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Editor’s
note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author's
and do not necessarily reflect the views of NDU, the Department
of Defense, or the government of the United States.
 est
easy, Americans. Your freedoms are secure. As you read this, a select
team of specialists is operating in South Asia with orders to "smoke
out" their secretive quarry. Loren Jenkins, senior foreign
editor of National Public Radio, has dispatched them. Jenkins instructed
his reporters to locate the American forces using language chillingly
similar to that used by the president in describing our objective
in pursuit of terrorists. As soon as they find out where the troops
are, they are to report it. One may ask what strange psychology
compels Jenkins to serve as a de facto auxiliary of the al Qaeda
intelligence apparatus? "I don't represent the government,"
the federally funded journalist explains. "I represent history,
information, what happened."
He represents
history? Is he on a retainer? Bizarre statements like this only
ratify the intuitive suspicions held by many Americans that the
press cannot be trusted. Jenkins writes off this wariness to the
fact that "they all blame the press for losing the war in Vietnam,"
a fairly simple and simplistic analysis on his part — which
has the benefit of being true.
There is, in
fact, an essential culture clash between journalism and the military,
especially in wartime. Military operations rely on secrecy, which
is necessary to preserve the element of surprise, a recognized force
multiplier since well before Sun Tzu declared it so. Secrecy is
particularly important in the type of conflict now being waged,
in which covert operations and Special Forces play a leading role.
The type of information Jenkins is seeking — the number, location
and presumably movements of our troops — would obviously be
of incalculable value to our enemies.
So why report
it? Journalists are driven by the pursuit of objectives at variance
with secrecy — sensation, scoops, good visuals. The reporters'
bottom line is notoriety; and in the case of commercial journalism,
ad revenues for their parents. Wrap this up in some self-inflating
rhetoric about "the public's right to know" and you have
a war correspondent. I assume that the 13 or so NPR reporters are
even now trudging around the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan
looking for Green Berets. I can visualize the scene: a pup reporter
freshly outfitted in Banana Republic gear, blundering into a sentry
post after having been observed approaching for a few miles, and
becoming a temporary guest of the government. I have no doubt that
the reporter would be very well taken care of and given all of the
personal interest stories he (or especially she) could handle; and
in the process discover that these are a great bunch of guys that
no American would ever want to endanger, regardless of the nature
of the scoop. The reporter would have an epiphany. It would be an
Ernie Pyle moment.
But for every
good-natured Ernie there is an evil Bert, cloaking himself in the
First Amendment as though granted unlimited power and conferred
special status on a select group of elites. Regrettably, to a certain
extent this is true — journalists have privacy rights in court
that other citizens do not enjoy. But they also face constitutional
limits. Some reporters might benefit from a close reading of Near
v. Minnesota (1931), in which Chief Justice Hughes wrote,
"no one would question but that a government might prevent
… publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number
and location of troops." Hughes, who had a much more authentic
claim to the status "representative of history" than Jenkins,
held operational security (OPSEC) to be a self-evident truth that
"no one would question." The safety of the men on the
front line is such an overriding countervailing state interest that
it even passes the test for prior restraint — not simply denying
access to troops but banning publication of their whereabouts. This
principle was upheld even in New York Times Co. v. United
States (1971), the Pentagon Papers case, which in other respects
gave great latitude to the press. Jenkins' assertion that "the
game of reporting is to smoke 'em out" betrays his thoughtless
approach to the same question. This is no game; this isn't a question
of a bureaucrat trying to conceal a cost overrun; it is a matter
of life and death.
Suppose NPR
had found out about and reported the recent Ranger mission to Kandahar
before the fact. Why? For whose benefit? Would a story like that
serve any public purpose? On the contrary, it would be extremely
detrimental. Most journalists seem to understand this. For example,
the press has generally cooperated with the Pentagon request that
reporters not use the full names of service people in the war zone.
Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times,
allowed that this was not "a major blow to the First Amendment."
Very gracious of him, but understand why this restriction is so
important. When the rebels in Chechnya learned the names of Russian
troops they used the Internet to track down personal information
about them, then conducted psyops against the soldiers and their
families back home. Imagine terrorists calling wives or children
of U.S. troops and telling them they had just skinned the face from
a still-living husband or father (N.B. — not an unknown practice
in that region). Somehow I don't see a constitutional crisis in
not facilitating this kind of psychological warfare.
OPSEC is tough
enough without a self-appointed Voice of History running around.
One could easily conjure hypotheticals that would illustrate what
Chief Justice Hughes saw as self-evident — e.g., a reporter
willfully giving away the secrets of D-Day, spoiling the deception
operations designed to divert the Nazis from the true landing beaches,
and leading to the failure of Operation Overlord. First Amendment
freedom or act of treason? You decide.
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