FC: Transcript of DOD meeting with media over war censorship rules

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[By "censorship," the participants below are talking about restrictions 
placed on media who are in the battlefield and may be required not to 
publish or broadcast certain information. --DBM]

---
        
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/t09302001_t0928asd.html

United States Department of Defense
NEWS TRANSCRIPT
Friday, Sept. 28, 2001

ASD PA Meeting with Media Pool Bureau Chiefs
(Meeting with DoD National Media Pool Bureau Chiefs. Also participating: 
Richard McGraw, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public 
affairs, and Army Col. Lane Van de Steeg, coordinator, DoD National Media 
Pool.)

[...]

Q:  Regarding the CINCs, General Franks is not the world's most 
press-friendly guy.  CENTCOM Public Affairs took down their web site last 
week.  Even with the basic housekeeping information.  He won't let his 
people post his testimony on his web site, unlike a lot of other CINCs.
He won't tell us if he's married, he won't tell us how many kids he's 
got.  We can understand that.  But getting access to his congressional 
testimony and stuff like that, if you could encourage him that that's not 
risking national security.  It would make our job a lot easier.
Clarke:  I had a conversation with him this morning, I've had conversations 
with him before and will continue to talk with him and the others.
There is a lot of stuff that comes under the category of easy and obvious, 
and that's all the way on one side of the bright line.  There are some 
things, and you all know what they are, that fall on the other side of the 
bright line that we'll never talk about, we will never discuss under any means.
What we're trying to do is put as many things as possible on this side of 
the bright line.  It may not be as clear as name, rank and serial number, 
but we're trying to find a way to put as many things over on that side of 
the bright line as possible.  And it is part of my job.  I will continue to 
work with him and the others to try to be as forthcoming as possible.
Q:  Can you define what -- be as specific as possible, Torie.  What are the 
areas that you will not talk about?  Right now we're in preparation for 
this conflict.  The experience of my reporters is that they're getting 
nothing from the Pentagon.  That everything is on the dark side of that 
bright line.
Clarke:  I'll tell you what we believe and what we're saying, and I will 
also say fully, we're trying to come up with the new vocabulary and we're 
trying to come up with the new guidelines, if you will.  But anything to do 
with operations, anything that has to do with classified information, we 
are not going to be talking about.  It's just not useful, it's not helpful, 
and it quite honestly can be quite harmful.  And quite honestly, and 
perfectly understandably, 75-80 percent of the questions we get are who, 
when, where, how.  We can't answer those and we won't answer those.
Quigley:  You might mention the USA Today story as an example of something 
that is not helping other correspondents.
Clarke:  I got eight, nine phone calls last night from several of your very 
hard working reporters who said my boss is beating up on me, there's this 
USA Today story, and can you help me on this, and I would say no.  And they 
would go well, can you steer me? Are they in the right direction or not the 
right direction?  I said we're not talking about that.
Talking about a story that talks about operations is talking about 
operations so we're not going to do it.  We spent, we were in the 
secretary's office a half an hour today making sure that everybody is clear 
about this, and making sure our colleagues in the Administration are clear 
about this.
Q:  Poll people here, that is not what everyone heard off the record or on 
background.
Clarke:  I'm sure that's true.
Q:  I'm just saying that what you say people are supposed to say and what 
they actually say on background or off the record is all over the line.
Clarke:  I know.  There are only so many people that we can really --

[...]

Q:  The U.S. military has a long tradition of not having any secret 
casualties.  Can you assure us that if anybody is killed or injured that we 
will hear about it?
Clarke:  It's one of the things that we have definitely put down on paper 
is try to be as forthcoming as possible about casualties.
Q:  Try.  Will you tell us when men are lost?  Or women.
Clarke:  Yes.
Q:  Promptly and under what circumstances?
Clarke:  Promptly.  Under what circumstances we're still wrestling 
with.  I'll ask you guys about Special Forces.  I just don't know the 
answer to that.
Male Voice:  I guess the only thing we might fuzz is the specific location 
of the person when their injury or death occurs.  We may not be clear as to 
the exact location. [...]
Q:  Would you say what happened?  In other words, you wouldn't say someone 
died of an automobile accident, for example, it would be --
Male Voice:  Lying, and the answer is unequivocally no.


[...]

Q:  Are you going to allow press to go with any of those units?
Male Voice:  That's the issue we're discussing today.
Clarke:  That's what we're looking at.
As we're sitting in this room --
Q:  I thought that's why we were doing this so that the media could join 
the military on these operations.
Clarke:  It's true, and in some places we can make it happen and some we 
won't be able to.  It's going to be very difficult, anything with Special 
Forces, to make that happen.
Q:  Do you really --
Q:  -- right?
Clarke:  Certain other ones will be available, but that's what we're 
working hard on as we sit here trying to figure out these aspects of it, 
the people who are putting this together are looking at a wide variety of 
options and plans and contingencies and trying to figure those out.  So 
we're trying to run a couple of tracks at the same time.
It would be very easy if we knew right now, September 28th, exactly what 
was going to happen and where it was going to happen and with whom, but we 
don't.  So we are trying to put things together.


[...]

Q:  Let's say we actually do get some of our people out there.  Two 
issues.  One would be censorship.  What kind of censorship do you think 
you'd be imposing in terms of what we can see, what we can't see, what we 
can report, what we can't report.
Clarke:  I don't think the choice of the word is correct.  Let me say why.
I happen to think that everybody in this room understands and supports, and 
I happen to believe every one of your reporters understands and supports 
that you won't be writing about, talking about national security, 
operational matters, any kind of classified.  I have found overwhelmingly 
people act very very responsibly.  And I think it is totally, totally safe 
to say that 99.9 percent of the people who are out there doing their jobs 
are going to do it well and they're going to do it responsibly.  That is 
not a concern.  When we have people who try to point out, and the folks who 
have been on these can weigh in here, they have more experience than I do, 
there will be circumstances in which someone will point out hey, what you 
just saw is classified information, I'd appreciate it if you don't do that, 
and I think most people will respect that.
Q:  Fine.  I think we're in agreement on that.  But beyond that.
Clarke:  There is no beyond that.
Q:  During the Persian Gulf there was something called security 
review.  And it was in the field and then back at the Pentagon.  Are you 
saying that will not happen this time?
Clarke:  I think we have to come up with a new vocabulary.  In the security 
review, you help me, it seemed to be very sporadic. There didn't seem to be 
a lot of consistency of how it was administered and by whom and those sorts 
of things.
Again, I just firmly believe that everybody knows the responsibilities, 
everybody knows the principles up front, and I think we can count to a 
great extent that your people will act responsibly.  It's just not a 
concern on my part.
Q:  I would be very worried there because clearly my definition of national 
security is going to be different from the U.S. Army's definition.  I think 
in peacetime it's usually not a problem.  But when the balloon goes up it 
is very much a problem.  I think there should be an effort made to try to 
refine it a little bit, rather than just saying we're all concerned about 
national security because my experience has been that the military would 
err on the side of extreme non-disclosure and --
Clarke:  I don't think that's a fair generalization to make.  I just don't.
Q:  Well, that's been my experience.
Q:  Torie, whatever the vocabulary, are you saying that neither in the 
field nor at the Pentagon will anybody review news material produced by 
pools before it goes out?
Clarke:  We probably will review it, but just for these very narrow aspects.
Q:  But there will be --
Q:  Where will it be reviewed?
Q:  On that point, weren't people told at the meeting this week that you 
won't even allow the use of the last names and home towns of service people 
that are being interviewed for stories?
Clarke:  That gets to the safety of the men and women in uniform.  That 
really does.  Things have changed considerably since the Persian Gulf War 
that makes their safety even more of a challenge.
Q:  Torie, can you explain to us what the issue is here?  I'm hearing this 
for the first time.
Male Voice:  I have been told, because I was ignorant in my ways, that 
that's not necessarily true.  However, in Kosovo we had some rules come out 
because of the terrorist threats against family members, that you don't 
talk about the family members, etc., etc.
As Ms. Clarke has said, this ain't Kosovo.  This is nothing we've dealt 
with before.  There are going to be limits when we get to the pool -- when 
any of you guys get to the scene to cover a story there are going to be 
some limits that we'll say please don't discuss location, because of the 
nature of this organization don't discuss last names.  There are going to 
be other situations where they're not going to care if you say this is Joe 
Schmedlock from lower Podunk.  It's going to be situationally dependent, 
and that is something that you should be briefed on before you cover the 
story so you at least know what the parameters are and will at least know 
going into it what your limits are.
Q:  Are you saying, for example, a Special Ops person you wouldn't want to 
identify that way, but an F-16 pilot you would?
Male Voice:  I wouldn't say an F-16 pilot.  However, a crewmember standing 
on the deck of the Enterprise or something, I don't know what the Navy, 
what that naval commander's restrictions are going to be.  But what I'm 
saying is that you guys -- we owe it to you to tell you what they are going 
in.  Whatever that specific situation is.  I cannot stand here and tell you 
blanket what the situations are.
Male Voice:  You'll find a different preference from each and every service 
member that you interview in the field.  Some will feel comfortable in 
having you use their last names and hometowns, some will not.
Q:  But it's different if they decide that individually or if you tell them 
they can't do it and that we can't do it.
Male Voice:  What we're asking you is to factor that into your thinking and 
if you get different reactions in the field it's going to be predicated on 
that person's individual experiences.
Q:  That's always the case.  I guess the question here is, whether you want 
to use the word or not, Torie, there's a long history of military 
censorship in this country.  We wouldn't expect anything other than that in 
this case.  But what we need to know is going into this thing, are those 
sorts of rules going to be applied on a blanket basis either by a 
particular service or by the military as a whole.
Clarke:  What do you mean when you say those sorts of rules?
Q:  No last names.
Q:  This occurred when the Roosevelt left Norfolk, they said no last names.
Clarke:  Let me say this.  My strong preference is that if it is not in the 
obvious category -- a Special Forces kind of person, or for instance a 
pilot.  Sometimes they would use their handles rather than their names.  My 
strong preference is to the greatest extent, people can use their names, 
they can use their hometowns, but there are going to be certain cases where 
we won't want to.  We'll try to make that clear.
But also, and again, I have a lot of faith in the people who work for 
you.  They tend to be very sensitive to these sorts of things.  So when 
they are interviewing a person they tend to be pretty sensitive to that 
individual's concerns.  So I have a lot of faith in the ability of people 
doing your work and people being interviewed to work that out.
Q:  Torie, outside of the location which is going to be sensitive, the last 
name, what are the other things that the pool report review will involve?
Clarke:  One of the things we're going to do as people leave is to hand out 
what is the existing, as of September 28th, guidelines -- do's and don'ts 
for the pool.  What I would ask all of you to do is take a hard look at 
them, as we are, and say what's relevant, what's not, what seems 
ridiculous, what seems valuable, and give us your ideas and suggestions on it.
I've tasked all of us to take a hard look at it and say does this really 
work?  Are there ways we can be more forward leaning than we are?  Are 
there areas in which given the aftershock of September 11th we should be 
tightening up?  And I think there are.  But we're going to be give you what 
the existing set is and say tell us what you think we ought to be 
changing.  I didn't think it would be useful with this large a group to 
have 40-some people start to edit the document.  But take it home, look it 
over, show it to your people and say this is crazy, but this is a cool 
thing.  It would be very helpful.
Q:  Does that mean that the existing rules and the principles that were 
ironed out ten years ago are up in the air, open for discussion?
Clarke:  Absolutely everything is open for discussion.  If I haven't made 
that clear, let me say it again.  It is a whole new world, folks, and we 
are trying to figure out the best rules of the road for going forward.  And 
after a lot of work and after looking at this hour after hour, after 
getting your inputs, we may look at them and go that's the way it ought to be.
We start with the fundamental principle, with the fundamental philosophy 
that we want to get out as much news and as much information as possible in 
as complete and total a fashion as possible, with the security and safety 
concerns built in so everybody understands, starting with that fundamental 
commitment and let's work from there to see what those rules of the road 
should be.
What I'm saying is anyone who thinks the way the world works prior to 
September 11th is the same today is nuts.  So let's take a hard look at it 
and see if we should change it, or if everyone looks at this and says these 
work pretty well, (inaudible).
Q:  You deal with a lot of host countries that have no traditional 
(inaudible), tradition of press control.  It was also an issue going into 
the Gulf War with the Saudis.  And the question is to what degree have you 
started a dialogue with any of these countries about providing access 
either on the ground unilaterally or through the military?  Are we going to 
find ourselves in a position where not only can we not report people's 
names, but we can't say what country they're in, we can't say what unit 
they're with because that could be sensitive information, we can't say what 
they do because that too could be operational.  We can say almost nothing 
of what they're up to.  (inaudible) with the countries.  You can say we'd 
like to have somebody in Uzbekistan, but Uzbeks don't want to 
cooperate.  It gives you an out but it doesn't satisfy us and isn't realistic.
Clarke:  Again, fortunately, I have met with and worked with to a greater 
or lesser extent with a lot of my counterparts over the last few 
months.  We've already tried to make the introductions, but some work with 
you more than others.  We've started around the calls again with some of 
the relevant suspects to say hey, let's keep the lines of communication 
open.  I have said to them that we are working through these issues and 
this is a priority for us, and get their thoughts, but the basic message to 
all of them, which has been well received, is we want to keep the lines of 
communication open, we want to try to find ways to the extent possible we 
can help our media do the job.  And so far the response has been quite 
positive.
Now there's a real difference between a phone call and making it happen, I 
know that.  But we at least have established the contact, communicated the 
desire, and (inaudible).
Q:  Let's say that a pool was activated yesterday and there's a pool report 
to be posted on the web today.  Who is going to review it before it's 
posted, and who actually posts this?  Who in DoD either in the field, the 
command out there...
Clarke:  How it currently works --
Q:  How many possible layers --
Q:  In terms of reviewing stories before they're --
Clarke:  -- a pool got activated yesterday and the following --
Q:  They want to post a report on the web.  Who reviews it, how many layers 
of review are there, who actually posts it?
Q:  (inaudible)
Male Voice:  It's very easy for me to say that I hadn't planned, if I was 
in the pool, of anybody reviewing what you wrote unless it was handed to me 
by one of you and you said I think this paragraph is okay but would you 
please tell me if I've said something wrong.
Clarke:  And I've got to tell you guys, in my brief what is it five months, 
six months, however long I've been in the job, my brief experience, usually 
what happens is your people come to us and say I've got a question about 
this, help me out here.  Am I delving into something I shouldn't delve 
into?  They've been tremendously responsible thus far, and I know that 
(inaudible), but the general --
Quigley:  Can I take a whack at that?  Security at the source is going to 
be one of the principal methods we're going to use to ensure that no 
classified information or movements of units or something like that.

[...]

Clarke:  And you're trying to make it too black and white.
Q:  We're trying to get some sense --
Clarke:  And we're trying to give you some sense, but there's no such thing 
as no appeals, and you all know that, and some of you have called me up in 
the last X months and appealed certain things.  That's a way of life, 
that's what we do and I fully expect that we and I will play that 
role.  There always are.  But what we really want to do is communicate to 
all of our people out there what our guiding principles are, if you will, 
and I have enormous faith that in most times they will work it out.  And 
when they don't, absolutely.
Q:  Torie, using the example we were talking about before.  You're 
interviewing a sailor on a ship.  He has absolutely no problem with his 
name and hometown being used, in fact he welcomes that.  But you have a 
CINC who tells the handler, the pool handler, I'm fighting a war, I don't 
have time to worry about whether this is on that side of the line or not, 
no last names at all.  And we did have situations like that in the Persian 
Gulf.  The CINCs told the handlers no, err on the side of not letting it out.
Clarke:  Here's what I can say about that.  It's not the Persian Gulf, it 
is something different.
Q:  I know.
Clarke:  I think, I am hopeful, I will be strongly encouraging and 
directing of all to err on the side of being more forthcoming.
Q:  But on the question of review, what we don't want to have happen is 
some blanket order that no last names in this particular area by order of 
the CINC.

[...]

Male Voice:  There's always a way for a reporter to say to me or one of the 
escorts, I need to contact my bureau chief, for us to call back and say, 
and to get that going.  That's not a challenge.  But to have you call with 
a cell phone directly back to somebody other than the bureau chief -- it 
starts to get really screwy.
As I explained, not screwy, but detailed, let me put it that way.
As I explained to the deployers, if we call the media pool out and the 
deployers are told to go to Andrews Air Force Base, don't have your wife 
drive you to Andrews Air Force Base.  Get in a taxicab and let them drive 
you.  Because if your wife has driven you to Andrews then there's one extra 
person who now knows that somebody is going out to cover a story on the 
military. Operational security --

[...]




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