent book The Vietnamese War, Professor David Elliott has a chapter “Tet: The 

Untold Story.” Elliot spoke Vietnamese and conducted a study in the Delta for the Rand 

Corporation. “How then, did these battered units manage to pull off the totally unexpected 

feat of penetrating and occupying part of My Tho city?” It went completely unnoticed at 

the time, and even decades later is still largely ignored. Unlike Saigon and other cities 

where a “General uprising was called for but never materialized, nearly the entire rural 

population was immediately and effectively mobilized in support of the offensive. Taxes 

were now paid in advance. Civilian laborers who had evaded the cadres before performed 

hazardous duties. Young men who had escaped the draft now signed up in large numbers. 

In short, a rural uprising did take place in My Tho,” writes David Elliott.
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Colonel Edward Lansdale

The enigmatic Edward Lansdale who was back in Saigon in a vague advisory job in 

1968 is later quoted in his biography “The Unquiet American,” as saying, “We lost the war 

at the Tet Offensive.” Lansdale said American commanders’ judgment in discriminating 

between friend and foe, never a very highly developed skill, was totally lost at Tet. “We are 

a technical nation and we love our equipment,” Lansdale observed. 

American commanders relied on artillery to keep the enemy soldiers at a 

distance and punish them. Their first thought was to radio for artillery support, instead of sending troops forward against enemy fire to overrun an 

enemy position. Those fire missions killed not only foe, but huddled civilians. Hundreds of Vietnamese now hate Americans and are afraid of them.

Lansdale reported the enemy attacks had destroyed all faith in the effectiveness of the 

Saigon Government, pushed popular morale dangerously low, and left the countryside vulnerable to further VC exploitation.

In a meeting with Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland a few days after Tet, 

Lansdale is reported to have shouted violently at Westmoreland: “You are doing it wrong.” 

Lansdale’s biographer, Cecil Currey, said the memories of faulty tactics by the Americans 

at Tet remained with him the rest of his life.

US Official Reports Versus the Media

We now know our press reports at Tet were rarely as pessimistic as official US 

Government sources like the Rand report or from the desk of General Lansdale, a US 

Embassy adviser. And certainly not as critical as dispatches from the CIA or as we learned 

from General Earle Wheeler, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman as published in the Pentagon 

Papers. “The enemy is operating with relative freedom in the countryside. ARVN is in 

a defensive posture. The Pacification program has suffered a severe setback. The initial 

attack nearly succeeded in a dozen places,” etc.

Tet: A US Military Victory

After the last enemy troops were rooted out of Hue, the US Government could 

finally declare that the Tet Offensive was indeed a clear-cut American military victory. 

Westmoreland would claim that 37,000 of the enemy had died, with US dead at 2,500. It 

was obvious, however, that the enemy operations had dealt Washington a decisive psychological blow. Somehow, more than 70,000 VC, backed by regular units of the NVA, had 

been able to coordinate a nationwide offensive with attacks on 36 provincial capitals and 

64 district towns.

The political consequences of Tet were made worse by the cheery public-relations 

campaigns that had preceded the offensive. Although some senior US commanders, like 

General Weyand, warned of a coming offensive against Saigon and had repositioned some 

US forces, Westmoreland had been determined to keep up a happy face. In November 
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1968, General Westmoreland admitted to me and a small group of journalists “off the 

record” that he considered his failure to share his intelligence with the news corps prior to 

the attacks “a great mistake.”

Just days before Tet, President Johnson gave a State of the Union address in which 

he avoided telling the American people what his military advisers were telling him—that 

there would be a large enemy offensive. The official optimism would double the shock felt 

by American citizens about Tet. In the offensive’s wake, US strategy was subjected to a 

new and critical reexamination.

There were stunning political consequences, too. On 31 March, President Johnson 

announced that he would not run again. In the following week, polls showed a drop-off in 

public support for the war. Soon, policymakers in Washington were hedging their bets and 

voicing more discontent about the war. Following that official shift, TV news correspondents were given more time for war criticism. Contrary to what some critics of the media 

believed, it was not that TV editors had suddenly become opponents of the war. Rather, 

their Washington sources had decided to shift toward opposition and that change was simply reflected in the reporting. TV news followed the change—it did not lead it.

Ten years later, I produced a TV documentary on the Tet Offensive, one of 26 programs 

in the series “The Ten Thousand Day War.” General Westmoreland was still bad-mouthing 

the media for the events of that morning. “This was the turning point of the war,” he told 

me. “It could have been the turning point for success, but it was the turning point for failure. By virtue of the early reporting . . . which was gloom and doom and which gave the 

impression that Americans were being defeated on the battlefield. It swayed public opinion 

to the point political authority made the decision to withdraw.” In a lengthy critique of the 

press, Westmoreland made it clear we were his worst enemy.

At one time we had 700 accredited reporters, all practicing, seeking and 

reporting news as they were accustomed to in the United States, all looking for sensational stories. If we continue the practice of reporting only 

the off-beat, the unusual or the bizarre in any future war, the American 

public are going to be influenced as they were during Vietnam. I think the 

bottom line on this subject is how an open society, and how our political 

democracy are vulnerable to manipulation by an autocratic flow of society.

Westmoreland not only failed to understand journalism in our society, but he also failed 

the lessons of history. Even grave defeats have been perceived as victories of the spirit 

when clear-cut goals—and shortcomings—are shared with the public. But there was little 

to inspire confidence in the nation about the military’s claims of victory at Tet. Tet should 

have taught a hard lesson to American leaders: responsible leadership in wartime will 

recognize problems clearly and publicize events that are likely to have a serious impact 

on the nation. Public relations spinning only makes matters worse. But American leaders 

extracted a different lesson: the need to control images coming from the battlefield. The 

bad rap the press got in the wake of Tet stuck and became the rationale for the military’s 

hostility toward the press. The fallout is still with us.
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Cronkite’s Sources

A final note on sources. Most journalists in Vietnam considered themselves reporters 

and not analysts. Sure we liked to share our opinions when asked, but the occasions were 

rare. US network anchors, like the majority of Americans, backed the US war effort. Walter 

Cronkite of CBS visited Vietnam in 1965 and said he was “impressed with our effort” so 

much that he was embarrassed by the “rude challenges” of young reporters at the “Five 

O’clock Follies.” Chet Huntley of NBC, widely considered a hawk, insisted in February 

1966 that “there is no alternative in Vietnam to fighting it out.” On my own ABC News, the 

co-anchor Howard K. Smith, defended the administration’s Vietnam policies in speeches 

on college campuses and in a July 1966 broadcast said, “It is entirely good what we’re 

doing in Vietnam.” At the White House, President Johnson blamed Vietnam-based reporters, rather than the harsh realities of the war, for bleak news from Vietnam.

Viewing the film showing the attack on the US Embassy, Walter Cronkite said, “What 

the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.” Cronkite spent a week in Vietnam 

and was in Hue while the fighting went on. He offered his conclusions in a remarkable halfhour special broadcast on 27 February. Once a supporter of the US war effort, Cronkite 

returned from Vietnam doubtful that victory was possible. Cronkite found that even though 

they suffered staggering casualties and had relinquished practically all the territory they 

had seized, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had succeeded in destroying the illusion of security in the cities and setting back pacification in the countryside. The solution 

Cronkite endorsed was disengagement and negotiation, “not as victors but as honorable 

people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.” His 

commentary was a shocker that stunned Americans, a different Cronkite who until that 

time had scrupulously avoided expressing any personal opinions on the air.

The question arose, “Was there a single defining event influencing him or was it the 

sum total of what he had seen on his Vietnam tour?” Former CBS Vietnam correspondent 

Murray Fromson wrote on the occasion of Walter Cronkite’s death that an important source 

for Cronkite’s report was, surprisingly, a senior US general. Cronkite’s producer, Ernie 

Leiser, before he died in 2002, revealed that the last night in Saigon they had dinner with 

an officer he respected who had been a friend of Walter’s during World War II. After a few 

drinks before dinner the General said, “Walter, we cannot win this Goddamned war, and 

we ought to find a dignified way out.” Walter’s source for that famous commentary was his 

old friend General Creighton Abrams, soon to replace Westmoreland as the Commander 

in Vietnam. The late Walter Cronkite was a fair but troubled critic of the war. It was an 

example to all of us in the field to know he had the courage to risk his reputation when he 

could have remained silent.

Old Truth

The Tet Offensive also reaffirmed a truth about counterinsurgency wars: “Guerrillas 

win if they don’t lose. A conventional army loses if it does not win.” Vietnam was first 

and foremost a political struggle, as the North Vietnamese understood far better than the 

Americans. Colonel Harry Summers, a war historian and founder of Vietnam Magazine
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recounts telling a North Vietnamese Army officer in Hanoi after the war, “You know 

Colonel, you never beat us on the battlefield.” The North Vietnamese officer pondered a 

moment and then replied, “That may be so, but it’s also irrelevant, isn’t it?”

The psychological impact of the 1968 Tet Offensive and the aura it bestowed on the 

Communist forces were seen 7 years later as contributing factors in South Vietnam’s 

eventual collapse. In 1975, a minor setback in a battle near Ban Me Thout escalated into 

ARVN’s panicked retreat and the fall of Saigon a few weeks later.

Tet also should have taught a hard lesson to American leaders: responsible leadership in wartime will recognize problems clearly and publicize events that are likely to 

have a serious psychological impact on the nation. PR [Public Relations] spinning only 

makes matters worse. But American leaders extracted a different lesson: the need to control 

images coming from the battlefield. The bad rap the press got in the wake of Tet 1968 stuck 

and became the rationale for the military’s hostility toward—and desire to manipulate—the 

press, tendencies that continue to this day.

Declassified Interogation Reports

The three captured sappers disappeared into the Saigon prison system, including 

Captain Ba Den, who later under interrogation described both the attack planning and how 

he spent what he had presumed would be his last evening alive. As revealed in the interrogation reports and the after-action reports of VC officers, such as General Tran Do, it is 

now clear that the Embassy attack was badly planned and carried out by poorly trained 

Viet Cong troops. Washington military analyst Anthony Cordesman has written, “One way 

to achieve decisive surprise in warfare is to do something truly stupid.” Yet, in this case, 

the “truly stupid” changed the course of the war. Those soldiers or journalists who apply 

the criteria of conventional warfare insist that Tet was a disaster for the North Vietnamese 

and Viet Cong. Those who concentrate on the political and psychological dimensions of 

insurgency warfare make very different judgments.

Why the Tet Offensive became a dramatic turning point was explained recently by 

military analyst Steven Metz, of the Institute for Strategic Studies, who said: “The essence 

of any insurgency is the psychological. It is armed theatre. You have protagonists on the 

stage, but they are sending messages to wider audiences. Insurgency is not won by killing 

insurgents, not won by seizing territory; it is won by altering the psychological factors that 

are most relevant.”

Pham Xuan An

A fascinating sidebar to the Tet story concerns the Communists top spy in Saigon, who 

was also the most respected Vietnamese journalist to many Western news agencies. Pham 

Xuan An worked for Time Magazine and I knew him as a valuable source. In two recent 

biographies, it is revealed An was the key agent in choosing the Tet targets in Saigon, 

including the US Embassy. An’s role as a spy had nothing to do with spreading disinformation in the Western press. He didn’t create the analysis that Tet was a psychological victory. 

Tet was a psychological victory. It proved that no Western position from the Embassy on 
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down was secure from attack. An’s job was to report to North Vietnamese intelligence 

and General Giap on this Western analysis and convince them of its importance. Hanoi 

was focused on the number of dead soldiers heaped around South Vietnamese targets. 

An was focused on Western anxiety and loss of certitude. President Johnson bowed out, 

Westmoreland got fired, and the United States headed to the negotiating table in Paris. 

An’s job as a spy was to translate Western tactics and strategy into Vietnamese intelligence, 

which he did brilliantly.

Last Survivor

Several decades after the Tet battle—long after the Vietnam war was over—I received 

a call from “Stan,” a Vietnam veteran who had become a resident businessman near Saigon, 

which had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City: “Don, would you like to meet Nguyen Van Sau, 

the last surviving sapper of the Embassy attack.” In the gutter in front of the US Embassy, I 

had lain next to Nguyen Van Sau in the street as US Marines and MPs exchanged fire with 

the attackers. Sau had been one of the first VC through the hole blown in the Embassy’s 

wall and was immediately wounded. Stan said Sau had spent the rest of the war with the 

other survivors from the Embassy attack in the infamous French-built prison on Con Dao 

Island. He was released in 1975 and returned to his village north of Saigon. Within a month 

of Stan’s phone call, I had flown back to Vietnam in pursuit of the interview. However, 

over a serving of spring rolls, Stan passed on some bad news: “Sorry, Don, Sau died just 

2 weeks ago.”

Time has taken its toll in other ways, too. The imposing US Embassy that withstood 

the attack 40 years ago was torn down by the Vietnamese shortly following the war’s 

end. A modest US consulate has since taken its place. A small marker in the consulate’s 

garden, closed to the public, lists the names of the American Marines and MPs who died 

there. Outside the consulate gates is a gray-and-red marble monument engraved with the 

names of the Viet Cong soldiers and agents who also died. As I again visited the scene of 

this unique military encounter, I imagined two of the soldiers who fought and died there—

Private First Class Bill Sebast and Nguyen Van Giang—returning to the Saigon of today 

and marveling at what has happened over the past 40 years. What would they think about 

Vietnam’s economic progress? about the close relationship that now exists between the 

two former enemy countries? the political futility of their sacrifice? And what would they 

see as the meaning of that war, which pitted them on opposite sides of the Embassy wall 

so many years ago?

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Panel 3—The Vietnam War

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

William M. Hammond, Ph.D.

Mr. Donald North

Moderated by Lieutenant Colonel Scott Farquhar

Audience Member

What do you think of the efforts of the US military to communicate with the local and 

national media from Vietnam and various organizations right now in Iraq?

Mr. North

Your question is how does the military in Iraq, in setting up or working with the Iraq 

Media Network, compare with what they did in Vietnam? Well, I would say that they 

certainly dropped the ball in Iraq. There was a marvelous opportunity to resurrect the television and radio network of Saddam Hussein into a democratic and fair news and entertainment network. And instead, Ambassador Bremer made the Iraq Media Network a tool 

for his agenda. In other words, he made it into a little Voice of America that became irrelevant to the Iraqis and they ignored it completely. And unfortunately, the Iraqis learned 

very quickly from Americans, and they learned from Ambassador Bremer, when they in 

turn took over the Iraq Media Network, to make it into their tool for propaganda and their 

agenda. And after millions of dollars of our taxpayer money and 2 years of Americans 

managing the Iraq Media Network, the most militant Shia elements in Iraq took over that 

network and started dispensing anti-American news, false news, and militant anti-Sunni 

propaganda. I always feel that it was a very sad day and that we lost a great opportunity 

to give the Iraqis a gift of what we here enjoy—a free and open media. It’s finally coming 

around a little. Commercial television. I’ve just been back to Iraq a couple of weeks ago 

training some journalists and I was glad to find that commercial TV and radio is prospering 

and there’s much more openness and freedom. But it seems that the government sponsored 

and government financed Iraq Network is still a propaganda organ. 

Audience Member

Good afternoon. My name is Bud Nutter and I’m in the Department of Military 

History. Mr. North, if we could get your opinion, if we could go back to the scene of the 

dinner between Mr. Cronkite and General Abrams in which General Abrams opined to 

Mr. Cronkite we couldn’t win the war. Could you give us some more context to General 

Abrams’ comment? If you think he was saying you can’t win the war because the combination of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong is too strong or the entire event is too complicated, fears of, for example, perhaps Chinese intervention, or is it your opinion or your 
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insights that General Abrams may have been saying that because of constraints placed on 

the military with respect to the conduct of that war?

Mr. North

It’s an excellent question, and I intend to follow it up actually. But to give you the exact 

source and how I came by that story, Murray Fromson was a friend of mine in Vietnam 

and recently Vietnam war correspondents, we have formed a little group on the Internet 

called the “Vietnam Old Hacks Group.” And my God, we exchange two or three discussions everyday and anything that happens—McNamara dies, there’s a hundred e-mails 

discussing it. When Cronkite died, everybody had a Cronkite story. And my friend, Murray 

Fromson, who is Professor of Journalism at Stanford now, wrote a two-page letter describing Cronkite’s last evening and the quote given to him by General Creighton Abrams that 

I quoted. In many ways, Cronkite paraphrased and replayed exactly what Abrams had 

said, but Murray didn’t expand on it any further. His source for that story was Ernie Leiser 

who was Cronkite’s producer of that story, who was responsible for writing the script with 

the input and veto power of Walter. Murray got that story from Leiser in 2002, just a few 

months before Ernie died. But I intend to follow up with Murray and see if he has any more 

details of what Leiser told him about that evening. 

Audience Member

Bill, this is Chuck de Caro. I’m a former CNN specialist and like my older friend, Don, 

there, we’re both friends of Peter Arnett. I served or I reported for Peter in Grenada. I have 

a point of contention about what you said about my friend, Peter, and I have to—I don’t 

always agree with you, but I have to stick up for a friend. You said that this dislike of the 

politics of Vietnam led him to do the story—is that what I heard you say?

Mr. Hammond

It’s my surmise that that’s what happened. I was there when they filmed it and they 

filmed the interviews in the Center. And I saw how they did it and I sat with Peter for 21⁄2 

hours and briefed him and told him that his sources were very dubious, that Singlaub had 

an agenda and he had people to pay back, and God knows what he was using Peter for, but 

he should be very careful and that we had another historian, Dale Andrade there, who had 

researched a good piece of this thing and gave them a great interview, none of which was 

used. It’s not Peter, per se, it’s April Oliver who did it. But Peter knew better. He was there. 

Audience Member

I understand. But to hang everything on Peter, I don’t think is fair.

Mr. Hammond

It’s just that I didn’t have enough time to really go into it.

Audience Member

It’s another bigger thing there, the networks, the unification of Time-Warner with 

CNN. As you recall, everybody fails to recall that Time Magazine did a cover story because 

they wanted to do a cooperative thing between Time-Warner and CNN and Time and it 

was huge. Let me underscore that. Huge management pressure and huge misjudgments by 
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Questions and Answers

CNN staff. Leaving Oliver in charge of this and her deputy, whose name escapes me right 

now.

Mr. Hammond

Jack Smith.

Audience Member

Peter had a sin in this because he didn’t check everything as carefully as he should 

have. But to blame everything on my friend, Peter, is not . . .

Mr. Hammond

No, no, no. It was not that. That was not the thing. But I think he was disposed to 

believe the worst. I know him, and I’ve known Peter for years. 

Audience Member

With respect to the attack on Saigon, it is my opinion that US Army General Fred 

Weyand had sniffed this thing out some hours before, 24 to 36 hours before ballpark, and 

had some suspicion that something was amiss and in fact caused much of his forces to be 

redeployed and pretty well intercepted the attack. What does your source have to say, or 

sources, have to say about that, about the decision of when?

Mr. Hammond

If you look at the December issue of Army History, that’s the Center’s quarterly bulletin. It’s on the Center of Military History’s Web site. You will see an article in there by me 

in which there is a couple of pages that look like they’re from Weyand’s memoirs, that he 

gave to Barry Zorthian and that Barry Zorthian gave to me. And mine’s quite old now. But 

he permitted us to use it. In these pages he says that he sat down with Walter Cronkite and 

briefed him on everything they knew before the Tet Offensive. They knew the date, they 

knew the name of the offensive, and they knew pretty much what was going to happen in 

Saigon. He had briefed Westmoreland. They had set it all up and had laid the whole thing 

out. Westmoreland told him to brief Cronkite on the whole deal, which he did at length. At 

the conclusion, according to his memoirs, Cronkite said to him, “That’s all well and good, 

sir, and I appreciate the briefing and everything, but I probably won’t use any of this. I’m 

going to put an end to this war. I’ve been up in Khe San, I’ve been at Hue, I’ve been in all 

these places and I’ve seen all the civilian casualties and I want to end this.” That was what 

he said, and he didn’t use anything Weyand gave him and Weyand was naturally a little 

put off. But that wouldn’t mesh very well with what Don is saying. In fact, he may have 

had a stronger source—Abrams had a lot of weight. Now, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the 

Fromson thing, so I can’t judge it. But I have seen Weyand’s memoirs, and it’s in that. I use 

that in that article and it lays it out. I try to suggest in there that he’s not obligated to use 

that information. He is his own person and if he has another point that he thinks is more 

important as a journalist, he has every right to write it.

Mr. North

General Weyand was really a very frank and open officer. We respected him greatly. 

Just before Tet, I can remember going down to his headquarters in Can Tho, and he leveled 
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with us completely. He told us he was going to move 30 battalions closer to Saigon to 

defend Saigon against what he truly expected was going to happen. Of course, we could 

not report on future troop movements, but it brought us into the picture and we set our 

own schedules accordingly. I moved my family out of Saigon to Kuala Lumpur and we 

knuckled down. Our R&Rs were all canceled, all on General Weyand’s briefing and his 

frankness with us. General Westmoreland, of course, was not as frank, and in November 

of ’68 in Washington with a small group of correspondents, Westmoreland told us that he 

considered it now a big mistake that he had not leveled with us at that time about what he 

expected at Tet.

Lieutenant Colonel Farquhar

Any other questions? If there are no other questions, gentlemen, I’d like to give you a 

small gift, a token, from the Combat Studies Institute: Three Centuries of Service: A Brief 

History of Fort Leavenworth. A big hand for these gentlemen please.
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Day 2—Featured Speaker

Mr. John Burns

New York Times

(Transcript of Presentation)

Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be back here. I was here a couple of years ago as a 

guest of General Petraeus. On my way here, I was reading or rather rereading a biography of General Patton who spent some time here, as I’m sure you all know, in 1923. And 

I thought you might be interested to know what he had to say about Leavenworth. He 

brought his polo ponies and then he discovered that nobody else had any so he brought 

in a second string of polo ponies so that he could have matches. And here’s what he said. 

“I don’t think much of the place.” I wonder how much of this will strike any resonance 

with you. “All the men have a haunted look and all lie heavily about 75 percent claiming 

to have good marks while having bad and 25 percent claiming to be getting zeroes when 

they’re really at the top. To add to the joys of the prospect, there are three large penitentiaries in view at all times, also a lunatic asylum. Still, as one must go and as many fools 

have survived it, I suppose I will. Most of the men are fat,”—I don’t recognize that, I have 

to say—“and dressed badly. All of them play golf??? A hell of a game for heroes.” Well, 

I know from my past experience here and the last 12 hours that much of that has changed 

and changed for the better. I’m pretty sure General Patton would not have been pleased to 

see the likes of me being invited, least of all to address a distinguished audience such as 

yourself. I only hope that I won’t damage the career of General Caldwell who was a widely 

admired and popular command spokesman in Iraq.

That falls into the category, as we say in England, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t 

he?,” but it’s actually true. He performed that task, which is one of the least rewarding I 

would think, and probably one of the least sought after general officer’s assignments in the 

US Army, with great candor, fairness, openness, and made our lives—and I speak not just 

for the New York Times, but for many of the journalists in Baghdad at the time—a great 

deal easier. So I’m grateful to him and I hope that I, as I say, that I don’t hold him below the 

water line by making—how much damage am I doing by saying this, by the way, General?

I feel it’s a little bit upside down here. I should be up there and you guys should be 

down here. It’s not the most natural place in the world for journalists to be addressing an 

audience like this. It’s somewhat uncomfortable, especially as I look around the audience 

and I see so many of you in military uniform and know well that most of you will have 

done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, I have already met one officer here this morning who has done 42 months in Iraq. I know something about that myself having spent a 

long time there. I know the strain it places on families and you, as I am now, relieved and 

based in London, which I can’t afford. I know that for you it’s altogether likely that you 

will go back there. Last time I was here, I was taken for a visit to the two cemeteries, the 

large one, the Cemetery of Honor, and then the one I believe overlooking the river where 

people exited this world after spending time as prisoners, including the German prisoners. 
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But to speak of the main cemetery, it was extremely moving and is a reminder, going back 

to I think before the Civil War, of the tremendous price that all of you have to be prepared 

to pay to defend your country. And I am honored and a little bit awed to be in a position of 

standing here talking to you today.

We’re here to talk about media and war. Ours is not a relationship made in heaven. 

It’s not a marriage. Nothing as fraught as that. But we are tied together in our different 

roles and the great enterprises that determine the fate of nations, especially of this great 

nation. We’re not enemies, but we’re not exactly allies either. We are thrown together. We 

cannot cover the wars without your support. Indeed, we can’t even get to the wars, to the 

front lines, without embeds, HMMWVs, Black Hawks, MREs, and the brave young men 

who protect us. On the other hand, you cannot maintain the support you need here at home 

without our telling your story, and we may hope fairly and comprehensively. There’s plenty 

of potential for grief in this relationship; plenty of potential for it to turn bad. There are 

officers and soldiers who see us as the enemy within, to be carefully watched and channeled, to be kept away from the hard truths. I know where they come from because my own 

father was an officer, indeed an officer of general rank in the Royal Air Force, World War 

II fighter pilot, who stayed on for a 40-year career. To his dying day, he regarded what we 

journalists do as the devil’s work. I think he felt a little bit easier when I washed up on the 

shores of the New York Times, which even he could recognize was a little bit different from 

the kind of Fleet Street newspapers that made him feel so uncomfortable. He used to say 

of them—let’s see if I can get this right—it was commonly said at the time by people like 

him: “You believe only half of what you see,” meaning the photographs, “and none of what 

you read.” So, he was unreconciled to what I do for a living.

In the US Army, there are people who take a similar view, and indeed, among my colleagues, there’s a kind of equal and opposite, and I’m very glad to say minority view, a 

kind of—if I can put it this way—post-Vietnam, post-Watergate instinct to think that governments and armies, in particular the US Government and Army, are by nature up to no 

good. That we are appointed unto God or under our editors to keep watch on you and catch 

you out—prosecutorial journalism. I don’t want to dismiss entirely that view. Investigative 

journalism, watchful journalism, holding public officials and officers and soldiers in the 

US Army to account is of course a good and essential thing in a democracy. But the attitude 

I’ve described is fortunately, I think, a marginal one, a minority one. It’s not, at least in my 

experience, the prevailing attitude among journalists in my generation any more than my 

father’s attitude any longer represents the attitudes that we’ve come to expect in our dealings with the US Army.

The fact that I am here today speaks, I think, for the fact that we’ve moved beyond 

those stereotypes. Although it’s also possible, I suppose, that you could regard my presence 

here as, what I learned to call when I was in China during the cultural revolution, “education by negative example.” I first learned that phrase when Lin Biao appointed heir to Mao 

Tse Tung attempted to overthrow Mao and fled the country in an aircraft, which was short 

on fuel and crashed in the Mongolian Desert. The bookshelves at the time were filled with 

the works of Lin Biao. The Chinese, ever practical, you might think would just dump the 

books in the closest dumpster. But not the Chinese. They simply overnight printed little 
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wrappers that went on the front of these millions of books, which said, “Sold at half price 

for education by negative example.” So for good or ill, I hope that what I say to you today 

will be of some educational value.

The 8 years since 9/11 have been a learning curve for all of us and I think a curve 

that has trended upward. To speak of my own experiences of that span of time, I went to 

Afghanistan very shortly after 9/11 and my first experiences with the US Army were not 

that encouraging just shortly after the Army moved in in force. There was an occasion, I 

had been up to Anaconda, the Battle of Anaconda, which I’m sure will be familiar to some 

of you. Indeed, some of you may have actually been there. And come to the conclusion 

from walking those mountainsides myself that the officially claimed death toll among the 

Taliban was improbable. I went back to Bagram and said I was—what do you call it? A 

non-embedded? Somebody’s writing about it. Remind me of the phrase. Unilateral. Thank 

you very much. Unilateral. In fact, I came closer that day than I have ever done before or 

since to kissing my backside goodbye. I was at the entrance to the valley in which the battle 

was fought when a swarm of Apaches came up the Valley and I was in a Land Cruiser with 

Afghans dressed indistinguishable from Taliban. And at the last moment, the Apaches, 

three of them, broke their course 45 degrees to the right and headed straight for us and did 

that ominous thing you see with attack helicopters when the nose goes down. I had just 

enough time to tell my Afghan companions to spread out, put their hands in the air, which I 

did too, and wait for the missile we thought, which never came. Two days later I was back 

at Bagram, and they said, “This chap here would like to talk to you.” He was one of the 

attack helicopter pilots who said, “You were dead men walking, but we were looking at 

you, and you didn’t look like a Taliban.” I think it was a reference—I think it was a reference to this, which by the way, might be a good excuse.

I got a question on our war blog the other day, the New York Times war blog. A lot of 

interesting—300 to 400 interesting questions. But question 57 was the one that I liked best. 

It was, “What’s with the crazy hair?” I haven’t answered that one yet, but I’ll get around 

to it.

Back at Bagram, I asked—forgive me, he went on to be Commandant at West Point, 

the general, the commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division? Sorry?—Hagenbeck. 

During that, it was after a medal ceremony in a hangar, and I asked him about the body 

count. But before he had a chance to answer, a staff sergeant stepped forward, and he 

stepped straight out of “Full Metal Jacket.” I’m sure everybody here knows that sequence 

in “Full Metal Jacket.” He was about this high to me and he had a cap on, which I couldn’t 

actually see his eyes, and he was addressing me as if I was on a parade route. He was using 

pretty rich language, the gist of which was, “If you ever ask another question like that of 

the general,” and this was sprinkled quite liberally with the f-word, he said, “I’m going to 

shoot your —— head off.” That was the low point and I—you know, I just sort of apologized and pulled back. I never did learn what General Hagenbeck thought of that. That was 

an exceptional experience. The rest of my experiences have been in a continuing onward 

and, as I said, upward curve.

We went through a period initially in Iraq of, on the part of the US military in dealing 

with us, of weariness, and I would say of some illusionism. I think that’s not any longer 
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in dispute. I don’t condemn that. That’s not my business to condemn. I think it was an 

extremely difficult time. US Army, as we know with great help from you folks here at Fort 

Leavenworth, was on a headlong sprint to redevise counterinsurgency warfare strategies 

and to be dealing with a press that was chronicling the chaos and confusion at the time 

couldn’t have been very easy. But the US Army and I think of this as a deeply embedded 

feature in the American character, in my experience, the US Army is extraordinarily good 

at reinventing itself. We can only stand in awe, frankly, of how quickly against the sweep 

of time the Army did reinvent itself and move from illusionism to realism. As I date that, 

one of the most significant moments involved your commander here. He won’t probably 

remember this. There had been a long trend toward realism eased by the fact that you guys 

were learning how to fight the insurgency in Iraq. But things were very fraught still in the 

fall of 2006 with the approach of the mid-term elections when the command spokesman, 

then Major General William Caldwell IV—and by the way, I had to fight with the New York 

Times to get the “IV” in. I’m not quite sure why. I think II and III were okay by our style 

book, but the IV was a bit of a reach—held a news briefing—and he could help me here, 

I should have looked this up in our archives—in which he used a word, which he told me 

later he and his staff officers had spent a long time thinking about. I think it was “dispiriting.” General, was that the word?

General Caldwell

Disheartening.

Mr. Burns

Disheartening. My editors, I spotted this—and of course you have to put this in the 

context of the fact that we were at that time probably only 3 weeks away from the midterms and led the paper with this. We went back and forth in the kind of passing of exactly 

what was meant by this. Their conclusion, not wrong as it turned out as some of those 

involved told me later, was that this was by no chance that this had been said, that the Army 

wanted a message to go out. Obviously, the command spokesman was not going to get up 

and say what some officers have said since, which was that there was an apprehension 

that the war was on the way to being lost. But within the realms of what was possible for 

a command spokesman to say, it was an extraordinarily candid statement and I would say 

in the history of that war an iconic moment. Thankfully, my editors spotted it as such and 

led the paper with it.

My own experiences of dealing with the US military, personal experiences in Iraq, was 

as far removed from that moment with the staff sergeant at Bagram as they could possibly 

be. First of all, I was a unilateral in the sense that I was in Baghdad for the last 9 months 

under Saddam. I’ve often said since then when people say, “Well, that was a brave thing 

to be doing, to be writing about how many people Saddam was killing from Baghdad.” 

Actually, I had a suit of armor on because I was a correspondent of the New York Times

and he was, as we know now, very keen to avoid war by all means. Thus, among other 

things, the deliberate obfuscation about weapons of mass destruction. The fact that got lost 

in the fog of the discussion about weapons of mass destruction is that Saddam wanted us 

to believe that he did and he had a track record of a very long time as you guys all know, 
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which lent great credence to the idea that he did have them. Of course, people now say that 

there was deliberate obfuscation and rewriting of the record on that, for all I know there may 

have been at some length, it’s a big issue in British politics because of the so-called dossier. 

But that fact, that Saddam was keen to persuade us that he had them has been lost sight of. I 

experienced it with the weapons inspectors in Iraq, leaving the UN headquarters at 6:00 a.m. 

and heading off ludicrously first north, then west, then east, then south to try and shake off 

pursuers. Of course, sooner or later, you have to take a dead reckoning for your target and 

the moment that that was settled on, you could see the Iraq guys—and we’re all traveling at 

120 miles an hour down rain-slicked highways—getting on their radios to say, “Okay, the 

target is” wherever it was. Then we’d arrive at the gates and somebody would be there saying, “Sorry, the general is not here,” and you’d see people coming out of the doors of these 

institutions carrying loads of documents and getting into cars and driving out the back gate. 

You know, it was not hard from that to conclude that Saddam had something to hide. I mean, 

this is a little bit irrelevant to the subject we’re discussing here, save that I’m not sure the 

media have done an adequate job in putting that whole issue in context.

In any event, I was a correspondent there and I felt I had a suit of armor. He wasn’t 

going to knock me on the head as long as there was a chance of avoiding war. Because distress for a New York Times correspondent is not likely to weigh very heavily, it also means 

nothing in the calculations of the people in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State 

Department. So I thought I was safe and I could do what I liked. The Information Minister 

used to mock me at news conferences, saying, “Ha,” when I asked a question, “the bravest man in Iraq.” He didn’t mean that at all. What he meant was, “It’s easy for you now to 

get up and ask these questions about our murderous president, and you go on doing that 

until we’ve decided that we don’t have to—we have no reason any longer to protect you. 

Then we’ll see how brave you are.” Well, that moment came, and it came when Saddam 

decided to defy the 72-hour notice of eviction that was given by President Bush. You 

know, “You and your sons have got to leave.” Then it became obvious there was going to 

be a war. In fact, the war came very quickly, quicker than we thought. It was, I recall, at 

dawn on 19 March in Baghdad, the airstrike against the Dora Farm complex. We were very 

exposed. In fact, I assumed they’d come for me, and they did come for me in the middle 

of the night. It’s all kind of B movie stuff. They said they were, it sounds ridiculous now, 

they were going to take me somewhere from which I would not return. Meaning, Abu 

Ghraib. The nasty little thug who made this threat, I said to him—part of this was true, 

much of it was invented—“Your name,” I knew this guy. He was an assistant director or 

something who had been assigned to keep watch on me. I can’t remember his name now. 

It’s the name of one of the southern provinces of Iraq. Sunni from the southern provinces. 

Anyway, doesn’t matter. I said, “Your name is known in the United States and it’s known 

personally to President Bush.” Invention, of course. “If I disappear, the US military bearing 

down on Baghdad, they’ll come for you and you’ll be one of the first to be put in front of a 

firing squad.” Invention. He said, “You’re threatening me.” I said, “Yeah, I’m threatening 

you just as you’re threatening me.” He then scurried away to consult with his superiors, 

and I told the five thugs who were left that they had probably a few minutes only to decide 

what they were going to do and that there was a lot of money in the room, a lot of money 
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in cash, actually hidden in the air conditioning duct. I said, “If you wait for him to come 

back, that will be his money. If you let me out of the door now, it’s your money.” There was 

a quick hurried discussion. They walked outside and I ran through the door and down the 

staircase and out into Baghdad. Frankly, I was pretty frightened. I was on the run for quite 

a long time, listening to shortwave radio, for the advance of the US forces on Baghdad, and 

I became deeply invested, as we are not supposed to be, in the success of the US Army. We 

all should be. Every battle is very personal to me.

Then the 3d ID took the airport. The bad guys all ran away from the hotel. I was hiding 

very closely to the hotel complex and I decided I could reappear. I think it was on the morning of April the 9th, maybe the 8th. The 3d ID had already arrived in what became known 

as the Green Zone, the Republican Palace. I was comfortable having had very little opposition, and some of the soldiers had taken their boots off and were sitting on the end of a pier 

dangling their feet in the water. We could see this from the Palestine Hotel which, those of 

you who served in Iraq know, is just 800 or 1,000 yards from the Republican Palace. We 

got our last briefing from the aforementioned information minister, otherwise known as 

Baghdad Bob. In England, he was known as Comical Ollie. Comical Ollie stood, as I stand 

now, with the river behind him on a mezzanine roof, telling us that the US Army was in fast 

retreat, that the American empire was collapsing, and that thousands of US troops had died 

on the walls of Baghdad. I said to him, “Minister, I think if you turned around and looked 

over your shoulder, you’ll see that at least some soldiers of the US Army have gotten to the 

heart of the city. They’re quite visible.” He had Coke bottle specs, he didn’t look over his 

shoulder, he just looked at me with a sort of withering pity, and he said, “Mr. Fisher”—they 

called me by my middle name as they often do in the Middle East—“Mr. Fisher,” he said, 

“I am here to tell you that you are too far from reality.”

In fact, I was too far from his reality. It was kind of a metaphorical, a strong metaphor for where they’ve got themselves to. They have lived for so long in a world where 

acknowledgment of truth was dangerous that they’d invented their own truth, their own 

virtual world. So in his virtual world, the 3d ID was not across the river. It was in retreat. 

I think he somehow—it’s an extraordinary thing, which having lived 25 or 30 years in 

authoritarian countries, including countries of the left and the right, Communist countries, 

apartheid in South Africa, the phenomenon that you often see, this ability of people under 

duress to believe what they want to believe. So that, I got a great attachment for the US 

Army in that period, and if I had had flowers to throw, I would have been among those 

who threw them. Not at the Army, I’d have to say, because we were on the east bank of 

the river, but the Marines when they reached Canal Expressway. I abandoned all pretense 

of impartiality because the first Marine commander I met asked me for a briefing on how 

many troops there were, Iraqi troops, between the Canal Expressway and the river. We had 

walked all the way to the Canal Expressway and the truth was there was nothing. There was 

nobody there. Now, according to the New York Times rules, of course, and by the standard 

rules of journalism, I should have done no such thing. I should have said, “We’re impartial 

here. We have to cover the war, we’re not here to aid you.” But I have to say, I was so keen 

for those Marines to reach the Palestine Hotel and seal the deal on my own behalf as well 

as Iraq’s.
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I was very fortunate in that I was the New York Times bureau chief, so I did what all 

the other reporters did and I spent probably more time than many of them with senior commanders. This also, I think, speaks for how far we’ve moved in managing this awkward 

relationship between you and us. All three commanders in my time, Generals Sanchez, 

Casey, and Petraeus, I was given extraordinary access to. I used to see General Caldwell 

regularly, as much as once a week in his office, and was given very candid briefings. When 

I traveled with the generals, I still can hardly believe this. In every case, I was allowed to 

attend, sometimes these were 2-day trips on Black Hawks. All over the country. I was able 

to attend almost all, not all, but almost all the meetings, including intelligence briefings. 

All they ever asked of me was—to use the phrase that General Petraeus used to use when 

something sensitive would come up—“Take it easy on us here.” This was his standard 

phrase: “Take it easy on us.” I knew what that meant. By the way, it’s not difficult to determine in any given circumstance what’s reportable and what’s not reportable.

It’s probably worthwhile to take a minute here to talk about the “on the record, off the 

record” issue, which I’ve always felt is an entirely inadequate measure on the occasions 

when disputes arise. Our rule, of course, the standing rule is, “Did they say they were off 

the record?” If they didn’t, they’re on the record. I’ve argued for probably not 30 years 

but certainly 20 years, that that’s an entirely inadequate measure. Why? Because by the 

nature of the circumstances in which disputes arise over this, it’s very often the case that 

the reporter and the soldier, official, general have developed a personal relationship. You 

travel for 2 days in a Black Hawk together, you’ve eaten MREs together, you’ve bunked 

down together. This generates a kind of climate of trust. So the real question is, to my mind, 

when you were told this, when this was said, did the people saying it, did the individual 

saying it have any reasonable expectation that they would end up being quoted in the New 

York Times? Very often the answer to that question is “No, they didn’t.” Now, there are circumstances in which the information divulged—very, very few that I can think of—would 

be of such overwhelming importance. Even then, it’s not necessary usually to name the 

individual concerned. But you can, there are exceptions to every rule. But in my view, it’s 

almost always very clear whether or not it’s fair to quote somebody in circumstances like 

that. I think it’s a distinction that’s worth pointing out and it might even be worth making 

this explicit when you deal with reporters and saying, “I can’t spend my whole time with 

you saying, ‘on the record, off the record.’ What I’m going to say to you is that I’m going 

to trust you.” (You wouldn’t do that, of course, unless you’d already made a judgment as 

to character and professionalism of the individual concerned.) “But you’re going to hear 

and see things that we do not expect to see in the paper or television screen. We’re going 

to trust you. We hope that you’ll honor that trust.” That’s a big leap to take. You should be 

aware that there’s a great risk involved when you develop that level of trust. You’ll enter 

into a kind of no man’s land where the reporter can say, “But you never said it was off the 

record.” 

Well, I don’t need to go on too long about this, but I had a very happy relationship with 

those commanders. I’ll give you an example. One of those commanders—I was on a long 

Black Hawk ride with him at one point and I had a headset on, and he said, looking out 

of the window on the city below, he said, “I must have been crazy not to have taken that 
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civilian job.” It could have been said and it probably was said half ironically. I’m pretty 

sure the commander concerned was not sorry not to have taken the civilian job, but you can 

imagine how destructive it would have been to have quoted that at a critical stage of the 

war. It was perfectly, if you apply the test I’ve just suggested, clear that there was no intent 

for that ever to be quoted. It’s not difficult for the reporter to determine where that moment 

lies. Is it legit or is it not legit? I’m sorry to go on about this, but I feel very strongly about 

that point, and I feel that I was dealt with with great respect.

I have to tell you one story because it came up last night. I was waiting at O’Hare after 

21⁄2 hours clearing through immigration. I found a wonderful thing at an airport newsstand, 

which is the $10 pair of American spectacles. What’s that got to do with my time in Iraq? 

Toward the end of my time, I went on a trip with General Petraeus, who was on his third 

tour—come from here as commander. We stopped to refuel in the desert. We got out of the 

helicopter and I’d been talking to him and taking notes and I had a very expensive pair, 

daresay 500 pounds worth, of spectacles, and as we ducked under the rotor blades to get 

in that sort of little area marked by white stones where you stand to wait and the CG, of 

course, is in his own little circle of white stones 20 yards away. My spectacles were blown 

off and bounded out into the desert. I went to go and get them and the load master who 

was standing there gestured saying, “no, no, no,” and ushered me back into the helicopter, 

ahead of course of General Petraeus, and we took off. As we took off, I said to him, “I 

just left a 500 pound pair of spectacles down there in the desert.” He said, “What do you 

mean?” So I told him the story. He gets on that thing and talks to the pilot and says, “Get 

on to them and tell them to pick up those spectacles and send them to my office.” About a 

week later, I got a call from General Petraeus’ executive officer who said, “We’ve got your 

spectacles. Could you send somebody out to pick them up?” They duly arrived, smashed 

into about 400 pieces of plastic. I can only imagine that somebody had driven a HMMWV 

over them. Whether this was somebody who didn’t like the press or it was just bad luck, I 

don’t know.

How are we doing for time? Twenty-five past. I think we’re good ‘til 10, am I right? 

Because it’s time for me, surely it will be time for me to stop banging on, as my wife 

would say, and ask if you have anything to shout back at me. You know, it’s a good thing 

to travel with your wife, as I’m sure many of you would know who have had to address a 

public audience because mine at least—and mine fortunately just came back from some 

time in Afghanistan where she has been trying to sort out things in our bureau there—she’s 

in the hospital at the moment, so she can’t be here. She’s got some bug, virulent bug in 

Afghanistan. A lesson learned by the way, that you guys don’t need because you were 

traveling on your US military transport to Bagram, don’t fly on Afghan aircraft if you can 

avoid it. And if you do, don’t eat the food. If she were here, she’d be doing this. She’d be 

drawing her finger across her throat.

When I was here last time, I was terribly impressed at the Lessons Learned Center 

here. I’ve learned a lot. I’d like to think I’ve learned a lot from my interaction with the US 

Army in terms of the way to look at, understand, and resolve problems. I’m not sure—it’s 

something I tended to say to reporters. I now say to my kids at home. I heard repeatedly 

senior officers talking to troops in the field, to field commanders, saying—and I’m not sure 
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whether the word is tier or dimension, but don’t just make your decisions on the one, the 

first dimensional, the first tier basis. Think of the second and third tier. Typical example—

insurgent is planting a bomb, you see them with the Predator, they make a run when they 

see the Predator for the closest house. The Predator fires a hellfire missile and as I heard 

said on numerous occasions, “Now you’ve got rid of two enemies, but you may have created another 20.” Of course, it’s just plain common sense. But I think you guys are pretty 

good at common sense. I think you are hardened by extreme experience into refining the 

ways in which to deal with these problems. That was one lesson that I learned.

The idea of learning in a systematized way from your mistakes is something that many 

institutions in private life, indeed many families, could also do well to learn. I think it’s 

the case, if I recall correctly from my last trip here, that if there is, for example, an IED 

[improvised explosive device] in which people are injured or killed, in as little as 24 hours, 

the system works so that the lessons to be learned from that are back down in the field at 

the platoon level—I found that very impressive.

I’m going to see if I can summarize one or two lessons that can be learned from the 

media/military relationship over the last few years. And this, you’ll forgive me, my own 

mother now long gone used to caution me against—a strange English phrase, I don’t even 

know where it comes from—“don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.” I’m not quite 

sure why you’d want to teach your grandmother to suck eggs, but in any event, I’m going 

to say some things that are probably blindingly obvious to those of you who have dealt 

with the media.

Be watchful, as you certainly will be, in dealing with reporters and make your own 

assessment of their reputation, their fairness, and their intent. Specifically, I think it’s perfectly fair, in fact probably imperative from your point of view, to determine in dealing 

with a reporter what he or she is about. What’s the story? Now, very often we don’t know 

what the story is. We arrive and we go looking for the story. The story presents itself. But 

there are occasions when there is a specific story. And I think just as we expect you to be 

candid and straight with us, I think it’s fair for you to expect us to be candid and straight 

with you, because there’s a danger otherwise and there may be some of you here who have 

had this experience of being put in a frame that you never thought you’d be put into. You 

know, a question that sounds unweighted can take on a whole new momentum and import 

once you understand what the frame is. I won’t delay you by giving examples of this, but 

I’m sure you can think of them for yourself. I think it’s fair for you to say to a reporter, 

“You know, what is it that you’re interested in here?” So that you know what you’re dealing with. And I do think it’s incumbent. There are occasions, of course, where reporters can 

legitimately be discreet about that. But we’re not in my view in the clandestine business. 

We’re not certainly in the deceit business, and I think it’s good, as I say, imperative that you 

should ask people what’s their intent.

I have to at this point enter a kind of, if you will, mea culpa because the last trip embed 

that I made and Colonel Edmonds and I were discussing this, he was at Tikrit in the summer of 2007 when I asked for an embed with MND [Multi-National Division] North. Of 

course I was asked, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Well, I want to talk about what’s 

going on in the north and I also want 1 day to myself. I need to be able to tell the story from 
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both sides and I’d like to get into Tikrit and have some time by myself.” At the time, it was 

not clear because the US Army doesn’t like to use its Black Hawk helicopters as taxis. So it 

followed from that that there was some unease about the habit of embedding and then disembedding and re-embedding. So I had to find my way past this. My real purpose, beyond 

reporting on MND North, was I wanted to get as nobody else had to the site of Saddam 

Hussein’s grave at the town of Awja just southeast, about 5 miles, of Tikrit. Problem was 

that it was a heavily insurgent infested area so there were certain risks even if I could get 

the US Army to release me. There were certain risks that I had to take to do this. It wasn’t 

wise to commit yourself to the trust of those guys. I dealt with Saddam Hussein’s tribe and I 

felt, given that it was Saddam, his place of burial, the tribal leader had said they would take 

me there. I’d cleared that hurdle and then I had to get myself, if you will, free of entanglement with the US Army for a few hours. And on the morning it was agreed that they would 

do this. In fact, Colonel Edmonds was a party to arranging this. We gathered three or four 

HMMWVs for the briefing by the platoon commander and there was a moment when I 

thought I’d—by this time, it was evident to me that the 15 kilometer drive down to Tikrit 

was one of the most dangerous stretches, still at that point, of roadway in Iraq. I assumed 

that there was a daily shuttle; there wasn’t. It was clear during the briefing that the only 

reason these soldiers were taking this trip was to take me and a photographer to Tikrit for 

a venture about which I had not been candid.

Looking back on it, as you’ll understand from the sequel to this story, I should have 

done what was my instinct to do that morning at 6:00 a.m. and say, “I don’t think I can ask 

10, 12, 14 soldiers of the US Army to take a deadly risk just so that I can get a front page 

story.” I think it’s wrong. So I’m going to take this occasion publicly to say I regret not 

having done that.

We got to Tikrit. There was some awkwardness on the part of the captain when we 

arrived at the governor’s offices to leave. He said I could use his radio to talk to probably 

Colonel Edmonds. Said, “Okay. Be it on your head.” So they left, we got into a vehicle, we 

were driven across town and put in other vehicles and then headed at great speed down the 

road to Awja where we were taken in to see the grave of Saddam Hussein. A problem arose 

that I hadn’t anticipated, which was that insurgent TV was there. They asked me to sign the 

visitor’s book, and I read through this. They had a little desk, and I read through it. I don’t 

read Arabic, but I could read some of the stuff that was in English and I had an interpreter. 

The “Oh Eagle of the Arabs, protect us,” and so on and so forth. I thought, “What the hell 

am I going to write in this book that is true to the New York Times’ intent and still going 

to get me out of here.” Fortunately, there must have been an angel sitting on my shoulder, 

because it came to me that there were four words that would meet the requirement. I just 

wrote, “A place in history.” This was duly translated to the enormous delight of all the 

sheiks and others standing around and there was applause. I had recognized the place that 

Saddam Hussein had taken in history.

Taken back to Tikrit and then finally got back, under my own steam, to the gates of 

Captain Spiker where my first appointment on readmission to the base was an interview 

with General Mixon, commanding officer. I was taken into his office and I was, at this 

point, quite pleased with myself. I had pulled it off—I knew I had a page one story. Walked 
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Burns

into his office and he came and said, “Oh, I saw you on TV.” He said, “Nice to meet you. 

How did you enjoy your trip to Awja?” I said, “How the hell did you know that?” “Oh,” he 

said, “Where else could you possibly have wanted to go?” Right? It wasn’t hard to figure 

out. He said, “We kept a watch on you.” I said, “How did you do that?” He said, “Well, 

we have our means.” I said, “You mean, what would you have done?” He said, “Well, just 

leave that to history. You got back safely.” Lesson learned? Be straight, especially when 

you’re asking the Army as I was to take risks with young soldiers’ lives. Be straight. I failed 

on that occasion. I like to think it wasn’t too often that I did fail the standard. It all worked 

out okay. Nobody got hurt. I got back. But it’s well for us to remember that you guys are at 

least as smart and probably a lot smarter than many of us are and we have our own obligations too in terms of candor.

I’d like to talk a little bit about embeds. We were discussing this over coffee before 

I came in here. Embeds are inevitable and they’re a tremendous opportunity, both for the 

military and for ourselves. I’ve been very uncomfortable in recent years with the altogether too frequent suggestion that embeds were invented in the age of Bush, Cheney, and 

Rumsfeld as a means of restricting, containing, capturing, and misleading the journalists. 

You know, they may sometimes be for all I know. But it’s not been my experience. Indeed, 

the embed is inevitable. When William Howard Russell went to the Crimean War, I think 

he’s regarded as the first of the real war correspondents. There are, no doubt, people who 

covered the Revolutionary War in America who would disagree with that. But in any case, 

when he went there, wasn’t he embedded? Yes, of course, he was. Was Ernie Pyle, Edward 

R. Morrow, Walter Cronkite, and some people who lasted into my generation of journalism 

covering General Patton and others, were they not embedded? I think they were. They were 

wearing uniforms, and as I recall, they were given the honorary rank of major. And by the 

way, they were much more constrained either by their own conscience or by the nature of 

that war or by the absence of satellite telephones or by the prevailing culture than we are. In 

the Patton biography I mentioned as I opened my remarks, they tell a story of the slapping 

of the soldier in the tent, actually two slappings of soldiers in a tent in Sicily. There were 

some very accomplished reporters in that tent and others learned about it very quickly. The 

book tells us that some of those reporters went to see—I’ve forgotten who—they went to 

the commander in North Africa to describe what had happened. It was dealt with as an 

internal issue until Drew Pearson, who had for one reason or another conceived a great dislike and hostility for General Patton, more than 2 months and I think more like 3 months 

later wrote about it in Washington. That’s when it became a public issue.

So the notion that the embed was invented in our age for maligned purposes is to my 

mind absolutely ridiculous. How could we cover these wars if we can’t—if we don’t have 

your help to take us to them. It’s absolutely essential. You only have to look at the history 

of the very brave people who were so-called unilaterals during OIF-1 to see how dangerous 

that is. Some of them got killed. Some of those who were embedded got killed too. But we 

need you guys. We can’t cover these wars without your help, and I would say overwhelmingly the embeds work out well. As the move from illusionism to realism set in in Iraq, 

and I’m talking about the period from I would say certainly by mid-2005, embeds became 

much more frequent and I’m inclined to think, although I don’t know this for sure, that that 
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Featured Speaker

was because commanders wanted the story told. I don’t think they were happy with the 

notion that America did not know just how difficult this war was. So long live the embed. 

The issue is not whether or not we travel with you, it’s how we manage it on both sides. 

I’d like to close with, at the risk of sounding somewhat maudlin, taking this opportunity to say to you and through you to the US Army how greatly I, and I have to say in this 

respect, I don’t think that my colleagues in Baghdad would differ. Not the best of them. 

Certainly, not people like Dexter Filkins, Alissa Rubin, the ones I know best, in saying 

what a great institution the US Army is. I learned a lot from you guys and I’m inclined to 

think—and this is a new thought in the last 18 months—it’s not just that you protect this 

nation and that you confront problems of extraordinary difficulty with great courage, tenacity, flexibility, and intelligence. But I think that you are, and I don’t think that there would 

be many Americans who disagree with this, I think you’re guardians of something else and 

that is the enduring values of American society. We all know from the experiences of the 

last year, in particular the disaster of 2009, the economic disaster, about the excesses that 

have affected certain aspects of American life. I think that as the Chinese would say, “Out 

of all things good, something bad; and out of all things bad, something good.” I think we’re 

all going to be better off when we’ve worked through this for the lessons we will have 

learned from this. It seems to me if we want to look at where an institution, which perhaps 

more than any other has stood as an emblem of the enduring values that made this nation 

great. I can say this because I am not an American citizen as I found out at O’Hare airport yesterday—21⁄2 hours to clear immigration. This is a great nation. It didn’t happen by 

chance. It was made by men and women of extraordinary imagination and courage, practicality, decency, and compassion. Those are the values that I feel I encounter every day 

when I’m with the US Army. I thank you for that and for you as a collective, and especially 

those of you who will be heading back to the wars, I wish you well. Thank you very much.
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Day 2—Featured Speaker

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Mr. John Burns

New York Times

Audience Member

John, a few days ago in the Stars and Stripes, there was a story that the Pentagon was 

hiring a random group to vet us journalists and make an analysis of our backgrounds and 

our stories when we’re being embedded. On the outset, I don’t have a problem with that. 

I don’t have any stories that are written that I would try to hide from the military, but as a 

journalist, I’m uneasy about this and I wondered how you felt about it?

Mr. Burns

Gosh, you know, there’s a danger of mine when I tell you these things. I’m marking 

myself down as an old man, or as they say in England, an old codger. I learned some very 

valuable lessons from a reporter who to my mind was an icon of our profession, Kurt 

Schork. He’s an American Rhodes Scholar, former executive director of the MTA [Mass 

Transit Authority] in New York, who at the age of 40 turned himself into a reporter, and 

was killed in Sierra Leone—a war of no great consequence that is not much remembered. 

But Kurt Schork taught me a lesson that was invaluable: we are citizens first and journalists second, just as you are citizens first and soldiers second. But there are civic values 

that should inform what we do. This is an oblique answer to your question. But it seems 

to me that everything depends on, if you will, whether those values are operational in an 

enterprise of that kind. There’s nothing wrong with the Pentagon asking people to, if you 

will, take a look at what we write. We should be accountable. We’re a lot more accountable 

than we used to be because of the Internet. We should be accountable, but the people who 

contract with people like that have got to make sensible judgments. You know, this should 

not be a recriminatory exercise. It certainly shouldn’t be an exercise to choose only the 

Army’s friends. Imagine if that were the case. Imagine what would have happened to Sy 

Hersh. Imagine what would have happened to the reporters who covered Abu Ghraib, and I 

think everybody here would agree, or Haditha. I’m sure everybody here would accept that 

stories of that kind, while extremely damaging in the short term, were in the long term for 

the health of the US Armed Forces. That if these things are not written about, looked at by 

journalists—and I’ve lived in countries where they’re not—then the wheels come off. So 

it’s just a question of being reasonable by commanders taking a look. The question is not, 

“Is he our friend?” The question is, “Is he fair and responsible?” Right? And I would very 

much doubt if there would be a single person in this room, especially not those in uniform, 

who would want it any other way. You don’t want a craven press. Look what happened to 

the Soviet Union. They had a craven press. Leonid Breshnev, who I had the pleasure of 

covering for 5 years and attended his 75th birthday party through which he slept, he had a 
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Featured Speaker

craven press. Look at what happened to the institution he was running. There are dangers in 

that. Yes, there are dangers in it, but as long as the people appointed to positions of authority hold to the values that those uniforms represent, it seems to me that it’s manageable.

Audience Member

Mr. Burns, it’s my opinion that there’s been a decline in the ethical standards of reporters since the Vietnam era. As a bureau chief, do you . . . 

Mr. Burns

I’m having trouble seeing who’s asking the question.

Audience Member

I’m over here. Right side of the room to your left.

Mr. Burns

Oh there, sorry.

Audience Member

The decline of, or in my opinion, the decline of ethical standards and fairness and reasonable reporting seems to have declined since Vietnam. As a bureau chief, do you apply 

ethical standards to your correspondents? Do you have expectations of them as far as fair 

and reasonable reporting goes?

Mr. Burns

I do and my editors do, too. Look, we all make mistakes. The Army knows that. It’s 

had its own experiences of error, including grievous error, which did not define you as an 

institution. This happens with us, too. But yes, there are ethical standards and, of course, 

reporters, especially reporters who are new to situations of stress, who are looking to make 

careers in a hurry, that we sometimes have to remind them of the need for balance. And by 

the way, as a bureau chief, I was not, I was a kind of capture in this, but we have a whole 

system in New York. They say there are 14 pairs of eyes that pass over everything we 

write before it appears in the print edition. I think we’re having trouble making that true of 

the Web, for reasons you all understand, because of the demands of time. But yes, I think 

that—if I can answer your question in a general fashion. I think it’s incumbent on us who 

are holding others by the nature of what we do to a standard, to an ethical standard, to a 

moral standard, to a standard of decency and accountability, as I hope I’ve made clear in 

my remarks about other things. It’s perfectly right that we should be held to those standards 

ourselves, and I think that perhaps more than we have been. I think that we need to look at 

some of these issues. I’d like to think that the New York Times—and we might have some 

dispute here about this—but I’d like to think that we’re pretty good at this on the whole.

I work for people you would recognize as fundamentally decent people. I can tell you 

that I’ve been spending the last few days writing about the Lockerbie bomber, and that’s a 

complicated issue. It’s also an outrageous issue. I’m of Scots origin. I’ve seen the damage 

that people like Mr. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi can do. I’m deeply invested in the relationship between Britain and the United States, and I’ve found what happened last Thursday 
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Burns

afternoon deeply, deeply objectionable and offensive on a personal basis. Now, I think that 

found its way into what I was writing about. My editors, although they never made that 

explicit, they were on the phone. Some of these stories took hours to knock into shape. 

They weren’t happy when I talked about Colonel Gaddafi’s capricious mischief making. 

Actually got it into two editions before it was struck from the paper.

As to whether the standards have declined or not, I’m inclined to say not. I think there’s 

been an improvement in my time and there’s quite a lot of insistence on these issues at the

New York Times. It’s incumbent on us to look at these issues, and not to expect of others 

more than we are prepared to deliver ourselves. Yes, there were issues. Some of the officers 

present in this room know of one or two of those issues that I’m referring to where I, as 

bureau chief, even before the editors got involved, had to in effect insist on balance and 

fairness more than was immediately apparent. I don’t say that there was a willful headlong 

intent on any occasion to be unfair, but we have a potential. We walk around with a club 

in our hands, and we need to recognize that that club needs to be wielded with great care, 

because we have tremendous potential to inflict damage.

Just one example I’ll give you because we’re running out of time. I’ve always said 

to my colleagues that before you commit, press the buttons as we do now, a story to New 

York, take a look at it and see who’s going to be damaged by what you write and whether 

the damage is offset by any kind of countervailing social, political benefit. That’s a little bit 

preachy for most people, but at the margins it can be a useful standard. For example, it’s 

very often not necessary to mention people. When a soldier who’s standing at the scene of 

a suicide bombing and in a state of tremendous distress says something that you know perfectly well is going to have his commander angrier than hell, we don’t need to name him. 

The New York Times doesn’t like unattributed quotes, but they’re perfectly open if you can 

explain why the quote is unattributed. You can say this guy was in a state of great emotional 

stress when he said this, but if we print this he’s going to be up on a charges tomorrow. It’s 

not necessary. You can explain that. So yeah, we need to, what do they say? Beam, the mote 

and the beam. You need to look sometimes at the beam in our own eye.

Audience Member

Mr. Burns, this is something that kind of jives with your—since 2003, you are the primary reason I do not stop reading the New York Times.

Mr. Burns

That’s a kind of two-edged sword if you think about it. 

Audience Member

But your reporting was superb and certainly fair. You nailed it in what you wrote and 

I believe that you are totally in the tradition of William Howard Russell, Richard Harding 

Davis, Edward R. Morrow—you earned that. I’m not sure who’s going to be next. Now, 

bad part. What I’ve read in the New York Times in the last half dozen years or so, it’s a 

schizophrenic paper. It is still a schizophrenic paper. I would read your stories on the front 

page or inside and I felt I was getting an accurate picture. Your byline was good as gold. 

Then I would read the editorial and of course op-ed pages, and the editorial line seemed 
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Featured Speaker

utterly at odds with what Baghdad’s bureau was reporting. It was Frank Rich in particular 

that gave me pause. So it was hard to square the fact that the editors at the New York Times

are getting a first rate, firsthand picture, and then they’re indulging in fabulous fantasies 

that eventually boiled down to get Bush. It seemed the paper was part the New York Times

and part rattle. Did this ever trouble you?

Mr. Burns

Specifically relating to our editorials and our op-ed pages, no. I think there’s a firewall 

between us and them. As a matter of fact, there’s an understanding that we don’t talk to 

them. Sometimes I thought that was unhealthy, particularly when we ran editorials. I think 

there are exceptions to every rule. We ran editorials saying, “Out now before the surge.” I 

thought it might have been helpful if the people who wrote that had actually talked to us in 

the field about what the consequences of that might be. But the rule, the principle, the rule’s 

a good one. We are separate and we should be a smorgasbord of opinion, however difficult 

some of those opinions might be. And I grant you that it does sometimes look schizophrenic, but it’s better than what you have in the UK where in most newspapers there is no 

such firewall and the paper’s become highly politicized. I should tell you the first President 

Bush invited me to his library at Texas A&M 2 or 3 years ago to talk with General Franks, 

already retired then, and himself about the war. It was a very large audience; people who I 

think were mostly very wealthy people, who had come for dinner, donating to the library. 

A gentleman who actually had what we in England call a ten gallon hat—don’t know if 

that’s the right term—sat in the front row. Of course, it would be inventive to say he was 

chomping on a cigar. He was an extremely wealthy Texas oil man. This was being covered 

on C-Span. At the end of this, when questions came up, he got up and he said, “Mr. Burns,” 

he said—you’ll forgive me my appalling imitation of a Texas accent—he said, “Did I hear 

correctly that you are a correspondent for the New York Times?” This was after 2 hours. I 

said, “Yes, sir, I am.” He said, “I’m amazed.” I thought, what’s coming now? “How did 

you ever get a job at the New York Times?” I thought, this is pretty offensive. He paused for 

dramatic effect and said, “Because you ain’t an idiot liberal.”

Well, without editorial comment on whether idiot liberals are represented, underrepresented, or overrepresented in our business, what I realized immediately was that any 

answer I gave to that question, and there was no answer required, would likely put me 

in big trouble with my editors who I correctly guessed were probably watching this on 

C-Span.

I want to read you something I read in the paper on the plane here. It’s not got a lot to 

do with this, except it has to do with truth and I liked it and it made me laugh. It’s called 

“Shaggy Dog.” Here we go:

A man sees an advert for a talking dog in the paper. Goes around and says, 

“I’ve come up to talk to you about the talking dog.” “He’s in there,” says 

the owner, “go and say hello.” The man goes into the living room, sees 

a dog stretched on the carpet. “Hello,” he says, feeling more than a little 

foolish. “Oh hello,” says the dog, turning to face him. “My God,” says the 

man, suitably amazed, “you can talk.” “Oh yes,” says the dog, “I can talk. 
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Burns

Not just English either. French, Spanish, Italian, conversational Arabic, a 

bit of Russian. I can write too. Written a novel, as a matter of fact, a couple 

of film scripts. Won an Oscar and I play the violin. Good at football too. 

Scored a winner in the FA Cup a few years ago. Been over in Afghanistan 

a lot recently helping the Army do bomb disposal.” The man selling the 

dog comes into the room. “Your dog is amazing,” says the first man, “I just 

don’t understand why you’d want to sell him.” “Because,” says the owner, 

“he’s a bloody liar.”

So truth has many dimensions.

Audience Member

Just for historical accuracy, when you talk about ethics, journalistic ethics, you 

talked about in World War II, there was also an Office of War Information, a Ministry of 

Propaganda, and an Office of Censorship, so information was highly controlled. So can 

you tell these folks who John Rendon is so they understand?

Mr. Burns

I’m not sure I know. You tell me.

Audience Member

Rendon, John Rendon, as you probably know, is the guy who invented the war room 

for the Clinton administration, called it [inaudible] who was neither in the military or a 

journalist and having vet other journalists.

Mr. Burns

Yeah, I should have been more cautious. I don’t know background to that story. It 

may be that it’s obnoxious, but if I’ve made one point today, I hope it would be this: We 

should be expected to be held to account by others just as we hold others to account. It’s 

fair enough. I’m not sure it’s necessary to spend the public money on hiring somebody to 

do it for me. I’d be more happy if it was an in-house enterprise. I’m pretty sure that when 

General Caldwell was command spokesman in Baghdad, it may have not been a formal 

exercise, but certainly informally he and General Casey and others would have formed 

their own opinions, knowing I think a little bit about both those two generals, as to who 

was pliant because these are serious people. You don’t get to be a three or four star general 

in the US Army unless you’re a serious person. In my judgment, they would probably have 

said, “Okay, is this person fair?” Am I right? That’s the standard. It’s not, “Is he pliant? Is 

he going to,” excuse my vernacular, “kiss our rear end?” It’s, “Are they going to be fair and 

responsible?” There was never any intent, never any effort that I was aware of when I was 

in Afghanistan or Iraq, other than possibly the staff sergeant out of “Full Metal Jacket,” to 

inhibit. I can’t think of an occasion when anybody tried to mislead me. There were times 

when I didn’t get to where I wanted to go, either geographically or you know in other ways, 

but I found a readiness to front up when things didn’t go right. I think, I may be wrong, but 

I think that the lessons learned thing is pretty deeply embedded in the US Army. It doesn’t 

mean to say that there aren’t mistakes, and God knows there were pretty serious mistakes 

made over Abu Ghraib and Haditha.
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Featured Speaker

I just would give you one last example because I know it’s now 5 minutes past the hour 

and everybody wants to go and get on with their lives. On the last afternoon of General 

Sanchez’s time in Iraq, there had been a transfer, a command transfer ceremony at Camp 

Victory. It was an extremely awkward occasion for him as you all know. John Abizaid 

made a speech which was, I thought, one of great wisdom and understanding. Afterwards, 

General Sanchez came over to me, he was biting his lip while General Abizaid was talking, 

and said he didn’t feel like going to the lunch, would I like to have lunch with him in the 

office to which he had moved. He was leaving on the night plane.

We sat all afternoon just talking. No notebook, just talking. But I don’t think he would 

object to my saying to you that we did talk about Abu Ghraib. He took something I asked 

him about as my inviting him to excuse himself from any responsibility for what happened. 

I know this was an uncomfortable subject, of course, because no senior officers ever that 

I know of were disciplined other than one brigadier general, correct. It’s a controversial 

issue. So I’m telling this story. He turned around in his chair and pointed toward the northwest. He said, “You know how far Abu Ghraib is from here?” I said no. He said, “It’s about 

21⁄2 or 3 miles.” And he said, “You know, there’s a lot to be said about this. We were under 

tremendous pressure to get intelligence, etc., but,” he said, “you know, I made a mistake.” 

He said, “When I was a young officer, first lieutenant, freshly commissioned,” he said, “my 

first unit commander said to me, ‘Sanchez, you’re going to find in any unit that you command that there are people who are potential criminals. You’re giving them weapons and 

many of them are young. There’s all kinds of potential for trouble. Your responsibility is to 

discipline those tendencies out of the men you command. You’ve got to be watchful.’” He 

said, “I went to Abu Ghraib,” I think he said twice, three times, and he said, “I was there 

for 11⁄2 or 2 hours each time.” He said, “I just forgot that lesson.” He said, “I should have 

been more watchful.”

I thought that that was a brave and candid thing to say, but in character with what I’ve 

encountered at all levels of this Army. That is, if you get it wrong, say so. I’d appreciate 

if there are any reporters here. I don’t imagine that the Kansas City Star or anybody else 

is the slightest bit interested in anything I have to say, but spare me on that, because I’m 

breaching a sense of confidence that I ever had that conversation with General Sanchez. 

But I thought that was eloquent of the character of the man and of the institution that he 

represented.
147

Panel 4—The Cold War

Professionalism’s Impact on Public Affairs Education 

at the Army War College, 1950–1989

(Submitted Paper)

by

Mr. Paul Gardner

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.1

—Abraham Lincoln

Introduction

Since the early 1940s, senior leaders of the Army, specifically the Chiefs of Staff 

and Secretary, recognized the need to talk to the public, because they believed it was an 

Army that belonged to the people. Prior to World War II, the Army was small and some 

have argued it was physically and socially isolated from the public. General Dwight D. 

Eisenhower, looking back on this period, wrote, “The general public, either as an interested audience or as a source of support, was largely ignored because of a long tradition, 

accepted by the Army, that the soldier should be seen but not heard.”2

 An indication of the 

increase in awareness of the importance of Army public relations was based on the location of the public information office. In the 1920s and 1930s, public information was a 

staff function of the intelligence service.3

 However, during World War II, General George 

C. Marshall created a Bureau of Public Relations in the War Department in an attempt to 

keep the nation informed.4

After World War II, there was a paradigm change. In the late 1940s, there was a question as to whether there was a need for an Army at all, due to the perceived dominance 

of air power and the United States’ sole possession of the atomic bomb. Thus, the Army 

fought for institutional survival. As the United States assumed a larger role in the world, 

its foreign policy became broader and it required a different kind of Army than had previously existed. The Army needed to foster the public’s understanding of its role, mission, 

and programs, and explain to the public, Congress, and its soldiers why it was needed and 

what resources it required. Simultaneously, at the local level, each Army post’s community 

relations office affected the community’s perception of the Army, which in turn affected 

the Army’s ability to gain support for its program. The aforementioned was accomplished 

under the umbrella title of public affairs.5

In 1946, the restructure of the War Department created the Office of Information, with 

Lieutenant General J. Lawton Collins as its first chief. General Collins was responsible 

for three areas: Public Information, Congressional Relations, and Troop Information and 
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Panel 4

Education.6 Community Relations was a subcategory of public information.7 The establishment of the Office of Chief of Information was based on Walter Page’s recommendation 

to Secretary of War Henry Stimson in an effort to shape the public and/or Congressional 

reaction to any proposed Army action, policy, or procedural matter.8

 It also was an attempt 

to respond to criticism about the Army’s transition from a fighting force to its early Cold 

War activities as an occupation force.9

 The Army’s senior leaders understood that public 

relations would continue to be a requirement in the future; therefore, it had to be part of the 

Army education system. General Collins, when discussing the professional military education system wrote, “Through the G3 of the War Department, we have had brief courses on 

Public Information introduced into all of our schools—at the Military Academy, Benning, 

Sill, Belvoir, Leavenworth.”10 Collin’s statement demonstrates that at the War Department, 

Army leaders recognized the need to educate Army officers on aspects of public affairs 

in an effort to inform American citizens on the Army. With this understanding of public 

affairs components, we can begin to examine how Army officers were educated.

The Army’s educational system has evolved since its inception in 1802 with the establishment of the Military Academy at West Point. A critical event in 1881 was the founding 

of the School of Application for Cavalry and Infantry at Fort Leavenworth, later renamed 

the Command and General Staff College. The Army’s School of Application was an effort 

to join the ongoing military professionalism process seen in Europe. Later in 1903, with 

the opening of the Army War College, the Army developed a progressive officer education system that still continues today. Thus, since the early 20th century, the Army education system was based on matriculation from the branch schools, then to the Command 

and General Staff School, and finally to the Army War College. These institutions existed 

to help educate the small professional Army officer corps, in brigade and above, tactics, 

incorporation of air power, and War Department level activities. The Army War College 

curriculum, and specifically public affairs instruction, demonstrated the Army’s commitment to educate the Army’s future leaders on the importance of and requirement to inform 

their soldiers, the public, and Congress about the Army’s efforts.

In 1940, the US Army suspended Army War College instruction, similar to World War 

I. At the end of World War II, Generals Marshall and Eisenhower supported unification of 

the services, especially in officer education. In 1945, General Eisenhower approved the recommendations of the board chaired by Lieutenant General Leonard T. Gerow, commandant 

of the Command and General Staff School, not to reactivate the Army War College and to 

conduct a study on officer education. With approval, Eisenhower gave the buildings that 

previously housed the Army War College to the newly established National War College.11

This remained the situation until Lieutenant General Manton Eddy’s board released its 

findings, which recommended that the Army War College be re-opened in 1949.12 The 

Army War College re-opened at Fort Leavenworth for academic year (AY) 1950–51, and 

its mission was “To prepare officers for duty as commanders and general staff officers 

within the headquarters of the army group and corresponding communication zone activities, the theater army, the theater, and zone of interior army, and the Department of the 

Army with emphasis on the Headquarters, Department of the Army.”13 For AY 1951–52, 

the War College moved to Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Since the Army War College 
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was the pinnacle of the Army’s educational system, it is of critical importance to see how 

it educated senior leaders to conduct public affairs.

During the Cold War, the national and strategic environments underwent numerous 

changes. The US Armed Forces, especially the Army, was constantly trying to understand 

the situation and remain prepared to play its part in the military support of the nation’s 

foreign policy. There was a correlation between the changing view of professionalism as 

stated by theorists and others and the amount of hours allocated to educate Army War 

College students on public affairs. This author will argue that the changing concept of professionalism had an impact on the public affairs education at the Army War College from 

1950 until 1989. Four main periods will be examined. First is the “Age of Justification,” 

which occurred when the Army was trying to justify its continued existence and demonstrate its part in the overall national defense. The next is “Age of Tradition,” which 

represents a period of traditional professionalism and relations between the military and 

civilians.14 Then came the “Age of Civilianization,” which covers the merging or fusion 

of the military and civilian spheres.15 The last period highlights a combining of the two 

previous ages and underscores where military and civilian parts were similar and different 

and is called the “Age of Progressive Professionalism.”16 The overall intent is to analyze 

why the Army, which recognized the need to communicate not only with the executive and 

legislative branches of government but also with the public, placed an inconsistent amount 

of emphasis in the education system, specifically at the Army War College, on such an 

important issue. This paper is based on the Army War College’s curriculum, military and 

civilian journals, and the stated theorists.

Prior to this examination, a short inquiry must be made as to what transpired regarding the concept of public affairs between the end of World War II and the opening of the 

War College in 1950. During most of this period, Chief of Information continued to report 

directly to the Army Chief of Staff. He was responsible for the Public Information Division, 

the Legislative and Liaison Division, and the Troop Information and Education Division. 

In 1950, the Legislative and Liaison Division was separated from Chief of Information and 

became its own staff section.17 Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Minton, a senior public information officer, wrote, “The Army Information Program assumes the task of furnishing timely 

factual information, so that both the American soldier and the American people will be the 

best informed in the world and, therefore, the least likely to be influenced by the mental 

stress that any enemy may attempt to create in them.”18 Also, great strides were being made 

in the field of community relations, and Major General Manton Eddy was a key figure. He 

started the Army Advisory Committees as a means of liaison between the local community 

and the Army. The Army has a distinct obligation to provide the committees with factual 

and timely information on military matters that concerned the local public. Nothing was to 

be concealed that should be released.19 General Collins summarized the Army’s information requirements when he said:

There are three main elements in the business of furnishing information 

about the Army. First, we have our dealings with the public at large—

direct public relations. We frequently forget the next part of our program, 

and that is our relations within the Army itself—between the various 
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elements of the Armed Forces and with our men, which I like to regard 

as our internal public relations. Finally we have our relations with the 

Congress, which is a very important element of our public relations.20

This sets the environment to begin the examination of the Army War College curriculum. 

Age of Justification

Among all the contemporary skills which a soldier these days must concern himself, not the least important is public relations—a phrase almost 

unknown to the Army and a profession little practiced by it until World 

War II.21

In 1949, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal wrote:

If the Army is to function as an effective member of the national security 

team, there must be a clear public understanding that land forces will continue to be indispensable as a primary fighting arm.22

As a result of World War II, the US Government accepted that it would have to play 

a larger part in the world environment. This was seen in the Government’s fostering of 

the United Nations and the commitment to garrison Germany and Japan. With this newly 

accepted requirement came a much broader foreign policy and the need for military strength 

to back up that policy. Initially, many Americans felt that the country could return to isolationalism and depend on the threat of aerial delivery of nuclear devices to make other 

nation’s adhere to the wishes of the United States. Simultaneously, the Army was rapidly 

demobilized due to societal and Congressional demand. After World War II, the Army had 

to justify its existence, and senior Army leaders, specifically the Chief of Staff, emphasized 

public information and the Army War College’s curriculum reflected this focus. During this 

period, the Army conducted multiple studies that examined numerous issues, such as the 

failure to get approval of universal military training.

The Army conducted many different studies between 1946 and 1950. In 1946, as previously mentioned, the Gerow Board investigated officer education and recommended 

that officers needed to have a general understanding of multiple subjects, including public 

affairs.23 Another board held during 1947, with Lieutenant General Wade Haislip as its 

president, reviewed current War Department policies and programs concerning Regular 

Army, National Guard, Organized Reserves, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps 

(ROTC) and made recommendations.24 The board found that the public misunderstood the 

nation’s capacity and strength at hand, because they believed capacity and strength were 

the same, and did not take into consideration the time factor necessary to change capacity 

to strength. The report also stated that a clear public information campaign, based on future 

wars and preparedness, would remedy the issue.25 The board reiterated the requirement for 

public support, but also cautioned that some people confused public information with propaganda and this must be avoided. Therefore, the Army must build up its prestige and public confidence. A key aspect to achieve this was to disseminate information without using 

propaganda and to ensure officers understood their responsibility for public information 
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and troop information. It suggested that officers get this education through the chain of 

command and the school system.26 Finally, in 1949, the Eddy Board recommended that 

the Army War College be re-opened, because it felt that the National War College instruction had not met the Army’s needs. It stated that the Command and General Staff College 

would instruct division, corps, and army, and the Army War College would concentrate 

on army group, theater army, and Department of the Army (DA).27 The aforementioned 

studies demonstrate that the Army leaders were deeply involved in the development of 

the Army education system, and they recognized public affairs as an important part at the 

beginning of the 1950s.

The Army War College re-opened at Fort Leavenworth in the summer of 1950. The 

first year of the school was taught there, and then in 1951 the War College moved to 

Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Its mission statement for the initial 5 years was to train 

officers for being a commander or staff officer in the highest level of Army field organizations, within the Department of the Army, and in the last 2 years of this period it added the 

requirement of working in other governmental agencies.28 The curriculum was divided into 

three phases: the Army, national security/international affairs, and war planning. Army topics received the majority of the weeks of instruction.29 As part of the educational validation, 

a civilian advisory group examined the War College in AY 1951–52 and made some suggestions. One suggestion was that greater attention be paid “to the whole complex of problems that bear upon the relationship between the armed services and the civilian population 

both at home and abroad.”30 Also, that the Army understand the domestic implications of 

mobilization, use of reserves, and National Guard because “The impact on the Army, budget wise and in terms of morale, is obvious and wise public relations may assume an even 

greater significance during such periods than in periods of heightened tensions.”31 These 

recommendations underscore a civilian perspective of public relations importance.

The Army War College curriculum was continuously being refined. It averaged 71⁄2 

hours annually that directly discussed public affairs and about another 7 hours contributed 

to the understanding of the concept of public affairs.32 Examples of this were seen in lectures and when seminars discussed assigned problems, some of them had to consider the 

issue of public opinion as part of the solution.33 Also, the College suggested some topics 

for the student’s individual paper, and during AY 1953–54 there were three topics related to 

public relations: “Public Opinion and the Army,” “The Role of the Army in Public Affairs,” 

and “Press Relations in Combat.”34 Furthermore, there were a total of four student papers 

that addressed public affairs or public opinion in this era. One of the AY 1953–54 papers 

was written by James E. Harper and was titled “Public Opinion and the Army.” He found 

that public opinion did influence the Army and it is up to Army officers to ensure that the 

public was given the facts from which to make their decisions. He covered not only public 

opinion but also the Army’s relationship with Congress. He concluded that the Army needs 

to understand the media and respond quickly to their inquiries; command support was 

required for public and troop information; and officer education was an important means of 

getting the message across.35 The instructional hours and student papers are an indication 

that Army and War College leaders understood their responsibility to inform the public and 

the troops and were actively pursuing that objective through education.
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Other events demonstrated the Army’s comprehension of public relations. In 1954, 

General Matthew Ridgway sent a note to subordinates on public and troop information. 

He explained:

We must modify the philosophy which has for years guided the Army’s 

actions in the field of public relations. This philosophy has influenced 

officers to remain aloof from the public and reticent on their few public 

appearances. We must become more articulate and develop a positive public relations attitude throughout the Army. Too many officers look upon 

public relations as a defensive operation rather than a living, dynamic one.36

Next, he highlighted that he wanted post commanders to give community relations their 

personal attention. Finally, 

The creation of a public relations-conscious Army also calls for adequate, 

progressive instruction in troop and public information throughout the 

Army school system for officers and prospective officers. Maximum use 

should be made of the Army’s facilities to train officers and enlisted personnel in this important field. Personnel specialization therein must not 

be penalized in regard to selection for promotion or higher training by 

reasons of such specialization.37

Starting in 1955, the Army War College began holding a national security seminar. 

It was here that civic leaders were invited to a weeklong seminar to participate in discussions as the students finalized their recommendations for a national security strategy. The 

civilians were encouraged to ask questions and provide input in the process. This was 

seen as a way in which prominent citizens and future military leaders could discuss critical issues about the nation’s security. This was a means for the two groups to grow more 

understanding of the other’s point of view and fostered public information. Finally, in 

1955, the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) held its first annual meeting with 

General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, US Army, as the president.38 This meeting was about increasing membership, but also a means of informing the public. These occurrences show that 

the leadership of the Army and the War College were developing multiple ways to keep the 

public informed.

The Army’s effort to justify itself was also visible in journal articles. One of the first 

was written by Lieutenant General Raymond S. McLain, Chief of Information: “In the 

Army we must take care that adequate emphasis be given to the role of the ground forces. 

That is our great concern. Nobody else is likely to carry our problem. They have their own. 

Yet we must be ever cognizant of the part other services will play, because what they can 

properly do reduces our problem that much.”39 Also, General Collins wrote “Why We Must 

Inform Others?” In the article, the Army Chief of Staff addressed the fact that since the 

Army was part of a democracy it requires public support. He stated that the public must 

be informed, and that this was a command function. Moreover, officers must also keep 

their troops informed. In the last part of the article he stated, “From the rawest recruit to 

the highest commander, this task of informing others is an important responsibility which 

all of us must shoulder well.”40 Noteworthy among the articles was an anonymous article 
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titled “Is Still: But It Must ‘Sell’ Itself If It Is to Stay Solvent.” The authors, two field-grade 

officers, argued that the Army required a solid doctrine and needed to take firm positions on 

controversial issues and stand up and speak clearly. The Army must make its case, present 

the information, and let the public and Congress decide.41 These articles are representative 

of the Army’s mood during this period, providing justification for the nation’s need of an 

Army.

Meanwhile, the Army was not the only group trying to grasp the issues of public relations. The civilian community was also trying to deal with it. There are many articles written in the Public Opinion Quarterly magazine that represent the scholarly discussion of 

public relations.42 During this period, the academic community was also trying to define 

public relations and what constituted public affairs training.43 These pieces highlighted 

that the Army was not very far behind other professions in grasping the necessity of public 

relations.

The Army used public relations as a means to inform the public and the troops as to 

why they were needed. This was seen in the Army’s senior leaders’ writings and within the 

Army War College’s curriculum. Not only were the students exposed to lectures, but they 

were required to consider the impact of public opinion as part of their solutions to assigned 

problems. In addition, as the students made recommendations for a national security strategy, they had civic leaders question and watch their deliberations. This exposed the students to an experience that they may have to deal with in the future, when they tried to 

inform civilians of their recommendations. Holistically, this demonstrated how the Army 

leaders dealt with a few of the critical topics of the age.

Age of Tradition

This cycle saw the Army return, in part, to what it was prior to World War II, which 

focused on military victory and its view of traditional professionalism. This perspective 

was within the context that the nation’s leaders authorized the need for a larger military, 

and the Army was accepted as an important component. Although there would still be 

issues that needed to be resolved, the Army no longer believed its existence was in danger, but also found itself continually fighting against the perception that the Army was a 

second-class citizen in the military community. Samuel Huntington, in The Soldier and the 

State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, described a kind of professionalism and civil military relations that would enable a conservative natured military to deal 

with society’s liberal values. He defined professionalism as being composed of expertise, 

responsibility, and corporateness. He focused his argument on officers being managers, not 

executors, of violence. The two key aspects are responsibility and corporateness. In the 

aspect of corporateness, he wrote, the officer “normally lives and works apart from the rest 

of society; physically and socially he probably has fewer nonprofessional contacts than 

most other professional men.”44 Furthermore, the officer must use his skill for the society’s 

benefit and in a manner the society approves. The officer’s responsibility must be clearly 

stated to fellow professionals, his superiors and subordinates, and most importantly to the 

state that he serves. It is his responsibility to ensure that the public understands what the 

Army needs to achieve society’s security.45 Huntington also conducted an examination of 
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the military mind, which he concluded was authoritarian and that military factors retained 

primacy in the officer’s thinking. He stated that the profession was narrowly defined and 

more intensely and exclusively pursued, which contributed to the profession being isolated 

from other human activities.46 In short, traditional professionalism is defined as the military 

having their own area, with a divergence between society’s values and military values.

Another factor affecting the military during this period, specifically the Army, was 

the Eisenhower administration’s policy of massive retaliation. The administration wanted 

to limit the amount of funds budgeted to the military and it had a fixed percentage allocation for each service, which contributed to the schism between the defense secretary and 

the Army’s military leadership.47 The uniformed leadership did not think that the senior 

defense officials provided the proper amount of resources for the Army. General Ridgway, 

in Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway, explained that modern governments 

needed to understand that decisions in the political, economic, financial, and military elements were interrelated. However, he wrote:

The responsibility of the professional military man lies in the professional 

military field. His over-riding responsibility is to give his honest, objective, professional military advice to those civilians who, by our constitution are his commanders. It is not his responsibility to decide whether the 

military means which he determines are essential to accomplish the military tasks assigned him will cost more than the nation can afford.48

He also wrote: “Under no circumstances, regardless of pressure from whatever source 

or motive, should the professional military man yield or compromise his judgment for other 

than convincing military reason. To do otherwise would be to destroy his usefulness.”49

Supporting this position was when General Maxwell Taylor in Uncertain Trumpet discussed the change of the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) with the arrival of the Eisenhower 

administration, because this act had the impression that the JCS belonged to the administration. Prior to this change, the JCS was seen as nonpolitical and would give professional 

military advice to their civilian superiors. Many senior military leaders thought the JCS 

advice should be strictly or primarily military based, with little to no attention to political 

or economic issues.50 These actions demonstrated that the two Army Chiefs of Staff during 

this period adhered to the concept of traditional professionalism.

The Army’s view of its school system was also adjusting to the times. The only major 

Department of the Army Board was led by Lieutenant General Edward T. Williams. The 

board concluded, and DA approved, that the Army service school system’s primary objective was for selected individual’s preparation for their wartime roles with emphasis on 

the art of command. However, nonwartime roles and conditions short of war that were 

not directly related to the wartime role were also taught.51 The board suggested that the 

curriculum be focused on essentials, and only those subjects that cannot be adequately 

learned elsewhere and “nice-to-know” subjects should be acquired by individual study on 

a nonresident basis.52 The board also recommended that school commandants be given 100 

percent flexibility on teaching general subjects, due to the board’s opinion that the requirement has become onerous.53 This recommendation was making a direct and opposite 
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recommendation to Continental Army Command’s (CONARC) desire. It was CONARC’s 

common subject directive that placed specified requirements for instruction, such as public 

information and troop information, on the Army school system. If the school commandants 

received authority to ignore the directive, the Army senior leaders gave up its means of 

ensuring that certain topics were taught in a progressive nature. Simultaneously with the 

board’s investigation, CONARC responded to the DA Deputy Chief of Staff for Military 

Operations inquiry on the Army Command and General Staff College’s and the Army War 

College’s public information instruction. CONARC stated that they recommended moving away from strictly public information and use a more broad title of information, which 

would “cover all aspects of this command activity, to include public information, troop 

information, civil liaison and community relations.” It was CONARC’s belief that emphasis should be placed on command responsibility and how information can benefit the command. It concluded that the use of guest speakers as a means of supplementing the other 

instruction remained the best approach.54 The above shows that the Army leadership was 

adapting the Army school system’s curriculum, and specifically how best to deliver public 

and troop information instruction.

The Army War College’s concentration on military subjects was not universally praised. 

John W. Masland and Laurence I. Radway, in Soldiers and Scholars: Military Education 

and National Policy, questioned the curriculum at the Army War College and the other war 

colleges. They questioned the emphasis on dealing with the Soviet Union, and the authors 

wondered if sufficient time was allocated to the study of American society. The authors 

stated that the colleges failed to provide the same level of attention to the “basic nature and 

characteristics of American democracy” as they do to studying the Soviets.55 The authors 

praised the colleges for their hard work discussing the relationship of public opinion and 

its influence on foreign and military policy. The college used guest speakers to lecture on 

public opinion, but Masland and Radway, after watching some seminars discuss public 

opinion, expressed a concern about its effectiveness. They concluded that the students felt 

that special interest and pressure groups were inhibiting the Government from choosing 

the correct path, and the general public was apathetic. To them this highlighted the student’s frustration with public policy, and they recommended that more time be allocated 

to discussing the democratic ideals and practices in the context of contemporary issues.56

This demonstrated the tension between the instruction of military and nonmilitary subjects, 

especially since the Army felt the need to concentrate on its first priority—victory in battle.

The mission of the Army War College was to train senior officers primarily for their 

wartime duties. For many of these academic years, there was a requirement to study current 

Army tactical and logistical doctrine and develop future Army doctrine, strategy, and organization. Added toward the end of the period was the introduction, in a more explicit way, 

of the element of national power: geographic, political, economic, psychosociological, and 

military.57 The curriculum retained primary emphasis on guest speakers addressing issues 

relating to domestic and economic aspects, and how the Government made decisions. It 

was amidst these topics that much of the discussion on public affairs was covered, such 

as public opinion’s impact on foreign and domestic policy. During this epoch, the average hours discussing public relations decreased to a little over 31⁄2 hours, and topics that 
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touched on public relations was down to 41⁄2 hours. There was, however, an increase in the 

amount of emphasis on readiness and wargaming. Therefore, the Army kept its focus on its 

responsibility to achieve victory in combat, thus adhering to traditional professionalism.

Age of Civilianization

As the American society was changing, the military was trying to adapt. Morris 

Janowitz in The Professional Soldier stated that immediately after World War II military institutions were defending their boundaries against external intrusion in an effort to 

remain distinctive. This resulted in an increased dependence on an academy trained officer 

corps.58 Also, the military’s self-conception and ideology acted like a counterforce toward 

civilianization due to the military benchmark of victory in combat. The military accepted 

the strategy of deterrence, but felt that the concept was only valid because the Armed 

Forces was prepared to fight.59 Janowitz asserted that it was the military that created the 

boundaries between themselves and society, not the other way around.60 During this period, 

the argument was that the military and civilian realms were moving closer together. The 

military profession mirrored what was transpiring in the civilian world, such as increased 

specialization, and leadership was becoming more about being a manager than the previous 

view of heroic leaders. Meanwhile, the overall national security policy moved away from 

massive retaliation and toward flexible response. This change placed an increased requirement on the military to be able to provide forces in support of the nation’s foreign policy 

in more diverse areas.

Although the military profession modified its perspective of the world and civilians, 

the civilian perspective of the military had not changed. Janowitz provided two concepts—

absolute and pragmatic—regarding how the military would approach political objectives. 

Absolutists were those officers who would focus on absolute military victory and see victory as an end in itself, whereas the pragmatist believed that war was one aspect of international relations and its conduct must be about political end state. One thing that both 

concepts agreed on was the need for managers.61 The absolute concept agreed with traditional professionalism. Janowitz addressed Huntington’s essential elements of a profession, as previously described, and suggested that responsibility must be reassessed based 

on the concept of mass destruction. The issue was that with mass destruction weapons, the 

conflict cannot be limited to solely military objectives. He also described a military profession’s elite, which included only the highest-ranking officers. These professionals used 

their skills to achieve social and political ends.62 Thus, these officers must take a pragmatic 

view. Janowitz argued that increased skill specialization furthered any professionalization, 

which affected the society and political perspectives.63 In summary, Janowitz believed that 

the military was moving parallel to the civilian world on the aspects of professionalism, 

and you cannot separate military from civilian areas.

The Army continued to conduct assessments of itself and its school system. One of 

the most critical was the Haines Board, led by Lieutenant General Ralph E. Haines, that 

examined the period from 1966 to 1976.64 The board concluded that the environmental 

conditions were expected to change in the next decade and called it the “Era of Information 

Explosion,” and that there was increased probability of American military forces being 
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used in stability and limited war operations.65 Moreover, in agreement with the Williams 

Board, the Haines Board recognized that time for education would become increasingly 

precious; therefore, the curriculum must be focused.66 The board found that the current 

curriculum was focused on the lowest common denominator, and some students were not 

being intellectually challenged. This contributed to the board’s recommendation for the 

introduction of electives into the Army school system. These courses would be taught by 

individual institutions, common to all schools or progressive in nature.67 It was expected 

that these electives would stimulate those who were not challenged by the core curriculum. 

Another finding was that all schools needed to have effective public and military information programs, such as their own periodical and ability to publish doctrine.68 This further 

indicated that Army senior leaders understood the need for positive relations with the public. The overall direction of the school systems became an issue during this period. Prior to 

June 1960, the CONARC was in charge of the entire system, but the Chief of Staff, General 

Lemnitzer, changed this when he directed that the Army War College would be supervised 

by the DA staff.69 This led to confusion as to what organization was in charge of the entire 

Army school system and professional military education.

There was some interesting discussion about the military profession and public 

affairs in numerous journals. In the military journals, Military Review, Army, and Army 

Information Digest, there was a return to some of the topics that were seen during the Age 

of Justification. These articles highlighted the need for military officers to talk with the 

public, to see public and troop information as two parts of a program rather than separate 

issues, and the assistance of the installation staffs that directly addressed their local community.70 As General Ridgway stated earlier, officers should willingly accept the chance to 

talk with the public about the Army.71 The Army’s key concept when addressing the public 

was that it was about deeds, reinforced by words, not the other way around.72 There was 

also some discussion in other magazines. Colonel Robert N. Ginsburg, in “The Challenge 

to Military Professionalism,” professed that the military was losing its professionalism, as 

officers were more concerned about items such as pay, rather than being willing to make 

sacrifices, which was a reflection of civilian society. He also asserted that the concept of 

fusion, when civilians and military were equally able to discuss military and nonmilitary 

terms, was not a positive trend. This theory had been emphasized in the War College’s 

curriculum. In the end, Ginsburg concluded that the military should refute this theory, and 

reestablish a sense of corporateness that would “recreate the prestige and attractiveness 

of a military career—without, however, trying to return the military to its prewar state of 

isolation.”73 Adding to this position was Edward L. Katzenbach’s article, “The Demotion 

of Professionalism at the War Colleges.” He argued that the war colleges should focus on 

military problems before national problems.74 These articles indicated the issues of professionalism and public relations remained a hot topic.

The Army conducted many studies in the early 1970s in anticipation of a difficult 

future. One of the first was the report by Major General Frank W. Norris that outlined the 

significant challenges the Army would have to address in the 1970s. The report foresaw 

that the military would be blamed for Vietnam, and that the Army’s leadership needed to 

increase emphasis on educating officers on communications skills, to deal with neutral 
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to hostile audiences, and the means for these officers to help their soldiers deal with this 

situation to preserve morale.75 Another interesting aspect of the report was the suggestion 

that the Army War College should increase the focus of military subjects over national 

strategy or foreign policy. However, Norris concluded that the College had the correct 

balance.76 Another study, done by the Army War College and titled “Army Tasks of the 

Seventies,” concluded it was a command responsibility to ensure soldiers had a solid grasp 

of American society, including a thorough knowledge of the role of the press and other 

media, and that community relations be aligned with national policy.77 Moreover, it recommended a return to the previous image of Army professionalism that emphasized it was a 

way of life, not just a job. By focusing on Army values, the institution’s image and credibility with the public can be corrected.78 These reports underscored the Army leadership’s 

reflection and discussion on how to modify the military profession to the current and future 

environments.

The Army continuously attempted to adapt to changes in the requirement as seen 

with the policy of flexible response and the commitment to Vietnam. With the start of this 

period, the Army War College curricular theme was about the development of a national 

strategy and supporting military program.79 However, this theme did not preclude multiple changes in the curriculum. For example, the Army War College disagreed with the 

suggestion by the 1962 civilian advisory group that the domestic environment should be 

addressed by readings only, because the topic needed more coverage than the readings 

could provide.80 The advisory group also recommended that the War College consider the 

compression of military subjects to provide greater coverage on nonmilitary subjects, such 

as foreign relations, international politics, economics, propaganda, and public opinion. In 

general, the College agreed on the need to balance military and nonmilitary topics.81 This 

was an indication that the Army War College was responsive and interested in improving 

the student’s education.

The allocation of hours to public affairs and related subjects was at the lowest level 

during this period. Less than 3 hours per year on average directly discussed public affairs, 

and the subjects that were indirectly related were reduced to about 4 hours. The Chief of 

Information’s lecture was the primary means of directly addressing public relations. This 

can be interpreted as alignment with the argument that there was an increased convergence of military and civilian spheres. Even with this decrease in hours, it is interesting 

that there remained a few students each year or so that would choose public affairs topics 

for their individual research projects. Many of these addressed national will and how to 

ensure that the population was behind the government, especially in the employment of 

military forces. Wolfred K. Whites’ monograph, “The Worried Warriors—The Dilemma of 

the Military Profession,” examined how society’s changes affected the public’s and professional soldier’s attitudes toward national defense. White stated that the military, like the 

civilian world, was becoming increasingly specialized. Also, the increased use of civilian 

methods in the military was blurring the delineation between what is specifically military 

and what is civilian. Moreover, the military was increasing the amount of people going for 

graduate degrees.82 Additionally, Howard F. O’Neil’s paper that advocated a more active 

military participation in civic roles would further the public’s understanding of the Armed 
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Forces.83 The perception that the military and civilian worlds were moving closer together 

is witnessed not only in theory, but also in the school’s curriculum. Furthermore, some of 

the students observed this trend and incorporated the concept in their writings. 

This epoch saw a reduction in hours for public affairs instruction, and the debate centering on the fusion of military and civilian spheres was argued in journals. The Army War 

College curriculum seemed to indicate that it accepted, to a degree, the merging of the two 

areas. This movement did not have universal support and can be interpreted as a factor that 

influenced the fluctuation of hours of public affairs instruction. Army senior leaders continued to look at the education system to ensure it was focused, and within those inquiries 

public affairs remained an important topic.

Age of Progressive Professionalism

The last era witnessed a combination of traditional and civilian aspects of professionalism. This merger was articulated by Charles C. Moskos Jr. in “The Emergent Military: 

Civil, Traditional, or Plural.”84 This view of professionalism combined the traditional 

aspects of concentrating on certain military subjects, while including the aspects of fusing 

other governmental actions. Moskos suggested that “Traditional and divergent features in 

the military will become most pronounced in combat units, labor-intensive support units, 

and perhaps at senior command levels.”85 He also asserted, “A predominantly civilianized 

military could easily lose that élan so necessary for the functioning of a military organization.”86 This kind of plural professionalism, according to Moskos, was already visible in 

the US Air Force. The difference in the level of civilianization was more easily seen in this 

service than in others.87 The concept of pluralism enables taking the best of both previous 

articulations of professionalism.

The withdrawal from Vietnam and the falling public support of the military also 

affected the manner in which the Army, specifically, was manned. Starting in 1973, the 

military became an All Volunteer Force (AVF) and ceased using the draft. The arguments 

of those for and against are not of importance here. How to achieve increased civil support 

of the military remained an issue.

There was an increase in articles and books written covering military and professionalism topics during the early 1970s. This inquiry will focus on two books and one 

article all written by professional officers. First was Colonel Robert G. Gard’s article, 

“The Military and American Society,” which concluded that the US Armed Forces were in 

an identity crisis and was searching for ways to adapt traditional professionalism concepts 

and practices to the modern period. Conducting a review and overhaul of the education 

and training programs were insufficient, and a full-scale reevaluation of career patterns 

was required to ensure that officers developed the necessary skills and those who do not 

get troop command could still advance. The Army must constantly adjust to society, but 

required some traditional values to function in combat, such as the need for orders to be 

obeyed.88 The next was US Army Lieutenant Colonel William L. Hauser’s book, which 

argued that the military was not isolated from society because both were dealing with the 

same issues: drug abuse, race relations, etc.89 He stated that professionalism may have to 

be separated into two groups: the fighting Army and the sustaining Army.90 He concluded 
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by noting that the Army must adapt to society and that it required public support.91 In short, 

he agreed with the idea of a plural professionalism. The last is the book by Lieutenant 

Colonels Zeb B. Bradford Jr. and Frederick J. Brown, The US Army in Transition. They 

argue that the issue was not military isolation, but the opposite. This peril of moving closer 

to society risks losing unique, and necessary, capabilities of the profession. They agreed 

with the need for a pluralistic Army, but emphasize the Army’s need to retain its unique 

capability while mirroring society.92 Therefore, these officers were in general agreement 

that the Army needed to combine the best from the previous two segments. With military 

prestige being very low, Army Chief of Staff General William C. Westmoreland tried to 

reinvigorate the profession.

Westmoreland initiated studies to help define the way ahead. The first, for the Army’s 

internal use, was titled The Army in Transition, dated 6 June 1973. The inquiry’s purpose 

was to articulate what the Army had accomplished from the Tet Offensive from 1968 to 

1972, but also expressed the Army’s concerns, challenges, and perceived problems in the 

future.93 It addressed the fallout from Vietnam and how it affected the Army’s professionalism. It also examined social problems and their impact on the Army, and how the press 

coverage of the Army had been less than favorable. Also, that the media’s unfavorable 

coverage caused military members to be less inclined to talk with the press. This resulted in 

coverage that was more adverse, because the press would use anyone connected to the military without stating the person’s authority or bias, to get a story.94 Moreover, Army leaders 

recognized the need to improve the Army’s ability to communicate. It was not sufficient to 

issue new policies and regulation, but the Army had to get out and articulate the why and 

how this new policy affects the soldiers in the Army.95 Tied to this was the need for the 

public’s acceptance of the Army’s legitimacy. Public confidence influences not only actions 

on the battlefield, but the Army’s size, composition, and limits. Thus, a military’s viability 

was not just related to numbers, but also required a favorable public attitude.96 This was 

how the Chief of Staff saw the future, but how would he affect education?

The changes in education were articulated in two major Army studies. The first was A 

Review of Education and Training of Officers (RETO) done in 1978, which investigated 

the period from 1980 to 1984.97 Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) replaced 

CONARC in 1973 as the agent responsible for the Army’s training and education. This 

study resulted from TRADOC’s initial revision in 1973 of the schools’ curriculum to 

emphasize tactical competence, and the Army’s realization in 1977 that it was not getting 

the type of officer it needed.98 The study concluded that the Army was moving away from 

equipping the man and toward manning the equipment, which was a significant change 

from the past.99 One of the key aspects of this study was the reinvigoration of the Army’s 

professionalism. The board concluded that the Army needed a systematic program of 

Professional Military Education (PME); this went beyond the acquisition of skills and 

looked at broader issues. The skills that broaden the officers’ understanding could also 

contribute to bridging the civilian community trust gap.100 The last educational study to be 

discussed is the Professional Development of Officers Study that examined the period from 

1985 to 2025. It found that the future would require even more knowledge for an officer to 

remain technically and tactically proficient and that Army schools were placed at the key 
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transition points.101 It asserted that the Army retained a disproportionate focus on training and it lacked a true philosophy for officer education.102 The study provides interesting 

findings that reiterate the Chief of Staff’s concept of “Be, Know, Do”: an officer must be a 

professional, know his job and his Soldiers, and do what is expected.103 It provides concrete 

examples of what was expected of officers and some of them related to the profession’s 

connection with civil society. For example, officers of the rank of colonel are expected to 

demonstrate officer attributes within the service and in public. It further stated that general 

officers must represent the military with the public, media, Government, and academia.104

Another interesting Chief of Staff decision was the need to develop information management and public affairs courses for general officers.105 This reinforced the concept that the 

Army senior leaders’ grasped the need for public affairs instruction, but lacked a comprehensive professional military education structure and concepts. The question was whether 

Army War College students understood the need for public affairs instruction.

Numerous students were fully cognizant of the need to improve the Army’s image and 

the necessity of public affairs. This paper will examine a few to provide context. First, 

Donald E. Gelke concluded that one of the contributing factors to the Army’s poor public image was that not a lot of people were speaking to the public on the Army’s behalf. 

His public relations formula was very simple: if you are doing your job correctly and 

imparting information there will be a change in the public’s view. Also, public opinion 

was not changed in the short term and people-to-people contact had the most impact.106

The Army War College elective, “The Media and the Military in a Free Society,” used 

Lieutenant Colonel Donald S. Mahlberg’s paper, “The Military and the Media: A Problem 

of Perception.”107 He concluded that the innate dislike was due to the military officer not 

understanding the press’s role in a democratic society, and the key to solving this was 

education.108 He also found that “One of the most neglected areas in military education is 

the development in the professional officers of an understanding of the role of mass communications.”109 He stated that military education must include a study of the development 

of the American press.110 These papers indicate that some students understood the need 

to inform the public, but acknowledged that there was a problem with how they communicate. Some of this could be related back to professionalism and whether they can 

use civilian language versus military vernacular. Finally, the article written by Lieutenant 

Colonel Clyde A. Hennies, “Public Affairs Training For the Army’s Officers Corps: Need 

or Neglect?” concluded that senior officers lack confidence in dealing with the media, and 

the military distrusts the media. Furthermore, “There is unanimous opinion that the officer 

corps should receive training and education in press related subjects, and that it should 

be started earlier in an officer’s career (captain level). It should be mandatory at least at 

the outset.”111 Hennies conducted a survey of his fellow War College students, and found 

that 79.8 percent of the officers had no formal education in public relations, journalism, 

or mass communications. Also, 93 percent agreed with the following statement: “All officers 05 and above should be able to capably and confidently interact with reporters when 

required.” However, 95.3 percent were not enrolled in the “Military Officer and the Media” 

elective.112 This leads to the question, if the above was true, why were not more of these 

students choosing this elective? The answer is beyond the scope of this paper, but it could 
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be that although these students recognized the need, it was not high on their priority. This 

begs the question of why so few took the elective based on the senior leader’s emphasis on 

the subject.

As for the War College curriculum, starting in AY 1973–74, the core course was 

reduced from 41 weeks to 31 weeks and these hours given to the research program. Harry 

Ball argued that the commandant, Major General DeWitt Smith tried to focus the College 

on where it could fit into the domestic environment.113 The College’s mission also was 

changed a few times. Primarily it was focused on preparing officers for command and 

staff positions within the Army, Department of Defense (DOD), and other departments and 

agencies by a professional military education in national security affairs with emphasis 

on land warfare.114 The curriculum during this era directly addressed public affairs a little 

over 4 hours and indirectly about 6 hours. Furthermore, the allocation of hours increased 

as it moved closer to 1989. This can be viewed as connected to the DOD’s approval of the 

Sidle Commission’s report and their implementation guidance.115 Also, the changes in the 

mission and objective or functions indicate that the Army leaders had accepted the need for 

a pluralist professionalism and had modified the Army War College curriculum to provide 

the necessary instruction.

Conclusion

The Army recognized, at least during the majority of the 20th century, that it needed 

to have a means to inform the public of its activities. As the understanding of the impact 

of public relations grew, the location of the office that dealt with it within the DA also 

changed. The amount of hours allocated to public affairs instruction varied during most of 

the century. Public affairs was and is more than just speaking to the public. By the Army’s 

definition, it includes informing the public, keeping the Army’s soldiers informed, and 

effective community relations. Therefore, the education of Army officers must cover all 

the aspects or it will not be comprehensive. In addition, public relations was a command 

function. So what was the Army’s plan to educate its future commanders on public affairs?

There were numerous educational boards and studies during this period, and each 

addressed, at some aspect, the issue of public affairs. This adds proof that the need for public affairs was recognized and acknowledged as important to the Army. The problem comes 

down to the fact that these boards made recommendations, but for various reasons their 

recommendations were not accepted or the implementation was not achieved to the fullest 

extent. The Army Chief of Staff made many statements on the importance of this subject, 

but these were not necessarily carried over into the Army War College curriculums. Also, 

initially the Army used the Common Subjects directive to define what topics were to be 

taught in each school, and this ensured that all officers received a certain level of education. However, it was the acceptance of the recommendation by the Williams Board that the 

requirement for Common Subjects be removed, which contributed, in the author’s opinion, 

to the decline in hours allocated to public relations instruction. This, combined with the 

fact that the Army’s view of professionalism was in the traditional period, allowed the curriculum to be shifted toward more military topics.
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The changing view of professionalism was a crucial factor in what the War College 

taught. Movement through the ages, as this paper describes, indicates that the Army was 

trying to address what they understood in theory and what they viewed in the society it 

served. Adjustments to the process were made during the age of justifying the continuance 

of the Army, to the return of traditional professionalism, through the age of civilianization, and finally through pluralization. The constantly changing views of professionalism affected the articulation of the kind of officer required for the future. Did the Army 

want specialists or generalists in their officer corps? At what level should the changes be 

made, and what was the requirement for Army senior leaders? The answers to these questions affected professional military education. Thus, the Army senior leadership needed to 

clearly articulate what their view of professionalism for the next 15 years or more was and 

ensure that they will be able to achieve this via the Professional Military Education system. 

Throughout the Cold War, there were many articles and other writings on professionalism and public affairs. The public affairs topics were primarily in the military related 

journals. The amount of articles varied in a similar quantity to the age that they were in. 

Discussion about professionalism took place in both civilian and military journals, and this 

indicates that the debate was broad based and not limited to within the Army.

In conclusion, the Army has recognized the need for public affairs for most of the 20th 

century. During the Cold War, the amount of public affairs instruction varied in a parallel 

to the changing view of professionalism. Army leadership needs to look into the future 

and define what they want their officer corps to be capable of doing at least 15 years in 

the future. Their conclusions must be described and stated in their view of the progressive 

nature of the Army’s professional military education and officer educational philosophy. 

As a part of that process, the Army must include instruction on all three parts of public relations, if it expects to be able to gain and maintain public support in the future.
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Notes

1. Although Abraham Lincoln was talking about slavery, this concept still rings true. http://

lincoln.lib.niu.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2221:2.lincoln, 254 (accessed 20 August 2009).

2. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (New York, NY: Doubleday, 

1967), 320.

3. Adam Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment: Its Impact on American Society (New 

York, NY: Harper and Row, 1971), 197–179.

4. Eisenhower, At Ease, 320.

5. For this paper, the terms public affairs and public relations are synonymous.

6. http://www.history.army.mil/books/root/index.htm#contents (accessed 10 August 2009), 

159, 173, 185–186; Collins states that General Eisenhower appointed him to the position on 

16 December 1945. General J. Lawton Collins, Lightning Joe (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994), 

340. With the reorganization of 1950, the Office of Legislative Liaison was removed from under 

the Chief of Information and made their own staff section. http://www.history.army.mil/books/root/

index.htm#contents (accessed 10 August 2009), 207. Public Affairs officers were trained at the 

Army Information School.

7. Department of the Army, Army Regulation No 360-5, Public Information (Washington, 

DC: Government Printing Office, 1950). Found in microfilm at CGSC. The regulation describes 

public information and section V covers community relations.

8. Walter Page was the vice president in charge of public relations for American Telephone 

and Telegraph Company and a consultant to the Secretary of War. Collins, Lightning Joe, 340.

9. Collins, Lightning Joe, 340.

10. Lieutenant General J. Lawton Collins, “The War Department Spreads the News,” Military 

Review (September 1947): 15. Abridged version of General Collin’s address to CGSC.

11. George S. Pappas, Prudens Futuri: The U.S. Army War College, 1901–1967 (Carlisle 

Barracks, PA: Alumni Association of the US Army War College, 1968), 141–147; Harry P. Ball, Of 

Responsible Command: A History of the U.S. Army War College (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Alumni 

Association of the US Army War College, 1983), 260–263; War Department, Report of War 

Department Military Education Board on Education System for Officers of the Army, 1946, 10–11. 

Also known as the Gerow Board.

12. Department of the Army, Report of the Department of the Army Board on Educational 

System for Officers (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949), 8–9. Also known as the 

Eddy Board. The board recommended calling an Advanced Course, Command and General Staff 

College, and only later did the title Army War College become accepted. One of the reasons for the 

reestablishment of the Army War College was based on the lack of coverage in the PME of army 

group through Department of the Army either at the Command and General Staff College or the 

National War College. (See pages 3–4 in report.)

13. AY 1950, Curriculum Guide and Phase 1, The Army and National Security, Course 1, 

Committee System, to Course 2, National Policy, 1 August 1950–6 November 1950. Box 1950/1951-

1. Folder—Secretariat, Curriculum Pamphlet, AY 1950, 1.

14. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military 

Relation (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957).

15. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York, 

NY: Free Press, 1971, 1960).

16. Charles Moskos, “The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional or Plural?” in National 

Security & American Society Theory, Process, and Policy, ed. Frank N. Trager and Philip S. 

Kronenberg (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1973), 536–550.
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17. http://www.history.army.mil/books/root/index.htm#contents (accessed 26 September 

2009), 207.

18. Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Minton, “The Army Information Program,” Military Review

(June 1947): 24.

19. Colonel Guy V. Miller. “Community Relations and the Army Advisory Committee,” 

Military Review (August 1947): 8, 10.

20. Collins, “The War Department Spreads the News,” 9.

21. Eisenhower, At Ease, 320.

22. James Forrestal, “The State of the National Military Establishment,” Military Review 

(April 1949): 4.

23. Gerow Board, 8.

24. War Department, War Department Policies and Program Review Board (Washington, 

DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 1–2. Also known as the Haislip Board.

25. Haislip Board, 7.

26. Haislip Board, 61.

27. Eddy Board, 3.

28. This is based on reviewing the curriculum pamphlets from AY 1950 through 1953. Each 

is in Folder 1 of Box 1 of their particular year.

29. Curriculum pamphlets stated the number of weeks allocated to each semester: Army had 

about 14 to 16 hours and the others had about 12 hours.

30. Report on the Army War College, by the Civilian Advisory Group, January 1952. Found 

in File, AWC, Institutional Assessment, Civilian Advisory Group, AY 1951–52 to AY 1961–62, 

3 January 1952–18 December 1963, Box 1, 3.

31. Report on the Army War College, by the Civilian Advisory Group, January 1952.

32. These numbers are based on the allocation of hours in the curriculum. When no definitive 

amount of hours was specified in the curriculum, this author used 2 hours, which aligned with the 

other courses. This is based on reviewing 5 years of curriculum. Topics that are directly connected 

include briefing on public affairs from the Chief of Information, and the other hours are represented 

by instruction such as “role of Military in the formulation of National Policy,” and “The Function of 

Public Opinion in the Formulation of Foreign Policy.”

33. AY 1953/1954, Box 1. Folder 16—Part I, National and International Affairs, Course 1, 

National Policy Formulation, Course Directive. Folder 23—Part II, The Army, Course 4, General 

Army Orientation, Course Directive.

34. Army War College Curriculum, AY 1953–54. Part II, The Army, Course 7, Operations, 

to Course II, Individual Study, 28 September 1953–1 June 1954. Box 1953/1954-2. Folder 30—

Course II, Individual Studies, Course Directive, 25. 

35. James E. Harper, “Public Opinion and the Army,” 15 March 1954. Found in US Army 

War College, Student Papers, 1953/1954, Hain to Herb. Other papers were by Lieutenant Colonel 

Gardner A. Williams, “The Influence of Public Opinion on the Military Establishment,” 27 March 

1953, found in US Army War College, Student Papers, 1952/1953, Tolson to Zehner; Guy C. 

Lothrop, “Public Opinion: A Factor Shaping National Security,” 1 April 1953, and Colonel Lyal 

C. Metheny, “The Role of the Military in Public Affairs,” 20 March 1953—found in US Army War 

College, Student Papers, 1952/1953, Lothrop to Oden.

36. General Matthew B. Ridgway, “Army Troop and Public Relations,” Army Information 

Digest (August 1954): 3–5.

37. Ridgway, “Army Troop and Public Relations,” 5.

38. General Lyman L Lemnitzer, “This is a significant Beginning,” Army (November 1955): 

62.
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39. Lieutenant General Raymond S. McLain, “The Army’s Role: A 1949 Perspective,” 

Military Review (January 1949): 3–14.

40. General J. Lawton Collins, “Why Must We Inform Others?” Army Information Digest

(October 1952): 27–30.

41. “Is Still: But It Must ‘Sell’ Itself If It Is To Stay Solvent,” Combat Forces Journal (May 

1954): 11–14.

42. Published since 1937, Public Opinion Quarterly is among the most frequently cited 

journals of its kind. Such interdisciplinary leadership benefits academicians and all social science 

researchers by providing a trusted source for a wide range of high-quality research. POQ selectively 

publishes important theoretical contributions to opinion and communication research, analyses of 

current public opinion, and investigations of methodological issues involved in survey validity—

including questionnaire construction, interviewing and interviewers, sampling strategy, and mode 

of administration. The theoretical and methodological advances detailed in pages of POQ ensure its 

importance as a research resource. http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/ (accessed August 2009).

43. Donald W. Krimel, “Problems in Public Relations Training,” Public Opinion Quarterly

11, no. 4 (Winter 1947–48): 540–547; Alfred McClung Lee, “Trends in Public Relations Training,” 

Public Opinion Quarterly 11, no. 1 (Spring 1947): 83–91.

44. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military 

Relations (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), 16–18.

45. Huntington, Soldier and the State, 14–16.

46. Huntington, Soldier and the State, 59–61.

47. Maxwell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 

71.

48. Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway (New York, NY: 

Harper and Brothers, 1956), 346.

49. Ridgway, Soldier, 272.

50. Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, 20–21.

51. Department of the Army, Report of the Department of the Army Officer Education and 

Training Review Board (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958), 1. U408.3 .U547 

1958. AKA Williams Board.

52. Williams Board, 47.

53. Williams Board, 52.

54. RG 546. Records of the United States Continental Army Command. US Army Schools, 

Command and General Staff, Fort Leavenworth, KS, Correspondence 1953–58. 290/36/13/2. 

Command and General Staff, FT LV, Box 28, File name “352 Subject—Common (Army Svc Sch 

and Tech—Staff College & Troop Schools) Quotas Vol I 01 Jan 58 to 31 Oct 58,” page 1. This is 

from the National Archives.

55. John W. Masland and Laurence I. Radway, Soldiers and Scholars: Military Education and 

National Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 380.

56. Masland and Radway, Soldiers and Scholars, 380–381.

57. Army War College, Curriculum, AY 1959–60, Curriculum Guide and Part 1, National 

Power and International Relations, Course 1, National Interest and National Power of the United 

States and the Soviet Union, 1 July–17 August 1959, Box 1959/1960-1. Folder 9—Part 1, National 

Power and International Relations, Course 1, National Interest and National Power of the United 

States and the Soviet Union, Course Directive, 17 August 1959, 2.

58. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, viii.

59. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, xiv–xvi.
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60. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, xvi.

61. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 264–265.

62. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 6–7

63. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 7.

64. Department of the Army, Report of the Department of the Army Board to Review Army 

Officer Schools (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966), 2. U408.3 .A43 1966. AKA 

Haines Board.

65. Haines Board, 5.

66. Haines Board, 7–8.

67. Haines Board, 39–40.

68. Haines Board, 90–91.

69. Harry P. Ball, Of Responsible Command (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Alumni Association of 

the US Army War College, 1983), 349–350.

70. Major Don E. Zieg, “Big IO Job,” Army (March 1962): 57–60; Major General William 

W. Quinn, “Army Portrait: The Army Information Program,” Military Review (April 1961): 51–59. 

Author was Chief of Information at the time of the writing.

71. Colonel Gordon A. Moon, “You Can’t Hide Behind the IO,” Army (January 1964): 61–63; 

General Harold K. Johnson, CSA, “When Freedom is On the Line,” Army (November 1967): 32–35. 

Brigadier General Howard S. Wilcox, “Press Relations and the Commanders,” Military Review

(August 1961): 2–11.

72. Colonel Gordon A. Moon, “Information Officer or Propagandist?” Army (December 

1967): 58–63.

73. Colonel Robert N. Ginsburg, “The Challenge to Military Professionalism,” Foreign 

Affairs 42, no. 2 (January 1964): 255–268.

74. Edward L. Katzenbach, “The Demotion of Professionalism at the War Colleges,” US 

Naval Institute Proceedings (March 1965): 35–41.

75. Frank Norris, Review of Army Officer Educational System (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1971), Vol 1, 2-3, and Vol 2, 2-5.

76. Norris, Review of Army Officer Educational System, Vol 2, 7-2.

77. Army War College, Army Tasks for the Seventies: An Analysis of the Decade of the 

Seventies: Perspectives and Implications for the United States Army: A Study Done for the Chief of 

Staff of the United States Army (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, 1972), 100.

78. Army Tasks of the Seventies, 167.

79. Pappas, Prudens Futuri, 249; Army War College, Curriculum, AY 1960–61, Curriculum 

Guide and Part 1, National Power and International Relations, Course 1, Orientation, 1 July–20 

August 1960, Box 1960/1961-1. Folder 16—Part 1, National Power and International Relations, 

Course 1, Orientation, Course Directive, all. Dtd 12–20 August 1960, 1.

80. Report of the Civilian Advisory Group, 1962, AWC, Institutional Assessment, Civilian 

Advisory Group, AY 1961–62, 30 January 1961–20 October 1962, Box 2, Folder 5, 5-6.

81. Report of the Civilian Advisory Group, 1962, 6–7.

82. Colonel Wolfred K. White, IN, “The Worried Warriors—The Dilemma of the Military 

Professionals,” 7 April 1967, US Army War College, Student Papers, 1966/1967, Watry to Zanin.

83. Lieutenant Colonel Howard F. O’Neil, USAF. “The Military Officer’s Role as a Citizen,” 

29 March 1968, US Army War College, Student Papers, 1967/1968, O’Conner to Picou.

84. Moskos, “The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional, or Plural,” 536–560.

85. Moskos, “The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional, or Plural,” 547.

86. Moskos, “The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional, or Plural,” 549. 
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87. Moskos, “The Emergent Military: Civil, Traditional, or Plural,” 547.

88. Colonel Robert G. Gard, “The Military and American Society,” Foreign Affairs (July 

1971): 705.

89. Lieutenant Colonel William L. Hauser, US Army, America’s Army in Crisis: A Study in 

Civil-Military Relations (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 189–193.

90. Hauser, America’s Army in Crisis, 219–225.

91. Hauser, America’s Army in Crisis, 226.

92. Zeb B. Bradford Jr. and Frederick J. Brown, The United States Army in Transition (Beverly 

Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1973), 175–176, 191–199.

93. INSTR Files 73, Office of the Chief of Staff, Box 9 C319.1 thru 320, File 319.1 File 

#1973, CSA, The Army in Transition, 1-1 to 1-2.

94. INSTR Files 73, CSA, The Army in Transition, chapter 5, 86.

95. INSTR Files 73, CSA, The Army in Transition, chapter 6, 19.

96. INSTR Files 73, CSA, The Army in Transition, chapter 11, 13–14.

97. Department of the Army, Review of Education and Training for Officers (RETO)

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1978), Vol 1, vii.

98. DA, RETO, Vol 1, v.

99. DA, RETO, Vol 1, chapter 7, 1. 

100. DA, RETO, Vol 4, P-1-4.

101. Department of the Army, Professional Development of Officers Study (Washington, DC: 

Government Printing Office, 1985), Vol 1, xxviii.

102. DA, Professional Development of Officers Study, Vol 1, 35–36.

103. DA, Professional Development of Officers Study, Vol 1, 74.

104. DA, Professional Development of Officers Study, Vol 3, Annex K.

105. DA, Professional Development of Officers Study, Vol 1, 70, 101.

106. Lieutenant Colonel Donald E. Gelke, IN, “PR is Everybody’s Business” (Army War 

College) (1972).

107. Lieutenant Colonel Donald S. Mahlberg, “The Military and the Media: A Problem of 

Perception” (1974), 1975–76.

108. Mahlberg, “The Military and the Media,” abstract, ii.

109. Mahlberg, “The Military and the Media,” 2. Based on his personal experience, review of 

literature, and talking with Army War College students.

110. Mahlberg, “The Military and the Media,” 5–6.

111. Lieutenant Colonel Clyde A. Hennies, “Public Affairs Training for the Army’s Officers 

Corps: Need or Neglect?” Armor (1983).

112. Hennies, “Public Affairs Training for the Army’s Officers Corps,” 14–20.

113. Ball, Of Responsible Command, 488–491.

114. AWC Curriculum Files, AY 1975 and 1983 pamphlets, Army War College, Curriculum, AY 

1975, Curriculum Guide and the US and World Environment, 01 April–17 December 1974, 1975-1. 

And AY 1983, Department of Academic Affairs, Curriculum Pamphlet. Box 1983-1, Folder–1.

115. Major General (Retired) Winant Sidle, “The Military and the Press: Is the Breach Worth 

Mending,” Army (February 1985): 22–31.
169

Panel 4—The Cold War

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Mr. Paul Gardner

Moderated by Mr. John McGrath

Audience Member

Donald Wright. Paul, this research is really interesting. I guess my first thought as 

you started going through this survey is that the Army [inaudible] services have provided 

on [inaudible] area training. I would call it that, but, public affairs professionals or public 

affairs officers and even enlisted now. So is it one solution that we just train a small cadre 

of public affairs experts and everybody else gets a smattering of this and that and hopefully 

that will carry us through? And I guess the next part of the question would be, what’s being 

done now since 1989? Where are we now in CGSC and where are we at in the War College 

with hours dedicated to this subject?

Mr. Gardner

On the public affairs and training as specialists, I can take you back to [inaudible], 

which it’s okay to have that, but it’s the commander’s responsibility. How do we train 

commanders? The commanders have to accept this. I found it wasn’t until late 1980s 

early 1990s that we actually had public affairs in our doctrine manual, i.e., in FM 101-

5-1, “Here’s how to actually do an annex.” The issue if we only have a few specialists, 

then we need to have the right specialists at the right time as Dr. Hammond brought out 

with General Sidle. He had the expertise. He had the knowledge. He was able to advise 

the commander. But the commander’s not trained to understand that, to make those correlations, to accept the advice or reject it and understand what risks he’s running. Then it 

all actually, my conclusion is it all comes down on the commanders. We can have all the 

specialists that we want, but unless they’re wearing the green tabs of a commander, then 

I’m not sure we’re going to actually get the effect of it. We didn’t have public affairs as a 

recognized specialty until late, but again the question is, how much credibility do we give 

the public affairs folks that are out there trying to do the right thing. If we don’t give them 

the credence and the acceptability, then they’re not going to be accepted by the commander 

and the commander will not make the decision or even bring them into the staff studies. 

So, that’s some of the issues. Yes, that’s a good thing if we have the right people there. We 

give them the time to be trained, to work this in all their training exercises. For example, I 

don’t think they started doing the public affairs in the Joint Readiness Training Center or 

any of the CTCs [Combat Training Centers] until the 1990s, although the NTC [National 

Training Center] came in the ’70s. So, the whole thing that I’ve concluded from this is that 

until we get the commander’s buy-in, nothing else is going to go from there. I really can’t 
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address what’s going on with the Army War College curriculum at the current time because 

I did not go through that.

Audience Member

Paul, I was just wondering, perhaps people didn’t take the electives fairly simply 

because you can’t get ahead in public affairs in the Army. Thinking of General Sidle. He 

got his second star only after he had returned to the auxiliary and command at the appropriate level, then he got his second star. He got the star essentially because of his public affairs 

expertise, but he couldn’t get it on that basis.

Mr. Gardner

No, sir, I agree with you. And again, it goes back to until the Army embraces public 

affairs and accepts that as a position. The Army may be moving toward that now, but they 

weren’t back then. It was the specialists who were almost—this is the only analogy. It’s 

almost like an additional duty. It was for a while, because we didn’t think we really needed 

to keep the press informed. Until we start recognizing that it is a critical task, and you can 

make the argument in a new [FM] 3-0 with information being moved up there. Maybe 

we’re heading in that direction, but back during the Cold War, that really wasn’t necessarily there because the Army, you could make the assumption, and that’s what I have, my 

understanding is that the Army expected that if we go back to war again after Vietnam, after 

the problems, we would actually only go based on the Weinberger Doctrine and the Powell 

Doctrine that would actually have public support. So I agree with you. I think some of the 

other Services in the 1970s or ’ 80s started having a dedicated flag officer running their 

public affairs. Don, this would also kind of indirectly answer your question. They actually 

had people in that position and that was a means of getting promoted. Until the public, correction, until the public affairs and commanders actually see that, I’m not sure, at least in 

this time period, the Cold War, that I would argue that’s probably maybe the only lessons 

we can learn from that.

Audience Member

Yesterday, Fred told us that you’ve got to have a neutral press corps and then there was 

a quote from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from Robert Bazell, “There’s no such thing 

as objectivity.” I’m not talking about the press now, I’m talking about an officer corps. 

My experience is that about, well, a large percentage of our officer corps is conservative 

Republicans. Isn’t there a great danger as we encourage officers to engage on losing our 

long-standing tradition of being apolitical as a force for the nation? 

Mr. Gardner

Apolitical or a-partisan?

Audience Member

You tell me.

Mr. Gardner

Well, I would argue George Marshall was a-partisan. You have to deal with the political realm. That’s just a fact of that level, especially for senior officers. If you just say, “The 

Army needs this, here’s why, here’s the military requirement,” and we stay in our lane, we 
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Questions and Answers

stay focused on military tasks, we tie it back to that. Personally, I’m not that concerned, 

focusing in on the Cold War time, that it would actually compromise, if you stick to your 

lane, stick to military requirements and try to articulate this to the public so they understand 

why you need certain things. Then the other thing, and you heard it throughout, if you make 

a mistake, just admit it. The coverups or anything you try to hide, if you throw the classification stamp on it, it would take me back to Senator Fulbright’s book, The Pentagon’s 

Propaganda Machine. We’re talking about how they’re going to bring out this new system 

and they put a FOUO, For Official Use Only, sticker on it. He took significant objections to 

this and he writes in the book, “It’s one thing to inform,” and he advocates that the military 

inform the public. He draws the line when you try to sell something. I would argue that 

regardless of what political affiliation you are, if you stay a-partisan and just inform, I think 

you’re on solid ground.

Audience Member

I’d like to explore the last question raised. Is there an issue here of the Army, like any 

good institution, trying to have it both ways—maintaining the military objective and the 

military mission accomplishments and at the same time intruding into the civilians or with 

public relations [inaudible]? In effect, your military mission accomplishment, which is the 

primary purpose, is being used as the standard by which you should intrude into what’s 

[inaudible] civilian activity? What is the danger of that?

Mr. Gardner

I’m not sure on the intrusion because if you go back to earlier times, we’ve always, the 

Army’s always tried to get their position out and there are arguments out there that one of 

the problems was that the Army will not take a hard position and make a partisan call. We 

need this because if your foreign policy has this as a requirement, then this is the military 

force we require to accomplish that. The politicians can always make the decision as my 

research led me to what General Ridgway was arguing, which is some arbitrary allocation 

of resources done by the Secretary of Defense. He argued, he made his point known, he 

actually went up to the National Security Council and tried to articulate it. So I don’t think 

it’s necessarily intrusion. I think it’s trying to inform the public what their Army and what 

their sons, daughters, and family members are doing. So that’s again—I tie it back to if we 

just inform and don’t try to put a spin on it, don’t try to sell it and try to do the best you can 

and being as forthright as you can, then I personally don’t see transitioning into the wrong 

territory, sir. 

Audience Member

Just an observation, please comment if you will. Your responses to the last two observations, it’s not the military intruding into the press’s realm, the press is intruding in the 

military’s realm. The military is fairly happy because they don’t. And as far as, yes, the 

officer corps does skew conservative. I mean, they’re not rabidly so. There’s diversity, but 

they do. And whether it’s 70 percent or not, I don’t know if that’s true, but wait a minute. 

Journalists, proven studies show, in the major media outlets skew up to 90 percent straight 

Democratic vote. So you can’t hold that up and say, “Well, military’s got trouble because 

they’re conservative.” The military is what it is. The problem I see is that as a society, 
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we’re now a post-racial segregation, but we’re self-segregating in careers and very different human beings, very profoundly different people go into journalism and the military. 

Mr. Gardner

Sir, the only thing I’d add to that is we’re all trying to do the best for our public, for our 

nation, and these are just different ways of keeping the public informed. That would be my 

only comment to that, sir.

Audience Member

I think one of the problems we have, and the word “intrusion” kind of distorts and 

distracts the situation a little bit, is that the Army is going to get drawn into, and in fact, 

all Armed Services are going to get drawn into the political realm whether we like it or 

not. We’ve seen it recently with General Petraeus and all the other officers who testify 

before Congress. When the Air Force tried to get this new aircraft that I think they didn’t 

get as many as they wanted, but we’re always going to have the situation where the military appears to be “intruding” into the political realm when in fact what they’re doing is 

perhaps lobbying and they are being drawn in by certain Congressmen and Senators who 

want them to testify. So a certain weapons system, I mean, if the weapons system is being 

constructed in a particular Congressman’s district, they’re going to want military support 

so they can get that weapons system done in their district and get more jobs back and stuff 

like that. So we have perhaps in many cases the appearance of the military intruding into 

the civilian sector, when in fact the military is only being a part of the process, and a very 

necessary part. 

Mr. Gardner

The one thing I’d say with that is the military always has responsibility back to the 

legislature. We need to present to them our opinion on certain facts, that is part of the 

Constitution, thus, we must do that. Again, my whole focus on this is saying when they go 

up there, that’s why they have the Office of Legislative Liaison and they do certain things 

to make sure that people are up there and providing accurate information. But again, it’s 

trying to tie it back to the curriculum. How do we expect our officers to understand that, 

understand that tenuous position they’re in when they go up and testify in Congress? If we 

don’t help them understand it through the educational means so that when they do become 

one, two, three, and four star generals, making those public opinions, correction, those 

public statements in front of Congress and trying to stay again, as I’ve termed it, a-partisan 

because at the four-star level, you are going to be in the political realm. That’s just basically 

your nature. It’s just, how do you stay a-partisan and provide a military viewpoint understanding the political ramifications and necessities of why you’re there?

Audience Member

Sir, if you allow me just an observation. The question was asked previously, what are we 

doing now to build on what may have been perceived as the Army’s success in its attempt 

to build up in parts of public affairs, just speaking in terms of CGSC and the Combined 

Arms Center, probably many students in this room could explain it better than I. But from 

day one, I think we take away from ILE specifically that there’s a major importance that 
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Questions and Answers

we have to understand for public affairs, we have a mandatory strategic communications 

requirement to complete for graduation throughout the core instruction we offer. We 

receive all kinds of information about community level [inaudible] of information, getting 

our subsequent messages out through the media and it’s not just coming from military 

instructors. This information that we receive from media panels and I think Mr. Peters was 

even here for some of the media accounts that we had and other media professionals as 

well. We’re continuing to build. Just as an observation and taking away from this course the 

absolute importance of understanding how we in the military should approach the media.

Mr. Gardner

I agree.

Audience Member

I would like to just follow that comment. The topic of discussion is public affairs, but 

I think it’s [inaudible] public affairs, it is this formal mechanism [inaudible]. Really what 

we’re talking about is media relations. It’s the media relations that we’re focused on here 

at this time, because I would contend that what we’re asking our leaders to do is to engage 

the media in many cases well outside the formal public affairs canvas, and that’s something 

completely, some would say, “Well, it’s a nuance.” But, I think it’s a very important nuance 

in understanding.

Mr. Gardner

I understand it, and that’s why I tried to lay out public information. How do you get 

your message across to the public, whether it’s via the media or just by going out and talking to someone. So I’m in agreement with you. The key thing is just to get the message out 

and just to engage with the public so they understand where all their tax dollars are going, 

especially when it’s allocated to the Services.

Mr. McGrath

Let me ask the last question then. The Marines and to a lesser extent, the Air Force, 

have legendarily successful public information, public affairs programs. Have you looked 

at those other services to see how they vary from the Army and the educational?

Mr. Gardner

No, not at this time. I have not looked at that, so I really don’t have a base to make any 

statement on that. 

Mr. McGrath

I guess that will be it. As is the new tradition here, we’ll present Paul with the Fort 

Leavenworth official coffee table book, Three Centuries of Service. Thank you for your 

presentation.

175

Panel 5—Experiences Beyond the US Army

Soviet News Media Performance During the Afghan War:

STRATCOM Utopia or Dystopia?

(Submitted Paper)

by

Robert Baumann, Ph.D.

Imagine, if you can, a state with a comprehensive strategic communications system 

designed to harmonize information operations in times of war and peace. Picture a social 

information infrastructure, from universities to popular entertainment, which takes its cues 

from a master department of strategic communications that enjoys real control over the 

release of information. Add to this a press corps, driven not by competition for subscriptions or the allure of sensational prize-winning scoops, but by an officially determined 

mandate to serve as an arm of the war effort. Finally, conjure up in your mind’s eye a cadre 

of newsroom editors who draw their paychecks from the same regime as the public affairs 

officers and are guided by an identical mission statement. Would not such a system optimize official strategic communications in wartime?

This paper will examine the actual performance of such a system in a recent historical case: the Soviet war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. The focus is not on relations 

between Soviet journalists and the Soviet Army, which remained fairly cordial. Of course, 

this ought to have been the case given their relatively convergent purposes. Rather, this 

study examines to what extent Soviet strategic communications, in which the Soviet news 

media played an integral role, aided the war effort by sustaining morale on the home front.

When political philosopher Hannah Arendt framed the concept of the totalitarian state 

in the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), it was with good reason that the USSR served as a 

source of inspiration. Novelists George Orwell and Aldus Huxley were equally impressed. 

Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet state managed all available means of shaping public 

perceptions—schools, the arts, print media, mass meetings, and public spectacles.

Not surprisingly, many in US national security circles believed in 1980 that the Soviet 

ability to suffocate dissent and employ all media to cheerlead for the war effort would illustrate the power of a comprehensive strategic communications approach. The implied contrast to the American war in Vietnam, during the latter half of which criticism in the news 

media seemed increasingly pervasive, suggested that the Soviets would fare much better. 

Facing no requirement to fend off domestic criticism, the Soviets could more effectively 

sustain their war effort to a victorious conclusion.

There was some basis for this prognosis. Many norms of the Stalin-era Soviet media 

persisted into the 1980s. Among the most Orwellian for Western observers was the 
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presentation of official speeches throughout the print media. Addresses by leading political figures, particularly during Party Congresses and other milestone events, appeared in 

complete text, often beginning on the front page. Especially striking was the parenthetical 

insertion of applause lines on a graduated scale from “applause,” to “prolonged applause,” 

to “stormy, prolonged applause.” Thus, if the reader had any doubt as to what was important or whether the address resonated with the audience, this official scale offered a reliable indication. For readers who lacked the resolve to comb through 5,000 word speeches 

couched in the bureaucratic jargon of the reigning ideology, on holidays and other notable 

occasions the Party released lists of official slogans. A case in point would be the list of 

56 May Day slogans published in Pravda (Truth—the Communist Party daily), Izvestiia 

(News—the official government daily), Krasnaia zvezda (Red Star—the military daily), 

and a host of other papers on 17 April 1983. These constituted the Soviet version of political bumper stickers and would be amply in evidence during the official parades across the 

country. In addition to the usual calls praising Marxism-Leninism or rallying the international working class, a number focused on foreign policy concerns. These included standard denunciations of imperialism, an evil that by definition in the Soviet lexicon could 

only be perpetrated by nonsocialist states. More topical were rejections of Israeli aggression and American intentions to deploy missiles in Europe. One specifically urged the 

countries of Asia to resist imperialism, “hegemonism,” and neocolonialism.1

 This slogan, 

the only one making oblique reference to Afghanistan, still appeared verbatim in the even 

more robust list of 63 slogans published as part of the buildup to the 67th anniversary of 

the October Revolution in autumn 1984.2

Because, as noted above, the Soviet news media constituted only one facet of a broad 

strategic communications effort, it is important to consider their role in that light. In other 

words, this paper cannot overlook the resonant effects of complementary efforts to shape 

perceptions of the war. The actual gathering of hard news was discretionary, but welcome, 

as long as the news was good or served a politically approved purpose. Indeed, so great 

was the emphasis on positive images of Soviet life and policies that even airplane crashes 

routinely went unreported if Soviet aircraft were involved. Meanwhile, the merest hint that 

official policy or dogma might be incorrect was explicitly beyond the pale of consideration, 

except in cases when Soviet leaders critiqued the incorrect policies of repudiated predecessors. For instance, following the ouster of Nikita Khrushchev in 1964, his policies came 

under public criticism by Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin who replaced him. As for 

the deposed leader himself, Khrushchev within days slipped into the utter obscurity of an 

ordinary pensioner, never quoted, photographed, or remarked on.

The Khrushchev case raises a related point. Denial of information was as important 

to Soviet propaganda as dissemination. To shield their domestic audience from contrary 

opinion, the Soviet authorities had to combat the pernicious influence of foreign broadcasts 

from sources such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, Voice of America, and especially Radio Liberty, whose content focused on events and conditions inside the USSR. 

Soviet efforts to contain information contamination assumed two main forms. The first 

was jamming, which operated variably according to the broadcast source and the political 

environment. During the United States–Soviet détente of the 1970s, BBC and Voice of 
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America transmissions reached Soviet audiences without obstruction. Jamming resumed, 

however, in 1981. In contrast, the Soviets jammed Radio Liberty continuously from March 

1953 until November 1988.3

 The second method of containment was the threat of criminal prosecution of listeners. Although listening was not itself a crime, the circulation of 

“anti-Soviet propaganda” by informing others of the content of dissonant foreign broadcasts constituted a prosecutable offense. Moreover, listening was occasionally cited as an 

aggravating factor in the prosecution of individuals charged with anti-Soviet activities.4

Ultimately, neither method fully prevented Soviet citizens from listening to proscribed 

foreign broadcasts. Western polling data suggested that from 1980 to 1988 listenership 

remained fairly constant at from 5 to 10 percent for BBC and Radio Liberty and at about 

15 percent for Voice of America.5

Looking at the overall Soviet media campaign with respect to Afghanistan, the Soviets 

did a good job of creating a unified narrative among information sources. One Soviet journalist who covered the war explained the system this way: “The articles they [journalists] 

wrote were edited mercilessly. The final touches would be applied in Moscow by Glavlit 

(central publishing) and the central military censorship office. . . . Not a single article from 

Kabul could be broadcast or published without passing through these two obstacles.” In the 

end, he concluded, “Collectively and individually, we did what was demanded of us; that 

is, we drew an attractive picture of revolutionary Afghanistan, not forgetting to project the 

image of the Soviet soldier as a peacemaker.” All news outlets presented the official view 

virtually without a dissenting voice.6

There was in fact a single celebrated incident in which a broadcaster for Soviet radio 

ad libbed a denunciation of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. Radio Moscow broadcaster 

Vladimir Danchev took the liberty of praising resistance against Soviet “invaders” during 

a news report (aimed primarily at a foreign audience) in May 1983.7

 In this instance, Soviet 

authorities immediately suspended him from his position. To be sure, such an extemporaneous partisan (not to mention unpatriotic) editorial might well have led to complications 

even had he been an employee of a Western news service. He would not, however, have 

been subjected to psychiatric confinement and a security investigation had he worked for 

the BBC or the Associated Press.8

 Neither would he have been officially muzzled. Rather, 

he would have found some other forum from which to express his opinions. 

Meanwhile Soviet television, in stark contrast to the presentation of the American 

experience in Vietnam, did not bring combat footage into Soviet living rooms. Coverage of 

any sort was rare and tended to focus on the repetition of official statements.

In general, the Soviet information system worked as intended. The pervasive human 

network of Communist Party members carried the official message into workplaces and 

institutions across the country. For example, within several weeks of the invasion, Party 

representatives organized a public information assembly at Moscow University to give students the authoritative word that the “limited contingent” of Soviet troops in Afghanistan 

was responding to a call for help from a friendly people on their southern border (as it was 

at the time) and would remain only long enough to stabilize the situation, probably no more 

than a few weeks. The same words and phrases found faithful replication across forums 
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and media outlets of all types. Before long, as it became clear that the duration of the mission was open ended, official statements forecast a Soviet troop departure as soon as the 

Afghan people no longer needed military assistance.

In stark contrast to the lavish reporting of actions of civil disobedience or expressions 

of dissent in the United States during the Vietnam war, Soviet media did not report rare 

acts of protest against official policy, which in any case were shut down by the police 

without delay. In one such unreported instance, a small group of students in the provincial 

capital of Ufa staged the briefest of demonstrations in support of dissident physicist Andrei 

Sakharov’s position against the war. Arrests followed shortly and punishments were meted 

out to anyone even remotely associated with the event.9

Over time, particularly with the start of Gorbachev’s new policy of “glasnost” in 1987, 

the official Soviet narrative of the war evolved to reflect changes in strategy and policy. In 

the midst of change, it was occasionally possible to discern certain nuances in the reporting 

that hinted at controversies behind the scenes. For example, in 1987, there was indication 

that Gorbachev faced some opposition in his efforts to reach an acceptable political settlement in Afghanistan to facilitate Soviet withdrawal. One contemporary CIA media analyst 

noted emphasis on the necessity for a realistic political solution. By implication, this suggested that some “hardliners” may have been reluctant to accept some concessions then on 

the negotiating table.10 Of course, this remained a matter of conjecture because the “hardliners” had minimal opportunity to break ranks publicly and put out a competing message.

Four major strategic communications trends stand out as key and fairly enduring features of the Soviet wartime narrative. Though carefully crafted, the themes could not in 

the long run withstand the corrosive effects of a reality that refused to adhere to the script. 

Furthermore, the unraveling of each storyline ultimately helped undermine not just the war 

effort but the Soviet regime itself.

Trend One: The Soviet intervention was at the behest of the legitimate government, 

essentially defensive, and heavily weighted toward humanitarian support activities. In 

a published interview in Pravda on 13 January 1980, Party General Secretary Leonid 

Brezhnev provided a succinct mission statement: “The only task of the Soviet contingents 

is to assist the Afghans in repulsing aggression from the outside.” The Soviet leader further 

asserted that it was not the legally invited Soviet forces, but others, who were violating 

the United Nations charter by interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.11 Soviet media 

diverted the focus from conventional military operations conducted by Soviet forces to 

descriptions of ancillary activities, such as escorting food convoys and scathing accounts 

of provocations by the Americans or Chinese and their cronies among self-serving elements in the native Muslim clergy.

So steadfastly did the Soviets stay on message that no substantive accounts of combat 

appeared in the Soviet press until about 1984, 4 years into the war. To be sure, there were 

vaguely worded accounts of heroism, but these were too few to suggest that actual fighting 

was anything other than an anomaly in Afghanistan. Major division-size ground offensives 

and air campaigns went unreported. The flood of refugees fleeing into Pakistan and Iran 

proceeded invisibly and, needless to add, there were no recorded atrocities. Reports of the 
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deaths of Soviet soldiers, the first of which occurred 10 months into the war in September 

1981, were rare and cryptic.12 Even when coverage expanded slightly in the middle of the 

war, the censors had their say. As recounted by a former Soviet war correspondent, censors 

altered a 1984 description of field combat to convey the impression that Afghan, rather than 

Soviet, soldiers were central in the action. Moreover, the published version transformed an 

ineffective action into a great victory.13 Not infrequently, Soviet soldiers disapproved of the 

coverage. One told a reporter, “I want to write about Afghanistan myself. Such nonsense in 

print—sometimes it’s sickening.”14

Perhaps most remarkable of all, casualty totals of any sort went unreported until 

Mikhail Gorbachev authorized their release in 1988 in the midst of his glasnost campaign. 

By this time, of course, the official story line on Afghanistan had finally changed.

One early challenge to the official interpretation of the war’s causes was the depiction of President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan. Amin was an early target of the skillfully executed Soviet takeover in Kabul and died in a shootout during the first hours of 

combat operations. The logic puzzle for the Soviets was to explain how it came to be that 

the man who had signed the last several requests asking for Soviet military support, the 

proclaimed basis for the operation’s assertion of legitimacy, was himself killed resisting 

removal. In this respect, the Soviet press completely skirted the fact that Amin had been the 

head of state requesting aid and instead identified him as a ruthless dictator and a tool of 

the CIA. To substantiate the assertion, Soviet sources pointed out that Amin had studied in 

the United States at Columbia University. (This much was true, although Amin had closely 

aligned himself with other student Marxists during his university days and was perceived 

as a genuine student radical.15) Concurrent with Amin’s removal was the installation of 

Babrak Karmal, a loyal Soviet henchman presented as a true son of the Afghan people, as 

the new president.

Trend Two: The Soviets consistently characterized Afghanistan as one front in a multifaceted anti-Soviet campaign waged by American imperialists to thwart the natural and 

historically progressive expansion of socialism. President Jimmy Carter, rarely thought 

of as a “hawk” in the US domestic political context, appeared as just another bellicose 

American with a knee-jerk anti-Soviet fixation. Thus were explained his tabling of the 

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), the imposition of an embargo on grain sales to 

the USSR, and other American responses to Soviet actions in Afghanistan. In concert with 

this interpretation, Soviet involvement in Afghanistan resulted from American meddling, 

especially by CIA operatives bent on subverting the will of the people. (Of course, Carter’s 

National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later acknowledged in a published interview that in the year preceding the Soviet invasion the United States had begun to provide 

clandestine support to elements of the spontaneously emerging resistance to the Soviet client regime in Afghanistan.16 The point of distinction, of course, is that the Americans were 

aiding, not instigating, the movement.)

The theme of “struggle against imperialist aggression” manifested itself in a variety 

of ways. News features remembering the victories against foreign aggression during the 

revolution, civil war, and the Great Patriotic war appeared with regularity. Freshly minted 
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histories made the case that foreign subversion in Afghanistan was a linear extension of 

foreign collaboration with the reactionary Basmachi campaigns in central Asia between 

1919 and 1933. Attacks on Western “falsifiers” of history fused with efforts to discount 

the claims of contemporary critics of Soviet policy. One such work, suggestively titled The 

Basmachis: Historical Truth and the Fabrications of Falsifiers, argued “It is not by chance 

that Afghan counterrevolutionaries are referred to as dushmany (bandits) or basmachis.”17

Trend Three: The Soviet press never acknowledged widespread voices of international 

disapproval of their role in Afghanistan. With a curt dismissal, the official line depicted 

any and all contrary opinions as the fabricated slander of pathologically hostile elements 

among foreign imperialist circles and their operatives among various intelligence agencies. 

All thoughtful, informed international opinion understood and lauded the Soviet position. 

In fact, published guidance on official thinking for Party regulars contained in the 1980 

Knizhka partiinogo aktivista (Short Handbook for Party Activists) stressed that the decision of the International Olympic Committee that the USSR would host the 1980 Summer 

Olympic Games was “convincing evidence of the universal recognition of the historical 

importance and correctness of the foreign policy of our country, the enormous contribution 

of the Soviet Union in the struggle for peace, its contribution to the international Olympic 

movement, the development of physical culture and sport.”18

This theme, too, confronted an unfriendly set of facts amidst the storm of international 

controversy following the invasion. Indeed, in an attempt to discredit the official picture 

presented to the Soviet audience, Voice of America broadcast the debates from the United 

Nations in January 1980 live and unedited. This, by the way, was a particularly clever ploy 

because Voice of America commentators, who were not necessarily perceived as objective 

observers, did not have to say much of anything. The raw evidence provided by the uninterrupted stream of international criticism by delegates from state after state was sufficient 

to create considerable cognitive dissonance for listeners accustomed to being told that progressive humanity everywhere admired Soviet foreign policy. Just weeks later, President 

Carter announced his intention to organize a boycott of the Moscow Olympiad, a gesture 

that he believed would constitute “a severe blow to the Soviet Union.”19 Whatever the 

overall merits of this much debated decision, it forced Soviet propagandists into an awkward spot. The Soviet line maintained that the boycott had nothing whatsoever to do with 

Afghanistan. Rather, it reflected just another American attempt to sow international discord and undermine Soviet efforts to promote peace. In this observer’s experience, many 

Soviet citizens were unaware of the linkage between the boycott and the war until a helpful 

foreigner laid it out for them. That said, the boycott, which was joined by 55 countries, 

certainly dampened public morale over what was intended to be a gigantic celebratory 

occasion.

Trend Four: Soviet authorities gave no attention to those rare domestic critics who dared 

to question official policy. They did not acknowledge even the tiniest crack in the popular 

united front among all Soviet citizenry and institutions on the question of Afghanistan.

One incident that generated significant international furor while producing scarcely a 

ripple in the Soviet press was the internal exile of world-renowned atomic physicist Andrei 

Sakharov. The first prominent Soviet citizen to question publicly the rationale for Soviet 
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military operations in Afghanistan, Sakharov required delicate handling. As a decorated 

scientist who helped give birth to the Soviet atomic bomb, Sakharov became a source of 

increasing embarrassment to the Soviet regime. Reluctant to imprison this globally recognized figure as they might an ordinary citizen, the Soviets sought to mute his message by 

means of more subtle tactics. On 22 January 1981, Soviet police arrested Sakharov and 

transferred him to the “closed” city of Gorky, a large provincial city off limits to foreigners. There the authorities could isolate him from the outside world. Even then, however, he 

succeeded in smuggling out public statements, such as one in 1983 that included a scathing 

comment on Afghanistan: “Three years of appallingly cruel anti-guerrilla war have brought 

incalculable suffering to the Afghan people, as attested by the more than four million refugees in Pakistan and Iran.” He also characterized the Soviet system as “totalitarian,” contending that the closed decisionmaking process led directly to bad decisions, such as the 

one to invade Afghanistan.20

In the end, as with the case of the American media and the Vietnam war, it is impossible to establish with any precision the impact of Soviet media efforts during their war 

in Afghanistan. In neither instance is it possible to separate all factors that shaped public 

opinion so as to isolate an impact specifically traceable to strategic communications. The 

comparative scarcity of opinion data aggravates the problem. Nevertheless, available indicators do permit some provisional findings.

Broadly speaking, at the beginning of the Soviet war there were virtually no manifestations of dissent, but by the end disillusionment was widespread. A number of individuals 

of my acquaintance changed their views on the war, in some instances well before the midpoint in 1984. One strong indicator was the evident desire of parents to keep their sons out 

of the Army, and consequently the war. Indeed, so great was the desire to avoid service in 

Afghanistan that there were reports of Soviet personnel officers selling choice assignments 

in East Germany or elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact states.21 Like their American Vietnamera counterparts, many Soviet students sought to obtain coveted medical and educational 

exemptions that would keep them out of combat duty. This contributed to the toxic perception that the sons of senior Party officials managed to avoid Afghan service.22 The first 

published signs of collapsing support for the war appeared in youth-oriented periodicals in 

1986. Letters to the editor in the weekly Sobesednik toward the end of 1986 suggested that 

the official portrait of young draftees proud to do their international duty was a mirage.23

One survey suggested that by 1987 only 6 percent of the public viewed military service in 

Afghanistan as honorable, whereas 46 percent regarded it as a “disgrace.”24

Survey research conducted by the Soviet Area Audience Opinion and Research Division, 

which operated separately but in conjunction with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 

suggested a strong correlation between the information sources of Soviet listeners and their 

opinions. These surveys, based on interviews with about 5,000 Soviet citizens traveling 

abroad each year, were obviously problematic to some degree.25 They reflected opinions 

current among an atypical sample. The trends are noteworthy, however. Disapproval of the 

war among the adult urban Soviet populace grew from 25 percent to 45 percent between 

1984 and 1987. Curiously, during the same stretch, support for the war held almost steady, 

diminishing from 25 percent to 24 percent.26
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Of particular note was a strong correlation between the type of information source 

relied on and attitudes toward the war. Clearly, those who relied most on the Soviet press 

were less likely to disapprove of the war. Those who admitted to receiving their information from Western broadcasts disapproved at a rate of 52 percent in 1984 and 71 percent 

in 1987. Those depending on the social grapevine (word of mouth) showed 46 percent 

disapproval in 1984 and 64 percent in 1987. (In the author’s experience, incidentally, the 

importance of informal information networks was remarkable.) Meanwhile, those relying 

most on official domestic sources, whether print, TV, radio, or public meetings, disapproved at rates between 19 percent and 23 percent in 1984, and then between 34 percent 

and 39 percent in 1987.27

Support for the war policy varied significantly by region. In 1986–87, approval slipped 

to 18 percent in central Asia while disapproval reached 49 percent. Results were more 

negative among residents of the Baltic republics, with disapproval exceeding approval by 

67 percent to 12 percent, and in the Caucasus where disapproval stood at 58 percent.28

Perhaps most surprising in the survey data was that whereas only 8 percent of 

Communist Party members disapproved of the war in Afghanistan in 1984, 37 percent did 

so in 1987. At the same time, member support dropped from 54 percent to 39 percent.29 To 

be sure, Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost and his own publically expressed concerns about 

the war had enormous influence toward the end. In his memoirs, Gorbachev noted that 

discussions in the Soviet Politbureau (the supreme decisionmaking body) began as early 

as 1985. Moreover, the Central Committee presented the finding to the 17th Communist 

Party Congress in 1986 that the war had to be brought to an end.30 SAAOR data from 1988 

and 1989 showed that 90 percent of the general public supported Gorbachev’s decision to 

withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Only 15 percent believed that the Soviet Union 

had achieved its strategic objectives.31

Overall then, this paper posits three rough conclusions about Soviet media and the 

Afghan war.

• First, though initially enjoying some success, the Soviet strategic communications 

system, and the media specifically, was unable to sustain public support for the war over 

the long run. In all probability, had it not been for the full range of coercive mechanisms 

available, a cohesive and vibrant antiwar movement would have emerged by 1984. Dissent 

was private, but nonetheless real.

• Second, the official moratorium on unpleasant news failed utterly to keep bad news 

out of the public domain. To use a physics analogy, no developed society with an educated 

population will fail to fill an information vacuum. Since the official information sources 

would not do it, people took it upon themselves. As early as March 1980, when no Soviet 

casualties had yet been acknowledged, I heard that coffins were arriving at Sheremetyevo 

Airport late at night. True or not, and I suspect it was, unofficial news circulated with 

astonishing speed and in ever growing volume. Rumors abounded and soaring casualty 

estimates made the rounds. One underground Samizdat (self-published) paper estimated 

losses at 30 percent.32
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Because the official media quickly lost credibility, people drew their own conclusions. 

Once the initial official projection of a brief campaign proved false, gnawing doubts ate 

away at the official story. I well recall a conversation with a Communist Party member 

4 months into the war. He told me, “Your government says we have 110,000 troops in 

Afghanistan. My government says we have 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. I figure we have 

about 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.”

• Third, in the end, falsifying the story was far more septic to the Soviet body politic than the truth would have been. By the late stages of the war, Soviet Afghan veterans, 

“afgantsy,” began speaking out. Whether or not they were supportive of the war, they 

tended to agree that the Soviet public had scant understanding of their sacrifices and that 

their government had done little to show its appreciation.33 By withholding the stories 

of campaigns and battles, the regime left its war veterans feeling somehow orphaned, as 

though what they had done was not part of the history of the Soviet Army.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, some would blame the war in Afghanistan. 

While in reality there were numerous causes of collapse—corruption, self-isolation of the 

leadership, cumbersome bureaucracy, centralized economic planning, ethnic disharmony—

the Afghanistan war certainly played a supporting role in triggering systemic failure, as in 

the end did the centralized management of information.
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Notes

1. “Prizyvy TsK KPSS k 1 Maia 1983 goda,” Pravda, 17 April 1983.

2. “Prizyvy TsK KPSS k 67-I godovshchine Belikoi Oktiabr’skoi sotsialisticheskoi 

revoliutsii,” Pravda, 11 October 1984.

3. R. Eugene Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener: An Empirical Assessment of Radio 

Liberty and Western Broadcasting to the USSR during the Cold War (Palo Alto, CA: Hoover 

Institution Press, 2007), 8–9.

4. Peter Zvagulis, “Water Shaping the Rock or Cold War Broadcasting Impact in Latvia” (a 

paper delivered at the Cold War Broadcasting Impact Conference at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, 

October 2004), http://zvadulis.com/Cold War.htm (accessed 22 July 2009).

5. Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 9.

6. Gennady Bocharov, Russian Roulette: Afghanistan Through Russian Eyes, trans. Alyona 

Koljevnikov (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1990), 52, 61–62.

7. John Burns, “Moscow Broadcaster who Altered Scripts is Returned to Work,” New York 

Times, 15 December 1983, http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/15/world/moscow-broadcaster-whoaltered-scripts-is-returned-to-work.html (accessed 14 July 2009); Nikolai Lanine and Media Lens, 

“Invasion—A Comparison of Soviet and Western Media Performance,” 20 November 2007, http://

medialens.org/alerts/07/071120_invasion_a_comparison.php (accessed 25 September 2008). In 

comparison, Dr. Noam Chomsky, former activist against the Vietnam war and since then a persistent 

critic of US and NATO foreign policy, points out that despite extensive searches he never uncovered a 

single instance in which a mainstream American journalist described the Vietnam war as an invasion or 

called for the Vietnamese to resist American aggression. See, Noam Chomsky, “Invasion Newspeak: 

U.S. & USSR,” FAIR, December 1989, http://www.chomsky.info/articles/198912.htm (accessed 

14 July 2009). Of course, Chomsky fails to add that numerous critiques of this sort on America’s 

Vietnam policy appeared in openly published left-wing periodicals across the country. Thus, the 

implication that Americans lacked an opportunity to confront dissenting opinions is quite misleading.

8. Chomsky concurs on this point.

9. The author met one former student who was punished as a result of the event in which he 

took no direct part in the protest during a research visit to Ufa in 1992. Apparently, he had failed 

to prevent the participation of a younger student for whom he was a mentor. As a result, he was 

expelled from his institute.

10. “Current Soviet Strategy on Afghanistan—CIA document,” 2 September 1987, faqs.org 

CIA Released Documents, http://www.faqs.org/cia/docs/20/0001475990/current-soviet-strategyon-afghanistan (accessed 22 July 2009).

11. “From Replies of Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the 

Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the 

USSR to a Pravda Correspondent,” in The Truth About Afghanistan: Documents, Facts, Eyewitness 

Reports (Moscow: Novosti Press, 1980), 7–14.

12. J. Bruce Amstutz, Afghanistan: The First Five Years of Occupation (Washington, DC: 

NDU Press, 1986), 129.

13. Artem Borovik, “Chto my natvorili?” Sobesednik, No. 37 (September 1989), 210, as cited 

in Anthony Arnold, The Fateful Pebble: Afghanistan’s Role in the Fall of the Soviet Union (Novato, 

CA: Presidio, 1993), 134.

14. Artyom Borovik, The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in 

Afghanistan (New York, NY: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), 92.

15. Around 1990 the author had an extended conversation with a former Columbia student who 

had encountered Amin. He saw no reason to doubt that Amin was an authentic Marxist. Certainly he 
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would have been in good company at Columbia at the time. Even the Soviets, who sought to cloak 

Amin’s assassination with charges that he worked for the CIA, would later criticize him for being 

too extreme as president in the pursuit of radical socialist reform in Afghanistan and thereby stirring 

up resistance.

16. “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan,” interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le 

Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15–21 January 1998, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.

html (accessed 13 July 2009); “Brzezinski: West Must Avoid Russia’s Mistakes in Afghanistan,” 

Deutsche Welle, 16 October 2008, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3715692,00.html 

(accessed 13 July 2009).

17. A.I. Zevelev, Iu. A. Poliakov, L.V. Shishkina, Basmachestvo: Pravda istorii i vymysel 

fal’sifikatorov (Moscow: Mysl’, 1986), 7.

18. Knizhka partiinogo aktivista 1980 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1979), 

158. 

19. Ronald Smothers, “Olympics; Bitterness Lingering Over Carter’s Boycott,” 19 July 1996, 

http:www.nytimes.com/1996/07/19/sports/Olympics-bitterness-lingering-over-carter-s-byocott 

(accessed 19 August 2009).

20. Andrei Sakharov, “Andrei Sakharov From Exile: Texts provided by the International 

League for Human Rights, New York, October 1983,” http://www.aip.org/history/Sakharov/essay2.

htm (accessed 15 July 2009).

21. Taras Kuzio, “Opposition in the USSR to the Invasion of Afghanistan,” Central Asian 

Survey 6, no. 1 (1987): 112–114. Kuzio cites SAAOR data as well as an article by Sergei Khovanksi, 

“Afghanistan: The Bleeding Wound,” Détente, no. 6, Spring 1986. In this author’s experience, 

Soviet parents were anxious to keep their sons out of Afghanistan by whatever means necessary.

22. Bill Keller, “Russia’s Divisive War: Home From Afghanistan,” New York Times Magazine, 

14 February 1988, 27.

23. Bogdan Nahaylo, “Soviet Newspaper Reveals Antipathy Among Youth Towards War in 

Afghanistan,” Radio Liberty Research 3, no. 87, 14 January 1987, 1–3.

24. Elena Lesoto, Komandirovka na voinu (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 15; Nahaylo, “Soviet 

Newspaper Reveals Antipathy,” 1–3.

25. Board for International Broadcasting 1990 Annual Report, Facts about Radio Free Europe/

Radio Liberty, 1 January 1990, 53.

26. Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 48.

27. Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 48–49.

28. Mark Galeotti, Afghanistan, The Soviet Union’s Last War (London: Routledge, 1995), 167. 

Galeotti also cites SAAOR data in presenting these figures.

29. Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 50.

30. Mikhail Gorbachev, Gorbachev: My Country and the World (New York, NY: Columbia 

University Press, 1999), 198.

31. Parta, Discovering the Hidden Listener, 51.

32. Ausra, No. 30 as cited in Kuzio, 101.

33. V. Pogrebniak, letter to the editor, Krasnaia zvezda, 22 March 1988; A. Turvandian, 

“Conscience Calls,” Kommunist (Erevan), 24 September 1987, as translated in JPRS-UMA-87-045, 

23 December 1987, 53; N. Burbyga, “Callousness: Soldier-Internationalists Encounter it Even in a 

Military Hospital,” Krasnaia zvezda, 19 January 1988, as translated in JPRS-UMA-88-008, 3 May 

1988, 23-26; V. Panov, “Ostavat’sia boitsami,” Znamenosets, no. 4 (1988), 25-26; I. M. Dynin, 

Posle Afganistana (Moscow: Profizdat’, 1990); N. Burbyga, “Gorkaia pravda nedavnei voiny,” 

Izvestiia, 26 October 1990. These are just a few examples.

187

Panel 5—Experiences Beyond the US Army

Public Communications and the International

Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

(Submitted Paper)

by

Mr. Bernard Barrett

Media Delegate, Washington

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of how the International Committee 

of the Red Cross (ICRC) views public communication, how it decides what it will and will 

not discuss publicly, and how public communication fits in with the mandate of the ICRC 

and its operational strategies. Before discussing public communication, it is essential that 

the mandate and role of the ICRC is clearly understood, as there is often confusion between 

the ICRC and other components of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, such as the 

American Red Cross.

The paper will begin with a brief explanation of the ICRC, how it fits into the larger 

Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, its mission, an overview of its major operations, and 

certain principles that are at the core of the institution. The paper will then differentiate different forms of communication used by the ICRC, from confidential bilateral discussions 

through operational communications to public communication involving the media. It will 

also describe the range of issues dealt with in ICRC public communication as well as different communication approaches used by the ICRC. It will conclude with a discussion of 

how the ICRC tries to balance the issues of neutrality, transparency, and confidentiality as 

well as how it views its role in public advocacy.

The ICRC and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement

The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Solferino, which opposed French and AustroPrussian forces in Italy, was marked on 24 June 2009. A Swiss businessman by the name 

of Henri Dunant arrived at Solferino in the aftermath of the battle where 5,000 dead and 

35,000 wounded had been for all intents and purposes abandoned. Horrified by what he 

saw, Dunant mobilized local villagers to help care for the wounded. This care was provided 

on the basis of need only, regardless of which uniform the soldier was wearing.

On his return later to Geneva, Dunant wrote a book, Memories of Solferino, and 

launched three major initiatives. He organized a group of leading Geneva citizens to 

form what they called “the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded on 
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the Battlefield.” He suggested that every country should have its own national society of 

trained volunteers to respond in the case of war or natural disasters. Finally, he convinced 

the Swiss Government to convene the leading European governments to work out a treaty 

on the care of the wounded on the battlefield.

As part of this first Geneva Convention, an emblem to designate military medical staff 

on the battlefield was adopted. In deference to Dunant and the Swiss Government, it was 

decided to use a red cross—the reverse of the Swiss flag. The International Committee 

became the International Committee of the Red Cross; the national societies became the 

national Red Cross societies, which eventually included the American Red Cross.

There are now 186 Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies around the world. They have 

an umbrella organization, “The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent 

Societies.” Along with the ICRC, the national societies and the Federation make up the 

International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement; however, each component is an independent organization.

In the case of natural disasters, the national society is the primary responder on behalf 

of the Movement. If the disaster goes beyond the capacity of the national society, the 

International Federation assumes the coordinating role. In the case of international armed 

conflict or internal conflict where the Geneva Conventions apply, the ICRC is the lead 

agency on behalf of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement.

ICRC Mission and Operations

The ICRC’s mission is to protect and assist the civilian and military victims of armed 

conflicts and internal disturbances on a strictly neutral and impartial basis and to promote 

compliance with international humanitarian law. With its headquarters in Geneva, the ICRC 

now has delegations in over 80 countries around the world. It has over 12,000 employees, 

of which roughly 1,200 are expatriates while the others are residents of the country where 

they are employed. As of early 2009, its 10 largest operations by order of importance were 

Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Democratic Republic of 

Congo, Somalia, Colombia, Chad, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.

The ICRC is not a nongovernmental organization (NGO), nor is it an international 

organization, although in many countries it does have the legal status of an international 

organization. It is a private Swiss-based organization with international standing as recognized by the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations (UN). Its role and mandate are 

derived from the Geneva Conventions or the Law of Armed Conflict. As such, it is not a 

human rights organization, but works to protect and assist the victims of armed conflict, in 

particular civilians, those who have been injured (combatants and civilians), and those who 

have been detained in relation to a conflict. 

Over 90 percent of the ICRC’s funding comes from governments. Although it does 

receive funding from private individuals and organizations, it does not conduct public fundraising campaigns. At the core of the ICRC values and of its operations is the concept of 

neutral independent humanitarian action (NIHA). Neutrality implies that the ICRC through 

its words and its activities must not suggest support for any particular side in a conflict, nor 
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can it be perceived as favoring one side over another. This neutrality is key to acceptance 

by all sides in a conflict, and therefore, fundamental to security for its staff in the field.

The ICRC does not travel in military convoys, nor does it use armed guards for its 

offices and residences, and (with the exception of Somalia) it does not use armed escorts 

when traveling in the field. Acceptance by the parties to the conflict and by the local population is, therefore, crucial not only for security, but also for basic access and for the ability 

to carry out its work. These acceptance/security needs apply to national staff as well as 

expatriates.

The ICRC must remain and be seen to remain independent. Although it will share 

information on humanitarian needs and its response with governments, the UN cluster 

system or other systems such as Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), it will remain 

independent of them and decide its activities according to its own criteria. Finally, ICRC 

activities must respond strictly to humanitarian needs and not be determined by any other 

objectives, be they political, military, or other.

ICRC Communications

In early 2009, after a strongly worded ICRC news release concerning a particular conflict at that time, one newspaper reporter wrote, “It was an unusual statement from the 

normally secretive ICRC.” In fact, the ICRC does communicate frequently, although its 

communication is often not the type that will generate attention-grabbing headlines. The 

ICRC sees communication as conditioned by operational need. Operational needs will often 

determine to what extent we communicate, what we say, and how forcefully we say it.

For the ICRC the priority is always access. This means access to those who require 

assistance, be they in places of detention or in conflict zones, which can be closed military 

areas or places where security risks are high. This also means access to those who have the 

power to improve conditions for people the ICRC wants to assist. This goes beyond physical access and includes a willingness to engage in discussion with the ICRC by those with 

power, whether they are local commanders, leaders of armed groups, or senior military and 

political figures.

The ICRC also sees communication as multifaceted. Public communication is one of 

several communication approaches. The ICRC privileges confidential bilateral discussions 

with authorities and others it hopes it can persuade to make changes on issues, such as the 

conduct of hostilities, the protection of the civilian population, or the conditions of detention. Public statements should not hinder such discussions and public denunciation often 

risks being counterproductive.

These confidential discussions can start with local commanders and prison directors and work their way up to the senior political and military leaders of governments or 

armed groups. During these discussions, the ICRC shares in great detail its observations, 

concerns, and recommendations. It often documents these in formal reports and requests 

investigation by the authorities as well as a formal response. 

The ICRC also engages extensively in diplomatic multilateral communication. It maintains a permanent presence at the UN, NATO, the Organization of American States (OAS), 
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and the African Union among other organizations. Without revealing the contents of confidential bilateral discussions, it will share its concerns in a broad manner with government 

officials and embassies of countries that may have some influence on the situation. Finally, 

the ICRC engages both in what it describes as operational communications and in public 

communication involving the media.

Operational Communications

Operational communications are usually in countries or regions where the ICRC is 

carrying out protection and assistance activities. It targets one or more of four broad objectives: improving access to victims; increasing acceptance of and security for the ICRC; 

fostering knowledge and acceptance of International Humanitarian Law, specifically the 

Geneva Conventions; and prevention. A classic example of prevention would be awareness programs for civilians, particularly children, of mines and other types of unexploded 

ordinance.

Operational communications can also focus on issues specific to a given context, such 

as the need to “Respect the Medical Mission.” These can be messages targeting combatants 

on the need to respect the neutrality of medical facilities and personnel. It can also be messages reminding the local population of the need to ensure that medical facilities are not 

“militarized,” or of the obligation on medical personnel and facilities to treat all patients in 

an impartial manner regardless of their affiliation or status.

Operational communications covers a wide diversity of activities ranging from small 

group discussions and handing out simple brochures at checkpoints to well-developed 

media campaigns or the development with universities and armed forces of International 

Humanitarian Law (IHL) curriculums.

The ICRC targets local populations in areas where it is working. In addition to explaining what it is and why it is carrying out certain activities, the ICRC may also be communicating about how to access its services, such as restoring family links or assistance 

programs.

In drawing up a strategy for operational communications, the ICRC delegations in 

respective countries start by identifying the issues it wants to address. These could include 

knowledge and acceptance of the ICRC and thus the security of its operations, recurring 

violations of the law of armed conflict, even sexual violence, access to medical facilities or 

other humanitarian services, or the dangers posed by mines and other forms of unexploded 

ordinance. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

It then identifies the audiences it wants to reach on these issues. These audiences can 

include those directly involved in the issues such as actual or potential beneficiaries, youth, 

front-line combatants, or medical staff. They can also include those the ICRC believes 

could influence the people involved, such as community leaders, local media personnel, 

religious leaders, teachers, local NGOs, military officers, politicians, or senior people in 

various armed factions.

Having decided on issues and target audiences, the ICRC must then decide on the 

appropriate formats and tools to transmit its messages. These range from small group 
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meetings and discussions to town-hall type meetings, to radio plays, to formal university 

style lectures. It can also be simply ensuring that all ICRC vehicles and drivers in the field 

have a supply of appropriate literature, such as pamphlets, brochures, or even comic books 

to hand out at checkpoints to combatants, beneficiaries, or other members of the local 

population.

Although all ICRC field delegates are expected to be conversant in the history, principles, and activities of the ICRC as well as the basics of IHL, the ICRC also has departments 

specialized in communications, IHL and legal issues, religious issues and their relation to 

IHL, as well as experts in dealing with armed forces and security agencies. Many of these 

specialists can be brought in from regional offices or from headquarters to help develop 

or actually deliver the communications program. The type of audience will determine the 

level of expertise required.

The ICRC possesses a considerable array of communications tools at the disposal of 

its staff in the field. These include 10- to 15-minute videos on ICRC activities and themes, 

comic books for younger or less literate audiences, simple pamphlets and brochures 

explaining the basics of the ICRC and the Geneva Conventions, or how to access ICRC 

services such as tracing and Red Cross Messages. 

More in-depth material covers issues such as women in war, the missing, internal displacement, and the protection of civilians in times of conflict. The ICRC also publishes 

two reviews—one in English and one in Arabic—featuring articles on issues of concern 

by academics and other independent experts. In addition to helping organize courses at 

the secondary school and university level as well as courses for armed forces on IHL, the 

ICRC also publishes a number of manuals and texts for specialized audiences, such as the 

military, security forces, and medical personnel. It also has regional communications support centers in places like Nairobi and Cairo, which assist country delegations in developing or adapting tools and publications in local languages for local audiences.

It is important to note that when the ICRC initiates an operational communications 

campaign, it tries to ensure the buy-in of appropriate local or even national authorities to 

ensure not only their support and encouragement, but also to avoid any misunderstandings 

about the content or purpose of the communications activities. This can be of particular 

importance in contexts where these activities could be misperceived as subversive ideological propaganda or religious proselytizing by a foreign agency.

ICRC Public Communications

Although this paper distinguishes between operational communications and public 

communications, the distinction is largely arbitrary for the purpose of clarity in this discussion. The two often overlap in terms of dealing with specific geographic contexts, particularly in periods of crisis and in their use of traditional media as well as other forms of 

electronic communications.

Operational communications focus largely on a particular geographical context and is 

often undertaken in light of operational concerns, such as acceptance, access, security, or 

the accessibility of ICRC assistance. Public communications can have a much broader focus 
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and intent. It generally deals with national or international media or audiences and usually 

is managed through communications or media relations departments. Although these specialists can be located in areas of high interest such as Goma in the Eastern Democratic 

Republic of Congo (DRC) or in Peshawar during the recent fighting in Pakistan, they are 

most often managed at country-level delegations, at headquarters in Geneva, or at major 

regional centers such as Washington, London, Cairo, Moscow, or Nairobi.

Public communications initiatives may deal with institutional priorities or issues. These 

could include visits by the president of the ICRC to major capitals such as Washington or 

to conflict zones such as Gaza, or the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on 

12 August of this year. They may highlight humanitarian concerns such as conflict-induced 

displacement, the treatment of war wounded, or the effect of conflicts on civilians. Public 

communications may also attempt to promote interest in “forgotten conflicts,” such as the 

ongoing horror of Somalia, the Philippines, and the continued fighting in Colombia.

When an acute crisis breaks out, usually with high media interest, ICRC public 

communications will focus on the humanitarian impact of the crisis. Its statements and news 

releases often begin with “expressions of concern” about specific effects on noncombatants 

and may include reminders of applicable IHL, which would mitigate those effects if fully 

respected.

Because it must respect neutrality and it hopes to maintain access to those in need, but 

also to those responsible on both sides, these statements are usually couched in general 

diplomatic terms. The expressions of concern can be specific, such as the high rate of civilian casualties or the lack of access to medical facilities. However, the statements usually 

“call on all sides” or “remind all parties” of the need to respect specific provisions of IHL. 

With the exception of very rare circumstances, the ICRC will not point fingers at one side 

or the other.

It should be pointed out that although such statements do not beg blaring headlines, 

they are read closely by parties to the conflict, interested foreign governments, and those 

journalists who closely follow such issues. Furthermore, terms such as “the alarming rate 

of civilian casualties” or the “downward spiral of basic living conditions” do attract considerable media pickup without assigning blame to one side or the other.

Finally, there are instances where the ICRC will publicly point fingers at one side 

or another or both. Referred to within the institution as denunciation, this is done rarely 

and only after serious discussion at the highest levels. However, because of the ICRC’s 

normally conservative approach, it unfailingly attracts widespread attention. This paper 

will return later to the question of denunciation, and the conditions under which it is used.

Public communications tools used by the ICRC include the usual gamut. Its Web 

site provides information in seven languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, 

Chinese, and Portuguese) on its latest news releases, operations in countries around the 

world, thematic issues, and the finer points on IHL. News releases and operational updates 

as well as feature stories are issued at the country and international levels on a regular 

(almost daily) basis.
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In addition to professional quality photographs, the ICRC provides audiovisual material to broadcasters internationally (much of the material is also available on an ICRC section of YouTube). Senior ICRC officials hold news conferences to deal with particularly 

sensitive conflicts or thematic institutional concerns. These are typically held at the headquarters in Geneva or in major national capitals. The latter applies, in particular, to visits 

by senior ICRC officers such as in Jerusalem in January 2009 during the Gaza crisis or in 

Bogota during the summer of 2008 in connection with an incident of misuse of the Red 

Cross emblem.

The ICRC also has a network of spokespersons in country delegations, regional 

centers such as Washington, London, Paris, Cairo, Nairobi, and Moscow, as well as at 

its Headquarters in Geneva to provide radio, television, and print interviews with local, 

regional, and international media as requested. Whenever possible, the ICRC will organize interviews with its spokespersons in or near the areas of acute conflict and high media 

attention, particularly in the initial phases, when the international media are not yet able to 

obtain their own information.

The ICRC communications staff also maintains networks of media contacts at the local, 

regional, and international levels to share the institution’s perspectives on ongoing issues. 

International journalists visiting a conflict zone will frequently come to ICRC offices for 

background briefings on the overall situation in the country as well as the evolution of local 

humanitarian concerns.

Media Perception of the ICRC

The Red Cross or Red Crescent is said to be one of the best known symbols worldwide. The recognition factor is reputed to rank alongside a certain well known soft drink! 

However, beyond the general recognition, most members of the public do not know or 

understand the various components of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and there is 

often confusion over the role and mandate of the ICRC. The exception is perhaps in those 

countries where the ICRC has been operational because of a conflict.

What is true of the general public is also true of most media representatives. The ICRC 

is often confused with national societies, at times seen as the international branch of the 

national Red Cross Society. In other cases, the ICRC is perceived as a human rights organization or an advocacy organization with expectations that it take public stands on issues 

ranging from press freedom, to immigration, to domestic judicial procedures. This is often 

due to confusion between International Human Rights Law and IHL or the Law of Armed 

Conflict. Others view the ICRC as primarily a medical or emergency assistance provider.

This, however, has changed considerably in recent years, particularly in the United 

States, where it is often seen now as the people who visit Guantanamo. Unfortunately, this 

picture remains incomplete. It comes as a surprise to many to learn that the ICRC also visits 

about half a million people detained in relation to conflicts in over 80 countries around the 

world and carries out a wide range of protection and assistance activities.

There is a growing body of reporters, editors, and producers in North America as 

well as in other countries who are very familiar with the ICRC. In some cases, these are 
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journalists who have taken a particular interest in key issues related to the fight against terrorism, but more frequently they are journalists with experience covering conflicts internationally. In most of these cases, their knowledge and interest comes from interacting with 

the ICRC in the field.

To both groups familiar with the ICRC, the institution is perceived as discreet, even 

“secretive.” They are well aware of the constraints we face and those we impose on ourselves in terms of public communication, particularly in terms of military or political comment. At the same time, they view us as conservative in our use of numbers and restrained 

in terms of our assessments. Unlike some organizations, the ICRC tries to avoid “the 

humanitarian auction” where the group with the greatest number of victims or the direst 

assessment gets the headlines; therefore, it is often perceived as more reliable. The ICRC 

tries to provide numbers for which it can vouch. As an example, it prefers to discuss the 

number of wounded treated in hospitals with whom it works, rather than speculate on the 

total number of casualties.

These journalists also recognize that the ICRC is generally well informed, but it will 

also admit when it does not have accurate information. The ICRC is well known for its 

unique access to many areas, and that it has usually been present long before the present 

crisis and will remain long afterwards. In many cases, journalists will approach the ICRC to 

get a “second opinion” on statements made by authorities or other organizations. It is often 

used as a behind the scenes “reality-check” on the humanitarian situation in a given context.

ICRC Media Relations—Reactive and Proactive

Because of its access and the broad scope of its activities in conflict zones throughout 

the world, the ICRC is often one of the first places electronic media call for on-the-scene 

interviews at the outbreak of a crisis. A particular example of this was in Kenya when violence erupted after the announcement of the election results in the final days of 2007. The 

demands on the ICRC changed as major media outlets were able to place their own teams 

in the region.

In cases where media access to the conflict zone is severely restricted by governments 

or other groups such as Gaza, and Sri Lanka in 2009 or Ossetia in 2008, the demand for 

ICRC interviews can continue over an extended period. Although the ICRC may issue 

news releases concerning such situations on a proactive basis, most of the communication 

is of a reactive nature responding to media requests for interviews.

There are also situations where the ICRC’s role as a neutral intermediary places it in a 

unique position resulting in heavy demands for information and interviews from the media. 

Two examples are exchanges of prisoners or of mortal remains, such as between Israel 

and Hezbollah in the summer of 2008, as well as in hostage releases as in Colombia or in 

Afghanistan.

Finally, the ICRC is often requested by the media to comment on issues related to 

detention, particularly in the context of the fight against terrorism but also on the conduct 

of hostilities and effects on the civilian population. This was true in Afghanistan as well as 

Sri Lanka and Gaza.
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In reactive media relations, designated spokespersons handle interviews. These may 

be senior managers such as heads of delegations or media and communications officers. 

With two exceptions, ICRC expatriate and national staffs are discouraged from providing 

information to the media. The first exception is in specialized fields, such as medical staff 

or water and habitation engineers. However, the parameters of the interview are established 

clearly beforehand.

The second exception involves expatriates who are solicited by media from their home 

countries and often in languages that only they speak. In these cases, the pre-established 

parameters stipulate the interview must focus on the work and responsibilities of that person. Larger questions concerning the broader humanitarian/political/military situation 

must be referred to the regular spokesperson.

In all reactive media relations, the challenge is to attempt to respond to legitimate media 

information needs while respecting strict ICRC parameters. These parameters include the 

necessity to remain totally neutral concerning the various sides involved in the conflict, 

the necessity to avoid any statement that would jeopardize acceptance locally or by the 

opposing parties and thus compromise the security of staff and operations, and to respect 

the expectations of confidentiality of the various parties with whom the ICRC works. The 

ICRC must also demonstrate respect for the dignity of those it is trying to assist.

To juggle these concerns, the ICRC usually applies a series of simple guidelines. ICRC 

spokespersons try to focus on the humanitarian situation and on the ICRC’s response to the 

needs described, rather than on political or military considerations. They also are cautious 

to use only what the ICRC knows firsthand through its expatriate and national staff in the 

field rather than repeat media reports or assessments by other organizations.

In particularly sensitive situations, such as questions related to detention, spokespersons 

will focus on what the ICRC does, not what it sees. It would be a breach of confidentiality 

to discuss conditions of detention or the treatment of detainees, including improvements as 

well as areas of concern. The ICRC will discuss the fact that it visits detainees in a given 

context, the frequency of the visits, how many detainees it has visited, and services offered 

such as Red Cross Messages. Reactive communication is usually based on press lines and 

sometimes supplemented by news releases that have been shared and discussed by operations in the country in question, headquarters in Geneva, and key regional offices dealing with international media. In addition to responding to media requests for information, 

the ICRC often approaches media on a proactive basis, using a range of tools from news 

releases, to news conferences, video packages and b-roll footage, offers of interviews to 

selected media, and informal media contacts proposing stories.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on 12 August, the ICRC 

released a quantitative and qualitative study concerning the effects of conflict on civilians 

in eight contexts (Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, Philippines, DRC, Liberia, Lebanon, and 

Georgia). The study, along with a news release and video material, was released internationally at the same time as a news conference in Geneva. The ICRC regularly approaches 

media proactively on thematic issues, such as protection of medical facilities and personnel, women in conflict, the missing. As an example, it produced and distributed to 
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television broadcasters in key countries a 30-second public service announcement on the 

need to allow medical personnel to carry out their work in the midst of fighting.

The ICRC also tries to interest media and the public in forgotten conflicts or ongoing 

issues that have faded from the news agenda. Examples include the issue of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the plight of the displaced in Colombia, the 

toll on civilians of the conflict in Somalia, and the difficulties of reconstruction in Gaza. 

During the acute phases of crises, the ICRC regularly issues news releases describing the 

humanitarian consequences and reminding all parties of their obligations under IHL. In 

highlighting its operations proactively, whether this is in acute crisis or not, the ICRC is 

also describing the current humanitarian issues and needs in a given context. Finally, in the 

rare cases where the ICRC decides to criticize a particular party, to blame or to denounce, 

this is always done on a deliberate proactive basis.

Public Denunciation

In its dealings with governments, military authorities, and leaders of opposition or 

armed groups, the ICRC is attempting to obtain improvements in access to those who need 

assistance, in the protection of civilians, in care for the wounded, and in the treatment of 

those detained in relation to the conflict. Based on its experience, it believes that persuasion 

is the most effective way to obtain changes and improvements over the longer term. In this 

context, the ICRC views public denunciation as a last resort. While a denunciation may 

create headlines when it is made, public attention often fades very quickly and the major 

long-term residual effect is with those the ICRC is trying to influence. In some contexts, a 

denunciation creates more than simply tense relations. The ICRC may be obliged to scale 

down or terminate its activities in the country in question. The ICRC must weigh these 

factors to decide what best serves the medium and longer term interests of those it wants 

to assist.

However, there are instances where the ICRC has used public denunciation. In the 

most classic case in recent years, on 29 June 2007, the ICRC issued a news release titled 

“Myanmar: ICRC denounces major and repeated violations of international humanitarian 

law.” More recently during the conflict in Gaza, although not formally denouncing, the 

ICRC issued a news release on 8 January 2009, after an incident in the Zaytoun neighbourhood of Gaza City. In the release the ICRC stated, “The ICRC believes that in this 

instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under IHL to care for and evacuate 

the wounded.” In June 2009, the ICRC reiterated its demand that captured Israeli soldier 

Gilad Shalit be allowed regular communication with his family. The news release noted, 

“The ICRC regrets that in his case, political considerations are judged more important than 

the simple humanitarian gesture of allowing a captive to be in touch with his family after 

3 years of separation.”

Because it rarely speaks out in such a direct manner, the ICRC is well aware of the 

impact such statements have. That is why it has established clear criteria for such public denunciation. It must be convinced that it has made every reasonable effort using a 

confidential approach, but that the confidential approach is not working. There must be 
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very serious humanitarian concerns and the ICRC’s information is based on firsthand or 

extremely reliable information. Finally, it must be convinced that speaking out publicly 

will be of greater benefit than harm for those it wants to assist in the short, medium, and 

long term. As mentioned earlier, the highest levels of the institution made such decisions.

Confidentiality

The ICRC has unique access to many sensitive places, such as conflict zones, closed 

military areas, or places of detention. This access is often permitted because the ICRC is 

known for its confidentiality. It shares its observations, concerns, and recommendations on 

a strictly confidential basis as part of ongoing discussions with the authorities in charge. In 

return, it also expects that the authorities in question respect the confidential nature of their 

discussions with the ICRC.

Confidentiality does not apply to most assistance operations, such as medical support, 

emergency relief, or water and sanitation projects. It is usually a key factor in operations 

dealing with protection of civilians, the conduct of hostilities, or visits to places of detention. Confidentiality is often essential for access in these areas. It is also important for the 

ICRC’s ability to reach those with the authority to make changes and the possibility of 

influencing their decisions.

The ICRC is at times criticized for not speaking out about situations of which it is 

aware. It recognizes there are other humanitarian actors, some of which use public advocacy very effectively. In general, they do not have the privileged access of the ICRC to the 

situations in question. For the ICRC, it is usually preferable to be able to maintain access to 

provide assistance and argue privately for improvements. Otherwise, its role and capacity 

would have little difference from existing advocacy organizations. However, confidentiality does not mean complacency, as the ICRC can be very vocal and forceful in its bilateral 

and at times multilateral discussions. 

The special role of the ICRC is well recognized, to the point that the ICRC and its staff 

enjoy testimonial immunity in many jurisdictions, including the International Criminal 

Court and the International Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia. In the United States, the 

ICRC staff has immunity from legal process for acts performed within their official functions and cannot be subpoenaed to testify.

The ICRC is very protective of its confidential relations. Leaked ICRC reports can 

cause serious damage to its reputation for confidentiality in the country in question and 

elsewhere in the world where the ICRC is trying to negotiate access to sensitive areas. 

There are limits on the ICRC’s confidentiality. In cases where ICRC activities are deliberately misrepresented, or where the partial leak of a confidential report may create a false 

impression, the ICRC reserves the right to clarify the situation even at the cost of confidentiality. In addition, without resorting to formal denunciation, the ICRC may decide to 

withdraw from a certain area and publicly explain why. This would be the case where there 

are ongoing serious abuses and there is no progress through normal confidential channels 

or where the ICRC is prevented from working according to the norms and procedures it 

feels are essential.
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Transparency

Despite its emphasis on a confidential approach, the ICRC also believes in transparency. This may seem contradictory, but transparency applies to what the institution does. 

The ICRC publicly describes its operations, its procedures, and its budgets. Most of this 

material is openly available on its Web site and in various publications. In an operational 

context, this is also important to secure and maintain the confidence of the belligerents as 

well as the local populations including beneficiaries. The ICRC tries to be not only transparent but also predictable in how it decides on operations, to whom and how it will provide assistance. It shares this with all sides to ensure there are no misunderstandings about 

its intentions and operations.

The ICRC believes it is accountable to its donors and beneficiaries and must be able to 

justify its decisions and activities to both. The one caveat is the issue of security. In certain 

contexts, it may prefer to wait until the completion of a distribution or other activity before 

announcing it to the media.

Although the ICRC insists on its independence from governments and international 

organizations, this does not prevent it from sharing information about humanitarian needs 

and gaps, about the ICRC’s capacity to respond to those needs and gaps, and its plans in 

terms of assistance activities as well as information on security issues in the field. As an 

example, although the ICRC is not a member of the UN cluster system and is not bound by 

their decisions, it does participate in cluster meetings at the country delegation level with 

observer status.

Public Advocacy

As stated earlier, neutrality is fundamental to the ICRC and is key to its acceptance 

and access to those who require its assistance. The ICRC also recognizes there are other 

organizations that use public advocacy very successfully. To maintain its independence, as 

a norm the ICRC does not take part in broader advocacy campaigns under the umbrella of 

advocacy groups or international organizations. Furthermore, unless it makes a very deliberate decision to the contrary, the ICRC will avoid singling out one party to a conflict for 

blame or denunciation.

However, there are many thematic or institutional issues where the ICRC does engage 

in public advocacy. This advocacy is done through the media, publications, videos, seminars, meetings, even formal training, and often a combination of such elements. The most 

obvious instances are campaigns to promote knowledge of and respect for the Geneva 

Conventions. Other examples include public advocacy to highlight the issue of sexual violence in conflicts, the plight of families of those still missing, the need to take measures 

to ensure families learn the fate of their loved ones, the issue of child soldiers, the need to 

protect medical personnel and facilities, and campaigns to promote bans on cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines. A key to all of these public advocacy campaigns is that 

they focus on the plight of those affected, remedial action that should be taken in general 

terms, but they avoid pointing out or blaming individual groups or governments.
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Conclusion

The priority for the ICRC is access to those requiring its assistance in times of conflict 

and to those with the power to make improvements in the conditions. This is why the ICRC 

favors a confidential dialogue with authorities on all sides of the conflict. ICRC public 

communication is dictated by operational needs, and public communication is part of its 

larger communication strategies, which include bilateral and multilateral communication.

In all of its public communications, the ICRC maintains the principle of neutrality and 

in sensitive areas such as detention, protection of civilians, and conduct of hostilities it 

must respect the confidentiality that ensures its unique access to those in need. In very rare 

occasions, and after discussion at the senior levels of organization, it can decide to drop 

its confidentiality restrictions or go as far as to publicly denounce one of the parties to a 

conflict.

Operational communications are intended to improve access to those needing assistance, to increase the acceptance of the ICRC and thus the security of its staff, and to foster 

knowledge and acceptance of IHL. The ICRC also engages extensively in broader public 

communications to mobilize support for institutional issues and themes, to highlight certain forgotten contexts, and to focus on the humanitarian impact of high-profile conflicts. 

By focusing its communications on humanitarian concerns and needs as well as the ICRC’s 

response, it tries to avoid engaging in political or military controversies that would jeopardize its neutrality and its acceptance.

Despite these concerns, the ICRC tries to be transparent about its operations and procedures. In its public communications, it is willing to discuss what it does, but must observe 

restrictions in terms of describing what it sees.

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Day 3—Featured Speaker

Today’s Combat Correspondent:

The “New Media” and Reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan

(Transcript of Presentation)

by

Mr. Andrew Lubin

Independent Journalist

Part One: Introduction—Today’s Embedded Reporter

Sometimes I have to laugh at the term “new media,” because there’s not much media 

newer than me. In the past few days, General Caldwell arranged for us to listen to two 

distinguished journalists: Bill Kurtis, who was reporting from Saigon when I was in high 

school, and Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns from the New York Times. Well, today you 

have me.

The past few years for me have been most unusual. I was teaching college and working 

as a consultant in 2002–03, and like most Americans, following the buildup to the invasion 

of Iraq. But unlike most Americans glued to their television sets in March 2003, I was following the marines of Task Force Tarawa roll across the border and then punching through 

the stiff—and unexpected—Iraqi resistance at An-Nasiriyah. While most of America was 

busy putting yellow stickers on their cars and bragging about how quickly “our boys” were 

moving up to Baghdad, my son, the marine artilleryman, was fighting his ass off at An-Nas. 

So when he came back to Camp Lejeune, and we all sobered up, I asked him, “So, my son 

the Marine combat veteran, tell me all about it.” And he did, and I was so impressed I went 

out and wrote a book about him and his battery.

To my surprise, it did OK. Actually, it did OK enough that I received a grant for another 

book, and did some TV and radio, and all my marine friends said, “Hey sir, this is awesome, you should embed with us.” Well, I knew nothing about embedding, but I’d never 

written a book before either, so I hustled some writing assignments and I went to Beirut 

in 2006 with the 24th MEU. That went well, and I got invited to go to Iraq, and I went 

to Ramadi and Fallujah, and I picked up some more writing work. But now I’m getting a 

little nervous. In addition to the marines wanting me to return in 2007, I had a National 

Guard PAO wanting me to embed with his unit. Look, I’m a political science major with 

a Masters in International Management. My last English course was 1970, in high school, 

and I’ve never had a journalism course. I don’t know what I don’t know, so naturally I 

went back and spent 5 months semper-gumbying my way around Anbar province with 

10th Mountain, the Marines, and the Minnesota Guard, threw in a trip to Afghanistan, and 

in addition to my Internet articles for On Point, I started writing for some magazines—and 

now I’ve got a career as an author and a journalist.
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Last year I went off-shore four times, including a trip to Guantanamo, and I’ll be going 

to Afghanistan for the fourth time next month. I get out in the field where it’s down and 

dirty, and I go where the troops go. My only agenda is that I need to do as good a job on 

my end as you do on yours, and I think my only serious bias is that I’m very pro-Marine 

artillery. I’m not sure if I’m “new media” or “freelance,” but for sure I’m this war’s combat 

correspondent.

Lieutenant Morant was more correct in his 1902 observation in how war was about to 

be conducted than he could ever have known. What he could never have imagined is how 

those same war correspondents who avoided reporting on his trial and execution would be 

taking a far different approach today.

Who would have thought that this line, taken from the movie “Breaker Morant” about 

the Boer War, would be so appropriate for today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Isn’t it 

interesting that despite the changes in technology and killing ability, our situation on the 

ground isn’t a whole lot different than that of a hundred years ago. As military technology 

evolved from the bolt-action Enfield to the chain gun, media technology has also evolved. 

From dispatches being cabled back to the head office, we are now able to broadcast “live” 

from the battlefield, giving our audiences a degree of authenticity that almost lets them 

think they’re up on the front lines. No longer are mom and pop at home watching grainy 

shots of soldiers and marines waving from a troop ship. I remember Ken Kaltrup from 

NBC Dallas broadcasting “live” from An-Nasiriyah at 0330 Eastern on 23 March—he was 

lying in the sand a couple of hundred yards in front of my son’s gun line and yelling into his 

microphone as 155 shells screamed overhead about this incredible Marine artillery barrage 

shelling the city for hours. Oh yeah, technology brings the war right into your living room.

A new style of war reporter has evolved over the last hundred years. From the florid, 

fictional styles during the Civil War of those who never saw a battle, but simply made-up 

their reports, a few determined combat correspondents began reporting on strategy, tactics, and the conduct of the war. The Brits had William Russell, known as the father of the 

modern combat correspondent, haranguing Lord Lucan about cholera and incompetent 

logistics in the Crimea, and later they had Winston Churchill serving in the Boer War as 

both a soldier and a reporter. During World War II, professionals like Ernie Pyle and Bill 

Mauldin embedded with the troops and sent back their dispatches from the front lines. As 

technology changed warfare, it also changed journalism. While the big network reporters 

like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite reported from Vietnam, you now have me and 

my more-freelance associates reporting “live” from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The news is far faster today, which makes accuracy in reporting extremely important, 

although it’s virtually impossible to get context in a 30-second video clip. The print people, 

writing for the morning papers, used to have a few hours in which to get a longer and more 

thorough story written, although now Web editions have taken much of that extra time 

away.

Today’s technology makes it cheaper and easier to get the word out. Russell paid per 

word for his dispatches to be telegraphed from Crimea to London, with some of his dispatches running to $8,000 each, while Joe Rosenthal sent his famous Iwo Jima pictures 
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back to a hospital ship with wounded marines. If I can talk my way past the Ugandans 

ferociously guarding the MWR [Morale, Welfare, and Recreation] shop, I can e-mail my 

article and a couple of pictures back to the States as soon as it’s written up. It’s not as quick 

as live TV, but in truth, other than An-Nasiriyah and Fallujah, we’ve seen almost no live 

news from the front until the Marine push into southern Helmand 2 weeks ago—assuming 

we’re not counting all those TV spots those incredibly brave visiting network anchors sent 

back from the safety of the Green Zone.

You’d never know it from the coverage today, but in opening days of Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM (OIF) in 2003, there were 770 reporters, with 550+ embedded with ground 

forces generating 6,000 stories weekly. The best newspaper coverage was probably the 

New York Times spectacular daily special supplement “A Nation at War,” which ran from 

prior to the invasion until after Baghdad fell. The major TV networks also had huge coverage, with the most popular being NBC’s David Bloom, traveling with the Army until his 

untimely death in the M-88 tank retriever known as the Bloom-mobile.

Has the coverage slowed because the media is antiwar? No, in fact you see more Afghan 

coverage on CNN.com than FOX.com, and the New York Times and the Washington Post

are providing some spectacular frontline coverage. Now, is the American public tired of 6 

years of war coverage that’s been mostly IED [improvised explosive device] news since 

2004? Absolutely, but public interest, both positive and negative, seems to be increasing 

as the Obama administration talks more about the war and their reasons for sending more 

troops. (Oh, I’d like to compliment the New York Times for their daily front-page coverage 

of Afghanistan. While it’s trendy in military circles to bash the “liberal” New York Times, 

their front-line coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan provided by the likes of Dexter Filkins 

and C.J. Chivers has been very well done, and you also want to follow their news blog, “At 

War—Notes from the Front Lines.” Or perhaps Afghanistan is simply too difficult a theater in which to embed? That’s possible; those mountains in the east are pretty steep, and 

having spent last June in 135 degree heat with the Marines in Garmsir, I know a journalist 

who asked to be pulled out due to the weather. But over all, it would be both unfair and 

inaccurate to say that the media is not reporting on the war.

Yet for reasons known best to them, the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] 

and the Department of Defense (DOD) bureaucracy now make it very difficult to embed 

in Afghanistan. As the war continues into its 9th year, the regulations under which we 

operate get unnecessarily stricter and more expensive, which makes editors rethink their 

interest in sending reporters. Next month’s trip into the AO [area of operations] will be my 

10th, yet this time I’ve got to waste a week and at least $1,000 going to Kabul for the sole 

reason of getting a retinal-scan that will take less than 15 minutes. First, what’s the reason 

for a retinal scan? Second, assuming there is a legitimate reason for it, why can’t I get this 

done someplace here in the United States? I guess they need to match it to the fingerprints 

they already have on file from my Iraqi embeds. This is on top of the time and effort spent 

in resubmitting my entire application, to the same people, to embed yet again in the same 

theater. Surely, it couldn’t be too difficult to build a database to keep these sorts of records. 

This is the kind of bureaucratic nonsense that makes it easy for an editor to say, “I’m sorry, 

it’s too expensive.”
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That’s assuming we’re allowed to go in the first place. On Monday it was announced 

that the Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group, the same public relations group that 

brought us the Jessica Lynch debacle, to vet reporters as to their political leanings and if 

their stories are positive or negative. One would think that after the Jessica Lynch and Pat 

Tillman debacles, the Pentagon would have given up trying to “manage” the news, but 

apparently not. You know, the American public isn’t as dumb as the Pentagon seems to 

think we are. To keep on feeding us those mind-numbing “good news” stories of grinning 

kids and soldiers tossing out soccer balls simply raises the question, “If there’s nothing 

but good news stories, then why are they still killing our marines and soldiers?” What too 

many PAOs and their highers don’t understand is that the military has a great message, 

but for whatever reason, you do your best to destroy your own credibility by pushing out 

this brainless stuff.

All of this is a shame, because then the marines and soldiers on the ground don’t get 

their stories told, and the American public misses hearing about some spectacular men and 

women. Then the Pentagon and DOD complain, “Oh, you media don’t want to get the story 

out.”

Not getting an accurate story out is a major mistake. Afghanistan is a mess and now 

it’s more important than ever to get the story out and to make it understandable. As military 

operations have changed from the conventional warfare of An-Nasiriyah and Fallujah to 

today’s counterinsurgency operations, it’s important for the American public to understand 

that counterinsurgency missions are judged more on civilian job programs and literacy 

rates than yesterday’s count of Taliban killed. They need to understand that success will 

likely be measured in years as opposed to battles. Like “Breaker” Morant said, “It’s a new 

kind of war, for a new century.”

Part Two: The Medium Versus the Message

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the mainstream media may have been exaggerated; perhaps it’s not the “news” that’s changing, but rather the “delivery system.” It’s 

no secret that network TV ratings are down as they compete with cable stations and the 

Internet, although the big networks remain profitable. The newspapers are being pounded 

in both readership and profitability; with fewer copies being sold as their advertising revenues simultaneously collapse.

It’s true that newspapers are doing poorly, but for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of their news. The primary reason for their financial problems is 

that their advertising revenues have dropped, partially because advertisers have switched 

to the Internet and partially because their historically biggest advertisers, autos and retail 

stores, slashed their advertising budgets because of the economic slowdown. How did the 

newspapers react to this drop in revenue? They tried to commit financial suicide by putting 

their newspapers on the Web for free, which cut into their own paid circulation. Who needs 

to buy the New York Times if you can read it free on-line? 

In the midst of this financial lunacy, many papers were bought with cheap money and 

junk bond financing offered by those same Wall Street weasels that ruined the world’s 

economies. For example, after real estate mogul Sam Zell bought the Chicago Tribune
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chain that included the LA Times, the Newark Star-Ledger, and other papers, the real estate 

market, which served as collateral for his enormous borrowings, collapsed, which caused 

him to declare bankruptcy. While the fall in advertising revenue was serious, what caused 

his bankruptcy filing was his immense real estate debt. Free content may be changing, 

however. Last week Rupert Murdoch announced he would be charging for content in all of 

his Web-based newspapers, and if this holds true, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the other 

newspapers quickly join him.

Sam Zell didn’t buy the Tribune because he was interested in the newspaper business—

he was interested in the underlying land and real estate values. That’s one of the issues with 

journalism and news today: it’s being treated as a commodity, with some of the media 

houses simply printing or broadcasting whatever makes a buck, whereas others still think 

of news as a public trust, with accuracy and quality writing still important. Many of the 

changes in the media world have resulted from this downward slide to news as a commodity, 

which is what has led us from Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley to the likes of Glenn 

Beck and Rachael Maddow.

Network TV news is a perfect example of this change in media viewing. While it 

remains popular, its demographic is older and declining, losing about 1 million viewers a 

year since Walter Cronkite retired as anchor in 1981. At the end of last year, according to 

a Gallup Poll, 31 percent of Americans considered the Internet to be a daily news source, 

a 50-percent gain since 2006. That’s almost 100 million people actively reaching out to 

get their news rather than flipping on the TV and waiting for it to come to them, and the 

repercussions are long reaching.

Some of us here today remember that the late Walter Cronkite was commonly called 

“Uncle Walter,” and that his word was more believable than that of President Johnson. It’s 

interesting that even today anchormen in Denmark and Holland are called “kronkiters,” 

because of the reputation he built for accuracy and integrity that dated back to when he 

was covering the Blitz during the battle for Britain. His was a trusted voice in the ’60s and 

’70s world where people’s trust in government was shattered and we were looking for a 

substitute.

But it’s different today. On the Internet there’s no place for an uncle to explain the 

news to us. With the current 24-hour river of information, much of it raw, context-free, and 

incomplete, we can either find our own context or find someone whose context matches our 

own opinions. Accuracy is not necessary to be popular, unfortunately.

That’s not good. It’s impossible to report on the war accurately in short, pithy, sound 

bites. If that’s what passes for news these days on the television, perhaps that’s why 

more Americans pick up their news from the Internet—where you can read an interesting 800-word article on a topic. That’s why the military should be welcoming us embeds 

with open arms instead of shunting us off for a week in Kabul waiting for a retinal scan 

appointment.

At the same time, the news is different today. Instead of simply reading or watching the 

news, it’s become a two-way street, something in which we participate instead of absorb, 

which raises the question of what is “news”? Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past few 
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years, it seems that every marine and soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan goes on patrol with a 

digital camera, and YouTube and the ’net is filled with IDF, IED, and firefight videos.

They’re exciting, obviously, but are they news? No, they’re really not, but its what’s 

beginning to pass for news today. A 10-second video of an IED blast on Ramadi’s Route 

Michigan describes just that—an IED blast, while it ignores the context of the 3-block 

war going on around it. Worse, the lack of an IED blast, which is important because it 

means that Ramadi is peaceful, doesn’t lend itself to video news of jobs, reconstruction, 

and economic revival. That’s the good and bad about the Internet; we’ve dumbed-down our 

audience with IED videos, yet my articles on the success of COIN [counterinsurgency] in 

Ramadi were widely distributed on the Web.

That brings us back to my earlier question about news and readership today: is news a 

“commodity” in which we publish or broadcast any old trash because it makes a buck or is 

news a “public trust” in which accuracy and fairness is of paramount importance? Maybe 

we can use the Web for some of both. The good news is that the Internet gets the news out 

quickly, so the reader can get accurate news from those who are trained in getting it out. 

I can e-mail articles, pictures, and videos back from whatever AO I happen to be, and I 

can send them to specific newspapers or TV stations relevant to the unit with whom I’m 

embedding. And we can read Andrea Scott Tyson’s stories on her embed with the marines 

in Helmand directly off the Washington Post Web site, which I’m happy to put it on my 

site—with attribution of course—so my readers can read her work. The bad news is that 

the Internet also gives a voice to those who really should not be in the news business, those 

who are poorly-informed, biased, or simply wrong.

I’ve divided the Internet media world into three groups. The first is the mainstream 

embeds whose newspapers post their articles on the Web: the Times, the Wall Street 

Journal, the Christian Science Monitor. Their work speaks for itself and will have followers regardless of how it’s presented. The second are those freelance or Internet media 

like me, David Wood, and Michael Yon, along with those very professional groups like the

Long War Journal or Military.com who provide daily articles from a variety of sources. I 

call what we do “news and informed analysis,” and it’s as professional as any mainstream 

newspaper in America.

But there’s another group that gives Internet news a bad name. It’s those bloggers sitting at home providing opinions based on incomplete, misunderstood, or cherry-picked 

information. That’s not news, that’s opinion, yet it’s too often mistaken for news if it’s on a 

fancy Web site. Yes, everyone has opinions, but informed analysis is professionally done. 

Informed analysis is a 5-Ws’ discussion of why COIN operations are needed in Helmand, 

but not in Kunduz. It also takes knowledge to write a good COIN article, as opposed to 

dashing off a rant that calls for nuking the Taliban back to the Stone Age.

What’s the difference, you might ask, between me and a blogger? You both have Web 

sites, you both publish on the Web, and isn’t professionalism sort of subjective? Yes, yes, 

and yes, but I’d like to suggest that I’m different because I’m paid for what I do and a 

blogger is not. To explain it with a sports metaphor—they’re amateurs, I’m a professional.
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The problem with bloggers and journalists is very simple—there are no qualifying 

standards as you have. Oh, we have standards of excellence, John’s Pulitzer, for example. 

But our world is far more flexible than yours, and judging from your questions yesterday, 

and the SAMS class I addressed, you have a frustration level in the lack of professionalism 

in some of our journalistic brothers. But that’s part of the difference between the Marines 

and Army versus the civilian world, and that’s not going to change.

Something else worth remembering is that there is news and there is information, and 

it’s important that you don’t get the two confused. Generically speaking, blogs are effectively Internet “op eds,” which is fine, so long as they’re recognized as such. Today, as the 

Internet explodes with blogs and pseudo-news, accuracy takes a backseat to readership 

numbers, and if you can pick up market share by bad-mouthing your competitors, hey, 

that’s just part of today’s business model. This isn’t good; this is like a journalistic version 

of Gresham’s Law, where “pseudo-news” drives “real news” out of circulation. The shame 

is that the mainstream media (MSM), in their drive for profit, dumb-down their news to 

compete.

Social Media: The Fad That’s Here to Stay

The current concept is that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are able to deliver information to a more tightly defined market segment than was done traditionally. What is confusing is that what was traditionally separated as “news” and “advertising” is now lumped 

together as “information.” But no matter what you call it, it’s still Ford, Pepsi, and the 

Army trying to sell cars, sodas, and recruiting to an audience that is far more sophisticated, 

or at least far more choosey, than ever before.

It’s an easy concept to understand. Whether you’re selling Coca-Cola or looking to 

recruit people into the Army, it’s a question of how to put your message in front of the 

most-interested eyeballs at the cheapest price. The ancillary concept is that people with 

similar interests will gather in groups, and if you can tap into these groups, they’ll buy 

your product as their feedback helps you refine your message and make your product more 

customer-friendly. What social media does is let me sharpen my target marketing. Instead 

of spending $50,000 on a generic advertising campaign in Kansas City, I can spend $9,000 

on Web-based advertising of everyone in my Kansas City-targeted zip codes who earn a 

selected income. That’s a target-market based advertising campaign, which is more successful for less money. 

The military is heavily involved in the world of social media. From the DOD in 

Washington to Marine Air Station Yuma, the military has launched onto the Internet with 

a vengeance. The Army recently ordered all US bases to provide access to Facebook. 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has 4,000 followers on Twitter. The DOD just 

unveiled a new home page packed with social media tools. There have been recent articles 

and rumors saying that a department within DOD is going to ban the military from using 

these sites, but my information is that this is incorrect. Individuals will remain permitted to 

access Facebook and the other sites from their own or MWR computers. What will happen 

is that access will be denied from DOD-networked computers. That’s no big deal, and in 
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fact, that’s nothing new. I can’t even access my Earthlink account from the DOD computers at Camp Lejeune, so I wander over to the library. It would be helpful, however, in the 

DOD’s drive to get their message out, that they managed to get this message out accurately.

The idea of using Facebook and the other social network sites for communication is a 

good one. Having a unit’s commanding officer (CO) posting to a Web site or a Facebook 

page is a wonderful way for keeping in touch with home and disseminating news. But, let’s 

not forget that if you can post a comment on Facebook from J’Bad, you can also e-mail 

your wife directly, and with SPAWAR at $2.9/cents per minute you can afford to call home 

regularly. This isn’t 2003 or 2004. You’ve got to admit that communication is a lot better 

than it was.

What’s Considered “News” Today?

There are two ways in which social networking and new media differ from traditional 

mainstream media. Part of it is the change in the delivery platform, from print newspapers 

to the Web, but a major change is what passes for news these days, and that is what should 

concern us all. Blogs seem to encourage a consensus-reality in that if enough people repeat 

an untruth, it must be true, and they succeed because no one today has the moral authority 

to halt it. In the 1960s and 1970s, Huntley-Brinkley and Walter Cronkite were accepted 

as the everyday incarnation of truth—in fact President Obama called Cronkite “a voice of 

certainty in an uncertain world” when paying him tribute when he died last month. Now, 

compare Cronkite and McNeil-Lehrer to Geraldo Rivera and Katie Couric. We need news; 

we get entertainment.

A good journalist can be either “mainstream” or “freelance,” but we still need to present the facts accurately. Whether we write for hardcopy or for the Web, we’re still far different from those many bloggers who pick and choose the facts they need to justify their 

conclusions. Today’s embed may write for the Web, but it is still “news and informed 

analysis,” and it’s far more professional than that of most bloggers.

Cronkite’s legendary assessment of Vietnam’s quagmire—the one that led Lyndon 

Johnson to lament, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America”—is often cast as 

a highpoint of the anchor’s power, where one man could influence a country’s attitude 

toward a government policy. But let’s remember that Cronkite earned that reputation with 

25 years of reporting from the front lines. He wasn’t sitting behind a computer terminal in 

his basement opinionating on a topic on which he knew nothing. In fact, Cronkite only presented America with this assessment after returning from yet another Vietnam embed. Now 

compare this to those self-proclaimed “experts,” ranging from Michelle Malkin to Ariana 

Huffington, both of whom seem to prefer opinions to situational awareness.

With so many news outlets and news anchors these days, the audience and target markets have changed since the days of Uncle Walter. NBC’s Brian Williams competes for 

viewers against Jon Stewart and Univision as much as he competes with Charlie Gibson 

and MSNBC, and the effect of so many anchors is to dilute their influence in a widening 

market. “News” is no longer simply “news”; it’s a brand and can be marketed and sold. 

That is what has changed since Cronkite’s heyday, and that’s what has changed in covering 

the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If all this half-accuracy stayed in the blog world, it might 
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be OK, but unfortunately, the mainstream media follows suit creating expectation and 

anticipation and too-often misusing it. Their goal is to have viewers and readers return, to 

boost ratings and readership, so their emphasis is on the half-story “with details to follow.”

But if you want to read the news, instead of trying to become the news, then the 

Internet is actually a great tool. Read Military.com, the Small Wars Journal, or the Long 

War Journal. This is professional journalism, except it’s on the Web instead of delivered 

as a newspaper. These business models are successful, both financially and professionally. 

Military.com boasts 7 million+ monthly readers and is owned by Monster, while Small 

Wars Journal was named one of the “Top-50” blogs by Rolling Stone magazine a few 

months ago. So, it appears that content and intelligence is still important fortunately.

Perhaps one reason for this lack of reading is that society is changing. Fewer and fewer 

families eat together as school activities run later into the evenings, and families rarely sit 

down and watch news together as my generation did. Current events were an important 

part of education, and homework assignments like watching Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley 

were common. But today, too many kids these days text rather than write and their grades 

and comprehension show it. But in an age of birthers, forged birth certificates, death panels, and town hall meetings, we’re in an age of instantaneous and unprecedented twisting 

of the truth, if not deliberate lying, that’s caused a loss of trust in media as vast as the loss 

of trust in government. Nightly news, Cronkite style, is a thing of the past. Perhaps in the 

Internet age, accuracy and honesty have become old-fashioned values to be studied instead 

of practiced. Maybe that’s just the way it is.

Covering the War Today: Who Are Today’s Combat Correspondents?

During the last 110 years, the media was evolving along with American society. War 

reporting ranged from William Randolph Hearst’s helping start the Spanish-American War 

to Halberstam’s articulate criticisms of Vietnam to the New York Post’s contributions to 

journalistic excellence with their front-page coverage of the UN debate in 2002 to the 

Marines in Fallujah in 2004. In between, Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite were in 

London reporting the Battle for Britain as the bombs fell around them. As Robert Sherrod 

stormed ashore with the marines at Tarawa and Iwo Jima, Ernie Pyle and Bill Mauldin 

embedded with the troops and reported on the war in Europe. Now you’ve got me and my 

group embedding with the soldiers and marines and sending back stories from Iraq and 

Afghanistan. There’s no place the military goes where you don’t have an embed wanting 

to tag along.

I think both the press and the military have done an exceptional job of getting the word 

out. No American can seriously claim he’s lacking for information on what’s happening 

overseas. Now, he or she may not understand conventional war versus COIN, or the difference between the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds, but the faults on him or her for not having the 

initiative to read the information that’s available.

So is there much of a difference between mainstream media and new media or is it 

more of a question as to how they operate? We both have deadlines for our work, we 

both need to be accurate in our reporting, and it helps if our work is interesting. But now 

our paths diverge. We each have our strengths and weaknesses; perhaps it’s similar to the 
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difference between officers and senior enlisted. From spending a fair amount of time overseas, I think there are three groups of journalists visiting the war zones today.

The first group is the big newspapers like the Times, the Post, and the television stations. There’s journalists like Tony Perry—LA Times, Mike Phillips—Wall Street Journal, 

and NBC’s Richard Engel who taught himself Arabic. These people are good; these are 

first-class reporters who’ve spent time in the field and lived dirty with the troops for weeks 

on end. That’s great journalism, and they’ve produced some great work in some very trying 

conditions. But they did have substantial help—staffs back in the States, editors, financial 

resources, and after the conventional fighting stopped, houses in Baghdad or Kabul from 

which they ran their news bureaus. They have corporate backing—both editorial and financial, which they used to put out some great work from both Baghdad and Kabul as well as 

from out in the field.

The second wave of combat correspondents is freelance new media photojournalists 

like myself. I’d like to think that we’re a tough crowd. We are in the field for 2, 3, or 4 

months straight, carrying everything we need on our back as we move from unit to unit. We 

write, edit, and send out our own print and pictorial work from wherever we’re at, and too 

often front the cost of the trip in the expectation of earning it back through the sale of our 

work. At the same time, war coverage is different now than during 2003 and 2004. Writing 

on COIN takes a greater degree of sophistication and expertise than covering kinetic ops 

like An-Nas or Fallujah. That’s a good thing. Subject-matter expertise is what separates the 

good journalist from the lightweights. Some of us covering 10th Mountain or the Marines 

were writing about “the 3-block war” long before terms like COIN and counterinsurgency 

became trendy. Most of us have a nonjournalistic background, which is probably a plus. 

Anyone can write, but if you don’t understand the topic on which you’re writing, no editor 

can save you. And this expertise has been honed from time in the field, which gives us a 

far clearer understanding of what you’re doing than some network heavyweight who flies 

in for 2 days and then leaves. While we’re not going to get access to General McChrystal, 

we usually do get access to the ground combat commanders (or at least I do), and the ones 

with whom I was fortunate to embed, both Army and Marines, gave me more access and 

information than I could ever imagine.

That’s what separates us from the last group: those second-time MSM and new-media 

wannabes who have been flitting over since 2007 for 2 to 3 days to get an “embed” check 

on their resume or to finesse information on a story for which they already had their conclusion. There were people flying into LZ [Landing Zone] Washington, and then bunking 

at CPIC [Combined Press Information Center] or the Al-Rashid whose level of expertise 

didn’t include knowing that Anbar was Sunni. I also met folks from “60 Minutes” who 

came with an agenda and their story already written; they just wanted the “cover” of claiming they’d researched it professionally. Let me tell you that folks like that are an embarrassment to me. They’re unprepared both physically and intellectually, and I do my best 

to stay away from them. But unlike boot camp, or the courses here, there are no uniform 

journalistic standards, and yes, the media world has its share of clowns.

It’s actually ironic, the military scoffs at Katie Couric and CNN, yet you covet their 

readership. Then there’s the freelance embeds like me, writing for three professional 
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magazines, yet too often we’re not taken seriously and you refuse to give me the same 

high-profile access that you give to those same MSMs you don’t like. Through it all, the 

military complains about the lack of coverage or about our stories as you make us line up 

for fingerprints and retinal-scans—assuming the Rendon Group has judged us politically 

and militarily acceptable to be embedded. 

It’s worth noting that the only journalist removed from the combat zone since the invasion of Iraq was Geraldo Rivera, FOX News. For all your talk of the liberal media aiding 

and abetting the enemy, it was Geraldo who drew a map and the Marine battle plans in the 

sand for the TV camera and discussed them in front of the world. Interestingly, a reporter 

from Stars & Stripes, of all organizations, was thrown off an embed in Mosul last month, 

because he refused to follow the stories the PAO wanted to assign to him. Perhaps the PAO 

thought that Stars & Stripes is an arm of DOD Public Affairs, and she could order him to 

report on selected “good news” stories she wanted covered. While Stripes acceded to the 

rather unprecedented demand that they pull the reporter, they refused to assign a replacement reporter to that unit. Let me mention that their reporter is getting along fine with 

another Army unit.

It’s hard to understand why the media, either mainstream or new, is treated with such 

distrust. The military has a great message, but it’s you who makes it so difficult to get it 

out. It’s not a question of whether the press is “for or against” a war; all we do is report on 

what’s happening. What we’re reporting is considered “good versus bad” by the reader, 

and their views of the war were determined long ago by their opinions of the administration’s reasons for sending troops in the first place.

It’s not the media who orders troops deployed, nor is it the military. It’s not the media 

who determines troop levels and neither was it you. And neither of us were happy when 

you were forced to resort to hillbilly armor and other work-a-rounds, but to impugn my 

patriotism for writing about parents forced to buy camel backs and body armor for their 

sons is simply an attempt to deflect attention from an administration that was poorly prepared. You don’t realize it, but we’re on the same side on all this.

The difference is that we have a flexibility you don’t. We’re using the 5-Ws. I’m writing an article; you’re writing a press release. Since it’s a press release, your motives are 

viewed with suspicion—not because you’re military, but because it’s a press release. Same 

as a press release from Exxon on the environment or McDonalds on healthy food, you’re 

pushing your own viewpoint and are, therefore, considered suspect. Incidentally, for those 

of you who were using hillbilly armor in Iraq in 2004–2005, it was outrage fueled by the 

pictures and articles coming from the embeds in Iraq that outraged the American public 

and forced Secretary Rumsfeld to order Rock Island Arsenal to run 24/7 and ship more uparmor kits to you guys. Like I said, we’re on your side more than you think.

The Embedded Journalist: The Military and Media Relationship

Now this is the best part of my talk, in addition to the fact that I’m coming to the end. 

What does the press want from you? And what have I discovered that you want from me? 

Let’s start with what I need from you. 
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Oh, we want it all. We want kinetics. Artillery is best, but tanks or gunships—with 

good lighting of course—are pretty awesome. If you can throw in some IDF—but not too 

close!—that would make it even better. Since I’m media, you automatically think I’m a 

liberal puss so if can you add some decent weather, I won’t have to break a sweat. And if 

you could arrange to pick the fight in the morning, then we can have the story written up for 

the East Coast USA opening and I can be back on line in the chow hall by noon.

Now, what do I really want? I need access. I’ve got articles to write, probably two to 

three weekly for the Web, as well as some longer, more thoughtful magazine pieces. So, 

I’m going to want some time with the CO and the operations officer when I pull into your 

headquarters. While I’m already fairly knowledgeable as to the unit and area with whom 

I’m embedding, I want to talk with the CO: What are your goals? What’s your mission? 

Tell me what you’re trying to accomplish, and then let me talk to the operations officer 

about how you’re trying to do it. You’ve got a message to get out—help me understand 

what it is. And then push me into the field and don’t be surprised when I ask your company 

commander or platoon leader the same questions. I’m not checking up on you. You’ve told 

me about the strategy, now I want to know the tactics. And I’m always off-the-record until 

we sit down and do a formal debrief. I need you to talk openly, and if you’re afraid I’ll 

cherry-pick quotes, it’s too difficult for us to talk.

Next, don’t get all panicky if I talk to some specialist. I’m not looking for operational 

security, I’m just a social guy who’ll be spending a week with strangers and I need to get 

along with people. Look, I’ve got nothing in common with some 20-year old listening to 

their incredibly dumb music. If I had a choice, I’d rather hang out with colonels and generals who are my peers in age and education.

On a general note, most embeds aren’t qualified to lead a platoon or assist on a crewserved, so cut us some slack when we ask a question you consider elementary. And if 

you’re smart, you’ll try to ascertain our level of knowledge of strategy and tactics, which 

will let you know how much you need to explain to us. And you want to do this, because 

it’ll help us write a better article on your unit if we know the “what” and “why” of your 

mission.

And here’s something else—I want to be invited back to your unit. I go out with the 

Marines a lot because they know me, or know of me, and like my work. Same as 10th 

Mountain. I’m invited back with them next month because they like my work from last 

year. Look, going back to a unit who knows me is a lot easier, so I have an incentive to do 

well the first time out. If you do this for me, I’ll share my work with you before I send it 

out. I enjoy sitting with the CO or operations officer and talking about my articles. Maybe 

I’ve missed a point you were trying to make; maybe all you do is correct the spelling of 

someone’s name. There’s no exposé or breaking news here, we’re just a couple of guys trying to do our best and working together makes it both easier and a lot of fun.

What’s really interesting is what I learned you guys want from me. When I started 

writing this presentation, I e-mailed some of the colonels and generals with whom I’ve 

embedded in the last few years and asked them some questions:

1. What did you expect from your embeds re: press or Web coverage?
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2. Do you prefer prior military experience? Did it make a difference if they did 

not have it?

3 What made one embedded reporter better than another?

4. What were the low points of your experience with embeds? the high points? 

5. What’s your reaction to the entire embed concept? 

6. And my usual question: What do you want to tell me? 

From Brigadier General Sean MacFarland, with whom I embedded twice in Ramadi:

1. What do-did you expect from your embeds re: press or Web coverage?

My expectation was that they would get the facts at least 90 percent correct and that their analysis of the situation would not be significantly at 

odds with ground truth. If that happened, then the engagement was not a 

setback. If I could get at least one or two of my themes across via . . . .

2. Did they have prior military experience? Did it make a difference if 

they did not? Some did (like you and Ollie North), most did not. It made 

a significant difference. Those with prior experience had a much shorter 

learning curve and tended to ask more astute questions.

3. What made one embedded reporter better than another? Objectivity 

and the ability to put aside preconceived notions.

4. What were the low points of your experience with embeds? the high 

points? I did not really have any significant low points with embeds (1-day 

visitors were another matter). The high point was my ability to influence 

the narrative about the awakening movement. A lot of reporters were 

initially skeptical. Probably the best exchange was when one guy kept 

questioning Sheikh Sattar’s motives for aligning with the Coalition. Sattar 

finally asked him if he was upset that the tribes were now working with the 

Coalition against AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq].

5. What’s your reaction to the entire embed concept? The more the 

better—absolutely the best way to go.

6. And my usual question: What do you want to tell me? We weren’t looking to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes, just get the truth out. Embeds let 

us do that.

From Colonel Scott Fosdal, USMC, with whom I embedded in eastern Afghanistan:

1. Military experience is nice, but oftentimes they can fool themselves 

into thinking they know more than they do, not realizing how dated their 

experience is. Physically fit and a sense of adventure along with the ability 

to live as we do is all I really need.

2. I always appreciated it when I got to check the copy before it was submitted or they summarized my remarks with me afterwards to ensure they 

have the context correct.
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3. I think embedding is great for the military. Only the most biased 

reporter can come away from being embedded without having gained 

respect for our American youth serving in uniform. Frankly, I’m surprised 

that the media accepts the embedded concept because it is hard to report 

objectively on the people who are in fact defending and feeding you. This 

doesn’t protect the operational commanders though—the reporters can 

still trumpet the bravery of the man on the ground while taking the leaders 

to task for poor execution or, more likely, painting a rosy picture in their 

own press briefings that conflicts with the truth on the ground. The only 

reason tactical unit commanders should fear embeds is if they’re doing 

something wrong or their troops are ill-disciplined.

4. My opinion of the media is different than most commanders. I welcome them because I understand that they have to report something and 

if I don’t give them access I can hardly complain when their reports are 

inaccurate. I only fear their reports if what I’m doing is wrong, poorly 

executed, or immoral. Bottom line, if you’re afraid of something being 

reported you must ask yourself should you be doing it at all. It’s also 

important to state your ground rules up front and if applicable, provide 

your guidance on what you think should be off limits. I find that honesty 

begets honesty.

From Colonel Jeff Haynes, USMC, with whom I embedded two times in eastern 

Afghanistan:

1. What do-did you expect from your embeds re: press or Web coverage? 

An accurate representation of the facts enhanced by coverage of the human 

side of the mission. An explanation for the American people of the complexity of the current operating environment. I also expected embeds to be 

low maintenance, free of bias or agenda, and willing to report the story, not 

create one. An embed must show up ready to move at a moment’s notice 

with a flexible timeline.

2. Did they have prior military experience? Did it make a difference if 

they did not? Most did not, didn’t seem to matter.

3. What made one embedded reporter better than another? Ability to 

listen in order to grasp the essence of the problem. Not looking for a 

kinetic photo op when one didn’t exist. Also, embeds who had done their 

homework—had a sense of culture, terrain, and history. I had a reporter 

who had never heard of Jalalabad before. That reporter was sent away to 

cover the National Guard for hometown newspaper stuff.

4. What were the low points of your experience with embeds? the high 

points? Low points—one had an agenda to portray the ANA [Afghan 

National Army] as totally incompetent—focused only on the negative. He 

was unbalanced and lacked perspective. And I do NOT accept embeds 
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who do not have time to spend at headquarters to gain insight and context 

before going down to small unit level.

5. What’s your reaction to the entire embed concept? Great. Particularly 

in a COIN environment where we are trying to show the host nation democratic values of transparency, etc. Plus, we need to get our good news story 

out without sugar coating it.

6. And my usual question: What do you want to tell me? Military PAs are 

paranoid and too controlling. I know what the hell I’m doing and have a 

message, so observe and you may gain some keen insight about what is 

really going on. 

Conclusion

I hope this helps dispel some of the myths and fears regarding having journalists 

embedding with you. Like the one Marine colonel surmised, we’re not really impartial. Do 

you really think I’m going to write smack about you if you take care of me in a firefight? 

And let’s be real. I’m on your turf and you’re keeping me alive, and if I do get hurt you take 

care of me. Trust me, I don’t come with an attitude. Let me tell you again, I think you’ve 

got a great message. When I leave and someone comes up and thanks me for getting the 

word out, I get embarrassed. I should be thanking you for taking me on for a couple of 

weeks and letting me get involved. Not only are we not your enemy, we’re in this together 

more deeply than you can imagine. You want to get your story out. Trust me, I want to get 

it out to my readers also.

I’d like to thank you for listening this morning, and I’d like to thank General Caldwell 

for inviting me to speak. And if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.

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Day 3—Featured Speaker

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Mr. Andrew Lubin

Independent Journalist

Audience Member

I have a question, sir. My name is John Rainvelle, I’m with the Battle Lab. I was here 

for Mr. Burns’ presentation yesterday as well. It seems to me that the theme you and Mr. 

Burns presented was that most journalists, the majority, want to get an accurate story out 

and should develop a mutual respect between the journalists and the unit with which they 

are embedded. Having talked to some of my friends who have had closer relations with the 

media, to include one guy who described a well-known female reporter for CNN who deals 

with Middle East affairs, who in his estimation was deliberately looking to distort what the 

facts were. My understanding of journalists is that the things that put fear into journalists 

is not necessarily that of death or that of imprisonment or that of being expelled from the 

area, but more of having a reputation of not accurately reporting the news. So, for instance, 

when CBS News reported that President Bush had false documents, other networks were 

on CBS like jackals on the wounded beast. So, if we believe that we are in a position where 

we’re falling victim to a journalist who is deliberately distorting the facts, what are your 

recommendations for how we could address that?

Mr. Lubin

Well, first of all, I think you see a difference in accuracy between the print media and 

the TV people. Within reason, you cannot deny her access because she works for CNN. 

You can answer it your own way—you don’t have to answer directly. You can say, “Hey, 

great question, ma’am, but let me answer it my way.” And you kind of go off topic and try 

to bring the topic back to the way you’re trying to lead the conversation. There’s always 

that option. Short of that, sometimes you suck with people. All you can do is then give a 

bland answer and hope for the best. And I’m sorry. Sometimes people do show up with an 

attitude. But I kind of look at things from the print side where we’re not in for 20 minutes 

and out again, we’re trying to give you a better story. On the other hand, the CNN lady in 

Washington is a whole lot more professional. Some are good, and some are bad. We’ve got 

great soldiers and great marines. We’ve got some clowns on that side, too. We’re people 

all the way around, unfortunately. I wish I could help you with a better answer. Somebody 

else had a—yes, sir.

Audience Member

Stephen Badsey. I’d like, if you would, to elaborate on a point you made earlier, because 

I think it’s a very important one, which is the perils for the Armed Forces of pushing the 
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Featured Speaker

good news story, because talking to people around here at this symposium, I’ve heard this 

several times. That the position they should take is good people doing good things and that 

will be adequate. And as we know from historical experiences and present day, there are 

certain perils for the military to take that view. Would you elaborate on the point you made 

earlier. 

Mr. Lubin

Well, to an extent, good people do good things is good news. It’s a good thing to write 

about. The problem I think is that the war has gone on too long and people don’t care anymore. And if I can only report school openings and medical operations—there’s only so 

many ways to do the same story over 3 years, 4 years. For me to do my job better, you’ve 

got to do your job better. You need the administration to prepare the American public for 

what they want you to do. I can’t write the rationale for invading Iraq. I can talk about what 

you guys are doing, but I can’t accurately talk about how and why you got there because 

I don’t know. That’s the problem. The American public doesn’t know. So all we’re left 

with at this point is grinning kids and people giving out sourballs, which is a shame. There 

comes a point where you can only do the same story so many times. On a personal basis, 

and what I found very frustrating, I was in Ramadi in October 2006 when an IED hit Route 

Michigan. Scary situation. September 2007 and back in Ramadi and on Route Michigan 

we ran a 5K race. Marines helped the Iraqis put on a 5K race, 3 miles apiece. We had 200 

Iraqis turn up. All the marines would give out water bottles and we ran the water stop and 

Baghdad TV came out. I came back, talked to the DOD media people. I had some pictures 

from that. Couldn’t get the DOD interested, just a 5K race, what difference does it make? 

It’s a 5K race with your IED people less than a year ago, and this is how much the Sunnis 

have changed and worked with the Americans. I couldn’t get anybody interested in any 

story like that at all. So you’ve got a good news piece that’s not only good news but shows 

how the entire area is turned around. My friends at Fox News said, “Well, that’s boring. We 

want like artillery and gunships. So a 5K race in Ramadi, for God’s sakes, that’s boring. 

Our readers don’t want that.” So that’s the problem. We can’t get anything to sell because 

the American public’s turned off because it’s been too long, it’s been too many years. 

There’s nothing new out there, and of course you’ve got Michael Jackson and Brittany or 

Lindsay that God forbid somebody doesn’t put her clothes on. You’ve got to put that on 

TV instead of a Ramadi 5K. Sorry. This is just—you get me wound up on these things. Sir?

Audience Member

You just made a statement that the war has gone on too long, and that’s typical of the 

media making judgments like that and judgments like that are extremely damaging. It’s just 

like, I read media people, “Oh war is lost. It can’t be won.” These are things that make the 

military and policymakers very, very uncomfortable. They’re judgments made by people 

who don’t have an understanding of what’s going on, don’t have a long view, and I think 

that a lot of people take exception to that kind of statement being made.

Mr. Lubin

Then why are we there? Why are we there? I put my son at risk. Why are we there? 

2003–2004 I understand. He gets whacked a year ago so that some Iraqi security guard can 
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take a ten grand bribe and let somebody through having a bombing? Why do I need to put 

up my son today? Answer me that. Put it in those terms.

Audience Member

Well, that’s a valid question, okay. And you can ask that, okay? But I’m still standing 

behind the statement that when you make statements like that, “The war has gone on too 

long; it’s already lost; it can’t be won, . . . .”

Mr. Lubin

I didn’t say it was lost and couldn’t be won. I said it has gone on—people are bored 

with war news is what I said. That’s the context. I said people don’t want, they just, been 

there done that. How many more pictures of grinning kids can you show? What other news 

is there except the Iraqis blowing each other up nowadays?

Audience Member

Then it’s a long drop, it’s going to take a long term. Why isn’t the media pushing that 

particular view?

Mr. Lubin

Because that should come from the administration, not from me. I have no primary part 

in it, but I’m not making policy. I’m reporting policy. That’s the difference. Sir.

Audience Member

Thank you. Colonel Steve Boyland from the Battle Command Training Program. Two 

things real quick. One, your last, toward the end you said about everything was off the 

record until you made sure that they knew it was on the record. I would say, sir, that you 

are the exception rather than the rule and that’s from most journalists in the field. It’s everything is on the record unless otherwise stated.

Mr. Lubin

I’m a month in the field. I’m not trying to catch anybody. I’m trying to get a story. 

Audience Member

I understand. I’m just making sure that you understand that you are the exception 

rather than the rule. 

Mr. Lubin

You know something? I appreciate—you and I met with General Petraeus 2 years ago.

Audience Member

That’s correct, sir. 

Mr. Lubin

Yeah, and in my opinion, that’s their loss. I want to get invited back. They’re looking 

to screw somebody tomorrow. I want a long-term business.
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Featured Speaker

Audience Member

I understand completely. Going back to one other point. On your issue of us pushing 

the kids and soccer balls, schools opening, and everything else. I would submit that we 

are trying to get the overall context and characterization of the entire picture, not the soda 

straw look at the latest IED or bombing of the day. We fully realize that the bomb of the day 

is going to get the headlines. The conflict is going to outweigh everything else. But I would 

say how then does the media in general—not you specifically, but in general—accurately 

characterize what is happening across the scope of the AOR [area of responsibility] vice 

that singular event that takes the precedence?

Mr. Lubin

You can’t do it by TV at all number one, you’ve got to do it by print because you need 

the time and the space. You need a thousand, two thousand words to do that. Unfortunately 

to do that, you’ve got to have interested readers who want to pay for the news to—it works 

back on the chain is the problem. And that goes back to what I said to the other gentleman, 

you’ve got to get the American public to understand why we’re there to make them interested. Like Roosevelt’s fireside chats. “Hey, folks, we’re going to invade the Pacific. Get 

a map out of the Pacific; we’re going to talk next week about what we’re going to do in 

our Pacific theater strategy.” And Rand McNally sold out of maps. You know, I agree with 

what you’re saying, but I need help from higher, way higher, to get that done. Otherwise, 

you’re talking COIN and that’s not bad, but that’s almost a book-size article, book-size 

thing instead of a thousand words in the Times.

Audience Member

Well, to use your same analogy, and then I’ll stop. If all the American public saw was 

the soccer balls and schools opening, that’s what they would expect—that everything is 

going well. However, you can use the reverse analogy as well. If the only thing they see is 

the bomb of the day going off, they think everything is bad, which is not accurate either.

Mr. Lubin

Yeah, I was going to say, it’s some of both is the problem. And I can do that story once. 

I can do that 6 months later and do that 6 months later again. There comes a point, how 

many times do I have to—how many times can I rewrite the same—we’re kind of in limbo 

until they stand themselves up type of story. That’s the problem. In my opinion.

Audience Member

Yes, sir, my name is Major Lowe. I’m with the College here. I’m a student. It seems 

to me that the Army or the military in general face a structural challenge regarding our 

media, which is that media that come from high-freedom environments, like the United 

States, Western democracies, tend to be obsessed or driven to report on their governments. 

I mean, particularly most of their reporting is how their tax money is being spent and 

that sort of thing. Whereas, journalists coming from low-freedom environments, like the 

theaters in which we’re operating, tend to report or never report on the foibles of their own 
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governments, but on what the other guy is doing. So what you have in essence is more base 

hits, more runs batted in for the enemy by our own media and on the flip side, our media 

almost never reports on an enemy picture, on enemy foibles, etc. That really puts us in a 

bind and opens us up to a lot of risk. I’d be interested in your comment on that.

Mr. Lubin

Well, some of that is the way the military has things set up. Let’s talk about Iraq. If I’m 

embedded with the marines, I don’t ever see any Iraqis unless we’re in a firefight. But when 

I’m in CPIC, we bring their media in to see us. I don’t have the same access unless I decide 

to get a taxi and go offshore, and I don’t want to do that. So I mean, I’m a brave guy when 

I’ve got a bunch of marines around me. Being in a taxi in Baghdad, I’d prefer not to. But 

again, we’re bringing them in, we’re giving them access. I ought to get the same access to 

an Iraqi TV station. Another thing, most of them speak English. We don’t speak any of their 

languages. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

Audience Member

If I might just have a quick followup. I agree with that assessment. I guess the question 

is whether or not there’s some news value that your editors would perceive as understanding 

sort of where the enemy is, what he’s doing, how he’s prosecuting his war effort. If that’s 

the case, then it would seem that there would be some due investment in interpreters, in 

language training, in many of the similar things that we have to take up to get our job done.

Mr. Lubin

That’s been done, I think. John, you did that when you had the Baghdad bureau, the

Times did that, the Wall Street Journal did that. I don’t have the finances for that. Might not 

have the readership for that either. Wouldn’t mind, but I do a “boots on the ground” thing so 

mom and . . . you know, if we’re doing a med op, when I got Lance Corporal Shmuckatel 

here and Private Jones and Sergeant Smith, I write so they can send that back and mom and 

dad can pass that through the Internet and everybody knows what’s going on overseas. I 

would love to do your kind of analysis, but I don’t have the finances for that. That’s more 

what John’s group does, unfortunately for me.

Audience Member

Just briefly. I certainly agree with you that it’s natural for journalists to have a healthy 

skepticism toward PAO briefings and PAO press releases. My problem is that Western journalists don’t seem to have the same skepticism toward Taliban press releases or al-Qaeda 

press releases. Case in point, or cases in point, in Afghanistan if there’s an airstrike on a 

target and Village X, whatever the number of casualties may be, the Taliban will certainly 

claim that they were all children gathering to read Oprah’s latest book club pick, and there 

will be 150 of them. What hits the headlines above the fold over here? It’s 150 civilian 

casualties. If the military rebuts it, if that’s run, it’s buried down on the page 7, continuation 

of the story. So, I get my chance to talk this afternoon, but I am not prepared to join the love 

fest with the media that’s been going on for the last 2 days.
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Featured Speaker

Mr. Lubin

I tend to look at everybody on a skeptical basis. I mean, I like the PAOs over there 

because they help me carry my gear, which is kind of nice. 

Audience Member

That was not a criticism of you, by the way, by any means. 

Mr. Lubin

If it is, that’s fine. I’ll get you back when you speak. No, but I knew that, Ralph. But 

yeah, I tend to look at things on a more skeptical basis. Do I believe people? You kind 

of look at who it is. If I hear it from Major Everyman, yeah, believe it in a heartbeat. 

Something from the Taliban, you know, come on guys. Sometimes we’re, as American 

people, we’re our own worst enemy at the same time. And to be honest with you, some 

of the things that come out—I think the major problem with the American military is that 

when the Taliban comes out and says 150 kids dead or whatever it might be, we come out 

and we say, “Well maybe it’s three,” and, “news to follow” in 2 weeks. The accuracy is 

good, but timeliness is important too, and the concept we have that we’ve got to be 100 

percent accurate. No, let’s go 80 percent and then put something out in an hour to kind of 

combat that. Hey, we think you’re wrong and we’re going to send troops in tomorrow to 

straighten it out and come out with this type of thing. We take too long to respond and that’s 

a shame. That’s not good.

Audience Member

Lieutenant Commander Haggerty, CGSC student. In most human endeavors, competition leads to a greater end product. The opposite seems to be true of journalism. Why is 

that, and what can we do about it? 

Mr. Lubin

Well, first of all, I disagree with that. Are you talking about journalism in general or 

embedded journalist, journalism in war?

Audience Member

I’d say journalism in general. The competition is to get it out faster, funnier, more 

appealing, and we end up with a trashier product as a consumer.

Mr. Lubin

We have, in my opinion, we’ve got a trashier market. I mean, the sign I put up about 

God texting the Ten Commandments. A lot of people coming to school here need remedial 

writing. You have people who are majors, which means you’re 30, 32, 35 years old, master’s degree, and you can’t write a coherent paper. That’s not a plus either. The kids coming 

into the Army, coming into the Marine Corps, they can text. They can’t write a complete 

sentence. My son, when he sent me an e-mail from Iraq would say, “Hay, Dad,” spelled 

H-A-Y. Well, mom’s horses have hay. My own son is a moron sometimes. I’m writing to 

a market. If I use big words, they’re all, “Well, what are you, some sort of Eastern snob?” 

Well, yes, maybe I am, but I know how to write a sentence. That’s the problem. I’m not 
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writing for you guys. I’m writing for the kids that are texting, maybe the parents of kids 

who were texting the Ten Commandments around. That’s the market out there, and I can’t 

change that unfortunately. I wish it wasn’t so, but that’s what I’m involved in.

Audience Member

I think this conversation is very interesting, and I’ve seen this happen. I’ve been doing 

this for about 35 years, talking to groups like you and military groups. There’s this kind of 

feeling that comes through the crowd that Americans, people, the audience believes anything that the media says, believes anything that Saddam Hussein says, believes anything 

that Osama bin Laden says, and frankly that is a real oversimplification. Rand did a study 2 

years ago on civilian casualties and the public concern about news media coverage of civilian casualties in Iraq. What came back was that the public was vastly more interested in 

two American soldiers who had been kidnapped by al-Qaeda than they were in 18 civilians 

who had been hit by an erroneous airstrike, and they had multitudes of comparisons again 

and again and again. We found in Vietnam, the media found in Vietnam, media people like 

you who would very conscientiously write stories about the civilian hospitals and people 

who had been burned by napalm and all these things that really do happen in war. Never 

saw the light of day. Never got printed. So they stopped covering it. Why? The managers 

in New York and Washington and Los Angeles and Chicago and Kansas City, wherever, 

who run those papers, run the TV outlets, understand their market. Their market wants to 

know about American soldiers. Not interested in civilians. Oh, they’re sympathetic. But as 

a Rand study found, they give the soldier the benefit of a doubt. Yeah, that happens in war. 

Everybody out there knows it. You’ve got enough people out there who have been in the 

military, who came through Vietnam, who know all this, who are aware of this. Our guys 

do the very best they can not to let it happen, but it happens anyway. This is the basic premise from which the public works. You got to screw up pretty badly before they really turn 

on you. They turned on you in Vietnam because everybody understood we were wasting 

lives, our own people’s lives mainly, and wasting our money and nothing was coming out 

of it, and we were fighting for a regime that really basically couldn’t get itself organized. 

That’s just a thought. I really think that we have to understand the audience and give them 

some credit.

Mr. Lubin

That’s why when I go overseas, my stuff is “boots on the ground.” It’s what those kids, 

those with a lot of names, a lot of hometowns, because that’s what people want to see. I 

mean, we’re still a pretty [inaudible] country, yeah, globalization, etc. But we’ve got a kid 

overseas. We want to know what they’re doing because the kid overseas who texts instead 

of writes letters or God forbid he calls home. Mom says, “Geez, haven’t heard from him for 

3 months. What’s going on?” Okay, I’ll write an article about what they’re doing in Ramadi 

or Fallujah or whatever it might be. Here’s what an embed operation does, whose picture 

is . . . my readership when I was overseas was 1.2 million a month. I [inaudible] newspapers, and this is just Internet stuff. You send it back, and it’s passed around and passed 

around through entire companies, entire battalions. That’s great news. Internet’s great. But 

it’s got to be used as what it is. It’s a tool and not a be all, end all.
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Featured Speaker

Audience Member

Lieutenant Commander Allen. I’m also here at the school. I would say that primarily 

I think the main point of some of the comments today, especially from the military folks, 

is that both friendly media, i.e., from the United States, as well as enemy media are all 

focused on our actions, and what we fail to see is an in-depth analysis and an in-depth 

comprehensive strategic study of what the enemy is doing and their actions. And I would 

also comment that over the last 2 days, I’ve heard this mention of good and bad folks, both 

in the military and in the media. The biggest problem is that a mistake on our end can be 

amplified by the media. For instance, a couple of marines do something bad in a little town 

and next thing you know it’s worldwide news. Our strategic policies are being affected by 

this, where it could just be for instance one reporter gets some bad news and puts it out. I’ll 

give you a perfect example. Abu Ghraib is still being used to recruit fighters.

Mr. Lubin

Well, Abu Ghraib wasn’t three marines. Yes, I think you’re right and you’re wrong. 

Abu Ghraib is something that they’re going to use for a long time. The marines, the one 

marine who threw the dog off the cliff and his moron buddy who filmed him, one kid got 

thrown out. The other kid’s been reduced in rank, and that made the news for 2 days. The 

PETA people are upset, but who cares. Beyond that, the story’s long gone. Abu Ghraib is 

a different situation, and the media didn’t break that. The kids, some of the soldiers over 

there who sent the videos back to their parents, and their parents turned it in, it wasn’t us. 

It was themselves who were disgusted with it. Some of that, too. You’ve got to use the 

context all the way across. 

Audience Member

What I would comment and ask the question on is when we have these blunders that 

are going to happen, the problem that we see is this broadscale worldwide amplification of 

the problem. It’s instantly picked up by the enemy, instantly used for propaganda purposes, 

whereas our side can’t really counter that message. We can’t go in because of a myriad 

of issues, but we can’t go in and prove the Taliban wrong by saying, “You know what.” I 

could tell you. I’ve personally seen a strike happen and seen bodies drug into a target.

Mr. Lubin

But here’s what I think . . .

Audience Member

But the problem is how do we get the media to support our national objective?

Mr. Lubin

First of all, I think people expect more risk because we are the United States. They 

expect the Taliban to do stupid crap and they expect us not to. We seem to have a halo 

around us for the past 200 and some years and that is people expect more from us. They 

don’t expect an Abu Ghraib from us. They expect it from the Taliban. You know—we set 

ourselves I shouldn’t say whether we set ourselves up or not—people expect more from us 

and we don’t expect much from them, and so when they don’t deliver much, it’s expected. 
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Lubin

They don’t expect us to do this. They expect us to be the knight in shining armor. Well, 

most the time we are, but sometimes we’re not. Our mistakes, unfortunately, when you pull 

an Abu Ghraib is a big mistake. The two marines throwing dogs off the cliff, yeah, what did 

that make the news for? A day, 2 days, then it was gone. They don’t get as amplified. When 

you’re overseas, you may think it’s amplified. Over here, it’s really not. Doesn’t seem to 

be in my opinion.

Audience Member

I just wanted if I may to elaborate on that remark that you posted on the screen there. 

What I intended to say, and I can correct the record if I got it wrong then, is that I don’t 

think that we are sent to places of conflict and places of contention to be neutral. I think 

there is a confusion often among the present generation of journalists about the difference 

between being neutral and being fair. If you are fair in making judgments as between the 

United States and some of its enemies and the way the United States Army behaves and 

some of its enemies behave, then you are likely to come to conclusions that, on the whole, 

are favorable to the United States and not to its enemies. At least as I have experienced it. 

There are those who believe that we should remain neutral, and I would say to them that the 

hottest place in hell belongs to those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

Mr. Lubin

Thank you. 

Mr. Gott

Andy, thank you once again for just an outstanding panel. Ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Lubin

Thank you.

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Panel 6—Current Operations

Historical Roots and Explanations for “Embedding” Journalists1

(Submitted Paper)

by

Phillip Fraund, Ph.D.

University of Constance

Media-Military Relations

In the past, wars were fought with sticks and stones. Then mankind invented swords 

and progressively more lethal implements of war. Nowadays we fight wars with cruise missiles and bombers. However, the most efficient way to fight a war is using a weapon that has 

decided wars in the past and will decide wars in the future: public opinion. Today this enormous force lies in the hands of the media. For centuries, the relationship between the media 

and the military was called military-media relations. To be more precise, it must actually be 

called media-military relations. The media reports about the military. Therefore, the majority of the power of definition and the sovereignty of interpretation is held by the media. The 

military is not able to communicate its point of view without the press as a mediator. The 

wars which have been fought during the past 100 years prove that media-military relations 

are crucial to the way wars are being reported, reviewed, and remembered. The Vietnam 

war, the Falkland Islands War, the Persian Gulf War, and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM 

may serve as examples.

When the Vietnam war ended, quite a number of military officers blamed the media 

for reporting on the war in a too negative way. They claimed that they had lost the war on 

the homefront rather than in the rice paddies of Vietnam. For the military, it is more or less 

a very good excuse for all the mistakes made in Vietnam. For the media, it is a praise of 

their ability to influence public opinion. Unfortunately, this “stab-in-the-back-legend” has 

been repeated so often that it soon became the standard explanation for losing the war in 

Vietnam. This legend also shaped the way the military was to deal with the media in future 

wars.2

The first major war in the Western Hemisphere after Vietnam was the war for the 

Falkland Islands in 1982. In the Falklands War, the military dealt with the press in a completely different way. The more or less completely free reporting of the Vietnam-era was 

past and a new era in the relationship between the media and the military began—an era 

in which the media was under the general suspicion of being unpatriotic and potentially 

traitorous. But the military still needed the media as transmitters to communicate their policies to the public.
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Panel 6

The Falkland Islands War: A Lesson Learned from the British

The precedent case of media-military relations after the end of the war in Vietnam is 

the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982 and the British attempts 

to retake the islands. From the beginning, the press had severe problems of covering the 

ongoing crisis. First, the long distance between London and the Falklands made it difficult to report. Second, the press policy of the British Government was disastrous. When 

the government finally decided to send the fleet to the Falklands, the Royal Navy initially 

refused to allow reporters on their ships. Sir Henry Leach, First Sea-Lord and Chief of 

Staff of the Royal Navy, asked if his government wanted him to load “pens or bayonets” 

on his ships.3

 When the Ministry of Defense (MOD) intervened, he agreed to create space 

for six journalists. Later the number of places for journalists on the ships departing to the 

Falklands was raised to 10. Responsible for public relations (PR) in the MOD was a civilian employee who was never trained to be a PR expert. His name isn’t even mentioned 

in any released documents. He was normally responsible for a completely different field 

within the MOD. He had the plan to fly all accredited journalists to the British outpost 

of Ascension in the Atlantic. There the journalists would board the ships. According to 

this plan, the media and the military would have 2 more weeks to get to know each other. 

However, the Royal Navy rejected this plan. They feared a journalist would discover that 

the airfield of Ascension was not shielded by any antiaircraft artillery and that there were 

no additional security measures.

The conditions under which the journalists who were allowed to accompany the fleet 

had been elected did not strengthen the credibility of the military. On 4 April 1982 the director of the Newspapers Publishers’ Association was having lunch when the telephone rang. 

He was told every reporter who wanted to travel with the fleet had to arrive in the military 

harbor of Portsmouth by midnight. The director should provide a list of the five selected 

journalists to the MOD within the next 4 hours. The other five places had been reserved 

for a journalist of both ITN (Independent Television News) and BBC, and a shared camera 

crew. The director spent the next 11⁄2 hours on the phone talking to all major newspapers 

on “Fleet Street.” Unfortunately, every newspaper insisted that their correspondent was the 

most important one. In the end, the only thing that could be done was to throw the names 

of all the journalists who were willing and able to go into one of the director’s hats. Then 

his wife had to draw the lucky “winners.” Immediately the excluded press started harsh and 

grim protests to No. Ten Downing Street. Finally, Downing Street had no other choice and 

raised the contingent up to 29 places. These protests are generally seen as “the most violent 

media lobbying of No. 10 in recent history.”4

 The forms the reporters had to fill in for their 

accreditation had been created during the Suez Crisis of 1956.5

Getting the journalists on board the fleet sailing toward the Falklands was a minor problem compared to the upcoming issues they were to encounter. On 8 April the MOD issued 

a directive for dealing with the press. It addressed the captains and the skippers of the fleet 

and described the issues they were not allowed to talk about. For example, it was forbidden 

to talk about almost all items “including speculation about operational plans; operational 

capabilities of individual units and of all types of equipment; particulars of current tactics 

and techniques; logistics; intelligence about Argentine Forces; communications; defects in 
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equipment.”6 Thus, the skippers of the ships were only allowed to talk about the weather 

and the menu of the staff canteen. Seen from the point of view of operational security, this 

directive may have had some significance. From the media’s point of view, this restriction 

was more or less a catastrophe. When even weather reports are classified, there is literally 

nothing the media can report. Getting the few reports from on board back home was the 

next problem. Journalists of the print media were allowed to use the military communications systems on board the ships. However, their reports did not reach their editorial offices 

back home. They reached the central communications room in the MOD. Reports from the 

journalists working for radio and television stations could only be sent using the commercial Inmarsat-System. Even during times of satellites, communications seemed to remain 

a problem.7

Another problem the media had to face was the hostility of the military. It seems like 

the Royal Navy had ignored the existence of an institution called “press” for decades. 

Symptomatic for the idiosyncratic way the Royal Navy dealt with the press was that obviously no one had had the idea to train the senior officers, all of them graduates of the Royal 

Defense College, in dealing with the press. The commander in chief of the Falklands Battle 

Group, Rear Admiral Sir John Forster “Sandy” Woodward, noted in his diary on 26April, 

“On this day I also ran into trouble from an unforeseen, though probably unwitting enemy, 

the British Press. I should point out, that I had never dealt with this phenomenon before, 

thus I was unsure how to handle them or what to tell them.”8

 The result of this was a very 

unprofessional performance of Admiral Woodward. The Sunday Telegraph wrote about 

one of these interviews: “Seeing him on television, half sitting, half lying back, hiding his 

mouth behind his knuckles as he reaches hesitantly for the right words, you see what happened on the Hermes last week. An Admiral got out of his depth.”9

A whole service thought that the press was the real enemy. From today’s point of view, 

it is not easy to understand why there was so much fear of the media. At this time, Margaret 

Thatcher had the highest rate of support from the public, better than all of her predecessors 

who had to face an international crisis—except Winston Churchill. Thus, she was in a very 

comfortable situation for a politician: the majority of the parliament, the majority of the 

public, and the majority of the media were backing her politics. So it was not surprising 

when the American PR expert and US Navy Captain Arthur A. Humphries praised the 

press policy of the British Government. He emphasized that it was Margaret Thatcher who 

insisted that six journalists would not be enough. Certainly, it was the right decision to send 

journalists along with the fleet to allow them to report. In fact, it was the inability to find 

a method for dealing with journalists that foiled the government’s plans to keep the public 

informed.10

When the battle of the Falklands began, the press, gathered on the British fleet, could 

finally report something substantial. These reports counterattacked the Argentine propaganda, which had claimed that several British fighters had been shot down by the Argentine 

Armed Forces. In this case it was fortunate that the only thing the journalists on board both 

British aircraft carriers could do was to count planes. They just needed to count the departing 

jets and to recount them when they landed. They reported that all planes had returned safely 

to the carriers.11 Using primary school mathematics is not really investigative journalism.
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What followed was, however, a “highlight” of bad taste in reporting: the headline of 

the British yellow-press newspaper, The Sun, on 4 May 1982. The front page showed the 

huge lettered headline “GOTCHA.” This word meant the sinking of the Argentine fighting 

ship ARA Belgrano by a British submarine. Describing an event that caused the death of 

1,200 Argentine sailors in this way underlines the sad fact that the press on the British home 

front had no idea what was going on. The complete ban of all coverage on the operations 

of the Royal Navy in the South Atlantic had also had an unexpected side effect. Due to 

the lack of official government information, the British press cited the communiqués of 

the Argentine Government. Therefore, “Fleet-Street” were blamed for being traitors. This 

situation was the chance for some “armchair strategists.”12 These experts, most of them 

retired senior-officers, were literally pulled into the next TV studio. They should explain 

to the audience what they would do, where they would conduct landing operations if they 

had the command down there. The often repeated criticism of these “military experts” 

was that talking about military operations on TV would provide crucial information to 

the enemy.13 These accusations have never been proven. Most of the “advice” of these 

armchair strategists had a certain similarity to “the children’s blindfold game of pinning a 

tail on a donkey.”14

The journalists who had to stay in Britain criticized the fact that the MOD did not host 

enough press briefings. They thought this would lead to too many speculations. However, 

the MOD had made the decision to cancel all press briefings when the fleet departed. The 

next press briefing was held on 11 May—when it was clear that Britain would definitely 

not lose the war.

More dangerous than some retired senior officers who explained what they would do if 

they were allowed to was the reporting of the BBC about the Battle of Goose Green. When 

the 2d Parachute Battalion had landed and erected a beachhead in the bay of San Carlos, 

the battalion moved forward to the village of Goose Green. There an unknown number 

of Argentine soldiers were placed to repel a possible landing. While the 2d Parachute 

Battalion was approaching, BBC World Service was reporting about their advance on 

Goose Green. What was reported was not general information. The World Service reported 

the advance of the 2d Parachute Battalion in a very detailed way, like talking about points 

on a map. The only thing the Argentine commander had to do was to order his soldiers to 

dig in facing north. This resulted in a fierce fight with casualties on both sides. How this 

report of the BBC happened was never fully examined. Obviously, there was an official 

press release, although it is unclear who issued it. The BBC handled this press release as 

official information.15

The Falkland Islands War was one of the rare wars of the late 20th century with no 

TV images from the front. Surprisingly enough, no pictures and TV images exist of the 

Argentine surrender in Port Stanley. According to Humphries, the British press policy can 

be summarized in the following way: “there was a serious information problems with the 

MOD. It arose not through any Machiavellian desire to mislead the news media or the public constantly but through sheer incompetence at times and most often through naiveté.”16

Likewise, the newspaper News of the World asked in a letter to the MOD: 
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Did the Ministry of Defence REALLY want this war covered? That is the 

question that must be asked. . . . why the MOD did not lay down sensible 

censorship regulations with the help of media experts conscious of the 

national interest. As it was, the whole operation was a shambles from the 

media point of view and the figleaf of “national interest” was used to cover 

the errors, omission, muddle and lack of information.17

After the Argentine surrender to the British military, officers all over the world started 

to examine the lessons they could learn from this war. An American naval officer and 

expert for PR also did this. He examined the lessons the US military could learn. In his 

article, “Two Routes on the Wrong Destination. Public Affairs in the South Atlantic War,” 

published in the Naval War College Review, he examined the disastrous British press policy. His article contains seven points that could be described as the golden rules for mediamilitary relations.

1. If a country wants to gain public support, it is not supposed to be seen as brutal, 

uncontrolled, and barbarian. In Humphries’ opinion, the best example is “Eddie” Adams’ 

picture taken during the Tet Offensive, which shows a South Vietnamese police officer 

shooting a suspected Viet Cong.

2. If relatives have to see TV images of fallen husbands and sons in color, the support 

for the war will decrease.

3. To prevent images like this, the access of reporters to the battlefield has to be 

controlled.

4. The implementation of censorship is necessary, if one wants to prevent the media 

from voluntarily or involuntarily helping the enemy.

5. In a war it is advisable for the government to gain the support of the public by 

addressing their patriotism. Triumphant headlines like “GOTCHA!” should be avoided.

6. In case of war the government has to inform the citizens about all events first, to 

ensure that the enemy propaganda will not work.

7. For gaining public support and to irritate defectors in the country, the government should report the truth about the enemy and ignore all of the enemy’s propaganda of 

atrocity.

Humphries concludes his rules with the determination that war is something a soldier 

is trained and prepared for while hoping that it never occurs. PR in wartime is something 

that is often used but never trained. Therefore, media-military relations must be an integral 

part of every military exercise.

Based on the background of the debacle of the Falkland Islands War, these rules sound 

well-thought through. The only problem is the implementation of these rules. In a democracy with a free press, it is impossible to guarantee the execution of these rules. An effective 

implementation of these rules recommends a press system that is not free and completely 

controlled by the government. Consequently, Humphries’ article outlined the lesson about 

press policy, which the Americans could learn from the British.
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The Definition of an American Press Policy for War Times

When US troops intervened in the Caribbean state of Grenada in 1983, which was 

Operation URGENT FURY, the media was completely excluded. The journalists were 

waiting on the island next to Grenada to go there and report. Unfortunately, press coverage was allowed only from the third day of the invasion—when there was definitely no 

fighting anymore. After URGENT FURY, there were a lot of complaints about the way the 

American military and the American Government dealt with the media. Inserting the words 

“Cleared by Department of Defense Censors” in the rare footage released showed very 

clearly that there was a violation of the First Amendment. Afterwards, the justification of 

the United States involvement was researched by committees of Congress.

The Justice Committee finally suggested that the military and representatives of the 

media should seek guidelines for a press policy in war times that would be satisfying for 

both sides. These guidelines should be developed by a panel, which had been installed by 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS). Head of this panel was retired Major 

General Winant Sidle. Therefore, this panel is also known as the “Sidle Panel” instead of 

using the complicated name “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Media-Military 

Relations Panel.” Sidle was a journalist before becoming a soldier, so he had some experiences with the needs of the media. Later, as an officer in Vietnam, he was head of the Army 

Public Affairs Office in Saigon from 1967 to 1969, and from 1974 to 1975 he served as 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. The Sidle Panel had to answer 

the basic question: “How can we [the US Government] conduct military operations in a 

manner that safeguards the lives of our military and protects the security of the operation 

while keeping the American public informed through the media?”18 When the panel ended 

its work, this question was answered in a very substantial way: 

The American people must be informed about United States military 

operations and this information can best be provided through both the news 

media and the government. Therefore, the panel believes it is essential 

that the U.S. news media cover U.S. military operations to the maximum 

degree possible consistent with mission security and the safety of U.S. 

forces.19

Furthermore, the installation of a pool system seemed to be the only practicable way of 

providing the media with access to the battlefield as early as possible. In the future, the 

planning for a military operation should take into account the specific needs of the media. 

The planning process should be reviewed by the public affairs staff of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff (JCS) and the Pentagon.

When in the late 1980s American warships escorted the oil tankers of Kuwait through 

the Persian Gulf, these escorts should have been accompanied by members of the newly 

established Department of Defense National Media Pool. Unfortunately, the journalists 

were more or less forced to remain in a hotel in Bahrain. A visible sign of their frustration 

was that they began to wear T-shirts with “When there’s news in the Gulf, we’re in the 

pool.”20 It seems unfair, however, to see the ineffectiveness of this case as a general disadvantage of the pool system. Since American warships had escorted these oil tankers, the 
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number of incidents had decreased rapidly. There was literally nothing worth reporting—

except one Iranian plane that had been shot down by a missile from an American warship.

The first real test of the pool system was the American invasion of Panama, Operation 

JUST CAUSE, in December 1989. The planning for JUST CAUSE ended when on 

20 December 1989 paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division and soldiers of the 7th 

Infantry Division landed in Panama City. Following the recommendations of the Sidle 

Panel, which were at this point the official press policy of the Department of Defense 

(DOD), the process of planning this operation should have been reviewed by the public 

affairs department of the Pentagon. Unfortunately, this review process never happened 

because of the hidden planning of JUST CAUSE with the JCS. Despite all these mistakes, 

the criticism of the pool system after Panama was very moderate. The environment in 

which the journalists could work was definitely much better compared to URGENT FURY 

with its complete ban of media coverage. The pool system provided journalists with the 

possibility to report. These reports were late, but at least they were possible.21

After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the early days of August 1990, the US 

Government decided to send troops to Saudi Arabia to deter Saddam Hussein from attacking 

the Saudi Arabian oilfields. When the first troops were deployed to the Arabian Peninsula, 

they were accompanied by journalists from the DOD National Media Pool. From the initial 

deployments to Operation DESERT SHIELD to the first shots in DESERT STORM, these 

journalists tried to report the buildup of allied forces. But soon, the limits of the DOD Media 

Pool became visible. The system nearly collapsed under the sheer number of requests from 

journalists who also wanted to accompany the troops on their way to the Gulf. When they 

arrived in Saudi Arabia, they soon shared the fate of their colleagues. There was nothing 

to report due to the harsh restrictions set up by the Saudi Arabian Government and the 

public affairs offices of both the Pentagon and Central Command (CENTCOM). After the 

war, General Norman “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf was often quoted with his remark 

“that hardly a journalist has seen the battlefield.”22 Preventing journalists from reporting 

their stories on the battlefield paved the way for the military to spread the image of a clean, 

surgical war with hardly any casualties. The less the journalists in Dharan were allowed to 

see the war, the more they reported the official point of view. With this in mind, the oftenquoted remark by “Stormin’ Norman” shows a certain pride in the way CENTCOM dealt 

with the media.23

Soon after the successful end of the war it became clear that this kind of media-military 

relations was not the best way for the military to deal with the media. The criticism of the 

way the media was allowed to report started soon after the victory parade in New York, 

when the editors in chief of all the major newspapers and TV stations started to think about 

the reporting of the last war and the role of the media. It became clear to them that they had 

been more or less willing executioners of the military propaganda. The book Second Front: 

Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, published in 1992 by the publisher of 

Harper’s Magazine, John MacArthur, made many of the problems, frictions, and restrictions the media had to accept during DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM visible to the 

public. This was the kick-start to a public debate about the way the media reported the war. 

During this discourse, the editors in chief had to admit that they had been rightfully blamed 
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for their dereliction of duty. Besides, it became obvious that the military still had problems 

dealing with the media.24

With the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the American decision to intervene, the DOD 

National Media Pool had been reactivated. The first troops were deployed to the Gulf on 

6 August 1990, the first journalists from the DOD Pool on 12 August. This 6-day delay 

boosted the existing criticism of the pool system. Not only the delayed departure of the 

journalists caused a lot of critique, but the fact that Saudi Arabia did everything to hinder 

journalists from reporting also caused a lot of problems. General Colin Powell, at this time 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in his memories: “Early in the buildup the 

Saudis made a simple announcement. They were not going to allow any reporters into their 

country. That, we knew, could not stand. You do not send nearly a half million Americans, 

plus thousands of other nationals, halfway around the world to prepare for a major war and 

then impose a news blackout.”25 The fact that it was impossible to impose a news blackout 

seemed to be clear to General Schwarzkopf, too. Schwarzkopf had to admit that “our own 

newspaper and TV reports had become Iraq’s best source of military intelligence.”26 So the 

Washington bureau chiefs of the media tried to get visas directly from the Ambassador of 

Saudi Arabia in Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.27

At the same time, a captain of the US Navy laid down a memorandum that should 

become the blueprint for the press policy of the Gulf War. The basic principle of this socalled “Annex Foxtrot” was that “news media representatives will be escorted at all times. 

Repeat, at all times.”28 This solved the so-called “Vietnam problem” military point of view: 

journalists running around on the battlefield.

The pool system was not the only way of organizing journalists. It was also a very 

elegant way of allowing reporters to report what the military wanted them to see. Even if a 

journalist had a place in the pool, this was no guarantee for being able to report anything. 

When a commander in the field did not want to be accompanied by a reporter of the pool, 

the decision was irrevocable. Colonel William L. Mulvey, at this time the commanding 

officer of the US Joint Information Bureau, complained about this arbitrary act: “If Gen. 

Tilelli of the 1st Cav. did not want a pool reporter, then his word was supreme. He didn’t 

get a pool reporter. He was a two-star General, and I know how to salute.”29 This attitude 

was more or less a lesson learned from the Vietnam war. According to the “stab-in-the-back 

legend,” the media was responsible for the American defeat in Vietnam by reporting in a 

too negative way. In other words, the supporters of this point of view thought that the war 

had been lost on the homefront and not on the front in Vietnam. The basic problem was in 

fact that there was no political directive for a press policy. The lack of such political guidance led to the creation of a press policy that basically tried to avoid everything that could 

be blamed for the defeat of the war. To sum it up: the free, hard to control, and even harder 

to censor press.30

Ironically, the best reporting about DESERT STORM was provided by journalists who 

refused to be in the pools. The members of the pools were sitting in their hotels and were 

waiting for the beginning of the ground offensive. The journalists who refused to be in the 

pools, the so-called unilaterals, had the chance to report about events that clearly showed 
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that the war was not the clean, surgical war the military wanted the world to believe in. By 

the end of January 1991, 2 weeks after the beginning of the allied operations against Iraq, 

Iraqi units conducted attack operations from their positions in Kuwait across the border 

to Saudi Arabia. These raids could be fought back by allied units. But the border town of 

Khafji remained in Iraqi hands for almost 36 hours.31 From a strategic point of view, one 

can second the argument of General Schwarzkopf that this episode was “about as significant as a mosquito on an elephant.”32 These attacks were irrelevant for the progress of the 

war. However, these incidents were not irrelevant for the reporting of the war. On the one 

hand, one can see all the problems related to the Gulf War under a magnifying glass: too 

small, too late installed pools, contradictory press briefings, and journalists working outside the pool system. On the other hand, the battle of Khafji is the only real achievement 

of the Iraqi propaganda. On the streets in all Arabian states, people and not governments 

celebrated Khafji as the victory of genuine Arabian forces.33

The operations for the reconquest of Khafji led to confusion of the military and the 

media. The first report of the Iraqi success in Khafji came from the French news agency 

Agence France Presse (AFP), citing an Iraqi communiqué. After AFP had issued a news 

flash, CENTCOM in Riyhad organized a press briefing as quickly as possible. At this press 

briefing, the CENTCOM spokesperson admitted that there were some incidents on the 

border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The contact with the enemy, however, had been 

lost. He did not mention the fighting around Khafji with any single word. His view of the 

incidents was soon obsolete, when some reporters reported that there were still enemy 

contacts in the Khafji area. They said that Saudi Arabian and Qatari units were conducting 

a counterattack with artillery support by US Marines. These reports had passed the military 

censors in Dharan. At the time, the spokesperson in Riyhad talked about the situation, this 

report dated back several hours. This showed clearly that the situation around Khafji was 

not under allied control. Furthermore, it showed that even the military PR personnel had 

problems with Clausewitz’ phenomenon of friction:34 “The battle of Kahfji severely tested 

the Coalition’s elaborate media management of press pools and military briefings. Under 

the pressure of fast moving events on the ground, the system proved unequal to the task of 

providing quick, accurate information. . . .”35

Embedding Journalists

After the Gulf War, many journalists began to reflect on their role in the war. It was 

obvious that the pool system was inefficient. The pool system was a good idea in terms of 

covering a war, but DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM showed its limits. It could operate well in a military operation limited by time, scale, and area. The pool system began 

to stumble when a military operation lasted longer than 3 weeks. After these 3 weeks, the 

members of the pool had to be replaced. Parallel to this, other representatives of the media 

got more and more interested in reporting the military operations.

When the United States went to war against Iraq again in 2003, the journalists who 

wanted to cover this war were embedded in the units of the US Armed Forces. This new 

form of dealing with the media was an immediate reaction to the harsh criticism of the 

pool system. Based on the recommendations of the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) and 
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the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “[to] tell the story—good or bad—before others 

seed the media with disinformation and distortion as they most certainly will continue to 

do. Our people in the field need to tell the story,”36 one tried to impose the lessons learned 

from the debacle in 1991 into a new system for reporting from the battlefield. The media 

and the military began to negotiate how future wars could be covered in a way that satisfied 

both sides. In April 1992, an agreement, named “Statement of Principles—News Coverage 

of Combat,” was reached. This agreement basically fixed the things that should have been 

the rules when the pool system was set up. But these rules were finally written down. It 

was also filled with restrictions the media had to accept and fixed duties the military had. 

Most of the points made in these principles had been more or less part of the final report of 

the Sidle Panel. It was the first time that these points were discussed not only in the DOD 

but also with representatives of the media. In this agreement, the word “embedding” is not 

mentioned; but in all the military operations that have been executed after this agreement 

was reached, a kind of predecessor for embedding journalists has been used.37

In 1995, when American troops were deployed to Bosnia as part of the Implementation 

Force (IFOR) Mission, these units were accompanied by journalists. The journalists were 

attached to the troops when they prepared to deploy in Germany. They should live with the 

soldiers in Bosnia for several weeks. Their reports were censored. The program aimed at 

providing the journalists with an opportunity to get a deeper and closer look into the everyday life of the GIs. Through this measure, the Pentagon hoped to achieve a more positive 

coverage about the soldiers and the deployment to Bosnia. Furthermore, they hoped that 

the resentments the military had against the media would be overcome.38

In May 1997, the Pentagon published a new doctrine for dealing with the media in 

future military operations. In this doctrine, special attention was paid to the circumstance 

that information published in an accurate and punctual manner was crucial for the credibility of the military. Through the publication of this “Doctrine for Public Affairs in Joint 

Operations,” the recommendations of the “Statement of Principles—News Coverage of 

Combat” was emphasized. Although the concept of embedded journalists was not mentioned in this doctrine, it provided guidelines for supporting the media, the security of 

operations versus the access to information for the media, and guidelines for discussions 

with media representatives.39

On 28 September, about 2 weeks after 9/11, the spokeswoman of the Pentagon, Assistant 

Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) Victoria Clarke, met the Washington bureau chiefs of 

all the media who were participating in the DOD National Media Pool. The deputy spokesperson of the Pentagon, Richard McGraw, and the Coordinator of the “DOD National 

Media Pool,” Colonel Lane Van de Steeg, also attended this meeting. After some general 

words of welcome, Victoria Clark began her presentation stating that all participants in this 

meeting now lived in a changed world. The Pentagon now had to try to figure out the rules 

of this new world order. Related to this general problem was the question how to cooperate with the press in the future while guarding the National Security and the life of women 

and men wearing the uniform. A lot of things in the relationship between the media and 

the military would remain in a status quo. But the military also had to look for new ways 

of cooperation. This said, Mrs. Clarke emphasized the importance of this cooperation for 
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the Pentagon, “We think providing as much news and information in as timely a fashion 

as possible is critically important.”40 One reason for this meeting should be the question 

how this could be reached in the future. Then she handed over to Colonel Van de Steeg, 

who said that the pool would be activated as an exercise. Many of the personnel responsible for managing the pool were now serving in different positions. Then the participants 

discussed several aspects concerning the secrecy of military operations. After discussing 

that, Victoria Clarke again started to talk to the participants. She stated that the pool system 

itself was not optimal after all. They had to look for an alternative to make journalists part 

of a military operation, to embed them into that operation. In the discussion of this point, 

the representatives of the media emphasized their acceptance of this alternative. They said 

that they wished to embed their reporters in every service and every branch of the military. 

The Pentagon should figure out how to maintain and to arrange this. The representatives of 

the media asked if there should be any censorship of their reporting. The spokespersons of 

the Pentagon stated that there would be no censorship as long as the reporters would keep 

certain standards of reporting.41

When the United States started Operation ENDURING FREEDOM with the attacks on 

the Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, the coverage of the war was more or less impossible. The war in Afghanistan was mostly waged with Special Forces. Due to the clandestine nature of such operations, it was hardly possible to cover this war.42

Following the first meeting in the Pentagon, there was a series of other meetings. The 

topics discussed concerned the proposed new system or generally the access to the battlefield. Before the planning for a new war against Iraq transitioned from ideas to real plans, 

the press officers of the JCS started with the planning of the assignment of the press. 

Following Sidle’s recommendations, they also started to modify these plans according to 

the needs of the media. At the same time, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his 

spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, started to discuss the effects of enemy propaganda and 

negative reporting on ENDURING FREEDOM with the press officers of the JCS. The 

result of the discussion was the consensus that unprejudiced reporting would secure sovereignty of interpretation and counter enemy efforts of disinformation.43

In the early days of October 2002, a group of PR experts from all commands and services, the Pentagon, and the JCS met in Washington to analyze the work of the media and 

the rules regulating their reporting in the last wars. Furthermore, they synchronized their 

conclusions with the war plan against Iraq. They concluded that the activation of the DOD 

National Media Pool was not the appropriate response for the planned quick operation. A 

great number of unilateral working journalists on the battlefield also did not seem a good 

solution. The only practical way of dealing with the media was—in the opinion of this 

group—the embedding of journalists into the troops. They developed a whole set of measures that could be described as a supporting mission to the media. The journalists should 

be trained for their deployment with a kind of basic training in surviving on the battlefield. The military should provide chemical protective gear to the journalists. It should 

also figure out how to grant quick and uncomplicated access to the video footage of target 

cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These proposals passed all other steps up 

to Rumsfeld. When he signed the proposals, they defined three goals: “(1) Dominate the 
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news coverage of the war. (2) Counter third party disinformation. (3) Assist in garnering 

US public and international support.”44

Rumsfeld outlined these goals in two messages on 14 November 2002 and 21 February 

2003 to all commanders. In these messages, he explained how the public perception of the 

military and all other organizations responsible for the National Security could be improved 

in future operations. Along with that he underlined the importance of providing access and 

transportation for both national and international media. Moreover, he recommended giving briefings to the media on a daily basis and to provide intelligence resources to media as 

soon as they were declassified.45

At the same time, the press officers in the Pentagon started with the creation of Public 

Affairs Guidelines (PAGs), which defined the basic rules for working with each other and 

the possible restrictions the media had to face. The official policy of the DOD was “that 

media will have long-term, minimally restrictive access to U.S. air, ground and naval 

forces through embedding.”46 Obviously, the authors of these guidelines were conscious 

of the importance of widespread reporting as objectively as possible. They emphasized the 

role of objective reporting not only on their own side, but also on the allied side. For the 

authors, the question of remaining in the “Coalition against Terror” could be decided by 

this kind of reporting. Besides, the reporting would also have an affect on the countries in 

which the United States would conduct military operations. It could affect the costs and 

the duration of an American involvement. For reaching this goal, the Pentagon would now 

start to embed journalists. For the first time in the discussion on a new press policy for war 

time, it defined and explained what embedding meant: “These embedded media will live, 

work and travel as part of the units with which they are embedded to facilitate maximum, 

in-depth coverage of U.S. Forces in combat and related operations.”47

Compared to the predecessors of the PAGs, the most important improvement is the 

recommendation for nearly unrestricted access of the media to fighting missions and the 

preparation and debriefing of them whenever possible. The unit the reporter was embedded 

in had to provide quarter, forage, and access to medical treatment. The journalist should 

have access to the military transportations system. While embedded, the journalist was not 

allowed to use his own car. Should his communication equipment fail, he was allowed to 

use the military’s communications systems to air his story. Point 3, section G was a very 

interesting aspect of these guidelines: The commanding officer of the unit the journalist 

was embedded in had to provide a possibility to the journalist for watching the ongoing 

battle. The personal security of the journalist should be no reason for denying this possibility. But, if this was no reason for restricting the access to the battlefield, the commanding 

officer was not responsible for the eventual death of the journalist. It was the personal risk 

of the journalist to view the battle, and he was responsible for himself. The military was not 

responsible for the safety of the journalist.48

The PAGs were a real turning point compared to the press policy in other wars. For the 

first time, the media faced hardly any restrictions. The guidelines clearly stated: “Media 

products will not be subject to security review or censorship.”49 Due to security reasons, 

however, some things were not allowed. It was, for example, not allowed to report the 
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precise number of casualties under the level of corps. But this kind of information is normally restricted in any war and could not be reported in the past wars. More interesting is 

the list of items that could be reported. It was allowed to report enemy targets that were 

already under fire, the branch of the service, the code name of the operation, and the home 

city of the units. Even the number of casualties could be reported—with the restriction 

that no one could have been identified by the recorded and aired images. These restrictions 

were to guard the dignity of the casualties and their relatives rather than to censor. Contrary 

to the war in Vietnam, a journalist was not allowed to carry a weapon. This restriction had 

definitely been an advantage for both sides: The journalist was not in danger to be mistaken 

as a combatant in the sense of the law of war. For the military, the risk of being wounded 

by shots from the journalist was reduced.50

Moreover, the units designated for the war were asked how many journalists could 

be embedded with them. The results of the estimates were a contingent of 671 places in 

the Army and the Marines and 83 in the Air Force. However, these estimate were very 

problematic because every unit used different methods for assessing their capacities for 

embedding journalists. Soon it became clear that all these estimates were wrong. When 

the war started, the Combined Public Information Center (CPIC) in Kuwait had registered 

2,870 journalists. Of them, 558 had been embedded into the units. Of these 558 journalists, 

539 were embedded into the ground forces and 19 into the Air Force. Embedding was a 

voluntary process. The embedded journalist could leave his unit at any time. At this point 

the system resembled a one-way traffic lane—if a journalist decided to leave his unit, he 

could not return.

Then, on the evening of 23 March 2003, CNN aired shocking images. The audience 

at home and all over the world saw dead bodies covered with cloths and a number of 

destroyed vehicles. These were the remains of the 507th Maintenance Company, which 

ran into an Iraqi ambush in the town of Nasiriyah. Evan Wright, a reporter working for 

the Rolling Stone, who was embedded into the reconnaissance squadron of the 1st Marine 

Expeditionary Force, described his impressions about the battle for Nasiriyah: 

Just after sunrise our 70-vehicle convoy rolls over the bridge on the 

Euphrates and enters An Nasiriyah. It’s one of those sprawling Third 

World mud-brick-and-cinder-block cities that probably looks pretty badly 

rubbled even on a good day. This morning, smoke curls from collapsed 

structures. Most buildings facing the road are pockmarked and cratered. 

Cobras fly overhead spilling machinegun fire. Dogs roam the ruins. . . . 

A few vehicles come under machinegun and RPG fire. The (Marines) 

return fire and redecorate a building with about a dozen grenades fired 

from Mark-19. In an hour, we clear the outer limits of the city and start to 

head north. Dead bodies are scattered along the edge of the road. Most are 

men, enemy fighters, still with weapons in their hands. . . . There are shotup cars with bodies hanging over the edges. We pass a bus smashed and 

burned, with charred remains sitting upright in some windows. There’s a 

man with no head in the road and a dead little girl, too, about 3 or 4, lying 

on her back. She’s wearing a dress and has no legs.”51
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This report shows two things very clearly: First, it describes in a very impressive way the 

impact of war on the houses and the civilian population of Nasiriyah. His description of the 

fallen also describes the impact of war. Second, this article shows how Wright identified 

himself with the Marines. Wright’s article can be divided in two parts. In the first part, the 

author describes in a neutral way what he saw. In the second part, the author changes his 

point of view. He transforms from the neutral journalist into the participant of the battle. This 

transformation can be interpreted as a kind of stylistic device for boosting the dramatic art 

of his article. However, this example demonstrates the danger of losing any critical distance 

for the journalist when he is embedded into a military unit. He becomes a comrade of the 

soldiers. In fact, this phenomenon of fraternization is one argument against embedding.

When the convoy of the 507th rolled into that ambush and was finally overrun, a young 

soldier, Private Jessica Lynch, had been wounded and captured by Iraqi forces. Following 

the basic principle of leaving no man behind, Lynch was rescued and freed on the evening of 1 April 2003 from the hospital in Nasiriyah. The operation to rescue Lynch was 

conducted by a combined Task Force of Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marines. This 

operation is one of the most cited operations in the history of the Iraq War of 2003. In the 

reports, she became a kind of superhero who fought literally to the last bullet and was tortured afterwards. The fact that she had fought like any other soldier was as irrelevant as the 

fact that she was treated by the Iraqis according to the rules of the Geneva Convention.52

The “end” of the Iraqi War was symbolized by two events: First, by the “fall” of the 

statue of Saddam Hussein in front of the Palestine Hotel. Second, by the speech given by 

President George W. Bush on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003. 

Both events were covered by almost all media.

Conclusion

Is embedding journalists into the fighting troops the ultimate tool to ensure accurate 

reporting? After the Persian Gulf War, the media was blamed for spreading the allied propaganda without any critical questions. Critics claimed that the media had become confederates in spreading the “great lie.” In some cases, this critique is right. With some critical 

research quite a number of the obvious contradictions in the reporting of the pretended 

Iraqi atrocities could have been uncovered. The fact that no uncovering happened during 

DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM showed two things. First that the media was willing 

enough to believe this perfect PR-show and to ignore the contradictions in it. One reason 

for this phenomenon is that the media tend to trade their critical journalism in war times 

to patriotism. Second, the way the media dealt with the pretended Iraqi atrocities clearly 

showed that most journalists, except some star reporters, had become boilers for prepared 

opinions, news, and reports.

It is, however, inappropriate to criticize the reporting about DESERT SHIELD/DESERT 

STORM. Journalism in general is not responsible for its working conditions when they are 

given by others. Many journalists who criticized the reporting about the Persian Gulf War 

forgot intentionally that they had welcomed the installation of the DOD National Media 

Pool after the PR-debacle of Grenada. Having the choice to be confronted in future wars 

with random restrictions or facing predictable and binding rules, the editors in chief of the 
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Fraund

great newspapers and broadcasting stations had opted for the second possibility. “Military 

officials said the pool system was intended to provide access while avoiding the nightmare 

of hundreds of journalists trying to reach the front lines at once. Having reporters running 

around would overwhelm the battlefield.”53

The opponents of the pool system criticize the potential and the effect on the experiences of the Gulf War. Judging the pool system by these extreme experiences is unfair. The 

pool system was never designed for large-scale and long-lasting operations. But, as a result 

of the ongoing critique of the pool system, the people responsible for PR in the Pentagon 

started to think about this problem. The primary goal was to ensure free reporting of the 

press about American soldiers in deployment while safeguarding the necessary secrecy of 

operational details. This resulted after several trial and error rounds in the installation of 

embedding. This new system should solve the dilemma of free, accurate, and timely reporting while safeguarding the necessary operational security. This dilemma had been the core 

problem in all previous attempts to grant access of the battlefield to the media.

Although the system of embedded journalists proved successful measured by the 

definitions of the Pentagon, the reporting did not improve remarkably. For the first time 

since Vietnam, the journalists were very close to the war, and could report more details 

than about all other wars since Vietnam. But the reporting about the war of 2003 remained 

superficial and hypocritical. This was caused by two inherent problems of embedding. 

First, the possibility of accompanying a unit during a war does not necessarily guarantee 

any serious reporting. Second, it is unlikely that a reporter who is embedded in a platoon 

or company level is able to report more than what happened in the perimeter of 10 to 

15 kilometers. This limited range of vision excluded reporting the big picture of a war. 

Therefore, the value of embedding could be questioned from a journalistic point of view. 

Embedding is interesting for journalists because of the following two reasons. It is the only 

chance to get access to the battlefield and to get actual material from the fighting. Besides, 

today embedding is in many ways the only possibility to get access to some areas that are 

too dangerous to report from without any soldiers with heavy equipment in the background.

As a matter of fact, not only the way of reporting wars has changed but also the common way of remembrance. Wars in the past were remembered mostly by the participants 

and their environment. Today, in times of modern communication, wars are seen from a 

global point of view. Through television and Internet people all over the world can view, 

review, and remember wars. They are participants in the ongoing debate in a global arena. 

As a result, one must reconsider reports in terms of the audience they are aimed at. If public opinion is the ultimate weapon, winning the “media battle” for the hearts and minds 

of literally everybody is crucial for winning a war. Hopefully a global audience, which 

determines wars by expressing their ideas of how they want to be informed about and thus 

remember these wars, can help to limit or even prevent wars in the future.
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Notes

1. This article is the shortened version of a chapter of my dissertation, “The Picture Survives. 

Zur Geschichte der Kriegsberichterstattung: Korea–Vietnam–Afghanistan–Globaler Krieg gegen 

den Terror,” http://kops.ub.uni-konstanz.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=8093&la=de (accessed 

11 January 2010).

2. For further details see Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final 

Years of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (San Diego, New York, London, 1999); William M. 

Hammond, “Who Were the Saigon Correspondents, and Does it Matter?” (with an appendix on the 

embedded reporters of the Iraq War) in Mihail E. Ionescu, [Hrsg.], War, Military and Media from 

Gutenberg to Today (= Acta XIX. International Congress of Military History) (Bucharest, 2004), 

80–108; William H. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Lawrence, KS: 

University Press of Kansas, 1998).

3. Robert Harris, Gotcha! The Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis (London, 

1983), 17, further cited as Harris, Gotcha!

4. Valerie Adams, Media and the Falklands Campaign (London, 1986), 6, further cited as 

Adams, Media and the Falklands.

5. See Lawrence Freedman, Britain and the Falklands War (Oxford, 1988), 89, further cited 

as Freedman, Britain and the Falklands; Adams, Media and the Falklands, 6; Miles Hudson and 

John Stanier, War and the Media: A Tandom Searchlight (Phoenix Mill, 1997), 169, further cited as 

Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media; Harris, Gotcha!, 18–20.

6. Adams, Media and the Falklands, 6; Peter Young and Peter Jesser, The Media and the 

Military: From the Crimea to Desert Strike (Basingstoke, 1997), 111–112, further cited as Young 

and Jesser, Media and the Military.

7. See Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 171; Adams, Media and the Falklands, 6.

8. Cited after Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 171.

9. Cited after Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 172.

10. See Arthur A. Humphries, “Two Routes on the Wrong Destination: Public Affairs in the 

South Atlantic War,” in Naval War College Review 36, no. 3 (1993): 56–71, here 58–60, further 

cited as Humphries, “Two Routes on the Wrong Destination.”

11. See Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 172.

12. Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 174.

13. See Harris, Gotcha!, 13; Adams, Media and the Falklands, 57–60.

14. Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 174.

15. See Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 175–176.

16. Humphries, “Two Routes on the Wrong Destination,” 62.

17. Cited after Young and Jesser, Media and the Military, 112–113.

18. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Media-Military Relations Panel (Sidle Panel), 

Final Report, 23 August 1983, Introduction.

19. CJCS Media-Military Relations Panel (Sidle Panel), 3.

20. Cited after Mira Beham, Kriegstrommeln. Medien, Krieg und Politik (München, 1995), 97.

21. For further details on JUST CAUSE, see Ronald H. Cole, Operation Just Cause: The 

Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Panama, February 1988–January 1990 (Washington, 

DC, 1995); Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media, 203; Young and Jesser, Media and the Military, 

143–145.

22. See David H. Mould, “Press Pools and Military-Media Relations in the Gulf War. A Case 

Study of the Battle of Khafji, January 1991,” in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 16, 

no. 2 (1996): 133–159, here 133, further cited as Mould, “Press Pools.”
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Fraund

23. For further details, see Young and Jesser, Media and the Military, 164; John Keegan, The 

Iraq War (New York, NY, 2004), 76–77, further cited as Keegan, Iraq War; Frank N. Schubert and 

Theresa L. Kraus, eds., The Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations “Desert Shield” 

and “Desert Storm” (Washington, DC, 1995), 50; Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller Jr., 

Shield and Sword. The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War (Washington, DC, 2001), 17–18; 

AP, “Confrontation in the Gulf: Military Drops Gulf Press Pool,” New York Times, 27 August 1990.

24. See John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War

(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1992), further cited as MacArthur, Second Front.

25. Former CJCS General Colin Powell cited in Young and Jesser, Media and the Military, 177.

26. Cited after Young and Jesser, Media and the Military, 177.

27. See MacArthur, Second Front, 3–6. 

28. Cited after Jason Deparle, “After the War: Long Series of Military Decisions Led to Gulf 

War News Censorship,” 5 May 1991.

29. Cited after Frank Aukofer and William P. Lawrence, America’s Team; The Odd Couple—A 

Report on the Relationship between the Media and the Military (Nashville, TN, 1995), 11. Young 

and Jesser, Media and the Military.

30. See Deparle, “After the War. Long”; Young and Jesser, Media and the Military, 173–175.

31. See Mould, Press Pools, 138.

32. Cited after Mould, Press Pools, 133.

33. Mould, Press Pools, 136–141.

34. Mould, Press Pools, 139–140.

35. Mould, Press Pools, 133.

36. Richard K. Wright and William H. Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media 

Program; Institute for Defense Analysis IDA Paper P-393,” September 2004, http://www.

militaryreporters.org/pdfs/embed%20-study.pdf (accessed 15 July 2009), S-3.

37. See Wright and Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media Program,” IV-2–IV-3.

38. See Wright and Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media Program,” I-4.

39. See Joint Pub 3-61, Doctrine for Public Affairs in Joint Operations, 14 May 1997.

40. US Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), 

News Transcript, “ASD PA Meeting with Media Pool Bureau Chiefs, 30 September 2001,” http://

www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=1945 (accessed 15 July 2009).

41. See News Transcript, “ASD PA Meeting with Media Pool Bureau Chiefs, 30 September 

2001.”

42. See Wright and Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media Program,” I-4.

43. See Wright and Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media Program,” IV-5–IV-6.

44. See Wright and Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media Program,” IV-7.

45. See Wright and Harkey, “Assessment of the DOD Embedded Media Program,” IV-7.

46. “Public Affairs Guidance (PAG) On Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations/

Deployments In The U.S. Central Command’s Area Of Responsibility,” 28 February 2003, http://

www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/d20030228pag.pdf (accessed 15 July 2009), section 2.A.

47. “PAG On Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations,” Sec. 2.A.–2.C.4.

48. “PAG On Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations,“ Sec. 2.A.–2.C.4.

49. “PAG On Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations,“ Sec. 6.A.

50. “PAG On Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations,” Sec. 4, Ground Rules.

51. Cited after John Keegan, The Iraq War (New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 2003), 151.

52. Keegan, Iraq War, 150–153; Gregory Fontenot, Edmund J. Degen, and David Tohn, On 

Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Annapolis, MD, 2005), 158–160.

53. Mould, Press Pools, 137.

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Panel 6—Current Operations

Beyond Doctrine: A Historical Perspective on the

Information Operations Debate in Media-Military Relations

(Submitted Paper)

by

Stephen Badsey, Ph.D.

The military-media relationship, particularly during wartime and in respect to operations rather than strategy or policy, is one of the most difficult aspects of present military 

thought and doctrine for the armed forces of all democratic countries, and particularly 

so for the United States. Contrary to the views of many soldiers and journalists encountering difficult issues for the first time, this relationship also has a considerable history. 

Interactions between military leaders and the media of their age may be traced back almost 

indefinitely, and the modern story starts in the early 19th century, as mass politics and mass 

society emerged in the British Empire, the United States, and parts of Western Europe, 

with the accompanying development of mass news media. The presence of reporters on the 

battlefield and on operations made its first significant impact on the conduct of war only 

a few years later, in the middle 19th century. An important change in military awareness

of the news media took place during the Vietnam War (1961–75), and since then it has 

been a common military perception that new media technologies, new media structures 

and consumption patterns, combined with new threats and new methods of conducting 

war, have contributed to an ever-increasing media intrusion into the sphere of military 

operations. For at least the last two decades, the US Armed Forces and other democracies 

have encouraged widespread awareness of media issues among their ranks and the generation of doctrine regarding the media. Even more recently, some concerned members of 

the US Department of Defense (DOD) have advocated a controversial and radically new 

approach to military-media relations as an aspect of information operations (IO), in the 

belief that changes in media technology, chiefly computerization and use of the Internet 

to include user-generated news content, Web-logging (blogging), twittering, and the Web 

2.0 phenomenon, pose a significant threat to the effectiveness of US Armed Forces unless 

countered.

When members of the armed forces are invited to discuss the media issue, very frequently the discussion develops rapidly in one of two directions. Most common is for the 

soldiers to describe their own function, in laudatory abstract terms, as defenders of their 

country and its fundamental values, while citing anecdotes regarding specific media distortions, deceptions, or misbehavior. It is broadly true that anyone who has not had bad 

experience with the media simply has not worked with them for long enough. Less common, but altogether more productive, are discussions in which soldiers also recognize the 
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function of the news media within society. In these cases particularly, what start as narrow 

and practical discussions of military-media interaction rapidly become acknowledgments 

of the wider issue: the respective places of the armed forces and of the news media within 

society and their importance to the democratic state.

This takes the military-media issue to where it should be, “beyond doctrine” in the 

sense that military doctrine is determined by the Army for itself, as an aspect of military 

professionalism and the military sphere of knowledge. In this perception, the militarymedia relationship, whether on operations or not, is not a problem for the Army to solve, 

nor an issue on which military doctrine should rule; it is part of the much wider context 

within which the Army exists. This view of military doctrine is recognized by the US 

Armed Forces’ official definition, which states that doctrine is “Fundamental principles 

by which the military forces or elements thereof guide their actions in support of national 

objectives” rather than the objectives of the armed forces.1

 It is the challenges posed to this 

view by present IO doctrine or its application that give the debate its great importance.

It has been repeatedly observed in recent military discussions that not all soldiers 

intuitively grasp that last point. Just as some soldiers do not grasp or “get” maneuver war 

or counterinsurgency, so there are many who do not “get” the media. A useful exercise 

with which to encourage soldiers to think in media terms is to invite them to abandon all 

military terminology and acronyms for a short while, and to express themselves instead in 

terms of media headlines and civilian perceptions, entering a world in which a Bradley is 

a tank, air support is bombing, and psychological operations (PSYOP) is just propaganda. 

It is also very common in military debates and discussions for the example of the media 

to act as a form of code for larger but unvoiced military criticisms of their own political 

and strategic leadership. A large part of the problem in grasping the nature of the militarymedia relationship is the immense complexity involved: just as there is no such thing as 

the military, so there is no such thing as the media, both have a multiplicity of types and 

behaviors. To this extent, planning for the media on modern military operations resembles 

logistics in that it may vary almost infinitely but cannot be ignored. However, while logistics is an ever-present important factor, in many operations media involvement may be 

minor or unimportant. This makes it hard for career generalists to develop an affinity with 

the military-media issue, and is an argument in favor of the traditional position that the 

Army should retain a small group of experienced specialists in media relations, rather than 

attempting to develop media doctrine as part of a more inclusive doctrine for operations.

It is a feature of the present US Army that it encourages debate within itself as part 

of the formulation of doctrine. The proposed revision this year of the Armed Forces Joint 

Manual JP 3-13, Information Operations, of 2006 has not only produced such a debate, but 

also revealed that contributors do not share even basic assumptions about what is being 

discussed. Within the last 3 years it has been argued in the military press that IO is the 

same thing as PSYOP, or that it is not but should be; that public affairs (PA) is part of IO, 

or that it is not but should be; that it is critical to separate PSYOP and PA; that it is critical 

to combine PSYOP and PA; that US IO doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a major 

success, and that it has been a colossal failure; that the solution is an all-embracing prescriptive doctrine; and that the solution is to preserve at all costs separate media relations 
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Badsey

institutions dependent on specialist skills. As one contributor wrote only last year, with 

some restraint, “there seems to be a lot of confusion in the Army as to the exact nature of 

information operations.”2

 This confusion also exists among allies fighting alongside the US 

Armed Forces; concerns have been expressed in Great Britain, Canada and Australia about 

such a radical and unilateral departure from accepted ideas about PA.3

 A further source of 

confusion is that there are several other meanings for “information operations” and “information warfare” other than those employed within current US military doctrine, including 

those used by historians studying its origins.

It is, of course, perfectly proper that such deliberations and debates should take place 

as part of the process of forming doctrine. There is a strong practical argument that outsiders should not get involved in such debates, and a view held by some military intellectuals 

that the role of the university-based thinker is, and should be, limited to the very early 

stages, until the DOD agrees to its terms of reference and a military consensus emerges 

on the parameters for discussion, after which the doors are effectively closed.4

 A historian 

may do a little more, by going back to examine the circumstances in which those terms of 

reference were created, enquiring as to their present viability. It is also a habit of historians 

to examine what are often called the “unspoken assumptions,” the attitudes that underpin 

thought and planning but are rarely if ever discussed, and to suggest comparisons with 

other countries and cultures.

One feature that distinguishes the US Armed Forces today from those of other 

countries is a strong institutional and often personal antipathy toward the news media. 

This is generally untrue of other democracies, where despite global media and widely 

deployed armed forces, military-media relations are traditionally adversarial without being 

antagonistic. In explaining this, it is usual to look no further back than the Vietnam war, and 

indeed that war was an important turning point, but the cultural roots of the explanation go 

much deeper. Although the anxiety expressed by soldiers about changing media technology 

is an important component in the military-media relationship, these concerns also are often 

tainted by a degree of hostility. It is a characteristic of the United States (above all other 

countries) to seek scientific and technological explanations and solutions to what are often 

political or social issues. In the military sphere this behavior long predates any theory: 

while the first categorical argument that technological changes determine the nature of 

warfare was made by the famous Italian airpower theorist Giulio Douhet in the 1920s, 

the assumption that technology and particularly firepower dictate how wars are fought 

has been explicit not just in US military ideas but in the national culture at least as far 

back as the Civil War (1861–65).5

 In contradiction to this, there is a considerable body of 

historical study on the impact of new military technologies, just as there is on new media 

and communication technologies, and in both cases the actual results show that effects 

result from a complicated mixture depending on politics, society, and the passage of time.6

With each new development in media technology, soldiers who are dedicated to finding 

out threats and solving problems also repeat the same claims in a manner that (at the risk 

of being misunderstood) sociologists would call moral panic: perhaps a small element of 

truth, unnecessarily or unrealistically amplified. The claim that in 2004 at the First Battle 

of Fallujah the US Marine Corps “weren’t beaten by the terrorists and insurgents, they 
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were beaten by al-Jazeera,” rather than that they employed inappropriate tactics for the 

political environment of their mission, is recognizable as yet another variant on the longdiscredited claim that the Vietnam war was lost on the television screens of America; and 

this in turn goes back to the German Army’s “stab in the back” myth at the end of World 

War I (1914–18).7

 In the 1990s, the term “new media” or “new news” was first used to 

include news applications of the Internet, together with direct satellite broadcasting of 24/7 

global television and radio, in contrast to the traditional “old news” of newspapers and 

broadcast television and radio. As was predicted, this new technology has placed severe 

financial pressures on old news institutions and outlets, promoting many changes; but new 

media has also been absorbed within old media, as major newspapers launch Web sites, and 

global search-engines depend on traditional news bureaus. The most recent generation of 

the “news doer” or user generated content, is now following the same pattern.8

Far from being a unique situation, the present military-media relationship lies somewhere in the middle of a third repeating wave or pattern since the early 19th century. In 

each case, there has been an initial explosion of new media, followed by the rise of that 

media to dominance over several decades. In each case, the main trigger for change, once 

the technology was available, has been largely economic including very small start-up costs 

and a multiplicity of outlets. In each case, the initial period of media change accompanied, 

and has been part of, a social and political upheaval in which an increasing (and increasingly rapid) dissemination of news has played a part. The first of these cycles began in the 

1830s with newspapers and print journalism, and was based on growing mass industrialization and mass literacy; it reached its level of domination in the 1890s, by which time daily 

newspaper buying had become a habitual practice, and its earlier phase coincided with the 

emergence of mass industrialized warfare as part of the same phenomenon. Its success has 

been marked by the fact that it has not passed into extinction yet. Its dominance was challenged from shortly before World War I by new media, which did not depend on literacy or 

even always a common language, starting with newsreel film, moving into broadcast radio, 

and finally achieving its own dominance over newspapers in the 1960s as broadcast television. This was also the era of the emergence of mass domestic politics, with its accompanying political and social instability, and in its earlier phase of global industrialized warfare 

of great violence and destruction: World War I and World War II (1939–45). The new challenge to this existing structure began again in the 1970s with direct satellite broadcasting, 

as the start of the impact of computers of both the media and on wider society. This has 

also accompanied social and political changes including war and violence, but so far in a 

relatively minor fashion, and has been accompanied by the so-called “revolution in military affairs” debate. While in each phase repressive governments have sought to legislate 

or otherwise control each outbreak of information dissemination, governments of liberal 

or democratic countries have used legislation sparingly to control the news media industry 

and its products, otherwise allowing social and economic factors to run their course. The 

most likely outcome for this wave, also, is that from a multitude of small businesses at the 

start the media will coalesce into a few large and stable outlets.

Naturally, each of these three phases has also had its own distinctive features. The first 

phase, based on the double communications revolution of steam power and the telegraph, 
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Badsey

saw the pragmatic recognition of a new power relationship between the military on operations and the media. In the 1830s, new steam rotary presses drove down the cost of newspaper production, and throughout the United States and its frontier territories local newspapers 

flourished as symbols of civic pride and self-advertisement, characterized for most of the 

century by political partisanship and by remarkably low standards of factual accuracy. The 

strong tradition, which already existed, of generals providing the media with their memoirs 

and of officers or civilians doubling as reporters (remarkably like the modern blogger or 

“news doer”) was eclipsed in this period by the professional war reporter in the modern 

sense. Perhaps the first war reported in this way was the Mexican War (1846–48), but much 

more important for the future of military-media relations was the British experience in 

the Crimean War (1854–56). On a battlefield or in a war zone, a reporter had virtually no 

authority and was dependent on military goodwill, but the same reporter was supported at 

home by a politically powerful newspaper, meaning that the military could neither remove 

him nor ignore him. This left the reporter to pursue his function as a separate witness to 

events on behalf of the home public, but only through negotiation.9

 The absence of a true 

aristocracy in the US Army officer corps meant that, even more than their French or British 

equivalents, the careers of US Army officers were vulnerable to poor or hostile reporting; 

William T. Sherman is one example among many of an officer whose family and early 

career were damaged in this way.10 This tradition of personal animosity from US officers 

toward the media remains in a phrase that has been heard several times in recent wars: “I 

suppose the press has its place; but you can’t do me any good, and you sure can do me 

harm.” But while both publically and personally retaining an officer-like disdain for the 

press, the successful commanders of the 19th century frontier wars had little choice but to 

strike informal bargains with reporters. About the last case of this highly individual form of 

military-media relationship existing independently of wider military institutional oversight 

was John J. Pershing in the Mexican Expedition of 1916, with George S. Patton Jr. gaining 

his first combat experience as one of Pershing’s press and censorship officers.11

This highly informal period of war reporting, habitually characterized by the reporters 

themselves as their “Golden Age,” came to an end starting in the last decade of the 19th 

century through the development of professionalism as the term was then understood: a 

“profession” was a self-regulating body of men holding high status on merit, who were 

also custodians of an accepted body of knowledge. In the case of the military, this took the 

form of the establishment of general staffs and staff colleges, and an agreed corpus of doctrine. For the US Army as for many others, it meant emulating the most successful military 

institution of the later 19th century, the Prussian and later German Army. The military’s 

claim to a sphere of their own was so fundamental to professionalism, and German influence so great, that in the 1930s the US Army argued that strategy must be seen as a military 

function independent of politics and civilian interference, as “radically and fundamentally 

things apart.”12

In the case of the media it was the most experienced war reporters who led the way 

toward professionalism, men like Richard Harding Davis who accumulated decades of 

experience of war, and in developing relationships with high-ranking officers.13 A code of 

professionalism among US newspaper reporters in general did not emerge until the 1920s, 
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in response to financial and institutional pressures. But little attention has been paid to the 

way in which, by laying claim to a professional military sphere, by definition the military 

accepted a civilian sphere of war, in which activities such as diplomacy, war finance, and 

weapons manufacture might be conducted. As an extension of diplomacy and domestic 

politics, wartime relations with the media became part of this civilian sphere of war, with 

generals being content to follow the civilian lead as regards policy; military professionalism 

in this respect consisted chiefly of the introduction of censorship and regulation of reporters in a war zone. From a base of some decades of informal experience and understanding, 

this was the system begun and very largely improvised first by the British on the outbreak 

of World War I, including the first institutionalized wartime propaganda organizations.14

Two conflicting traditions emerged from World War I over the civilian direction of 

media and propaganda policy. One, which became widely accepted in all democratic countries and has remained so up to today, is that although deception and propaganda were 

recognized weapons of war, and any policies involving the media needed to be coordinated 

as part of a wider political grand strategy, those institutions dealing with the media must be 

kept separate from those dealing with deception and propaganda, whose activities were of 

a different nature. This conception saw media relations, and even propaganda and deception, as branches of domestic politics, diplomacy, and grand strategy in its widest sense. 

The other tradition, which received much greater public attention at the time, made claims 

in the 1920s for the effectiveness of aggressive and very specifically directed propaganda 

policies based on deception and manipulation, including unofficial British claims to have 

subverted the neutrality of the United States before 1917, and to have caused the collapse 

of the Austro-Hungarian and German home fronts, a claim much supported by the German 

Army as part of its own “stab in the back” propaganda. Repeated historical investigation 

has shown these claims to be at best exaggerated, and at worst fraudulent, and in practice 

they were ignored by professional propagandists and diplomats.15

George Creel, who as head of the Creel Committee had led US media and propaganda policy in World War I, called his memoirs How We Advertised America, and the 

word “advertising” like “propaganda” could still be used in this neutral sense at the time. 

But the civilian version of the wartime dispute between media relations based on mutual 

understanding and propaganda as an aggressive weapon became in the 1920s a similar split 

between the newly professionalized reporters with their codes of conduct and the equally 

new advertising industry with a mission to sell its products, and the relationship between 

advertising and military PSYOP has remained a close one.16 One point on which there 

was no disagreement, and has never been throughout history, was that the German Army’s 

attempt to run propaganda and the media on the basis of military primacy had failed; this 

was an aspect of warfare for which the German version of military professionalism was 

ill-suited.

This accepted policy and doctrine for a democracy in wartime and its dealings with 

the media can be clearly seen in the entry of the United States into World War II. In 1942, 

two civilian organizations were established, the Office of War Information to be the public 

face of the US Government and broadly to handle media issues, and the Office of Strategic 

Services (OSS), initially formed to conduct clandestine propaganda and deception. The US 
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Army only briefly possessed a Psychological Warfare Branch (under a variety of names) 

from 1941 to the end of 1942, leaving Army psychological warfare, known as PSYCHWAR 

and later as PSYWAR, as the responsibility of theater headquarters. However, the creator 

of the OSS, Colonel William J. Donovan, insisted that the OSS should be effectively militarized as a supporting agency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and should combine the functions of propaganda and clandestine warfare, which the British kept institutionally both 

civilian and separate, reportedly because Donovan admired the German Army propaganda 

of the time. Another important advocate of PSYWAR was General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 

who first created a Psychological Warfare Branch for his headquarters in the North African 

campaign, and maintained it to the end of the war in Europe. According to Eisenhower, 

“The expenditure of men and money in wielding the spoken and written word was an 

important contributing factor in undermining the enemy’s will to resist.”17 Although the 

functions of PSYWAR included the Army’s own media as well as exploiting traditional 

civilian newspapers and radio services, the United States was quite unique in militarizing 

PSYWAR in this way, and in combining propaganda with clandestine warfare. US military 

PSYWAR fell into brief abeyance after World War II, but it was resurrected for the Korean 

war (1950–53) chiefly through the creation in 1952 of the Psychological Warfare Center at 

Fort Bragg, by which time it was scarcely distinguishable in doctrinal thinking or practice 

from covert or special warfare.18

What perspective does this brief historical overview give to the present IO debate and 

to its unspoken assumptions? First, according to their critics, what characterizes present IO 

doctrine and practice is that for the first time members of the US Armed Forces have sought 

to exert control over both foreign and domestic media in the name of immediate military 

expediency. This suggests a military view of the media as at best a tool to be exploited 

and at worst an enemy, and that a deep military antipathy toward the media is still a factor. 

Further, if any country might be predicted from its history to suffer from poor militarymedia relations, it would be the United States, whose media traditions and expectations are 

those of 18th century liberal England and Scotland, with an admixture of Revolutionary 

France. The great size of the United States as it expanded, together with high rates of 

adult literacy and an extended franchise, all helped guarantee for the press a unique role in 

politics, and in society, that it still enjoys. Rather than being a model for other countries, 

American media exceptionalism is a recognized historical and cultural phenomenon.19 But 

the traditions of the US Army, other than a small admixture of the France of the First 

and Second Empires, remain overwhelmingly those of Prussia and Germany. It may be 

questioned whether it is still wise for the US Army to model itself on one of the least successful armies of the 20th century; but in the context of military-media relations, the more 

important question is Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany’s poor understanding of the media’s 

place in warfare, and German military prioritization of operations over wider strategy and 

policy. This German influence is very evident in the current IO doctrine and the place of 

PA, including the very heavy importance assigned to mission accomplishment. Indeed, 

and with some regret, recent development in historiography make it necessary to take the 

United States’ emulation of German methods briefly, and controversially, beyond doctrine. 

An argument has recently emerged among historians of World War I and World War II that 

German skills in military operations cannot be separated from brutality and barbarism, 
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which are now seen as inherent in their doctrine from its creation. Already one respected 

historian has drawn unflattering parallels between German atrocities and the behavior of 

US troops in Iraq since 2003. This is shaping to be a significant historical debate for the 

future.20 If the US Armed Forces find it difficult to maintain their preferred doctrines and 

methods in the present media environment, then the question may have to be addressed 

from both sides.

Beyond this is, once again, a much larger issue. At present the ability to fight a short 

high-tempo conventional war remains the pinnacle of US military accomplishments, to 

which all others are subordinated. But it has been increasingly argued that the change in 

recent times toward smaller military operations fought in a highly politicized context has 

not only been fundamental to the nature of military operations, but is also permanent. To 

cite only one example, a leading exponent of the idea that military force will for the future 

be used in the “public space” rather than in a delineated military sphere, British retired 

General Sir Rupert Smith has argued for a new military perspective on the media, that “We 

are conducting operations now as though we were on stage, in an amphitheater or Roman 

arena,” and that operations may even have to be subordinated toward media issues on occasion.21 Every military institution must choose to put its point of main effort somewhere. 

If US Army policy continues to prioritize conventional maneuver war, then it must accept 

that its soldiers will be deficient in the skills needed for fighting in the public space, including media skills. This is not an argument for abandoning maneuver war for the sake of better media relations, but rather a further illustration of how the military-media relationship 

is now a thread that, once pulled, leads to the centers of military thinking.

As presently defined by the DOD, IO are “the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), PSYOP, military deception (MILDEP), 

and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.”22 The core of the present debate is whether those 

“supporting and relating capabilities” include, or should include, the traditional military 

organizations responsible for dealing with the news media: PA, together with the related 

civil-military operations (CMO), and the wider defense support to public diplomacy, doctrinally identified as “related capabilities” to IO. Put more simply, the debate is over the 

relationship between PSYOP and MILDEP on the one hand, and PA on the other; whether 

they should be coordinated in broad policy terms, or whether PA should be subordinate to 

IO for the purposes of operational mission accomplishment.

The first use of the term “information warfare” (which was removed from official US 

military doctrine by the 2006 manual but remains in common usage throughout the world) 

is usually credited to Thomas P. Rona in 1976, although the same ideas are explicit in a 

policy speech made by General William C. Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff in 1969. 

At first it meant simply the application of computers to electronic warfare, and then by 

extension their application to data handling as the military aspect of information technology. This was still the perspective of John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt’s influential article 

“Cyberwar in Coming!” of 1992, and is the way that most armed forces and academics 

around the world continue to understand the concept.23 The major change in US military 
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doctrine was announced in August 1996, when the National Defense University published 

its booklet, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, and the US Army issued its first 

doctrinal manual, FM 100-16, Information Operations, followed 2 years later by the Joint 

Armed Forces, JP 3-13, Information Operations. This was followed in 2003 by a DOD 

Information Operations Roadmap and in 2006 by the present joint doctrinal manual.24

Whether it was again military wisdom to seek to combine electronic warfare with 

deception and psychological warfare in this way is a separate issue to that of the militarymedia relationship, albeit a highly relevant one. But in the same period, partly through 

increasing military experience in humanitarian operations, the doctrinal definition of 

PSYOP was extended from its traditional, and widely understood, meaning of deception 

aimed at influencing enemies and coupled with clandestine warfare, to a much wider definition incorporating peacetime activities. As acknowledged by the DOD in 2003, “The 

customary position was that ‘public affairs informs, while PSYOP and public diplomacy 

influence.’ PSYOP also has been perceived as the most aggressive of the three information activities, using diverse means, including psychological manipulation and personal 

threats.”25 This is scarcely recognizable in the present DOD definition of PSYOP, which is:

Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, 

groups, and individuals. The purpose of PSYOP is to induce or reinforce 

foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator’s objectives.26

This definition does not mention deception, or that the target should be an enemy. It is a 

very wide definition indeed for such a controversial subject, and one which is not accepted 

by most people outside the US military, who continue to understand PYSOP to mean propaganda in the sense of biased or misleading information, with implications of violence or 

subversion. The problems created by such a radical change in doctrine were already apparent in the Kosovo War (1999), with friction evident between traditional, and often civilian, 

practitioners of media relations within NATO and the new US Armed Forces doctrinal 

approach. Although this definition of PSYOP also stresses that all targets should be foreign, 

it does not exclude friendly or even allied powers, or their populations. Military Affairs

this year included an article advising that the US Army had recently approved an updated 

doctrinal definition of IO, to include the use of its capabilities “to influence the perceptions 

of foreign friendly and neutral audiences.”27 This in itself makes it most unlikely that any 

further doctrinal pronouncements from within the US Armed Forces will be able to impose 

clarity and uniformity on the matter, or will be accepted by other countries.

The exclusion of any attempt to influence the United States’ domestic public or their 

media from IO doctrine is in large part based on considerations of the law. The basic First 

Amendment right of the press is modified only slightly by a handful of legal precedents, 

most importantly the “clear and present danger” doctrine enunciated in 1919 by the Supreme 

Court in Schenck v. United States. Originally for the US Information Agency (and by extension any US Government institution) to seek to use the domestic media for propaganda 

purposes is specifically forbidden by the 1948 Information and Educational Exchange Act 

(Smith-Mundt Act), strengthened by the 1972 Foreign Relations Authorization Act. The 
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intention of the Smith-Mundt Act was to set the bar as high as possible, by legalizing the 

dissemination of propaganda by US Government agencies abroad, while preserving the 

older tradition of truthfulness in public diplomacy, since it barred the State Department 

from conducting covert propaganda. Even beyond the law are the wider implications of 

any military interference with the press, something to which the most politically sensitive 

US Army general of the 20th century drew attention. In his farewell televised speech of 

January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, after famously warning against influence 

sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex, went on to say:

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or 

democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert 

and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge 

industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods 

and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.28

In this conception, one of the core duties of the armed forces is to protect the media, precisely because of their investigative role on behalf of the people.

The objection raised even in 1948 was that in practice it was extremely difficult to 

prevent cross-contamination of domestic and foreign media; with the present day globalized media, it has become almost impossible to prevent this, or to identify which media 

institutions and outlets might be described as domestic to the United States. But the law 

still stands, and for this reason proponents of the inclusion of PA within IO still insist on a 

“firewall” (as it is often termed) between them: to do otherwise would be to advocate that 

the US Army should break the law. Even after the shock of the 9/11 attacks, the attempt 

by the DOD to establish an Office of Strategic Influence in October 2001 was discontinued because of ambiguous statements as to whether it would target US domestic audiences through deception operations. Nevertheless, the 2003 DOD Information Operations 

Roadmap stated that the effects achieved by PA “may be similar to some aspects of IO, 

particularly PSYOP.”29 Both in doctrinal discussions and in the practice of recent IO, the 

US Armed Forces have set the bar increasingly low. In 2003 the DOD Roadmap recognized 

that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, 

increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice versa,” and acknowledged 

that “future operations require that PSYOP focus on aggressive behavior modification at 

the operational and tactical level of war, but its proposals for public diplomacy in this 

situation went no further than that “clear boundaries for PSYOP should be complemented 

by a more proactive public affairs effort” and that training regimes should develop closer 

coordination between PSYOP and PA.30 In 2006, Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, one 

of the architects of the Second Battle of Falluja in 2004 and its accompanying IO, argued 

that “In order to mass effects in the information domain and effectively integrate IO into 

the battle plan, the warfighter must find a way to bridge the doctrinal firewall separating IO 

and PA without violating the rules governing both” and that during the fighting in Fallujah 

“We were able to effectively bridge the firewall between IO and PA to achieve our desired 

end-state without violating the rules of either discipline. This integration has broader implications. We must consider how tactical actions will influence the operational and strategic levels.”31 This position, that IO and PA should be effectively combined for reasons of 
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operational and even tactical mission accomplishment, may be set against the traditional 

position, very clearly articulated in 2007 by then Brigadier General Mari K. Elder, Deputy 

Chief of Public Affairs, “The formulation of definitions that describe and differentiate 

types of communication, some of which could potentially be unethical, goes to the heart of 

the morals and ethics that underpin our constitution and democratic values.”32

As a final thought on a complex issue: the first wave of media development accompanied, and contributed to, the expansion of the franchise and the establishment of governments based on public opinion. The second wave contributed to the development of 

mass politics, and the intrusion of mass opinion into domestic political issues such as 

employment and education. It caused great troubles including the rise of demagoguery and 

national socialism, but no one would seriously suggest its reversal even if this were possible. What we are now witnessing is the extension of the same mass opinion into areas of 

foreign policy and the use of military force, as one aspect of “public diplomacy.” Again, it 

is causing great problems, but in the near future it may well come to be seen as a positive 

force, part of the phenomenon of “citizen diplomacy,” which holds that all people have an 

obligation to promote better understanding through their own personal actions. These are 

not problems for military doctrine to solve, but issues for much wider debate and concern.
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Notes

1. Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated 

Terms, 12 April 2001 as amended through 17 March 2009, entry under “Doctrine” (emphasis added).

2. Lieutenant Colonel Frederick W. Rohm Jr, “Merging Information Operations and 

Psychological Operations,” Military Review (January–February 2008): 108.

3. Stephen Badsey, “The Military and the Media: Past and Future,” in Peter Dennis and 

Jeffrey Grey, The Military, The Media & Information Warfare: The Chief of Army’s Military History 

Conference 2008 (Canberra: Australian Military History Publications, 2009), 6–21; Commander 

J.D. Scanlon, “Truth: In Defense of Military Public Affairs Doctrine,” Military Review (May–June 

2007): 92–96.

4. This point is made particularly by Colin S. Grey, The American Revolution in Military 

Affairs: An Interim Assessment (Camberley: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1997).

5. This point is too obvious to require much elaboration, but see, for example, Bruce Norman, 

The Inventing of America (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1976), 85–104; see also,

Giulio Douhet, Command of the Air (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983 [1921]).

6. Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet 

(Cambridge: Polity, 2002); Brian Winston, Media Technology and Society—A History: From the 

Telegraph to the Internet (New York, NY: Routledge, 1998); and for an influential if controversial 

view of military technology, Paddy Griffith, Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to 

Vietnam (Chichester: Anthony Bird, 1981).

7. Quoted in Kenneth Payne, “The Media as an Instrument of War,” Parameters (Spring 

2005): 82.

8. For some of the problems posed for institutions by the “news doer,” see Nik Gowing, 

‘Skyful of Lies’ and Black Swans: the New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises (Oxford: 

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2009).

9. Andrew Lambert and Stephen Badsey, The Crimean War: The War Reporters (Thrupp: 

Alan Sutton, 1994), 1–14; Michael S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 14–28; James K. Hogue, “Presidents, Generals 

and the Legacy of Freedom of the Press in 19th Century American Wars,” in Mihail E. Ionescu, 

ed., Acta of the XXIXth International Congress of Military History: War Military and Media from 

Gutenberg to Today (Bucharest: Military Publishing House, 2004), 219–227.

10. John F. Marsalek, Sherman’s Other War: The General and the Civil War Press (Memphis, 

TN: Memphis State University Press, 1981), 23–40; Harry J. Maihafer, War of Words: Abraham 

Lincoln and the Civil War Press (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2001).

11. Stephen Badsey, “The Media and the Art of War in the Western World 1792–1975,” in 

Mihail E. Ionescu, ed., Acta of the XXIXth International Congress of Military History: War Military 

and Media from Gutenberg to Today (Bucharest: Military Publishing House, 2004), 48–65; Frank 

E. Vandiver, Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing: Volume II (College Station, TX: 

Texas A&M University Press, 1977), 607–618; Carlo D’Este, A Genius for War: A Life of General 

George S. Patton (London: HarperCollins, 1996), 156–177.

12. The Principles of Strategy for an Independent Corps or Army in a Theater of Operations, US 

Army Command and General Staff School, 1936, quoted in Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency 

and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (New York, NY: Praeger, 2006), 

180, footnote 40.

13. Greg McLaughlin, The War Correspondent (London: Pluto, 2002), 54–58.
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14. M.L. Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War

(London: Macmillan, 1982); Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First 

World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992); Stephen Badsey, The British Army in 

Battle and Its Image 1914–18 (London: Continuum, 2009). For US Army relations with the press 

in World War I, see The United States Army in the World War 1917–19: Reports of Commander 

in Chief A.E.F. Staff Sections and Services Part II (Washington DC: US Army Military History 

Institute, 1948), 81–142.

15. The historical literature on this is considerable; for an overview and references, see Stephen 

Badsey, The British Army in Battle and Its Image (London: Continuum, 2009), chapters 7 and 8, 

163–210.

16. Michael S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce (Evanston: 

Northwestern University Press, 2006), 45–50; Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda 

and Persuasion (Newbury Park: SAGE, 1992), 117–125.

17. Quoted in Alfred H. Paddock Jr., US Army Special Warfare: Its Origins (Washington 

DC: National Defense University Press, 1982), 20; see also, Philip M. Taylor and N.C.F. Weeks, 

“Breaking the German Will to Resist, 1944–45: Allied Efforts to End World War Two by NonMilitary Means,” in The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 18, no. 1 (1998): 5–48.

18. Alfred H. Paddock Jr., US Army Special Warfare: Its Origins (Washington DC: National 

Defense University Press, 1982), 143–159; Gregory F. Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of 

Intervention in the Postwar World (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1987), 31–43; Michael McLintock, 

Instruments of Statecraft: US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, Counter-terrorism 1940–1990 

(New York, NY: Pantheon, 1992).

19. Michael Schudson, Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (Malden: Polity, 2007), 

27–39.

20. Richard Overy in George Kassimiris, ed., The Barbarisation of Warfare (London: Hurst, 

2006), 2; see also, Jeff Lipkes, The German Atrocities in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven: Leuven 

University Press, 2002); John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities of 1914: A History of 

Denial (Yale: Yale University Press, 2001); Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture 

and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

21. General Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World

(London: Allen Lane, 2005), 284.

22. Joint Publication 3-13, Information Operations, 13 February 2006, ix.

23. Thomas P. Rona, “Weapons Systems and Information War,” Boeing Aerospace Company, 

Seattle, Washington, 1976; Paul Dickson, The Electronic Battlefield (London: Morian Boyers, 

1976), 221–222; John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “Cyberwar is Coming!” Comparative Strategy

12, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 141–165; Jonathan Reed Winkler, “Information Warfare in World War I,” 

The Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (July 2009): 845–867.

24. Harlan Ullman et al., Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: 

National Defense University, 1996); FM 100-6, Information Operations, US Department of the Army 

1996; Joint Publication 3-13, Information Operations, 9 October 1998; Information Operations 

Roadmap, US Department of Defense, 30 October 2003; Joint Publication 3-13, Information 

Operations, 13 February 2006.

25. Information Operations Roadmap, 26.

26. Joint Publication 1-02, entry under “Psychological Operations.”

27. Quoted (without specific reference) by Major Walter E. Richter, “The Future of Information 

Operations,” Military Review (January–February 2009): 103–113.
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28. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation, 17 January 1961.

29. Information Operations Roadmap, 10.

30. Information Operations Roadmap, 26–27.

31. Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz et al, “Massing Effects in the Information Domain: A 

Case Study in Aggressive Information Operations,” Military Review (May–June 2006): 9 and 12.

32. Brigadier General Mari K. Elder, “Towards Strategic Communication,” Military Review

(July–August 2007): 70.
259

Panel 6—Current Operations

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Phillip Fraund, Ph.D.

Stephen Badsey, Ph.D.

Moderated by Mr. Steve Vogel

Mr. Vogel

Dr. Badsey, thank you for your presentation. Since we’re running just a little bit short 

on time, I want to go directly to the question and answer session. And I’d like to begin 

that myself with a question for Dr. Fraund. Two days ago, we met for the first time and we 

talked a little bit about your paper and how your own army has progressed in its relationship with the military and the access that we’ve granted the media. I was wondering if you 

could share your thoughts with the group on where your country and your military and its 

media stand from that relationship?

Dr. Fraund

I think the basic problem is that the German Army has an understanding of media techniques that is the same as the United States or other nations had back in the 1970s, blocking 

almost all information for the media. The way the German media dealt with Afghanistan is 

more or less close to the way the German Government wanted to see the German involvement in Afghanistan as, let’s say, a very substantial way of peacekeeping mission. The 

German Government wanted to keep the image of German officers or soldiers going out 

showing teddy bears, spreading chocolate and chewing gum, all these, let’s say, humanitarian action works and not really a fighting mission, which it already is. And so the German 

Army reacted to journalists who were too critical by excluding them from their flights to 

Afghanistan or in restricting the way they were able to depart.

Audience Member

This is for Dr. Badsey. Sitting here for 3 days thinking about this. You talked about the 

relationship of the military to the media and we’re talking about basically macro level. One 

of the problems I think, or irritation with the media, is you have people who are involved 

in a very intense combat situation where people are killed, people are maimed, people for 

which officers and NCOs are responsible, friends, comrades. They do the best they can to 

accomplish their mission and then they read about, hear about, or see this particular action 

on television, on the net, and in print, in which they are really criticized and if not criticized, the action was not worth it, was not supposed to happen, was bad, and this creates 

in the average person I think a sense of betrayal and a sense of real anger, especially when 
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you get back from combat and you get that emotional come down. The Army’s a very small 

place, a very confined society, if you will, and I think this is one of the things that leads to 

irritation with the media. I don’t see how anything can be done about it because the media 

person, as embedded as they are, are not part of that unit and they get up and leave and they 

still leave the unit there. They’ve been offered the hospitality, protection, whatever, of the 

unit, and those people, regardless of whether commissioned or not, are going to feel a little 

bit betrayed.

Dr. Badsey

That’s a question I’ve thought about quite a lot. I should say, if it isn’t perhaps obvious, 

that it’s not easy as a civilian for me even to discuss this, because I’m about to talk rather 

glibly about casualties and that means you and not me. And if you don’t think I haven’t 

thought of the implications of this many times, you’re wrong. But just take this as red. 

Members of the US Armed Forces, by their nature, by their training, are taught and led 

to do some extraordinary things, to make sacrifices. One of the problems I think you now 

have is the idea of making a further sacrifice of taking along with you a reporter who may 

not report exactly what you want, and from the other side of that, of course, what would 

actually satisfy somebody who had been in a bad firefight and seen their buddies die? My 

experience is nothing and would, no matter how it was written, somebody would find an 

objection. And if it was written so that it was absolutely perfect for the US Army, you can 

be sure the French Army wouldn’t be happy with it. In other words, that is a desire for 

something that is not achievable. But even beyond that, if I can put it in terms of a rhetorical question, is it seriously being argued that you have to have this person with you, look 

after them, protect them, feed them, and they are there to be critical of you. The answer is 

yes, because that is inherent in the Constitution of a democracy and I don’t think that US 

military thinking has yet embraced that. To go further and put it in terms of advantages to 

you, we may be getting into circumstances in which you may have to think in terms, and 

this perhaps goes back to what Chuck de Caro was saying yesterday. You may have to think 

in terms of being willing to take casualties to get a good story. You have to see it that way. 

That it actually might be worth a soldier’s life to get the media coverage you want. I can 

hear the silence. You haven’t thought of it that way yet, have you? This is the way your 

thinking perhaps needs to be going at the moment. As I said, no one’s going to put me in 

this situation. I’ve been talking about this for a very long time. I’m aware of how that can 

sound. But this, if you can teach your soldiers to risk death for other reasons, you may have 

to consider teaching them to risk death or wounding for the sake of an effective—I’ll use 

the term information operation. I wish you wouldn’t in some ways. I think it’s a bad term, 

because it does blur these two, in my view, entirely distinct areas of psychological operations and public affairs.

Audience Member

The military has been asked to step outside the military thought process to understand 

the media. Many military members would argue that the super majority of the journalists 

here this week refuse to provide the same courtesy to the military. Why should we think 

that’s acceptable? 
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Questions and Answers

Dr. Badsey

Why should you think that’s your decision, your call to make? 

Audience Member

Why is it yours?

Dr. Badsey

I’m not, I’m not a US citizen. My point is, are you saying that that is a decision to 

make? I think constitutionally you’re completely wrong.

Audience Member

I don’t think it’s the military’s decision to make, but I don’t believe that it’s the media’s 

decision to make either. 

Dr. Fraund

I think the media and the military have to rely on each other in this case, and I think that 

media have to try to keep up their work as they did because most of the reporting we could 

see from, especially the first stages of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, was more or less a 

very pro-US, not very about some, let’s say, war crimes or atrocities against Iraq. These 

reports came later. Think of the Marine unit that was going to a mosque with a TV team 

behind them and then shooting some, perhaps, or possibly wounding Iraqis in a mosque 

which is, that’s like you can do that, but not in front of TV, not with a TV team behind you, 

which [inaudible] at the next time possible. 

Dr. Badsey

I should add, historically, this works best, the relationship, when it is done at the lowest 

possible level and informally. Attempts to make broad generalizations might decide very 

difficult. If I can add something, this may be slightly at a tangent, but I don’t believe so. 

About 10 years ago, I published a paper in one of the academic journals on how Hollywood 

films depicted war reporters. One of the basic assumptions behind I think real life US 

Armed Forces thinking and certainly behind the Hollywood reflection is that if you embed 

a reporter, if you take a reporter into your organization, they will be converted, so they will 

share your values. That is not always the case, and the sense of rejection can often cause 

trouble. The idea that you could, like I said, take somebody into a life-threatening situation, 

look after them, protect them, and they will not share your point of view partly because it 

is their job not to share your point of view completely. Reporters with combat experience 

will know how difficult this is to work, a line it is to work. I see Don looking at me rather 

critically here. But you’ve spent years doing it, I just write about it. 

Audience Member

Having spent two tours in Vietnam, I know you talked about the—there’s a big distinction on the media that was embedded in Vietnam and those in the United States that had no 

idea what was going on in Vietnam. And I would say probably the journalist reporting from 

all of the embedded was in the game park that 90 percent of us that were fighting for the 

United States and for the South Vietnamese. We didn’t have a lot of respect for the South 
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Vietnamese Government through its extensive corruption. The [inaudible] Vietnam and the 

North Vietnamese were very dedicated hard-fighting people. So I mean, I agree, we would 

have pulled out more by the media that was going with John Kerry and his baby killers than 

those people that were actually embedded. There were numerous reporters embedded in 

there and, yeah, we tried to do coverups and they would weed them out. But basically, they 

did not misrepresent us that much.

Dr. Badsey

Thank you for the contribution. So I know Bill Hammond’s trying to get in, but can I 

just add, there’s an element of buck passing on the media side and it’s not unreasonable. I 

mean that critically. The field reporters will often say that they’re doing their job and the 

problem occurs with the editor back home. I think in research terms, we should pay more 

attention to the editors back home and get their version of it because at the moment, the 

moment being from memory back to the 1880s, they’re the people who tend to get blamed 

by the reporters when the story goes wrong. As I said, thank you for the contribution. 

Dr. Fraund

If I may add, the German TV reporter who was covering the Iraq War from Baghdad 

suddenly stopped working for CBS German television because of the fact that his editors 

at home wanted him to report about an action in Afghanistan to build up or to portray an 

Afghan police unit in a very glorious way, which in fact wasn’t that glorious. So, he said, 

“Okay, I can’t get with your personal agenda, so I quit working for CBS German television.” And this was one of the few, very few, situations when the influence of the military 

officers back home were so open to the public because it was discussed in nearly all the 

media sites and all the major newspapers in Germany.

Dr. Badsey

On the issue of embedding for a major military operation, say 2003 Iraq, a big organization, and I happen to know exactly how this was done by the BBC because I watched 

and talked to the guys involved, will take their most acceptable people to the US military, 

the British military, respectively, and put them forward as embeds and then they will run 

unilaterals. As a matter of fact, the senior BBC foreign affairs, that is John Simpson who 

once in a tongue slip claimed that the BBC had liberated Kabul. I don’t know if you picked 

that up at the time. Pray it didn’t get reported here. He has refused consistently editor work 

with any British or Western or NATO military unit. He always goes unilateralist, and he’s 

one of the best we’ve got because he feels he needs that separation. But the media will do it 

both ways. They will put the people in as embeds who they think are acceptable to you and 

at the same time they will run other reporters for other purposes to get exactly this second 

story, this second eyewitness function I’ve been talking about. Now that’s just something 

you have to be aware of. 

Mr. Vogel

Sorry to cut things off here, especially as we’re really starting to get rolling, but it is 

time for us to take our lunch break. But in closing here, I would like to express our appreciation on behalf of the Combat Studies Institute for both Dr. Fraund and Dr. Badsey for 

speaking with us today.
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Day 3—Featured Speaker

Mr. Ralph Peters

Independent Journalist

(Transcript of Presentation)

The most important thing I will say today is this: To my brothers and sisters who have 

served, who are serving, and who support those served, I thank you for your service and 

our country thanks you. Now for the last 2 days, we’ve—those of you who have been here 

for the whole thing—have seen a very productive conference in my view. A wide range of 

journalists, critical commentaries, and yet I felt it slipped a bit out of balance, because the 

military, of course, doesn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings and certainly not journalists, 

and the media can be self-congratulatory. So today, I’m going to be more critical of the 

media than I would otherwise be simply because I’m trying to put things into a bit of 

balance.

Let me make it clear. As many of you know, when I think the military gets it wrong, I 

am perfectly glad to criticize our military when I think it is genuinely deserved. Certainly 

we cannot blame the media for the lack of strategic vision and appropriate strategy in 

Vietnam or in Afghanistan. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. After 22 years 

in the military, 11 years in the media, but not of it, for I will always be a soldier first, I think 

I have a reasonably balanced perspective, and I would like to offer my critical views on 

the media.

I want to talk a bit about the history of how we got here—where today’s media really 

comes from. Take you back beyond the 19th century. First, let’s do a little bit of traveling. How many of you have been to Washington, DC? All those good Pentagon assignments and die. But when you go back, if you can find time in your schedule on a pleasant 

autumn day perhaps, go down and stroll the Mall. It really is impressive. Walk up the Mall, 

Constitution Avenue. Then you’re going behind all these, between the museums and federal buildings, some of which were designed in the, frankly, the fascist era of architecture. 

Albert Schaber would love it. Nonetheless, it’s a very, very impressive capitol. As you go 

down to where Constitution meets Pennsylvania, literally, at dawn in the shadow of the 

Capitol, if you look left, you’ll see on Pennsylvania Avenue a dramatically bad piece of 

recent architecture. Hundreds of millions of dollars in it. It’s called a museum. It’s of the 

journalists, by the journalists, and for the journalists. It’s a monument to our media, a celebration of our media. Admission is $20. There are various discounts, none for veterans or 

serving military members. The media are entitled to have their museum. Of course, there’s 

none for the doctors throughout history or the engineers who built America. But walk the 

Mall again and see if you can find a single museum on or near our National Mall to any 

branch of the US military. There are some monuments, some of them more attractive than 

others, but there is no museum to those who fought and died for our country. Yet, we have 

an incredibly expensive museum that charges $20 a head to celebrate the heroes of the 

journalistic profession.
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Now, you often hear reference to the CIA and NSA, which the movies always get 

wrong, of course. Who minds the minders? Who watches the watchers? Well my question when it comes to the media is who critiques the critics? Because brothers and sisters, 

the media does not do it to itself. Now, there are things for which you’ll be castigated. 

Plagiarism usually gets you kicked out of the bunch for awhile. Lying, it depends on the 

lie. Depends entirely on the lie. But the media have set themselves up, moved from being 

reporters back to really their earliest, their origins, of judging the quick and the dead. And 

I want to know why a degree from the Columbia School of Journalism gives you the right 

to judge the actions of a weary young marine at a roadblock or a weary soldier on patrol, 

especially if you have not done your homework, of which more later.

Now, journalists come in many, many flavors. There are some whom I admire 

enormously, and certainly John Burns to me is the lion of this generation. You heard him 

speak. A wonderfully impressive man as well as a journalist. I’m very proud of my wife—a 

journalist for Government Executive magazine who will never get a Pulitzer Prize. Never, 

because she is scrupulously fair, even to the Air Force. She agonizes over is she being 

just, is she being fair? Brothers and sisters, that is not fashionable. But I want to talk about 

some of the other journalists. And you heard, you know, defense of several journalists that 

have . . . all right. Peter Arnett. Now, I’ve never met Mr. Arnett. I have no wish to do so. But 

I’ve seen his commentaries for decades and he strikes me as having a chip on one shoulder 

against America and a huge chip on the other against the American military. Now perhaps 

I am being unfair. That is simply my impression. Simply my personal impression. 

Some, you know, John Burns actually praised Seymour Hersh, Sy Hersh of the New 

Yorker yesterday, who I regard as the greatest living American fiction writer. Let me tell 

you my personal experience with Sy Hersh who obviously was not meant to be an intelligence officer, because he had his intel wrong on this one. I retired 11 months after pinning 

on lieutenant colonel in 1998, because I wanted to write certain things that a serving officer honorably can’t. It was the Clinton years, etc. Well, a couple of years after I’d retired, 

Seymour Hersh embarked on this campaign for whatever reason to bring down General 

Barry McCaffrey, a legitimate American hero in multiple senses of the word. And by the 

way, a personal friend of mine and we go back a long way, went through some tough stuff 

together. But Hersh called me up and I answered the phone. “This is Sy Hersh.” Yeah, of 

course, everybody knows Sy Hersh. After he established that I was the right Ralph Peters, 

he said, quote, “Listen, I want you to help me get Barry McCaffrey.” Sound like balanced 

journalism to you? His article eventually appeared almost a year later in the New Yorker. 

When he talked to me, he wanted to write it about how bad McCaffrey was at SOUTHCOM 

in the drug wars and his drug czar and about his command in DESERT STORM and how 

monstrous and atrocious he was. We spent about an hour on the phone. I hope Hersh someday publishes the transcripts, because he brought up all the things he thought he had uncovered and I explained exactly what they were, what they meant in military terms, and why 

they would have happened, and some things I said, you know, “That can’t have happened, 

it doesn’t work like that.” Of course nothing I said ever made it in the article. When the 

article was eventually published in the New Yorker, he never had been able to track down 

anything on SOUTHCOM or the drug czar years, but McCaffrey in the desert commanded 
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a reinforced division of about 28,000 men and women. Hersh found about a half dozen who 

didn’t like McCaffrey. His primary witness was an E5 who had not been at the site of the 

atrocity he claimed happened. Six out of 28,000. I think you’ll find six disgruntled soldiers 

in the best infantry company we’ve got, probably in a regiment of rangers for that matter. 

But Hersh just launched and went ahead and wrote that story that was grotesquely dishonest and grotesquely unfair. That to me is the epitome of truly bad journalism, but Hersh had 

some hits early on. It’s kind of like Bill Haley. Bill Haley might be before your time, but he 

had a hit in the ’50s called Rock Around the Clock, and he spent the rest of his life trying to 

have another hit. That’s basically what Hersh is.

I want to be fair though because obviously there are great journalists who get it right, 

who are scrupulous, fair. They’re not military groupies, but like John Burns they are absolutely scrupulous. I think of Martha Raddadz for ABC who absolutely empathizes—she’s 

not a groupie, but she empathizes with soldiers and with their families and genuinely cares 

about them as human beings. Sean Naylor who can irritate people in the military, but nonetheless, he cares and he tries to get it right. And he is a Special Forces groupie. But I want 

you to really step back and think about the career of journalism. It’s critical. I absolutely 

believe in the First Amendment. Of course, we need a strong media, not just a press anymore, but strong media. I just want one that does its homework and has an elementary sense 

of fairness. 

So journalists, those among us who are journalists, think about what your profession 

really is. You live and prosper off the deeds, the sacrifices, the crimes, or the blood of others. Without the deeds of other men and women, you have no story. You have nothing. And 

I don’t mean this in a pejorative sense, but in a dictionary sense, you are parasites living 

off of others, off of the systems of others. So get a grip when next you go to the museum to 

worship yourself, the “Newseum.”

Now, also I really believe this. The key to understanding journalists for those of you 

in the military is that they are herd animals who think they are rugged individualists. Now 

there are some true individualists and pioneers among journalists, but I will tell you—I’ve 

seen it again and again how once the pilot fish, such as BBC or the New York Times, sometimes CNN or National, establish the story line—this is the narrative of this event—all the 

journalists flock to that. I’ll give you one example. 

In 2006, during the dustup between the Israelis and Hezbollah, it was fascinating. I 

went to the Israeli side. Just rented a car, drove up, an Israeli friend got me a room. [inaudible] is three clicks from the border. It’s where they had their commando engineer company 

and their PAO center. So I just check in. It’s funny—no security. It was amazing. But you 

stand up there and you set up an observation post that sits on a hill and you watch the battle 

unfold. It’s an incredible—must have been like the spectators at Bull Run. We could watch 

the artillery, count the flash, the bang, and hear the small arms. And, you know, small arms 

there—I think it’s in that field, oh, that’s at that particular village because that’s where the 

rounds are hitting now. We’re in direct fire and it was great because I was the only journalist there. I did see an AP pool reporter for about 3 hours during my stay. That was it. But 

you were getting reports from Israel. And the Israeli PAOs were joking about it.
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Featured Speaker

Now, the cable news and network reporters were at Haifa—well out of range. They 

were in helmets and battle flak jackets on the hotel terrace doing their stand-ups in the 

dark. You can’t see what’s out there. While inside the hotel, people were eating, drinking, 

dancing, etc. Where were the key reporters, the lead reporters? They were on the Lebanese 

side because immediately, when the war kicked off, the herd decided the narrative was 

Lebanese suffering. Now, I’m with the Israelis. The Lebanese did suffer, and the Israelis 

did some stupid things. But tens of thousands, over a hundred thousand Israelis were driven 

from their homes by [inaudible] fire. Tens of thousands of Israelis were driven into living 

in basements for a month. Hezbollah was able to claim they were the first people to make 

refugees of Jews since 1948. There was plenty of suffering to go around. But all you heard 

about was the massacre, rather the wedding at Cana, where if you really looked at the film, 

they’re trotting out the same dead baby over and over again, and it doesn’t get questioned. 

But once the story line was established, nobody challenged it. And you saw it back in 

Vietnam and elsewhere. 

So what I want to do—oh, and by the way, another point. When a journalist is wounded 

or, God forbid, killed or goes missing, boy, it’s a story. Why is a journalist’s life more 

important than that of any soldier, marine or navy corpsman, or Air Force forward air controller? History. Where do we really come from? We in the military, who have dedicated at 

least part of our lives to the military, who are our antecedents in mythic days? Well, they’re 

the warriors, Gil Gavish, Achilles, Hector. If you’re really good, Ulysses or the [inaudible] 

from Slavic myth. 

Who is the antecedent, the ancestor of the journalist? It’s a neighborhood gossip, 

because people want to know what’s happening—it’s human nature. You know, we exist 

to defend our homes, our families, and our people. On the other hand, you have the people 

who just want to know. We don’t know a lot about what Bardell called the structures of 

everyday life in Greece and Rome. We do know that in Athens at the [inaudible], current 

events were discussed, so you had at least a verbal newspaper. We don’t know if anything 

was nailed up or whatever. I’m sure by the time of the Romans there were things that we 

don’t pick up on now to transmit news because people want to know. But where the process 

really becomes formal is with the invention of movable type plates for the printing press, 

Gutenberg mid-15 century. 

The first thing that approaches being war correspondents comes in the wars of religion 

in the 1520s. Here’s an interesting thing. For the first almost century and a half, about 

a century and a half, it’s not reporting. You know, reporters take pride of place over 

opinion writers, but the fathers and mothers—really, the fathers in those days of today’s 

journalism—were opinion writers. That’s what you got first. The first proto newspapers 

are really usually one sheet print-offs with a gory illustration of those bad Catholics or 

those bad Lutherans or those bad Anabaptists with a little bit of tax and it would get passed 

around and sold for a very, very small amount. It’s not a newspaper, but it’s drawing the 

road. Then you move forward, by the Elizabethan era, there are pamphleteers—Richard 

Green and others in London—but no real newspapers. Where newspapers, and war is the 

father of many things, where the first real newspapers, gazettes that I can find, are in the 

English Civil War of the 1640s. The parliamentarians and the royalists have their gazettes 
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and there’s some news in them, but it’s always in opinion pieces. It’s invective. It’s, you 

know, Charlie Rose to the max. Pick the most vociferous. It’s really more Rush Limbaugh 

on both sides. That’s what you get. But there are real newspapers now. They’re published 

on a semiregular basis when people aren’t being chased by armies. And you move forward.

Now what we called style section or Geist continues through the first golden age of 

journalism in the Marlborough era. You’ve got Addison and Steele, etc. But newspapers 

are starting to get a grip in the English speaking world far ahead of elsewhere. By the 

Seven Years War, the French and Indian War, Robert Rogers, Rogers Rangers—any rangers in here? Give me one rule—Roberts Rule of Rangers number one. Good. Well, Robert 

Rogers, a truly capable heroic man, leads what is a regiment of rangers and he becomes 

a darling of the press because the British aren’t getting any victories and Robert kinds of 

delivers just small ones. Although his most celebrated exploit, the battle on snow shoes, is 

actually a defeat, but he gets his guys out. He’s made into a hero by the media of the day 

and shortly thereafter they unmake him because the newspapers are bribed by people to 

whom he owes money. He owes the money because he borrowed to pay his men because 

the Crown would not honor its obligations to them.

We move forward. The first great and I think in my experience still the finest war journalist, war correspondent ever was indeed William Russell. Now, Russell’s an interesting 

guy. You should read his stuff. It is good. He actually could write. Classical educations 

count for something. But Russell, he was a Confederate sympathizer, as most Brits were, 

except for the working class up in Manchester, etc. But his account of Bull Run was hated 

by the Union. He was basically kicked out of the Union over it because it was so accurate. 

Even though he was a Confederate sympathizer, he depicted the battle and the route absolutely accurately. It’s still the best account we have of First Manassas, or the Battle of Bull 

Run. It is a classic and to my mind it still may be the best single piece of war reporting. 

But he keeps on reporting. Russell eventually goes down. He loses his popularity by the 

Franco-Prussian War because he doesn’t get on the Internet of the day. He’s committed 

to handwritten dispatches, and he doesn’t believe in the telegraph and so all his competitors are telegraphing back from the Franco-Prussian War battlefields and he is just trying 

to do the handwritten dispatches. At the same time in our Civil War, Shiloh is instructive. 

Because if William Russell, the scrupulous reporter is again the example, the John Burns of 

his day if you reverse the equation, you also had . . . and I’m sorry, I just forgot his name. 

I guess I’m getting old. I knew an Alzheimer’s joke, but I forgot it. At Shiloh, there was 

a lot of pressure even then to file before the others. Your paper wants to lead. There was 

a journalist on one of the river boats. He never set foot at Pittsburgh Landing, never set 

foot on shore. But he comes down in the morning and he sees—there’s always confusion 

in the back of battles, or used to be before we had the discipline and professional forces 

we have now—and he doesn’t see the battle. He just sees all these Union guys who ran 

away and were clamoring to get on the river boats, etc. So he gets on the first boat back 

north, bribes a Union telegrapher to file his dispatch, and the dispatch from the first morning of Shiloh is “Union Disaster, Army Destroyed,” etc. Well, of course, by the second day 

Shiloh turns into the first decisive battle of the war. The Southern Confederate saying is, 

“The South never smiled after Shiloh.” But you know what? It started the tradition of just 
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Featured Speaker

destroying generals’ reputations. The press went after Grant: he’s a drunk, etc. And you 

know who’s a master of press relations? George B. McClellan. He was slick, well dressed, 

well connected, married to John C. Vermont’s daughter, Jesse Vermont. And he mastered 

it. McClellan hangs on and hangs on through all these defeats and the only thing that saves 

Grant is Lincoln who sees better than anyone else. Lincoln’s statement, of course, is when 

he’s told, “Fire Grant, everybody hates him, the press wants him gone,” Lincoln says, “I 

cannot spare this man. He fights.”

By the time of the Spanish-American War, the press is going great guns. It’s a heyday 

of the yellow press. You’ve already heard the story of how the Western artist and graphic 

artist, Frederick Remington, is sent to Cuba by the Hearst papers. He gets there and there’s 

been unrest, but there’s really nothing, and he’s an illustrator. So—and this story is apocryphal. It’s not really proven, but the story in circulation is that he cables back to William 

Randolph Hearst and says, you know, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, and says, you know, 

“No action. Coming home.” And he gets an emergency response supposedly that says, 

“You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” But Hearst didn’t furnish the war. Hearst 

was a brilliant reader of the Geist, the public opinion of the time. And this will come into 

play again later. America in the golden age, and it’s really the end of the golden age. We 

were looking around the world. The last flowering of European imperialism was grabbing 

everything that was left and Americans, not all Americans, but those that looked outward 

wanted something. We needed our part too. The war was inevitable. Hearst may have 

accelerated it a little bit, probably not even that. But he read the public mind. That’s what 

the great tycoons of the media do.

So you go through World War I, you’ve heard about the censorship. The British are 

masters of propaganda. Brilliant. You know, “The Huns raping Belgium nuns,” etc. Then 

you get to World War II, the true golden age of American journalism. I’m going to come 

back to this. But since we have limited time, I just want to give you one example of the 

difference between then and now. In the buildup to D-Day, there was a horrific allied disaster at Slapton Sands. Everybody heard of that? At Slapton Sands we were training to land 

troops, land tanks, and it was off the coast of England. Well, wartime training exercise, but 

not under fire, and we had troop transports and landing crafts. Part of a German wolf pack 

got in among them. Nobody was protecting them. The sea literally ran red with American 

soldiers’ blood. All the journalists in the pool agreed to keep it quiet. Why did they keep 

it quiet? Why did they agree to that? Americans. Now, I think several hundred American 

soldiers die, thousands are wounded—how can you keep that quiet? Because they wanted 

America to win. They weren’t out for a Pulitzer Prize. They wanted us to win and they 

saw that while this is news, this would lead—if it bleeds, it leads—there was nothing 

the American public would gain from this and it could hurt morale considerably. But the 

important thing, the American public wasn’t going to gain. And I grow tired of this idea, 

the public has a right to know. Yes, but it does not have a right to know if it undermines the 

war effort or if it kills American service members. That’s an extreme example, but I think 

an important one.

I’m going to come back to World War II and personalities in a moment. Let’s move 

on to Vietnam. Terribly misunderstood, the media’s effect on Vietnam. The media did not 
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defeat the United States in Vietnam. The draft did. If you really go back and look at the 

timeline, start reading how journalism changes and when it’s changing and look at events 

in the United States, the protests, etc. Except for left-wing magazines and Ramparts being a 

leader, there’s really not much critical coverage in ’65 or ’66. It gets a little bit more so, but 

society is ahead of the journalists. The journalists follow. They have, whether consciously—I 

suspect subconsciously because we’re all affected by society—the journalists catch the 

contagion that the war’s a losing proposition and it’s a losing proposition for many reasons 

but primarily because middle class and upper middle class kids are going to war and they 

don’t want to. Now I’m not defending Vietnam, and you can make cases for it either way. 

But again, you can’t blame the media because we didn’t have a rational analysis and a 

sensible strategy, although they did make things worse. I think by the time you get to the 

’70s, you can blame the media for the cutoff of arms supplies to South Vietnam, etc. They 

may have accelerated things, intensified things, but the media followed the public much as 

William Randolph Hearst had six decades earlier.

Now, let’s move up to the present day. Again, just stay with one example. Guantanamo. 

Prisoners in the general population at Guantanamo were treated better than prisoners in 

any prison in the Leavenworth area. They had more privileges, better medical care, special 

diets, and yet the global media—and that’s the thing, it’s global now—the global media 

made Guantanamo into a chamber of horrors, which it was not. Now, many factors come 

into play, but the one strategic factor we never talk about is jealousy. There is among some 

Americans, but among many foreign journalists, a hard left anti-American streak. It’s just 

there. What troubles me isn’t that there was bad reporting about Guantanamo and lies told, 

what bothers me is once again the narrative line was set, the herd moved that way, and 

where were the journalists who went there and saw the real conditions and said, “Look, 

yes, they did some dumb things, but on the whole this is a pretty good deal. It’s a tropical 

beach.” We should have responded by immediately closing them and sending them to the 

Yukon. But we did not. Our defense of it was utterly inept. Because once again, as I made 

a comment earlier this morning, the military isn’t trusted, but by God, if Al Jazeer or the 

Taliban is saying something, it must be credible. 

Now, what happened between World War II and Vietnam and the present day? Several 

things. But let’s go back to World War II and just a few of the great names who are revered 

and not just by conservatives or not just by average Americans. Ernie Pyle, the soldier’s 

journalist. Edward R. Morrow, darling of the left, right? Except that Edward R. Morrow 

wanted America to win. Edward R. Morrow kept Slapton Sand secret. Edward R. Morrow 

knew which side he was on. He was on the same side of the men and women in uniform 

in this room, the side of the US Constitution. Bill Malden, the cartoonist, great cartoonist 

and journalist. I still love his stuff. Richard Tregaskis who wrote Guadalcanal Diary. Let 

me tell you why those men were such brilliant reporters on the GI. It’s because they grew 

up with the GI. They played football with the GI. They got bloody noses together. They got 

into trouble with their fellow GI.

Ernie Pyle was a sharecropper’s son with a few scraps of education. Edward R. Morrow 

was born in a log cabin in North Carolina and his family, not wealthy, move out to homestead in Washington State and he goes to a state school. Bill Malden, son of a civilian 
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scout for the US Army in the Apache wars. Richard Tregaskis, the only one of those four 

who had a good education, grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is not exactly Darien, 

Connecticut. Tough town. They understood the people they were covering. They were the 

kids next door.

Then you move on—Vietnam. Now journalism has always attracted a strange bunch of 

people. Some that didn’t know anything else to do, some were rogues, some were adventurers, some would just fall into it. I mean, people become journalists for a lot of different 

reasons as people join the military for a lot of different reasons. But it changes. Journalism 

was never a blue-collar profession. Back in the 1590s, some of the pamphleteers had 

Oxford or Cambridge educations and couldn’t do much else with their lives, but that’s 

what they did. But something happens. Journalism is really what I would call a light blue 

collar, or a dirty white collar profession. It’s in between over the centuries, over the years. 

There are exceptions like William Russell. But something happens. It starts becoming a hip 

profession during Vietnam. And then, of course, at the tail end of Vietnam, the tragedy for 

American journalism, Woodward, Bernstein, and Watergate. The great exposé. You get to 

be played in a film by Dustin Hoffman or Robert Redford. I’d rather be played by Redford 

actually. But take that as it may, suddenly the journalist isn’t telling the story. The journalist 

is the story. The journalist is the hero.

If you wanted to rescue American journalism, my one suggestion would be close journalism schools. Of those four men I mentioned, Pyle, Edward R. Morrow, Bill Malden, 

Richard Tregaskis, only Tregaskis would have had a shot at getting hired by a major establishment media outlet today because he went to Harvard. He worked his way into Harvard. 

I won’t name media organization names, but there is one which I have a lot of inside 

knowledge that will not hire a young journalist who did not go to an Ivy League school. 

And I can tell you that they hire them and they have to fire them, that the owner has a 

Harvard thing, etc. Now, as journalism became a hip profession—you go to journalism 

school, Columbia School of Journalism, gold standard—what happens? Where do most of 

the people that go to journalism school at Stanford or Columbia or Harvard or Yale come 

from? They don’t come from blue collar, working class neighborhoods. They come from 

the suburbs. The upper middle class suburbs, or even the upper crust. They’re playing at 

life. They don’t do their homework. You know, I think a journalist—getting a degree in 

journalism is nutty. Now take Journalism 101 to learn how to write your lead paragraph, 

etc. Study history, international relations; know what you’re talking about. That’s something that bothers me terribly. Journalists are lazy and don’t do their homework. Now there 

are many exceptions, many. I’m concentrating on the bad apples here. There are many who 

try, but I’m just appalled at the willful ignorance of so many.

Now, we move from the era of the Bill Malden’s and Edward R. Morrow’s into the era 

of what I would call the prize chasers. Journalists are wringing their hands, well, why on 

earth, why is the population of the United States growing, but circulation of the Washington 

Post and New York Times, it’s going down. What’s happening? Is America dumbing down? 

Why don’t you know? The print journalists and those major outlets have forgotten that 

they have a national audience. Increasingly, the journalists at the top of the game more and 

more write for other journalists. They write for prizes and other journalists decide by and 
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large who gets the prizes. If you’re not willing to write for what’s dismissed as the “flyover 

crowd,” if you’re not willing to write for the busy person, the person who doesn’t have time 

in the faculty lounge to read Frank Rich for the third time, you know, you’re going to lose 

audiences. Times change. The demotic voice changes. Attention spans change. But when I 

read columns in the establishment press, I get why they’re going down. They’re writing for 

other journalists, they’re writing for prizes and they’re not reaching out. You can read, you 

can smell the condescension between the ink and the paper. 

I’m a name names guy. I want to raise a couple of specific cases that truly bothered 

me. One person who’s won a couple of Pulitzer Prizes, and I’m going to talk about—by 

accident, it’s just all journalists in the Washington Post. Let me make it clear. I think the 

Washington Post is the finest establishment paper in the United States today. The New York 

Times, except for its brilliant war correspondents—I mean, figure this out—you’ve got 

Burns, Chivers, Dexter Filkins—I mean, it’s incredible, and the Post doesn’t. But in every 

respect, the editorial page of the Post is balanced. It makes both sides angry. Their coverage is good. Neither paper has good copy editors anymore. It’s appalling to read it. But 

the prize chasers, to me the most egregious recent offender is Dana Priest, and the specific 

example I would pick is her exposé of Walter Reed. Remember that a few years back? 

Where soldiers are living in awful conditions and they were. I don’t want any wounded 

soldier ever to live in bad conditions. But Priest is a very good writer, not brilliant, but 

she’s very good and she knows how, she knows what to leave out. So if you read the long 

columns exposing, if you get well down, you realize, well, it’s one building and part of 

another, a small number of soldiers—no soldier should ever have to, wounded soldier, and 

these are primarily outpatients, but they shouldn’t have to endure mold in the bathrooms 

or bedrooms. Of course not. We got it. Go back and read the stories and what is missing 

from the exposé of Walter Reed. And she knew of course. Where’s the mention, description, and discussion of BRAC? Walter Reed was on the BRAC list at that point, the Base 

Realignment and Closure. What happens when an installation goes on the BRAC list? 

Stop spending money. But Dana Priest didn’t explain that to the American people, and she 

got the scalps of a couple generals out of it. Maybe the generals deserved to go, but it was 

accurate yet patently dishonest journalism.

Anthony Shadid. Priest is a good writer. Anthony Shadid is a brilliant writer. He’s 

maybe the most talented American journalist of this generation when it comes to sheer 

story-telling quality. I also believe, in my personal opinion, he is the finest propagandist. 

I wish he was working for our side. If you read his dispatches from early on in the war, 

they just ooze dislike of the US military and our policies. Now, let me make it clear, let 

me remind everybody, that these are my views. They have nothing to do with CSI or the 

US Army or anything else. These are my views and mine alone. It’s a shame because 

Anthony—I always want to say Shahid—Shadid, but at any rate, Anthony Shadid is a brilliantly talented writer and in my personal read I believe he is dishonest because he leaves 

things out that matter. 

Last one, I’m not going to mention this guy’s name. You can figure it out because he 

was long a personal friend. But a journalist who’s never served in the military because he 

went to a good school. And if you go to a good school, why on earth would you serve in the 
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military for God’s sakes? John Kerry could set you straight on that. I mean, and the people 

like me, well, I’m too stupid to do anything else. You know, John Kerry explained—I never 

knew but now I know. But at any rate, he never served in the military, but he got a military groupie, wrote some fine reporting on the military over the years. But by the time he 

gets to Iraq, this guy who’s never tied on a combat boot knows better than the military. He 

knows better than the generals, and he tears into Ray Odierno, even writes a book in which 

Odierno is the villain. Well, you know, journalists tend to take a very short-term view. This 

guy is a great reporter; he’s not a good analyst. In my personal view, only because of the 

tough, he always criticized the tough policies of Ray Odierno and the marines next door 

early in the war. Only that the realization that its US soldiers and marines are not to be 

messed with gave the Sunnis the courage and the confidence to flip. Because, let’s face it, 

I love the British Army, but if it had been up in Anbar, or Diyala at that time, I do not think 

the Sunnis would have flipped. How many Shia tribes flipped out in Baghdad. They had to 

know that we were bad hombres. It took time to pay off. Wars don’t automatically fit your 

filing deadlines. They don’t fit your book contract deadlines. And they don’t fit American 

electoral cycles. You’ve got to stand back a little bit and elementary fairness. Fortunately, 

the US Army was smarter than the journalists and kept promoting Ray Odierno, who continues to do magnificent service for our country and for civilization I might add.

Now, let’s stress again, absolutely, the First Amendment. There’s a reason why it’s the 

First Amendment. Without it, nothing else works. Without a free press, democracy doesn’t 

work. Here is the breakdown point, and you see it with Iraqis as well and with the Soviets 

at the end, the collapse of the Soviet Union. With freedom comes responsibility. Journalists 

are not gods to judge the quick and the dead. If you are a reporter, report and tell the truth 

even if it doesn’t square with your education. You know where Dana Priest went to get her 

undergraduate degree? University of California, Santa Cruz. If you don’t know it, it makes 

Overland College look like Pat Robertson University. It’s probably the most liberal school 

in the country. Now, again, Ms. Priest is a very good reporter when she’s on the issue, 

when she’s willing to report the issue fairly. I just feel, in my personal view, she reported 

unfairly because she knew she was out for a prize. You don’t get prizes for creating heroes 

or reporting heroes.

Let’s do a test. If there’s one name from our Afghan conflict that the American public 

knows, whose name is it? Pat Tillman. All the awards for valor, all the heroism. If there’s 

a second soldier below the rank of general that the American public might know his name, 

who would it be? I’d say Bowe Bergdahl. I mean, the responsibility, you know, when 

Bergdahl, he’s PFC Bergdahl, he walked off his post back in June. Just walked away from 

his post, abandoned his post in the combat zone, turns up later in a Taliban propaganda 

video. The media went orgasmic because this was their guy. They finally had a deserter. I 

mean, it’s like Vietnam, when they’re making heroes of deserters and draft dodgers, etc. 

They didn’t do their homework. They had already reported, the New York Times and others, 

had reported that Bergdahl had abandoned his post in wartime and had disappeared into 

the night. But boy, when he shows up in a Taliban videotape, nobody scrubs it. Scripted 

videotape by the Taliban—violation of the code of conduct, but boy no worry about that 
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guy. But what troubles me, and it’s fine to report all that stuff, you obviously want to report 

Pat Tillman, but the Pat Tillman case was great for the media because the Army screwed it 

up. Friendly fire. Well, there’s a story. And then the Army did screw it up.

But there’s a lot that the Army’s done right, and the Marines and others have done right 

in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been—you know, a medal of honor was just given to 

a young marine who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies. There have been no 

end of distinguished crosses. There have been navy crosses, plenty of silver stars, although 

we’re pretty stingy with awards today, they’ve been earned. Why don’t the American people know any of their names? If Ernie Pyle had been writing, or Richard Tregaskis or 

Edward R. Morrow, the Americans would have known at least a few of their names. But 

we only know the mistakes and the errors. So I’m not arguing for a coverup. You don’t 

have to do a Slapton Sands over Pat Tillman. But what about the heroes? And I make no 

secret of this. I will write facts. I’m an opinion writer. I’ve done some reporting, but I’m 

an opinion writer. My opinion is that the greatest immorality isn’t an action at a roadblock. 

It’s not even the disgusting situation at Abu Ghraib. The greatest immorality is always for 

the United States to lose. 

Now, I would just say this. I’ve been very hard on the profession today, but obviously 

I’m in it, if not of it. It helps pay my bills. I do my part and that should be a testament to 

the fact that I think it’s important. Just by the way, I don’t enjoy it. When I left the military, 

I thought I’d write a few articles and then just write my novels. That’s what I love to do. 

Write fiction. It’s much more intellectually challenging, believe me, but in times like this, I 

felt I had to do this. By the way, I’ve never sought out a job. As soon as I retired, the phone 

started ringing for a very simple reason. There are plenty of people who can write well 

that don’t know the military. There are plenty of people who know the military, but can’t 

necessarily communicate. I’d been writing while I was on Active Duty. So the phone starts 

ringing and I don’t enjoy it. I like writing the fiction, but I feel like, and this is egotistical 

of me, I know, but I want to be the voice for the people who do fight. I make no pretense of 

objectivity in that sense. Facts, yes, but I am on the side of those soldiers and marines and 

navy corpsmen and seabees. I am on their side. To me, reporting honestly, sticking to the 

facts, but knowing which side you are on is the duty of an American journalist. You are not 

citizens of the world. If you are, go get a passport from the UN. If you’re a citizen of the 

United States, you do not have to agree with our military policy, you do not have to agree 

with our Government policy, but you should not sabotage it either. Integrity is an oft-used 

word and rarely encountered anywhere in today’s society except in my experience in the 

US military. God bless you and thank you.

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Day 3—Featured Speaker

Questions and Answers

(Transcript of Presentation)

Mr. Ralph Peters

Independent Journalist

Audience Member

Interesting presentation that I enjoyed listening to. If I started my presentation with the 

recitation of some kids in the Army, some soldiers who didn’t have a good day, would that 

have been fair? If I had introduced the topic of military and media and talked about those 

four soldiers who got forced to commit suicide, would that be fair?

Mr. Peters

Well, the answer is yes. 

Audience Member

Do you think you are fair and balanced?

Mr. Peters

No, I try to be fair, but I don’t pretend to be balanced. I’m on America’s side. Why do I 

bring out the negative? Because for 2 days we have had a love fest and I’m not in the mood 

for love. I have never pretended that I was objective. Look, today’s reporters at their worst, 

were they to transport back to World War II, they would be calling the German Information 

Ministry and saying “Dr. Gertels, we need your side of the story.” Sorry. We don’t need 

the Nazi side of the story. So look, these are just my views. They may be wrong, but the 

difference between me and many of the star journalists is I’m willing to admit that I might 

be wrong. Sir.

Audience Member

I want to make a comment if I might. You mentioned that there are no military museums, and they’re all over the place. The Navy has a nice one. The Marine Corps has a 

beautiful museum.

Mr. Peters

At Quantico.

Audience Member

The only Service that doesn’t have a museum is the Army and we have a wonderful 

collection, it goes around the country. We have relics from Gettysburg, and appraisers figure out how much they’re worth. And we have nowhere to show them, but we’re trying to 

build that sucker and it’s going to be about a $55 million piece of work out at Fort McNair. 

Okay. And I want to say a word for Russell. He wasn’t a Southern sympathizer. He had to 
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get out of the South because, while he sympathized with Southern society because they 

were so much like Britain, (I mean, even their accent, the British accent, he loved it.) but 

he could not stand their peculiar institution and he made the point in his writing that that 

institution was the only reason that society existed and he had to get out and he had to get 

out fast. And he had to get out of the North because of his portrayal of the Battle of Bull 

Run. But he only left when a soldier threatened his life on the battlefield, and he knew he 

was done and he got out.

Mr. Peters

You’re absolutely right. I mean, I was giving a very abbreviated portion. Well, not 

absolutely right. His heart was with the South. But to William Russell’s credit, by 1864, he 

recognized that the South couldn’t win and he published that and that alienated the South, 

the Confederacy, and alienated much of the British upper crust society. But as far as museums, I was making the point there is no military museum on the Mall or near the Mall. We 

do have them. There’s a wonderful museum on this post.

Audience Member

But I just went through the National Museum of American History.

Mr. Peters

Has a couple of rooms.

Audience Member

It’s beautiful. It has George Washington’s sword. It has Cornwallis’ sword. Did you 

know that? And it has a beautiful rendition of the history of the US Army, right in front, 

right through. Much of that stuff comes from the Army museum that doesn’t exist.

Mr. Peters

Yes, and the Army, and the US Army and the Museum of American History are competing with Julia Child’s Kitchen. 

Audience Member

Don Wright from CSI. Ralph, do you think the Army should maintain a black, white, 

gray file on media to determine who gets access and other considerations?

Mr. Peters

No. I don’t think there should be a formal file. I think it’s a duty of the PAO to just pay 

attention. Because there is—in fact, I’d like to hear from Steve Boylan on this, the great 

PAO of the centuries. But if you ask my view, my view is, look, there is no reason why you 

have to give Peter Arnett a Black Hawk. If somebody is reporting dishonestly, we are not 

obligated to facilitate the reporting. Now, by the way, let me go over this. In a speculative 

article about the power of the media, I don’t know, a year or 2 or 3 ago, I wrote that—and 

I’m talking about the even more radical than Al Jazeera outlets that are on the Web, and I 

made the point that in future warfare, we may have to treat some media elements as enemy 

combatants and the response, of course, from the media and from the blogosphere was, 
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“Peters wants to kill Katie Couric.” Now, personally, I wouldn’t miss Katie, but I do not 

wish her ill. So for all of you out there, please if anybody ever says, “Peters wants to cut 

the throat of Katie Couric like a sheep and bury her in an unmarked grave, it is not true.” 

Steve, please. 

Audience Member

In your view, what would it take to transform the media into what I take is a professional organization or professional career field? Would it take a governing board? Would it 

take an approved standards/ethics? Since there is nobody like the AMA, what does it take 

to transform the media?

Mr. Peters

Humility. Next question.

Audience Member

If you were to recommend a national oath for a profession to profess, you know, doctors profess to do no harm, we profess to support and defend, how would you write an oath 

for the profession of journalism?

Mr. Peters

Obviously, to give you a fair answer, I have to think about it. My off the cuff response 

is five words: I will tell the truth. But it’s more complicated than that, and the journalists in 

this room know it. So I can’t fairly give you an answer without being flip, and I don’t want 

to be flip about that.

Audience Member

You detailed the trends in culture from the Edward R. Morrow’s to the current batch 

of journalists. Edward R. Morrow, Bill Malden, to them, the American GI was sacrosanct. 

I mean, they could take shots at the brass, the officers, but their concern was the American 

GI. What was this change in culture that occurred when the journalists had nothing but 

contempt and hatred for the GI that they did for them to get home?

Mr. Peters

Yeah, I don’t think the journalists had contempt and hatred for the GI. I think certainly 

not hatred. Now some did. There were extreme cases. There really were. I think the journalists were as confused as the rest of America in ’66, ’67, ’68, and ’69. They had a wide 

range of political views, but there was a sea change where they followed the [inaudible] 

guys and the reporting got a lot worse. Now, I want to be fair to the journalists. I’ve also 

written elsewhere that it’s a good thing we had journalists because otherwise, we’d still be 

in Vietnam.

Audience Member

Okay. But what I’m saying is that especially in the late ’60s, early ’70s, when you start 

in television especially, and the situation shows, the villain is always a dope crazed, homicidal maniac with an M16 who was a Vietnam vet.
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Mr. Peters

I don’t remember those shows, but I was probably too stoned.

Audience Member

I need to stick up for the dope crazed thing you talked about. But it’s not true. Don 

Bellisario produced a wonderful series called Magnum in 1980 that strode out in front of 

everybody and says, no, we’re not dope crazed, we’re not anything, and we’re loyal to our 

country and military.

Mr. Peters

Let me actually try to give you a little bit more of an answer. I think that the media 

reflected the [inaudible] in there. It was a very, very difficult time for everybody to make 

sense of. The tragedy though is that’s really where journalism starts becoming a hip profession. Now, when I was growing up as a kid in the 1950s, early ’60s, the cool thing in 

my pathetic little mind in Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, where my family motto is “no 

lifeguard in the gene pool.” The dream was to be a novelist. You know, Hemingway. We 

didn’t realize yet what a fraud the guy was. But it was to be a novelist. Really, by the late 

’60s, ’70s, it’s now the verite journalism, and journalism is the cool thing. Woodward and 

Bernstein, and suddenly the journalists are the heroes. Now it’s interesting to me—you 

know, soldier first and novelist second and journalism somewhere a distant third—to watch 

the journalists getting theirs as the blogosphere takes over. Because the blogosphere is 

not journalism. Journalism still has standards. I may not always agree with them or think 

they’re fully enforced or honored, but it is standard. The blogosphere is the domain of 

hatred and spite. And one of the things I’m proud of that I wrote back in ’94 or ’95, very 

early on in ’95 it probably was, was that the Internet was the greatest tool for spreading 

hatred since the invention of the moveable type plate for the printing press. I mean, just 

read the stuff. And the rule, by the way, the rule for the blogosphere is very simple. If you 

don’t have the courage to sign your name to something, you don’t count. You just don’t. 

And as an officer, there were things I wanted to write critical of the administration. Plenty 

of people would have published them had I signed them anonymous or Aristotle or God 

knows what. It would have been dishonorable. So my choice was to take off the uniform 

so I could do it honorably. Except in the rarest of cases, anonymity is cowardice. A man or 

woman should be willing to stand behind what he or she writes or says and if you are not, 

don’t say it or write it. 

Audience Member

You’ve touched on a very real issue, the issue of patriotism, which goes back very 

deeply into the whole discussion. And you say that journalism has changed. You mentioned 

Peter Arnett. I believe he was from New Zealand. In the international global journalistic 

climate, how would you respond to the suggestion, which I’m just putting forth to debate 

here, that the views you’ve expressed are like many right-wing military views simply out 

of date.
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Mr. Peters

They may be, but they are my views. All I can give—all I can go here. I’m not here to 

pander. I’m not looking for a job. I’m not trying to sell anybody anything. I was asked to 

speak here and when I’m asked to speak, I give my honest views. By the way, I did enjoy 

your presentation very much this morning. I am not willing to sacrifice a single American 

soldier or marine for a headline; however, I would gladly sacrifice no end of journalists to 

keep a single soldier or marine alive.

Audience Member

Why do you think so few of the military do what you’ve done as a second vocation in 

terms of they’ve experienced command, they’ve experienced being in the Army, they’ve 

experienced DESERT STORM, and why are so few—what do you think the Army could 

or should do to nudge them forward to do that?

Mr. Peters

The obvious answer is that they’re more talented and capable than I am. But no, I think 

it’s tough. You know, I’ve been critical of journalism today. Again, as many of you know, 

I’m critical of the military too. I had a great session with the SAMS group last night. Just 

wonderful, wonderful, impressive officers. Far better than those of my day. But we talked 

about reading, the importance of reading. Not just rereading What’s an Eagle for the 12th 

time. But reading serious history, and not just reading another book about Vietnam or 

World War II. But what do you know about the Aztec way of war? What about the Ottoman 

Empire? Had we studied its behavior or the behavior of Arab armies we would have saved 

a lot of ambushes in Iraq. What about medieval times? I mean, you’ve got to read intensely 

and broadly and deeply and not just read the easy stuff. What I will say, don’t waste your 

time reading theory. Anything in print on theory is out of date. It’s 20th century. The academy is really what won’t catch up for a long time. Soldiers catch up. You’re way ahead of 

me because you’ve been out fighting the wars. I occasionally swoop by and do my best to 

figure out what’s going on or write about it. But you are the real repositories of knowledge. 

You are the real repositories of knowledge, but you must deepen it. As an officer, you are 

obligated to study not only your profession directly, but everything that’s corollary to it. 

And to me, history, and by the way, to me the most tragic thing that happened to American 

society in the last 50 years is actually that we took history, serious history, out of our 

schools—K through 12 and college. A country—I don’t want jingoism. Maybe it’s clear in 

journalism—I don’t want jingoism. I want a deep sense of heartfelt patriotism that reflects 

itself in knowing when not to report the story that’s just going to torment a soldier’s family 

and not going to help America’s vision center.

But at any rate, I don’t want jingoism. Don’t want to study theory. I do want you to 

read history. I want you to study and talk about it among yourselves. You’ve just got to 

know more. You’re busy. I know you’re swamped with work. You’re going to be busy 

here. Hopefully, you’ll have time with your families. You’re going to go back to war. But 

you’ve got to keep learning. If there’s any danger I see in the US military is that we learn 
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reading, good reading habits. We learn them too late. If you’re not thinking about strategy 

as a captain, you will not be a strategist as a four star general. In fact, one of the points 

we talked about in the session last night, it was a great session, I should have shut up and 

learned more, but was the fact that, you know, the National War College was established 

to create strategists. SAMS is really to create operational capability but strategists later 

on. And since the World War II generation of leaders, where is the American three or 

four star general who’s published anything worthwhile on strategy? We’ve produced brilliant tacticians, fully competent operational commanders, but where are the strategists and 

where does it get us? I mean, there’s a huge story right now in Afghanistan and the fact 

that there’s no strategy. There’s techniques being employed. There’s no strategy. There’s 

no articulation of where we are, what’s doable, what we want to do, what the trade-off 

is on the investment of blood and treasure. Nothing. Nothing. And by the way, you want 

to see the press? Remember how vociferous the press was about Iraq? Because that was 

Bush’s war. But this is Obama’s war. There’s criticism—but it’s not that impassioned Bush, 

Cheney, Rumsfeld bad. And by the way, at least Cheney and Rumsfeld were very bad. I’m 

very proud of very few things in my pseudo journalistic career. One is calling for Donald 

Rumsfeld to go in the summer of 2001. But look, you know, I was a good intel officer. I can 

spot a loser a mile away. Except when it came to old girlfriends. But they spotted a loser. 

But at any rate, seriously, we have to educate ourselves. And I think that’s something that 

applies to the media as well. Look, read some history. Know what you’re talking about. 

Study the military. I skipped some things in my notes because I wanted to leave max time 

for questions and answers.

But the result of these journalists being from these upper crust families, never serving 

in the military, never studying history, was simply that every firefight is Little Big Horn. 

Now, one thing I disagree with your terrific presentation this morning was first Fallujah. 

Yeah, I was there, I was actually there with the Kurds up north and I would watch TV every 

night and watch Al Jazeera and everything else. We’d watch CNN International. By the end 

of the week, it’s hard to tell the difference except that CNN International is in English. The 

media did stop the marines. It wasn’t that the marines used the wrong tactics. The marines 

went back in November and did almost exactly the same stuff. The difference is they did it 

faster because they cracked the code that in a full out combat operation where serious lead 

is flying and where people are dying and there are civilians and you can’t help it, they’re 

going to get killed, you got to operate inside the media cycle. You’ve got—and that means 

if it’s an intense operation, you’ve got to get it done faster than the media can persuade 

Washington it’s a losing endeavor in public relations. The marines were efficient, slow—

they took too much care in the first Fallujah. I sat there with the Kurds and we all agreed, 

we’re going to have to go back in and by God we did. But the marines who went back in 

knew what they were doing and they knew the media was a factor and they pushed balls 

to the walls and got it done and won a major victory and what? Thanks to the media? Oh 

thank you so much. What is the image everyone remembers from the second Fallujah? A 

marine shooting a wounded guy. All the heroism, the valor, the sacrifice that went into that 

fight, and the celebrated image for the media is a marine shooting a wounded guy. Brothers 

and sisters, that tells me all I need to know. Thank you very much. God bless you.
281

Glossary

ABC American Broadcasting Company

AEF American Expeditionary Force

AFP Agence France Presse

AO area of operations

AOR area of responsibility

AQI al-Qaeda in Iraq

ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam

AT&T American Telephone and Telegraph

AUSA Association of the United States Army

AVF All Volunteer Force

AY academic year

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BRAC Base Realignment and Closure

CBS Columbia Broadcasting System

CD compact disk

CENTCOM Central Command

CEO	 Chief Executive Officer

CG Commanding General

CGSC Command and General Staff College

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

CMH Center of Military History

CMO civil-military operations

CND Council of National Defense

CNN Cable News Network

CNO computer network operations

CO	 commanding officer

COIN counterinsurgency

CONARC Continental Army Command

CPI Committee on Public Information

CPIC Combined Press Information Center

CSI Combat Studies Institute

CTC Combat Training Center

DA Department of the Army

DDI Director of Defense Information

DOD Department of Defense

DRC Democratic Republic of Congo

EST Eastern Standard Time

etc. and so forth

EW electronic warfare

FOUO	 For Official Use Only

HMMWV high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle

HQ headquarters

i.e. that is

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

ID	 identification; Infantry Division
282

Glossary

IED improvised explosive device

IFOR Implementation Force

IHL International Humanitarian Law

IO information operations

ILE Intermediate Level Education

IRS Internal Revenue Service

ISAF International Security Assistance Force

ITN Independent Television News

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

JIB Joint Information Bureau

LZ landing zone

MACOI	 MACV Office of Information

MACV Military Assistance Command Vietnam

MEDEVAC medical evacuation

MEU Marine Expeditionary Unit

MGB machinegun battalion

MILDEP military deception

MMAS Master of Military Art and Science

MND Multi-National Division

MOD Ministry of Defense

MP military police

MRE meal, ready to eat

MSM mainstream media

MTA Mass Transit Authority

MWR Morale, Welfare, and Recreation

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NBC National Broadcasting Company

NGO nongovernmental organization

NIHA neutral independent humanitarian action

NSA National Security Agency

NTC National Training Center

NVA North Vietnamese Army

OAS Organization of American States

OIF Operation IRAQI FREEDOM

OPD	 Officer Professional Development

OPSEC operations security

OSS	 Office of Strategic Services

PA public affairs

PAO	 Public Affairs Office(r)

PBS Public Broadcasting Service

PETA People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

PIO	 Public Information Officer

PME Professional Military Education

POW prisoner of war

PR public relations

PRT Provisional Reconstruction Team

PSYOP psychological operations

PSYWAR psychological warfare
283

Glossary

PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

R&R rest and recreation

RETO	 Review of Education and Training of Officers

ROTC	 Reserve Officer Training Corps

SAAOR Soviet Area Audience and Opinion Research

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SAMS School of Advanced Military Studies

SECDEF Secretary of Defense

STRATCOM strategic communications

TRADOC Training and Doctrine Command

TV television

UAV unmanned aerial vehicle

UN United Nations

UPI United Press International

US United States

USSR Union of Socialist Republics

VC View Cong

VE Victory in Europe

VJ Victory over Japan

VSR virtual staff ride

285

Appendix A

Conference Program

Day 1

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

0730–0800 Registration

0800–0815 Administrative and Opening Remarks

0815–0830 Movement of Symposium Personnel to Eisenhower Auditorium

Keynote Address

0845–1000 Keynote Presentation (Eisenhower Auditorium)

 Mr. Bill Kurtis

 Kurtis Productions

1000–1015 Break

Panel 1

1015–1145 Forging a Relationship: The Army and the Media

 A Horrible Fascination: The Military and the Media

 Mr. Frederick Chiaventone

 Ethics and Embedded Journalists: Beyond

 Boundaries of Industry Induced Guidelines on

 Objectivity and Balance

 Mr. Ron Martz

 Moderator

 Donald P. Wright, Ph.D.

 US Army Combat Studies Institute
286

1145–1300 Lunch

1200–1240 Virtual Staff Ride Demonstration—

(Optional) Operation ANACONDA (Room 2104)

 Mr. Gary Linhart

 US Army Combat Studies Institute

Panel 2

1300–1430 The Philippines and the First World War

 Its Officers Did Not Forget: The Philippine War,

 the Press, and the Pre-World War I Army

 Thomas A. Bruscino Jr., Ph.D.

 School of Advanced Military Studies

 Conflicts of Interest: Media Ethics and the

 First World War

 Mr. Jared Tracey

 Moderator

 Major John C. Mountcastle

 US Army Combat Studies Institute

1430–1445 Break

Panel 3

1445–1615 The Vietnam War

 Generals Westmoreland and Abrams Meet the

 Press: What Went Right and What Went Wrong

 with Media Relations in Vietnam

 William M. Hammond, Ph.D.

 The Viet Cong Assault on the US Embassy at Tet

 and the Military Media Controversy It Launched

 Mr. Donald North

 Moderator

 LTC Scott Farquhar

 US Army Combat Studies Institute

1615–1630 Administrative Announcements
287

Day 2

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

0800–0830 Registration

0830–0845 Administrative Announcements

0845–1000 Featured Speaker

 Mr. John Burns

 New York Times

1000–1015 Break

Panel 4

1015–1145 The Cold War

 Professionalism’s Impact on Public Affairs

 Education at the Army War College,

 1950–1989

 Mr. Paul Gardner

 Media and the US Army in Warfare:

 A Roadmap for Success

 Ms. Rhonda Quillin

 Moderator

 Mr. John J. McGrath

 US Army Combat Studies Institute

1145–1300 Lunch

Panel 5

1300–1430 Experiences Beyond the US Army

 The Soviet Media During the War in

 Afghanistan, 1979–1989

 Robert Baumann, Ph.D.

 US Army Command and General Staff College
288

1300–1430 Panel 5 (Cont.)

 The ICRC’s Approach in Terms of Philosophy,

 Planning, and Execution of a Media Plan

 Mr. Bernard Barrett

 

 Moderator

 Curtis King, Ph.D.

 US Army Combat Studies Institute

1430–1445 Break

1445–1615 Featured Speaker

 Mr. Chuck de Caro

 CEO of AEROBUREAU Corporation

 

1615–1630 Administrative Announcements
289

Day 3

Thursday, 27 August 2009

0800–0830 Registration

0830–0845 Administrative Announcements

0845–1015 Featured Speaker

 Mr. Andrew Lubin

 Independent Journalist

1015–1030 Break

Panel 6

1030–1200 Current Operations

 Historical Roots and Explanations

 for “Embedding” Journalists

 Phillip Fraund, Ph.D.

 Beyond Doctrine: A Historical Perspective

 on the Information Operations Debate in

 Media-Military Relations

 Stephen Badsey, Ph.D.

 Moderator

 Mr. Steve Vogel

1200–1300 Lunch

1300–1430 Featured Speaker

 Mr. Ralph Peters

 Independent Journalist

1430–1440 Administrative Announcements

1440–1500 Concluding Remarks

 Dr. William G. Robertson

 Director, US Army Combat Studies Institute

291

Appendix B

About the Presenters

Stephen Badsey is a Reader in Conflict Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. 

He received an M.A. in History from the University of Cambridge (1981) and a Ph.D. in 

History from the University of Cambridge (1982). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

Historical Society (FRHistS) in 1995. He has authored or coauthored over 20 books and 

60 other publications, including The British Army in Battle and Its Image 1914–1918

(2009); Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–1918 (2008); The Falklands 

Conflict Twenty Years On (2005) with Rob Havers and Mark Grove; Britain, NATO, and 

the Lessons of the Balkan Conflicts 1991–1999 (2004) with Paul Latawski; The Media 

and International Security (2000); Modern Military Operations and the Media (1994); 

The Crimean War: The War Correspondents (1994) with Andrew Lambert; and Gulf War 

Assessed (1992) with John Pimlott.

Bernard Barrett, a Canadian citizen, is the spokesperson for the International Committee 

of the Red Cross (ICRC) and responsible for ICRC relations with American and Canadian 

media. His previous ICRC assignments as media representative include Rwanda (1997–

1998), South Sudan (1998), Timor (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Haiti (2004), Sri Lanka 

(2005), Jerusalem (2006–2007), and Nairobi (2007–2008). He was also seconded by the 

Canadian Red Cross to work with the American Red Cross in New York City in September 

2001. Barrett has also worked as a private consultant, training media in Vietnam and Laos 

(1999), Kosovo (2000), Chad (2001), Haiti (2003), as well as Iraqi media in Amman and 

Beirut (2005–2006). Earlier in his career, he worked for 23 years as a reporter, producer, 

and executive producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He holds a B.A. 

in Communications from Concordia University (Loyola) in Montreal and an M.A. in 

Occupational Sociology from Laval University in Quebec City.

Robert Baumann was officially appointed the Director of Graduate Degree Programs for 

CGSC in April 2004 after having served in that role in an acting capacity since June 2003. 

Baumann joined CGSC in 1984 and served for 19 years as a member of the Department 

of Military History. In 1995, Baumann was recognized as TRADOC and CGSC Civilian 

Instructor of the Year. He received a B.A. in Russian from Dartmouth College (1974), an 

M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University in 1976, and a Ph.D in 

History from Yale University (1982). From 1979 to 1980, he was a graduate exchange 

student at Moscow University with grant support from the Fulbright-Hayes Program and 

the International Research and Exchanges Board. Baumann was subsequently a Research 

Associate at Leningrad State University during the summers of 1990 and 1991. In addition 

to over 20 scholarly articles and book chapters, Baumann is the author or coauthor of 

the following Combat Studies Institute Press publications: Russian-Soviet Unconventional 

Wars in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Afghanistan; Invasion, Intervention, Intervasion: 

A Concise History of the US Army in Operation Uphold Democracy; My Clan Against 

the World: A History of US and Coalition Forces in Somalia 1992–1994; and Armed 
292

Peacekeepers in Bosnia. A 1999 recipient of a research grant from the United States Institute 

of Peace in Washington, DC, Baumann is also writer-producer of a documentary film on the 

US and multinational peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Beyond Russian military history, he 

has also written extensively on the history of the Bashkirs and taught briefly as a visiting 

professor of history at the Bashkir State University in Ufa, Russia, in the fall of 1992. With 

the start of military operations in Afghanistan in 2001, Baumann conducted an OPD for the 

10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum just prior to its deployment. Subsequently, in March 

2002, Major General Hagenbeck, CG of the 10th, asked Baumann to come to Bagram to 

brief the international staff on the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and to help collect 

the history of Operation ANACONDA. In addition to his continued teaching at CGSC, 

Baumann has frequently served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Kansas 

and Kansas State University.

Thomas A. Bruscino Jr. is an assistant professor at the US Army School of Advanced 

Military Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Military History from Ohio University and has served 

as a historian at the US Army Center of Military History in Washington, DC, and the US 

Army Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth. He is the author of Out of Bounds: 

Transnational Sanctuary in Irregular Warfare (Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006) and 

the forthcoming A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get 

Along.

John Burns is a British journalist and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He is the London 

Bureau Chief for the New York Times, where he covers international issues. Burns also 

frequently appears on PBS. Born in Nottingham, England, his family emigrated to Canada 

when he was young where he later studied at McGill University. In the early 1970s, Burns 

wrote for the Canadian (Toronto-based) newspaper Globe and Mail, covering both local 

stories and later serving as a China correspondent. Burns joined the New York Times in 

1975, reporting, at first, for the paper’s metropolitan section, and has written ever since 

for the newspaper in various capacities. He has been assigned to and headed several of the 

Times foreign bureaus. He along with fellow Times journalists John Darnton and Michael 

T. Kaufman won the 1978 George Polk Award for foreign reporting for coverage of Africa. 

Burns was also the Times Bureau Chief in Moscow from 1981 to 1984. In 1986, while 

Chief of the Times Beijing Bureau, Burns was incarcerated on suspicion of espionage by 

the Chinese Government. Charges were dropped after an investigation, but Burns was 

subsequently expelled from the country. Burns received his second Pulitzer in 1997, this 

time “for his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on 

Afghanistan by the Taliban.” Burns was based in Baghdad during the leadup to the Iraq 

War in 2003 and has written extensively on the war and the subsequent occupation. In July 

2007, Burns succeeded Alan Cowell as bureau chief in London. On 30 September 2007, 

Burns received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws 

degree from Colby College. Burns is a frequent contributor to PBS, including a number 

of appearances on the Charlie Rose Show and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer via satellite 

from Afghanistan and Iraq.
293

Frederick J. Chiaventone is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and commentator. 

His novel of Red Cloud’s War Moon of Bitter Cold won the coveted Western Heritage 

Award while his novel of the Little Bighorn, A Road We Do Not Know, won the Ambassador 

William F. Colby Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer. Chiaventone’s articles appear 

regularly in the New York Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Armchair General, 

American Heritage, and Cowboys & Indians. A retired Army officer, Chiaventone taught 

psychological operations, counterterrorism operations, and counterinsurgency operations 

at the US Army Command and General Staff College and was contributing editor for the 

Oxford Companion to American Military History and for Greenwood Press’ Historical 

Dictionary of the United States Army. An advisor to director Ang Lee for his film Ride With 

the Devil (Universal Pictures), he has also appeared on PBS’s The American Experience

and on The History Channel.

Chuck de Caro is founder and CEO of the AEROBUREAU Corporation. He is a former 

CNN special assignments correspondent who specialized in combat reporting from 

Nicaragua, Grenada, and Surinam; investigative reporting on illegal drug operations, 

foreign espionage, and criminal gangs; and defense reporting on US and foreign 

military activities. He has written front page stories for the New York Daily News, the 

Providence Journal Bulletin, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, the New Orleans 

Courier, and Army Times. He has also written major stories for the Atlantic Monthly, 

the Washington Post, Defense News, and Air Progress. He has been a technical advisor 

to TV magazines such as Hard Copy, Sightings, and Encounters, as well as to dramas 

such as Magnum, Quantum Leap, and J.A.G. Mr. de Caro was educated at the Marion 

Military Institute, the US Air Force Academy, and the University of Rhode Island. 

Phillip Fraund received his M.A. in History and Political Science from the University of 

Konstanz (2004) and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Konstanz (2009). Fraund’s 

most recent publication was his presentation published in the conference proceedings of the 

2006 Meeting of German Historians. Fraund has recently completed the 2009 West Point 

Summer Seminar in Military History.

Paul Gardner is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Army Tactics at the US Army 

Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and is also an adjunct 

Assistant Professor in International Relations for Webster University. He retired from the 

US Army in 2007 as a lieutenant colonel and is currently a doctoral candidate in History at 

Kansas State University. 

William M. Hammond has been a historian at the Center of Military History since 1972 

and Chief of its General Histories Branch since 2001. He is the author of two volumes in 

the Center’s History of the Vietnam War, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962–

1968 (Washington, DC, 1988), and Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968–1973

(Washington, DC, 1996). His condensed and updated version of these volumes, Reporting 

Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Lawrence, KS, 1998), won the Organization of 

American Historians’ Richard W. Leopold Prize in 2000. Hammond is also a coauthor of 
294

the Center’s Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea (Washington, 

DC, 1996). He held a research fellowship from Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein 

Center for the Press and Public Policy in 1999. On the side, he serves as a Senior Lecturer 

in University Honors at the University of Maryland, College Park, where since 1990 he 

has taught courses on the Vietnam War and the military and the media in American history.

Bill Kurtis is a television journalist, producer, well-known former CBS News anchor, and 

current host of A&E crime and news documentary shows, including Investigative Reports, 

American Justice, and Cold Case Files. Previously, he anchored CBS Morning News

and was a popular news anchor at WBBM-TV, the CBS owned-and-operated station in 

Chicago. Kurtis began his television career as a full-time anchor at WIBW-TV in Topeka, 

Kansas. On the evening of 8 June 1966, a severe thunderstorm 20 miles southwest of town 

generated a tornado that headed straight toward Topeka. Kurtis warned: “For God’s sake, 

take cover.” This warning became synonymous with the 1966 Topeka tornado that left 16 

dead and injured hundreds more. Kurtis remained on the air for 24 straight hours to cover 

the destruction. His performance during this disaster proved to be his big break. He moved 

to Chicago in 1966 to work at WBBM-TV’s Channel 2 News Chicago, first as a reporter and 

then as an anchorman. In 1982, he moved to New York to anchor the CBS Morning News

but returned to Chicago 3 years later to produce documentaries for the television show The 

New Explorers. Kurtis also returned to WBBM-TV at that time and worked as an anchorman 

there until 1996. He started his own production company, Kurtis Productions, in 1990 and 

joined the A&E cable television network the following year. Kurtis has received numerous 

awards for his television work, including over 20 Emmys and the Illinois Broadcasters 

Association 1998 Hall of Fame Award and the Kansas Association of Broadcasters 2003 

Hall of Fame Award. He was the narrator in the Will Ferrell comedy film Anchorman: The 

Legend of Ron Burgundy and also contributed a spoken-word introduction to the Dandy 

Warhols’ 2005 album Odditorium or Warlords of Mars. Other narration work includes his 

introduction to various news clips on the CD portion of the multimedia book, We Interrupt 

This Broadcast. Most recently, Kurtis was featured in a series of commercials for AT&T 

Mobility, which pokes fun at his serious investigative journalist persona.

Andrew Lubin has appeared on FOX, ABC, and CNN and in 2004 supplied expert 

commentary and analysis on the war in Iraq for WPVI-6, Philadelphia ABC. His work 

appears in newspapers nationwide and on Military.com. According to his peers, Lubin is 

rapidly becoming one of the most knowledgable journalists covering Iraq, Afghanistan, and 

Central Asia today. He is an internationally recognized writer and college professor and has 

30+ years of hands-on experience in logistics, international relations, national security, and 

international trade. He has been able to successfully combine the academic theories and 

practices of international relations and international management with the harsh realities of 

walking night patrols with the Marines in Ramadi. The author of the critically acclaimed 

Charlie Battery: A Marine Artillery Unit in Iraq, his first book received rave reviews from 

such military and foreign policy experts as Max Boot (Council for Foreign Relations and 

author of War Made New), as well as General Al Gray who served as the 29th Commandant 

of the Marine Corps. He has done book signings in 11 states and 4 countries, and in 2005 
295

Lubin was a featured author and speaker at the prestigious University of Virginia Festival 

of Books as well as the Southern Kentucky BookFest and the Baltimore Book Festival. 

Talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, and our Marines and Soldiers has brought Lubin to ABC, 

FOX, CNN, and CN 8, as well as radio appearances in New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts. 

He is a regular feature on The Joey Reynolds Show (770 AM, nationwide).

Ron Martz writes on defense issues for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His books 

include Solitary Survivor: The First American POW in Southeast Asia (with Lawrence 

R. Bailey Jr.) and White Tigers: My Secret War in North Korea (with Ben Malcom), and 

Heavy Metal: A Tank Company’s Battle to Baghdad (with Jason Conroy).

Donald North is an independent journalist and video producer who went to Iraq to help 

form the Iraqi Media Network. He covered the Vietnam war as a journalist and was 

involved in training journalists, particularly television and radio journalists, in Bosnia, 

Afghanistan, and Romania. He recently wrote an article for Television Week titled “Iraq 

Project Frustration: One Newsman’s Take on How Things Went Wrong.”

Ralph Peters is a writer, strategist, commentator, and retired military officer. He is the 

author of 24 books and almost 800 columns, articles, essays, and reviews. Uniformed 

service, personal interests, and research have taken him to 70 countries and 6 continents. 

He served in the US Army for 22 years, first as an enlisted man, then as an officer, retiring 

shortly after his promotion to lieutenant colonel to write with greater freedom. He has 

published six books on strategy and military affairs, Wars of Blood and Faith, Never 

Quit the Fight, Beyond Baghdad, Beyond Terror, and Fighting for the Future, each of 

which collected his previously published essays and articles, and New Glory: Expanding 

America’s Global Supremacy, a nonpartisan critique of our national strategy. Looking for 

Trouble, a memoir of his adventures and misadventures in remote trouble spots while in 

uniform, was published in 2008. Peters’ commentaries, essays, and reviews have appeared 

in the New York Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Atlanta JournalConstitution, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Newsweek, 

Harpers, Weekly Standard, National Review, Washington Monthly, Wired, Parameters, 

Armed Forces Journal, Joint Force Quarterly, Strategic Review, Armchair General, 

Military Review, Maclean’s, and other domestic and foreign publications. He has appeared 

on every major American television and cable news network, as well as numerous radio 

programs and in international media. In March 2009, he became the first strategic analyst 

for Fox News.

Rhonda Quillin joined the Center for Army Tactics in June 2008 as media editor. Prior 

to this position, she edited federal submission and journal publications for international 

companies. She also has written communications for the Food and Drug Administration 

and the National Health Institute and is now working on an article about strategic 

communication. She served for 3 years in the US Army, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. 

She earned a B.S. from the University of Texas−El Paso and an M.A. in Communications 

from Abilene Christian University.
296

Jared Tracey served 6 years in the US Army and is now a historian at Fort Bragg’s 

Airborne and Special Operations Museum, Fayetteville. He holds undergraduate and 

graduate degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and George Washington 

University and is nearing completion of a Ph.D. in History from Kansas State University 

with his doctoral dissertation, “World War I as the Basis of the Modern Public Relations 

Paradox, 1917–1941.” He has published works on leaflet drops, military education, and the 

“Ethical Challenges in Stability Operations,” the latter of which was awarded first place in 

the US Army’s 2008 General William DePuy writing contest. He is currently reviewing a 

social history of the American Expeditionary Forces in a forthcoming issue of the Southern 

History Journal.



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